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Julian Sanchez | June 21, 2005

McCartyhism may have been a dark stain on American history, but does that mean we have to romanticize the Hollywood communists Tailgunner Joe attacked? Cathy Young looks to the left coast and wonders: Have they, at long last, no sense of decency?

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|6.21.05 @ 10:37AM|#

We are here to usher in a new era without violence. By following the rules of the Film Actors Guild, the world can become a better place that handles dangerous people with talk, and reasoning. That is the FAG way. One day you will all look at the world us actors created and say, "Wow, good goin', FAG. You really made the world a better place, didn't ya, FAG?"

Jeff|6.21.05 @ 10:43AM|#

If people are going to romanticize something about about the Soviet movement, make it something cool. Like the poster art. Or the hats.

It is uncanny how so many Hollywood types jumped on the current admin's attempts to have influence over movies, while studio meetings with communist party leaders were common and open.
I recall there is a running joke in a movie (either Three Stooges, Marx Bros, or Abbott & Costello, I can't remember which) about a studio head speaking to his minions in Russian, then switching back to english. If anyone remembers what film that is, pass it on.

|6.21.05 @ 10:53AM|#

On the topic of soviet art. Do yourself a favor and see "The Cranes Are Flying". It's one of my all time fave movies.
The funny thing is, although it was obviously a propaganda movie, there is very little in the film that is particularly communist or leftist.

|6.21.05 @ 11:16AM|#

If people are going to romanticize something about about the Soviet movement, make it something cool. Like the poster art. Or the hats.

Or the small arms. The Soviets couldn't fix a Big Mac, or sew a decent pair of jeans, but they sure knew how to build guns. Even today, Makarov pistols from formerly Eastern Bloc nations are quite reasonably priced- under $200 in many cases.

/apologies for the threadjack. :)

keith|6.21.05 @ 11:29AM|#

They made cool, funky cameras, too. And supermodels, but only up to age 25.

|6.21.05 @ 12:30PM|#

Just a little quibble with Julian's post: Sen. McCarthy did not much target Hollywood, if at all. He was after Communists in government. There were a lot of them, many spying for Stalin, but Joe recklessly misidentified (mostly) them and harmed innocent people.

It was the House Un-American Activities Committee that went after Hollywood. It is difficult to know how a free nation should defend itself when a lot of smart and creative people take secret oaths of fealty to a foreign tyrant and agree to conform their intellectual output to the needs of that regime. Dragging them before Congress feels icky, like a violation of precious political freedoms. But then again, they are secretly working for the interests of a foreign, murderous tyrant -- and moving heaven and earth, under direction from their foreign master, to keep those who tell the truth of the murder from gaining political acceptability.

Certainly, the standard, binary depiction of the Hollywood Reds as sainted martyrs and the anti-communists as the forces of Darkness does, as Cathy Young and the Radoshes book explores, bear some retooling.

|6.21.05 @ 12:36PM|#

Mona,

It seems like it was a case of wrong vs. wrong.

|6.21.05 @ 12:42PM|#

"They made cool, funky cameras, too. And supermodels, but only up to age 25."

They seem to be pretty good in churning out supermodel tennis players, too, while the ones we have look like men in skirts.

The Lonewacko Blog|6.21.05 @ 12:45PM|#

On a somewhat related note, here's a roundup of terrorist acts committed by Bolsheviks in 1919.

|6.21.05 @ 1:19PM|#

What would be really useful, Wacko, would be a roundup of terrorist acts committed by Hollywood Communists.

Or violent crimes.

Or, maybe, evidence that someone, somewhere, was harmed by their actions.

Without that, all we've got are some deluded celebreties engaging in undesireable speech and association. Which, if I've got this libertoid thing down, is supposed to be countered by free citizens engaging in their own speech and association.

Which, come to think of it, is pretty much what Radosh is doing. Bully for him.

|6.21.05 @ 1:29PM|#

As historian Donald Ritchie writes:

The term "McCarthyism" so broadly covers all of the investigations of the 1940s and 1950s, that it has melded McCarthy's investigations into those conducted by the House Un-American Activities Committee and the Senate Internal Security Subcommittee. McCarthy's detractors blame him for investigating Hollywood, which he did not. His supporters praise him for investigating Alger Hiss, Julius Rosenberg, and others whom he did not.

