Some Disturbingly Relevant Legacies of Anticommunism

[newthinking]

Some Disturbingly Relevant Legacies of Anticommunism

The impact of Cold War anticommunism on our national life has been so profound that we no longer recognize how much we’ve lost.

Victor Navasky
March 23, 2015 , The Nation Magazine

http://www.thenation.com/article/201177/some-disturbingly-relevant-legacies-anticommunism


In 1956, Jack O’Dell was subpoenaed to appear before Senator James Eastland’s Internal Security Subcommittee, the intersection of the red scare and white supremacy. (AP Images)

More than once, when i’ve been introduced to someone as the former longtime editor of The Nation, that person has asked me: “Did you found the magazine?”

And more than once, I have resisted the temptation to denounce the questioner.

I am old (82 last July), but not that old. However, the truth is that when, in the late 1970s, I had the chance to become The Nation’s editor, I said yes largely because of The Nation’s long and noble history.

Even though I grew up in a home where The Nation (along with The New Republic) arrived weekly, my parents found it hard to understand why I would give up what looked like a promising career at The New York Times (where I worked as an editor on the Sunday magazine).

I had taken a leave from the Times in the early 1970s to write Naming Names, the story of the Hollywood blacklist, which focused on the role of the informer during the so-called phenomenon of McCarthyism. I say “so-called” because the anticommunist hysteria that was its signature began before Senator Joseph McCarthy arrived on the scene and persisted long after he drowned in alcohol. (The historian Ellen Schrecker tells us that knowing what we know now, we should probably call it “Hooverism,” after J. Edgar, who did so much behind and in front of the scenes to promote the anticommunist hysteria.)

In the course of my research, I read through all the magazines and journals of the period, and I came to admire The Nation’s coverage more than any other’s. I also got to read, interview and know The Nation’s editor during those years, the late, great and wise Carey McWilliams, who gave a parade of informed and eloquent writers capacious space to document the paranoia of the period, not least among them the lawyer-historian Frank Donner, who so accurately and definitively reported in 1961:

Continued:

http://www.thenation.com/article/201177/some-disturbingly-relevant-legacies-anticommunism

[marcolu]

1. i like this part

i like this part The impact of Cold War anticommunism on our national life has been so profound that we no longer recognize how much we’ve lost.

[TBF]

2. With an assist from the democrats (Wilson) ~

Yes. Democrat Woodrow Wilson was overseeing AG Palmer and his raids:

Palmer Raids, also called Palmer Red Raids, raids conducted by the U.S. Department of Justice in 1919 and 1920 in an attempt to arrest foreign anarchists, communists, and radical leftists, many of whom were subsequently deported. The raids, fueled by social unrest following World War I, were led by Attorney General A. Mitchell Palmer and are viewed as the climax of that era’s so-called Red Scare.

The emotional pitch of World War I did not abate with the armistice, and rampant inflation, unemployment, massive and violent strikes, and brutal race riots in the United States contributed to a sense of fear and foreboding in 1919. A mail bomb plot, consisting of 36 explosive packages designed to go off on May Day, 1919, triggered a grave fear that a Bolshevik conspiracy sought the overthrow of the United States. On June 2, 1919, a second series of bombings took place, destroying Palmer’s home and leading to increased public pressure for action against the radical agitators.

Palmer was a latecomer to the anticommunist cause and had a history of supporting civil liberties. However, he was ambitious to obtain the Democratic nomination for the presidency in 1920 and believed that he could establish himself as the law-and-order candidate. Together with J. Edgar Hoover, Palmer created the General Intelligence Division in the Federal Bureau of Investigation and secured an increase in funds from Congress to devote to anticommunist activities by the Justice Department.

Source: http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/440201/Palmer-Raids

[bemildred]

3. Yeah, it really begins with Wilson.

Which is why I don't like Wilson. And the racism, of course.

[Joe Chi Minh]

4. I read in a thriller by Robert Goddard

that what that McCarthy business was all about was actually to sideline potential critics of the Korean War; which seems to make an awful lot of sense given the rampant growth of the MIC after WWII. I suppose there were too many to suicide them. Not that MIC would actually fear anyone or anything. But McCarthy's Reds under the Bed campaign would have smoothed the way for them.

[MisterP]

5. it's also self-consuming: it let the anarcho-capitalists take over under Reagan

and condemn Eisenhower as an economic "statist," then condemned Reagan as a Red by '87 (no, really!), then

Jon Voigt's even crazier uncle accused the YWCA of being pink because it was for race-mixing after he endorsed the Axis a few years before

everyone from Senators to John Wayne were arguing we were on the wrong side in WWII: what these Hitler fans did was to "launder" themselves back into "patriotism" through Red-baiting and a sharp new wave of segregation that even purged the libraries