Michale Moynihan has got their number. (H/T Instapundit)
How ridiculous are some of the attempts to whitewash Stone's relationship with Soviet intelligence? This ridiculous: Eric Alterman, whose tag line proudly proclaims that he is a "is a professor of English and journalism at Brooklyn College and a professor of journalism at CUNY Graduate School of Journalism," proclaims that Stone was not a spy because his activities do not match Dictionary.com's first definition of the word "spy." Seriously. I hope Alterman's English and journalism students start citing Dictionary.com's first definition of a word as its definitive and indeed only meaning, just for fun.
UPDATE: By the way, Stone is said to have "assisted Soviet intelligence on a number of such tasks: talent-spotting, acting as a courier by relaying information to other agents, and providing private journalistic tidbits and data the KGB found interesting." But nope, no spying involved.
FURTHER UPDATE: This seems as good a place as any to plug my own contribution to the literature on domestic American Stalinism, a discussion of the First Amendment issues raised by the government's crackdown on American Stalinists in the late 40s and 50s.
While I don't know anything about Stone or what he may or may not have done, in what world are these tasks "spying"? Based on your description it doesn't sound like he relayed any secrets. That doesn't really make it any better: the man was a journalist and likely not in a position to do much by way of spying. If you're serving as a paid agent who assists the KGB's intelligence operations, the fact that you're not personally doing any "spying" doesn't really improve matters.
In what world is working on behalf of a foreign intelligence agency to assist it in procuring intelligence NOT spying? What are you looking for, a trench coat and a coding machine?
Instead, they resort to the kind of mocking tone generally employed when one is unable to engage on the level of evidence. Oh look, he cited Dictionary.com! Oh look, he says Stone never mentioned being a Soviet spy to him!
The reference to the dictionary definition is hardly beside the point. One can unwittingly provide information to foreign intelligence, or even be a "useful idiot" as the nomenclature goes, without being a spy. "Spy" implies intentional or knowing conduct, not a scenario where you provide information to a foreigner without knowing THEY are a spy. And Stone didn't even have any confidential information to provide!
It's also noteworthy that Stone's detractors uniformly label him as a Soviet spy, period, when the allegation is solely that he assisted the Soviets against the Nazis during the 1936-38 period. Puts a little different context on it, wouldn't you say? Moynihan's post is unintentionally hilarious on this point, tossing off references to things like "the years of Stone's known employment by the KGB," as if implying that there may be unknown years is a substitute for evidence. And Moynihan uses the word "employment" rather loosely considering the absence of evidence to rebut Alterman's statement that Stone is not recorded to have received any payments.
If Stone was indeed a spy for the Soviets, the case is being made in an awfully sloppy way. In standard right-wing form, the process seems to be (1) make hysterical and exaggerated charges; (2) call anyone who disagrees a Communist symp! The more things change, the more they stay the same.
Anyway, I've found Haynes and Klehr reliable in the past. And, ultimately, I don't think it matters much to Stone's historical reputation if he was "a Stalinist who remained a Stalinist through Stalin's death" and was (a) a knowing spy for Soviet intelligence; or (b) a dupe who was so naive that he thought that Soviet officials who prodded him for information were not intelligence agents. And Moynihan's basic point is that there is no reason to think, given Stone's biography, that Stone was primarily motivated to help the USSR by anti-Nazi sentiment, as opposed to his pro-Communist, pro-Stalin views. And this at a time when the death toll from Naziism was in the low thousands, and from Soviet Communism in the millions.
In my book, aiding a foreign power as Stone is alleged to have done is certainly worth condemnation--and if I note correctly, you are the one creating a straw man argument about people calling "anyone who disagrees a Communist symp!"
No one on this thread has done so, though it is clear that Stone really was a "Communst symp."
Indeed, name calling is a sign of desperation. In your case, the argument seems to be, "The right thinks Stone was disloyal to his country, so I will attack the right rather than discuss the actual allegations."
I would think most people think of a "spy" as someone who obtains sensitive or restricted information - someone who "spies out" secrets. People engaged in talent-spotting, courier services, or journalism are not spies (they are . . . wait for it . . . talent-spotters, couriers, and journalists).
Checking the Alterman piece you mock, it turns out that was exactly his point - a point that seems so self-evidently true that it was obvious to me before reading the piece. Why you do not understand it even after he explained it to you I do not know.
I do note, also, that Alterman's piece contains an extensive and detailed discussion of the article that started all this. Your entire response to it is to criticize the use of one - obviously correct - dictionary definition of a word you should already have known. Moynihan's is barely more detailed, and he seems to completely misunderstand the single, ellipsis-filled, quotation he gives from Stone himself. In short, whatever may be true of Stone, or his defenders, both this post and Moynihan's are unserious hack jobs.
I suspect that real professional intelligence services do not actually use the word "spy". But it is well-known that they employ professional operatives, and casual part-timers, in a wide range of clandestine tasks. Most do not involve spying out secrets. None of the activities you describe seem to involve such work; it is not clear they would even be illegal.