The U.S. Post Office issued a Paul Robeson stamp several years ago. This is appalling. It is time to take a clear-headed look at what the Communist Party USA was really about, and commemorating a Stalinist like Robeson is not to be on that path, as you can glean from reading this piece by Ronald Radosh. McCarthy may have been a demagogue, but he was not hunting witches -- which do not exist. The Stalinist spies and fifth columnists really did exist.

|6.21.05 @ 1:31PM|#

I'm pretty sure Robeson was being commemorated for being a talented actor, singer, and social activist as a black man in an age of bitter and overt racism, not for being a commie.

|6.21.05 @ 1:35PM|#

joe claims: Without that, all we've got are some deluded celebreties engaging in undesireable speech and association. Which, if I've got this libertoid thing down, is supposed to be countered by free citizens engaging in their own speech and association.

No, CPUSA members -- including the Hollywood Ten -- were sworn to uphold the interests of a foreign nation, and to do all in their power to bring about the takeover of this one by their (literal) master. When "associating" in their cells they conspired as to how best serve their genocidal master in their sphere of influence.

Do you see no opening for a national security concern here?

|6.21.05 @ 1:51PM|#

Mona,

"sworn to uphold the interests of a foreign nation" = engaged in offensive, disreputable association

"to do all in their power to bring about the takeover of this one by their (literal) master" As a matter of fact, no they were not. They were not sworn to plant bombs in buildings, or seek out and transfer military technology to the Soviets. They were sworn to...wait for it...say stuff.

Now certainly, there is a cause to be concerned here - that's why I wrote that their actions should be countered. But your use of the term "national security" is ambiguous. They were never going to endanger the nation's capacity to defend itself from aggression - if they had, somehow, succeeded in turning American communist (a laughable idea, btw), the transformation of our politics into internal communism and international alliance with the Soviets would not have been the conquest of our nation by a foreign power, but the realignment of our politics through persuasion and the spread of ideas.

Governments gain their just power from the consent of the governed. If the American people consented to be government by a communist regime (again, a laughable conceit), then the commies' power would have been legitimate. That this never happened was not the result of government thuggery, but of the acceptance and transmission of the concepts of human rights, freedom, and democracy among the American people. As I said above, free people engaging in speech and association is the right way to "fight off" an abhorrent ideology like communism, when that ideology is "attacking" us using only the speech and association of its own adherents.

To sum up, yes there was, in a sense, a "national security concern." And that concern was dealt with by decent American people behaving as free people in a free socieity, not by the subversion of that freedom and the top-down squashing of ideas by the political elite.

|6.21.05 @ 1:54PM|#

As discussed by Ronald Radosh here, Paul Robeson dedicated his life and his career to Stalinism. He lied for Stalin, and did so in a manner that aided and abetted mass murder, earning him "The Stalin Peace Prize." To make a stamp commemorating him is as outrageous as doing so for a lifelong Nazi, even if said Nazi was a brilliant artist. Money quotes from Radosh's piece:

In his essay, [Robeson biographer] Duberman fails to bring up Robeson�s reprehensible behavior regarding Stalin�s impending pogrom against Soviet Jews, which the singer learned about when he traveled to the USSR for a concert tour in 1949. There, Soviet Jewish friends told him how bad things were for Jews in Soviet Russia, as Joshua Rubinstein writes in his new book, Stalin�s Secret Pogrom: The Postwar Inquisition of the Jewish Anti-Fascist Committee, (Yale University Press, 2001). Robeson asked to see the imprisoned (and soon to be executed) poet Isaac Fefer, whom he had met in the United States in 1943. The poet understandably asked Robeson to keep quiet about his fate, fearing that if he spoke out, retribution would be taken on his family.When Robeson returned to the United States, he denied all reports of any Soviet anti-Semitism, claiming and lyingthat he had met "Jewish people all over the place" and had heard not one "word about it." Rubinstein, echoing Duberman, acknowledges that Robeson justified his silence on the group that "any public criticism of the USSR would reinforce the authority of America�s right wing," but he notes that Robeson "did not even alert his friends in the [Communist] party to what he knew, or search for other, discreet ways to help Fefer once he decided not to make a public appeal. As one party comrade said to the writer Howard Fast, �If you and Paul Robeson had raised your voices in 1949, Itsik Fefer would be alive today.�"

CPUSA members -- which Robeson and the Hollywood Ten were -- were under strict Party discipline to a tyrant whose crimes they denied when feasible, and which they apologized for when denial was not feasible. Making heroes of such moral retards is absurd.

|6.21.05 @ 1:56PM|#

Also, as far as submitting to the whims of a foreign power and preparing their own country by takeover of said power, I seem to recall that fellow Communist neighbors China and Russia were poised at the brink of war -- with each other -- more than once in the 1960's. So much for a one-world government.

|6.21.05 @ 2:01PM|#

Mona,

Would you then petition the U.S. Government to withdraw stamps commemorating fellow "moral retard" Charles Lindbergh?

(From Wikipedia)
"In Europe during the rise of fascism, Lindbergh traveled to Germany several times at the behest of the U.S. military, where he reported on the Luftwaffe (air force). In 1938, Hermann G�ring offered him a German medal of honor, and Lindbergh's acceptance caused an outcry in the United States when Lindbergh's closeness to the Nazis was criticized. Lindbergh declined to return the medal to the Germans because he claimed that to do so would be "an unnecessary insult" to the Nazi leadership. Lindbergh's letters and diaries of the time indicate that he approved of Nazi policies and of Hitler's leadership.

As Nazi Germany began World War II, Lindbergh became a prominent speaker in favor of isolationist and pro-German policies. On January 23, 1941, Lindbergh testified before Congress and recommended that the United States negotiate a neutrality pact with Adolf Hitler. Lindbergh was also major spokesman for America First, and at a rally in Des Moines, Iowa, on September 11, 1941, he accused "the Jewish race" of being behind the drive to have America enter World War II on the side of Allies."

|6.21.05 @ 2:10PM|#

Mona,

I have no doubt we're about to cross post. Such is life.

"McCarthy may have been a demagogue, but he was not hunting witches -- which do not exist. The Stalinist spies and fifth columnists really did exist." There were thousands of people - FBI agents, CIA agents, and others - who dedicated, and on occasion gave, their lives to ferret out communist spies. Save your honor for them.

Joe McCarthy did not, in good faith, work to seek out Soviet spies. He engaged in a pattern of exploiting that legitimate issue as a means of slandering the reputations of patriotic Americans, including heros like George Marshall, for personal and partisan gain. In the process, he and people like him not only destroyed people's lives, but discredited the noble and necessary effort to protect our government from foreign infiltration and to discredit the evil ideology of totalitarian communism.

If you're looking for someone to blame for the rebellious glamour and victimological moral high ground that communists and Marxists were able to seize in Hollywood in the 50s and across American in the 60s/70s, and if you're looking for someone who promoted the image of the CPUSA in the national consciousness, look at your hero Tailgunner Joe.

|6.21.05 @ 2:12PM|#

SPD, to be fair, Lindburgh realized and renounced the errors of his ways, and put in his life on the line flying combat missions in P-38 Lightenings (as a civilian, no less) in the fight against the Axis.

|6.21.05 @ 2:13PM|#

I have actually long considered Joe McCarthy a somewhat strange choice, both as a hero for the Right (and read any random issue of National Review to see this) or a villain for the left.

Joe McCarthy was a corrupt, sleazy, grandstanding phony. Not only (as Mona points out) did he arrive relatively late in the "Red Scare" (the Wheeling speech was in 1950 two years after the "Hollywood Ten" and Alger Hiss cases, and four years after Truman ordered loyalty oaths for government employees) but noone was ever convicted or even exposed as a result of anything he did. He seems to have spoken something close the truth (possibly accidentally) in stating that the govt was ridded with communists (some say his estimates were low), but for some reason has become the icon of the age.

|6.21.05 @ 2:14PM|#

govt was ridd[l]ed

|6.21.05 @ 2:15PM|#

Wait a minute, Julius Rosenberg was a Hollywood actor? I had no idea.

Oh, wait, I get it. The "they" in my sentences "They were not sworn to plant bombs in buildings, or seek out and transfer military technology to the Soviets. They were sworn to...wait for it...say stuff" refers to the Hollywood crowd. Sorry for the misunderstanding.

As for "ferretting out" the propagandists, I'll say it for a third time: Yes, it should be done. No, it should not be done using the security apparatus of the government, but through the sunshine of public disclosure and the "counterattack" of free people sharing and promoting the values of a free people.

|6.21.05 @ 2:16PM|#

SPD -- yes, I think Lindbergh's being a Hitler supporter should foreclose commemorating him with a stamp. And I thought so when that stamp was issued, just as I was disgusted when the Robeson one came out.

|6.21.05 @ 2:16PM|#

"...the icon of the age" would read better as

"...an icon of evil for the age"

|6.21.05 @ 2:19PM|#

joe,

True, but only after his patriotism was called into question. By then his reputation as a Nazi sympathizer had been well-cemented.

After seeing The Manchurian Candidate (the original one), I couldn't help but wonder if Tailgunner Joe wasn't secretly a Communist, distracting the American public by parading celebrities before the camera and pretending to fervently root out this threat.

|6.21.05 @ 2:44PM|#

joe writesAs for "ferretting out" the propagandists, I'll say it for a third time: Yes, it should be done. No, it should not be done using the security apparatus of the government, but through the sunshine of public disclosure and the "counterattack" of free people sharing and promoting the values of a free people.

Well, with regard to Hollywood and the artistic community, I tend to agree with you. Reagan and the Screen Actors Guild did a pretty good job of exposing the Stalinists in their midst.

|6.21.05 @ 2:48PM|#

Mona,

Maybe we should remove slaveholders Washington and Jefferson from our money.

|6.21.05 @ 2:49PM|#

Mona,

The motivation of much of the left to defend the CPUSA, and the effectiveness with which they have been able to do so, can be laid squarely at the feet of your hero, Tailgunner Joe, who gave them to rebellious glamour they spent so many decades coasting on.

There were huge portions of the left who were virulently anti-communist. It's not as if the left has historicly been adverse to schismatic infighting. The cyncical persecution carried out by people like Joe McCarthy in the name of anti-communism generated a degree of solidarity within the left, and sympathy for them within the society at large, that did far more to damage our country than some boob whistling "The Internationale" in a movie.

BTW, how many times do I have repeat my statement that the CPUSA was bad, and needed to be resisted, before you'll stop bludgeoning me with these quotations of blindingly obvious observations?

|6.21.05 @ 2:52PM|#

I have to tell you, Mona, I don't know very much about what Ronald Reagan did on the private side to bring attention to the matter. His behavior is permantely linked in my mind, and in the minds of most people who know something about the episode, with the thuggish behavior of the government. Perhaps this is because so much has been written about the government's actions, and the private actions of individuals like Reagan and institutions like SAG are so little discussed; and when they are, they discussed as appendices to the McCarthyite/HUAC Star Chamber.

Perhaps there are some conclusions to draw from this.

|6.21.05 @ 3:02PM|#

To be fair, I haven't heard of any of the Hollywood Commies engaging in illicit or murderous dealings as members of the CPUSA. This is not to deny that the CPUSA was an appendage of the Comintern, or that CPUSA had members who engaged in murder and other acts (even if as simple as asking Moscow to "take care of" some troublesome member of the Party and then sending that member on a Free Trip to the Worker's Paradise). It's just to say that I haven't heard of those guys getting in on it.

|6.21.05 @ 3:26PM|#

crimethink: Our founders are who they were, slavery and all. But there are thousands of citizens we could commemorate with stamps, and it certainly seems that excluding Nazis and Stalinists makes sense in light of the many worthies who did not see fit to support genocidal dictators -- and in Robeson's case, to keep quiet about a pogrom his speaking out might have prevented.

|6.21.05 @ 3:38PM|#

"I'm pretty sure Robeson was being commemorated for being a talented actor, singer, and social activist as a black man in an age of bitter and overt racism, not for being a commie."

So I guess Germany will be honoring Leni Riefenstahl with a commemorative stamp any day now.

|6.21.05 @ 3:44PM|#

Seamus,

Forgive me but I don't see the connection. Was Riefenstahl ever persecuted in her own country for the color of her skin?

|6.21.05 @ 4:02PM|#

From a fine book review printed last year in Reason Fools for Communism: Still apologists after all these years. The reviewer, Glenn Garvin, is assessing the sorry state of leftist academia that hates -- just hates -- that the Venona decrypts and the Soviet archives have been made available.

When Hoover Institution historian Robert Conquest used newly available data from the Soviet Union to update The Great Terror, his account of Stalin�s murderous purges of the 1930s, his publishers asked for a new title. "How about I Told You So, You Fucking Fools?" Conquest suggested.The Conquest anecdote comes from In Denial: Historians, Communism and Espionage, an improbably riveting dispatch from the battlefields of historiography by scholars John Earl Haynes and Harvey Klehr. Chilling and often perversely funny, it details the intellectual sleight of hand to which many American historians of communism and the Soviet Union have resorted as newly revealed archives in Moscow and Washington suggest they were, well, fucking fools.

Their foolishness has nothing to do with McCarthy, and everything to do with having been so wrong about what they most deeply believe.

|6.21.05 @ 4:16PM|#

SPD: Richard Wright was a person who certainly knew what it was to be persecuted for the color of his skin. And he rather briefly joined the CPUSA -- but unlike Robeson, Wright was horrified at the lies, and Party discipline in which intellect is subjugated to propaganda needs. So he left, and in 1949 contributed to The God that Failed, a collection of essays by former Communists who ultimately could not avert their gaze from the murderous and totalitarian nature of the USSR, and of the CPUSA.

The man was a very gifted author -- Native Son is one of my favorite books. With choices such as Wright available, why turn to an unrepentant Stalinist with blood on his hands to honor with a stamp?

|6.21.05 @ 5:40PM|#

SPD:

I was under the impression that you thought Robeson was honored by a stamp for his artistic accomplishments. I implied that, by that reasoning, Riefenstahl should be honored for *her* artistic achievements. Now if you meant to meant to argue that Robeson's artistic accomplishments *weren't* sufficient reason for issuance of a Robeson stamp, that he wouldn't have merited that stamp except for the fact that he was also a victim of racism, well then, yeah, the analogy isn't apt.

|6.21.05 @ 5:43PM|#

And while we're wringing our hands about blacklists, when are we going to hear the denunciation of how Lillian Gish was blacklisted for publicly joining the America First Committee, and wasn't able to get work in Hollywood until she resigned from that organization? Or is it that all blacklists are created equal, but some are more equal than others?

|6.21.05 @ 5:45PM|#

There's an interesting interview with anti-communist historian Harvey Klehr, who was one of the first Western researchers allowed access to the archives of the Comintern. He's considered to be pretty "right wing," but he says:

McCarthy was a demagogue. He accused innocent people, misused evidence and couldn't tell a communist spy from a fellow traveler. He gave anti-communism a bad name.

The rest of the interview is here.

|6.21.05 @ 5:50PM|#

Seamus:

That was pretty much what I meant to say (poorly, I admit, but I've never been too proud of my discursive abilities). Robeson's legacy in the eyes of many was that he was an artist whose gifts allowed him to rise above the lot of his fellow African-Americans. His unfortunate political connections, which Mona has documented well enough beyond the need for repetition here, were obviously not part of the criteria for those who selected him to be honored on U.S. postage.

In summary, I believe that Robeson's honor was two-fold: as both an artist of exceptional talent and range, and as a prominent African-American whose internationally acclaimed gifts allowed him to transcend the blatant racism in America at that time.

Riefenstahl, her groundbreaking directorial skills notwithstanding, was embraced both by her fellow countrymen and her government, and was not subject to the oppression that Robeson had to endure in his native land -- which, ironically, may have led to his embrace of Communism.

|6.21.05 @ 5:50PM|#

And I'm hoping that we can all agree that whether or not the mass-murdering totalitarian regime one supports/supported is communist or anti-communist, the blood on one's hands is equally red.

|6.21.05 @ 5:52PM|#

Mona,

I would never argue against Wright being given his own stamp, either. But I would no sooner call attention to his personal politics than I would to Robeson's.

dagny|6.21.05 @ 5:54PM|#

They seem to be pretty good in churning out supermodel tennis players, too, while the ones we have look like men in skirts.

Of course, "the ones we have" tend to have the advantage of, you know, actually being good at tennis

|6.21.05 @ 6:00PM|#

Les et al,

Just to clarify, my defense of Robeson's appearance on a stamp should not in any way be interpreted as a defense of his politics. Surely there are other greats in the fields of arts and sciences whose own politics -- fascist, communist or otherwise -- might give us pause. Do we choose to ignore their personal philosophies in light of their contributions to the world at large, or do we scrutinize each other and keep only those whose world views correspond closely enough with our own?

|6.21.05 @ 6:02PM|#

My last sentence should have included the phrase "each one," not "each other." Mea culpa.

|6.21.05 @ 6:02PM|#

seamus asks: Or is it that all blacklists are created equal, but some are more equal than others?

Indeed, and "naming names" is awful if those named are Communists, but not if they are, say, pacifists after the Soviet "Motherland" has been attacked. See Glenn Garvin's response in Reason to the letter from son of blacklisted screenwriter and Communist Dalton Trumbo (at the bottom of the Garvin piece I linked to above); after Hitler had the gall to attack the USSR, the CPUSA abandoned its opposition to the U.S. entering WWII-- during the Hitler-Stalin Pact they were militantly anti-war. Trumbo, a dutiful Stalinist, withdrew his anti-war novel, Johnny Got His Gun from publication after the Hitler-Stalin Pact collapsed. And he reported to the FBI anyone who asked him for a copy. Garvin writes in response to Trumbo's son:

Everybody, including his father's leftist admirers, should read Dalton Trumbo's 1944 letter to the FBI reprinted in Additional Dialogue. In it, he boasts of having provided the FBI with letters from writers who are "1) anti-war, 2) anti-Semitic, 3) in the process of organizing politically, 4) distributing pamphlets to further their cause and corresponding with persons detained by the Federal government, and 5) of the opinion that the Commander in Chief of American forces is 'the greatest criminal incendiary in history.'" He adds, "I share with the men of your organization a sincere desire to see an end to all such seditious propaganda as criminal slander of the Commander in Chief, defeatism, pacifism, anti-Semitism and all similar deceits and stratagems designed to assist the German cause." He closes by noting that he's including more letters and begging the FBI not to tip off the writers about what he has done, presumably so he can keep ratting on them.

|6.21.05 @ 6:07PM|#

SPD: I would never argue against Wright being given his own stamp, either. But I would no sooner call attention to his personal politics than I would to Robeson's.

Robeson abetted MURDER. Whether that was in the context of "personal politics" or not, it is obscene. We ought not be honoring such folks on stamps.

|6.21.05 @ 6:13PM|#

Robeson abetted MURDER. Whether that was in the context of "personal politics" or not, it is obscene. We ought not be honoring such folks on stamps.

Why should Reagan be on a stamp? I mean, he actively supported a number of organizations (whether it was the terrorist Contras or the governments of El Salvador, Indonesia, Guatemala, Angola, to name just a few) that were committing murder left and right (pardon the pun). What's the difference between what Robeson did and what Reagan did?

|6.21.05 @ 6:15PM|#

SPD writes: Do we choose to ignore their personal philosophies in light of their contributions to the world at large, or do we scrutinize each other and keep only those whose world views correspond closely enough with our own?

In a word: yes. It is the United States Postal Service issuing the stamps. As a nation, we should not be honoring, in an official capacity, a man who supported a totalitarian enemy of all that we stand for, and who dutifully lied about that enemy when doing so enabled slaughter.

|6.21.05 @ 6:59PM|#

les writes: He's considered to be pretty "right wing

Yes, les, Klehr is considered "right-wing" because as an academic whose expertise is American communism, he tells the truth about Stalin and his apologists. That puts him outside of the academic mainstream in his field, which is very far left, and has a long record of defending Stalin and his domestic followers. Most normal people are "right-wing" by contrast with this academic critical mass. As Klehr wrote to an academic listserv I read, where some of the gulag deniers post:

There are a handful of neo-Nazi academics in America and they are rightfully shunned by decent men
and women. The defenders of Joseph Stalin and communist mass murder are,
unfortunately, far more numerous, but they should be treated in precisely the
same way. Their history is bogus and they should be moral lepers. I will
not engage them in debate and I urge other members of this list to do the
same.

Read Klehr's entire post Holocaust denial and Stalinism denial.

|6.21.05 @ 7:05PM|#

les asks:Why should Reagan be on a stamp?

Because he was President of the United States, and those issuing the stamp are the United States Postal Service?

|6.21.05 @ 7:43PM|#

Mona, you sly fox, know very well why I asked why Reagan should be put on a stamp. You capitalized the word "MURDER" when explaining why Robeson shouldn't be on a stamp. Why don't the same standards in terms of supporting murderous regimes and terrorists apply in regards to Reagan?

|6.21.05 @ 7:49PM|#

Les: Why don't the same standards in terms of supporting murderous regimes and terrorists apply in regards to Reagan?

Many Presidents have had to make decisions that led to bloodshed. War and conflict are unavoidable. But Robeson sat silent in the face of gratutitous, mass-scale slaughter of Jews and political dissidents. His hero, Stalin, killed more Jews AND communists than Hitler did. So why honor Robeson?

|6.21.05 @ 8:02PM|#

That's a nice elision into "the academic left," Mona (and an even nicer one to conflate a couple of open communists with academics of a leftist bent in total - as with your earlier use of "national security," you continue to demonstrate the highest capacity for using words to steal bases).

But no one was talking about "the academic left." You just sort of pulled it out of your ass, because you seem to consider it the most favorable ground for a conversation you'd like to have. Unfortunately, no one else is having that conversation.

|6.21.05 @ 8:05PM|#

Seamus,

Blacklists that involve private industry working hand in glove with the government are more equal than blacklists that involve private parties going about their business on their own.

I'd think a regular at the Reason site would find such a distinction fairly obvious.

|6.21.05 @ 8:09PM|#

Mona:

"Many Presidents have had to make decisions that led to bloodshed." And many private citizens, such as those who voted for Ronald Reagan and supported aid to the Salvadoran regime, had to choose among disreputable alternatives in a fallen world, because they had a vision of the good, and thought a few eggs had to be broken to get there.

Again, a disction without a difference.

|6.21.05 @ 8:19PM|#

Mona,

Many Presidents have had to make decisions that led to bloodshed. War and conflict are unavoidable.

Making "a decision that leads to bloodshed" is entirely different than supplying mass murderers with weapons and training. It's obviously different than supplying terrorists with weapons and training. Please don't tell me you're one of those who actually believes that we couldn't have won the cold war without helping to create and support societies as miserable and unjust and totalitarian as any the communists created. You don't really think that terrorism was necessary to win the cold war, do you?

If not, then my question stands. Why was it wrong for Paul Robeson to support murderous tyrants while it was perfectly okay for Ronald Reagan to do the same (only more directly and effectively)?

|6.21.05 @ 8:45PM|#

Reagan would seem to be far more culpable for the murder of trade unionists in El Salvador than, say, Country Joe McDonald's parents or Allen Ginsburg's parents were for any deaths that took place in the Soviet Union. Reagan actually had authority, and used it to provide murderers with the tools and training.

Hell, by that measure, Reagan has more blood on his hands than Gus Wossisname, the longtime Chairman of the CPUSA.

|6.21.05 @ 8:47PM|#

joe writes: But no one was talking about "the academic left." You just sort of pulled it out of your ass, because you seem to consider it the most favorable ground for a conversation you'd like to have. Unfortunately, no one else is having that conversation.

Well joe, perhaps naively, I figure historians in the field of American communism are most likely to have insight into the issues Julian cites Cathy Young for. It is they who allowed me to know that Julian is wrong to identify McCarthy as having gone after Hollywood Communists. And, of course, Ronald Radosh, whose book Young was commenting on in the piece Julian points us to, is an academic and also a participant on the academic listserv from which I have been quoting.

I'm familiar with Radosh because I know the scholarly field in which he works. You think that means I've been engaging in some kind of misdirection. Ok. (shrug)

|6.21.05 @ 8:56PM|#

Les writes: Please don't tell me you're one of those who actually believes that we couldn't have won the cold war without helping to create and support societies as miserable and unjust and totalitarian as any the communists created. You don't really think that terrorism was necessary to win the cold war, do you?

I never liked it, and was very disturbed by supporting dictators, even to contain the Soviet threat. But do you equate that with Robeson remaining quiet in the face of Stalin's pogroms against the Jews?

|6.21.05 @ 9:21PM|#

I never liked it, and was very disturbed by supporting dictators, even to contain the Soviet threat. But do you equate that with Robeson remaining quiet in the face of Stalin's pogroms against the Jews?

Well, actually I do more than equate it because while I think what Robeson did was wrong, it wasn't as wrong (or as demonstrably destructive) as giving aid, supplies, and training to terrorists and military dictatorships that routinely tortured and murdered dissidents.

I don't think ideology can be useful as a determining factor regarding the morality of torture and mass-murder.

|6.21.05 @ 9:26PM|#

Reagan's support for certain contra groups was odious. Backing some of them, such as the Mosquito Indians, seemed like the right idea at the time. In any case, the Administration's alliance with the right-wing Salvadoran death squads and the former Somocistas was not so different than FDR's pact with Uncle Joe. It would have been better to fight alongside comrades with clean hands, but that choice isn't always available.

I used to shock some old pinkos I knew when I declared that "the only thing wrong with Joe McCarthy was that he had an inaccurate list." In fact, he may not have had much of a list at all, as he was infamous for changing the number of so-called commies that were on it very time he mentioned it. It would have been better for the anti-communist crusade had Joe just been content to be a backbencher, making sure that the dairy farmers got their pork, and finding some out-of-the-way bars to drink in. His spectacular flamout probably did make it somewhat respectable in some quarters to have a Red past, without apologizing for it.

Kevin

|6.21.05 @ 9:28PM|#

Les, FDR and the U.S. went into a formal alliance with Stalin in order to defeat Hitler. At the time, Hitler was the far greater threat. In a real sense, we had no choice.

Some Cold Warriors subsequtnly felt we had to make alliances with dictators in order to oppose the USSR. Reasonable people can come to different conclusions on that question, but the difficult issue remains.

But Paul Robeson let Jews be slaughtered by a genocidal tyrant, rather than face the truth about that monster, or have that truth be told.

|6.21.05 @ 9:43PM|#

Well, if supporting dictators and death squads is necessary to defend our freedom...

...then 2 weeks from now on July 4th I'm going to say a prayer of thanks to Islam Karamov, Manuel Noriega, Agosto Pinochet, the Shah of Iran, Crown Prince Abdullah, Hosni Mubarak, the Contras, and numerous other thugs who defend my freedom!

Thanks, guys! If it weren't for you I'd be speaking Russian!

|6.21.05 @ 10:01PM|#

thoreau writes: Well, if supporting dictators and death squads is necessary to defend our freedom...

It may have been in WWII. An alliance w/Stalin ensured the defeat of Hitler and Imperial Japan. One can be glib, but life does no always permit easy choices.

|6.21.05 @ 10:03PM|#

Mona,

All due respect, that's a terrible argument and I would urge you to re-examine it.

FDR and the U.S. never gave the Soviets the means and motivation to commit its atrocities.

That's exactly what Reagan (et al) did during the cold war. The U.S. government encouraged and rewarded slaughter after slaughter, rape after rape, torture after torture. This is well documented.

I'm sorry, but those who condemn Soviet atrocities without acknowledging and condemning U.S. encouraged atrocities (you know, the ones we paid for) simply can't be taken seriously.

|6.21.05 @ 10:27PM|#

FDR and the U.S. never gave the Soviets the means and motivation to commit its atrocities.

Yes we did. At Yalta, and by entering into a formal alliance that gave them cover as a civilized nation. We also gave them money.

I'm sorry, but those who condemn Soviet atrocities without acknowledging and condemning U.S. encouraged atrocities (you know, the ones we paid for) simply can't be taken seriously.

The U.S. did not "encourage" atrocities. It tolerated them in anti-Soviet allies. Some believe we were caught between a rock and a hard place; reasonable people disagree whether this was so. Robeson was not so caught-- there was no excuse for what Stalin was doing in the USSR.

|6.21.05 @ 10:46PM|#

Yes we did. At Yalta, and by entering into a formal alliance that gave them cover as a civilized nation. We also gave them money.

Did we give them military aid and military training in how to root out dissidents?

The U.S. did not "encourage" atrocities. It tolerated them in anti-Soviet allies. Some believe we were caught between a rock and a hard place; reasonable people disagree whether this was so. Robeson was not so caught-- there was no excuse for what Stalin was doing in the USSR.

Would you honestly describe supplying mass-murderers with ammunition and training while they're committing mass-murders as "tolerating" it? That sounds like what a defense attorney would say. If I kill a few hundred men, women, and children, and then I get my ammunition re-supplied, along with lots of petty cash, I have been encouraged to repeat the behavior. This is rather elementary, I believe.

And no, I don't believe that reasonable people would argue that arming and training terrorists and murderous military regimes is ever necessary. I don't believe that reasonable people can argue that it's ever necessary to "tolerate" institutionalized rape and torture to defeat an enemy.

there was no excuse for what Stalin was doing in the USSR.

We had as much excuse for paying off terrorists as Stalin had to do what he did, which is, none at all. Though I'm sure Stalinists feel like he had no choice in the matter.

If you're suggesting that helping torture and the mass-murder of many thousands of men, women, and children occur was necessary in order to defeat communism, I can only say that I'm sorry you have such little confidence in American ingenuity and fighting prowess.

|6.22.05 @ 11:50AM|#

"Well joe, perhaps naively, I figure historians in the field of American communism are most likely to have insight into the issues Julian cites Cathy Young for."

The problem, Mona, is that the conversation you were involved in was about the perception and image of communists within American society in general, and how that perception has been fed by, and has influenced, their depiction by Hollywood.

Then you started talking about a cadre of Academics that nobody has heard of, in an attempt to refute my observation that the behavior of McCarthy and HUAC helped the image of the communists, and harmed that of anti-communists, in the PUBLIC MIND.

|6.22.05 @ 11:52AM|#

And Mona, doesn't the enormous degree of import you attribute to Robeson's, and others', decision to "keep quiet" indicate to you that most American communists did not, in fact, have a good understanding of what was being done in the name of communism in the Soviet Union?

|6.22.05 @ 11:58AM|#

Mona: "The U.S. did not "encourage" atrocities."

Did Paul Robeson "encourage" Stalin's atrocities? I thought he just didn't denounce them.

Did Mr. Robeson actually provide any material assistance to the Stalin regime, that was used to arrest people or aid the functioning of the gulags? Mr. Reagan most certainly did provide many millions of dollars to the Salvadoran, Honduran, and Guatemalan governments to purchase weaponry and pay soldiers.

fyodor|6.22.05 @ 12:08PM|#

Mona, your words are mere toleration, the words of those you hate seem to have more weight in your eyes.

|6.22.05 @ 12:44PM|#

If any person should be on a stamp, it should be Lysander Spooner, the father of (relatively) affordable postage. He competed with the U.S. Postal Service by delivering mail at about a third the cost, forcing the USPS to lower its rates before the government legislated him out of business.