Whatever Stone did ought to be described accurately, and readers can draw their own conclusions. Moynihan's article is so uncaring it gives almost no description of what Stone was actually supposed to have done, and his references to dates are so garbled it is hard to tell from that article alone even when it was done, though he notes that would be a crucial point. It is filled with invective regarding supposed beliefs of Stone apparently made up by presumption, and events and times totally unrelated to the actual charge at hand; Moynihan airily proclaims that the very limited information that has been revealed is merely what is "known" about the issue, apparently believing that what is not known is simply a less convenient form of data. But even beyond this travesty, nothing you or Moynihan say seems to have anything to do with "spying". Comparing various sources, the entire affair seems to boil down to the claims that (a) Stone knowingly responded to NKVD requests for information during the period of the Spanish Civil War, and (b) this cooperation took the form of passing on useful bits of legally-available information. If these are the strongest charges Stone's critics can muster - as apparently they are - then it would seem they have supplied his defense with their own attacks on him. At the very least, making any more serious charges stick will require actual research and argumentation - a burden apparently much too high to be borne by any of the partisans flogging this supposed scandal.
Maybe it doesn't matter much to you, but to most people there's a heck of a lot of difference between "providing non-confidential information to the Soviet press attache, with no knowledge that he's actually a KGB agent" and "being employed by the Soviets as a spy."
If an operative for our CIA, posing as a diplomat, tricks some foreigner into providing us with useful (albeit non-confidential) information, would we refer to that foreigner as an American spy? Would we say they were "employed by America" even if no money changed hands? The rhetoric here is absurd.
Well, that's a compelling point. See what I mean about the attempt to substitute mockery for actual evidence?
Meanwhile, "Talent spotting" for a foreign country looking to recruit spies is not illegal?
No, the Left wouldn't. But at that time those in Moscow would have arrested and disapeared the idiot that gave the CIA / Diplomat the information. Regardless of how non-confidential it was.
The Left can NEVER admit that they blindly supported and believed the USSR until it fell. I remember the 60's and 70's. Watching all the Left never questioning the USSR but reporting anything that made the USA look bad. The love affair of the American Left with Communism is never ending and without reason only emotion.
If I'm mistaken as to his ideological allegiance, please correct me.
Professor, I am sure you have done the necessary media studies to back up this claim of yours about what the media constantly talks about.
Or are you just pulling that "fact" out of nowhere?
(1) It is one thing to provide information to a hostile power to the detriment of your own country; it is quite another thing to provide info (which is not a state secret) to agents of another country to help fighting a perceived common enemy (Nazis in this case). FDR cooperated with Stalin and provided him information; does it make him a Soviet agent of influence?
(1.5) NKVD (not KGB, by the way) was involved in a number of activities, most of which were despicable, but some were not, like fighting the Nazis. Are you ready to condemn any person who was spying against Nazis in the Nazi-occupied Europe and providing the information to NKVD agents?
(2) In 1936-38 the scope of Stalin's crimes was not known in the West. Apparently, after the Molotov-Ribbentrop pact Stone was disillusioned with the Soviets and did not cooperate with them any more.
No, if you mean the SOVIET UNION.
But I certainly don't think the American Right comes off better than the American Left. Both sides made horrible blunders and had anti-liberty tendencies.
lol.
...except they have these people called "case officers," who recruit other people to collect clandestine intelligence. Case officers are considered to be "spies," even though they might never even see the collected intelligence themselves.
Valerie Plame was widely called a "spy," even though there's no evidence she ever did any actual first-person spying. No, you don't get extra points for calling her by the euphemism "intelligence officer." An intelligence officer is a spy with an office.
It seems to me that if you give someone nonsecret information that isn't subject to any formal or informal confidentiality obligations, you aren't spying. Your definition would make someone who reads the local newspaper and alerts a foreign government to interesting items into a "spy."
My major objection to the use of "spy" here is that it conflates Stone's actions (e.g., talent scouting) with people who pass on state secrets (which is the paradigmatic case of spying for a foreign government). Thus it makes Stone's actions sound worse than they actually were. At the same time it's not exactly an exoneration that he was merely a KGB "agent" rather than a KGB "spy." He was working for the forces of evil either way.
It's not just that. This "silence" about the crimes of communists does not exist. Stalin's purges are taught in schools. Ron Radosh gets his papers about the excesses of American communists published in respected journals. Ann Coulter got her book defending McCarthy published and was featured on numerous television and radio shows promoting it.
Plenty of people still talk about all the things the left did wrong in the Cold War, just as plenty of people still talk about all the things the right did wrong in the Cold War. We'd probably all benefit, in fact, if people STOPPED talking about it so much, because so much of what is going on is nothing more than ideological axe-grinding on both sides.
But fine, let's go with semantics. On the continuum, you're a spy, or an operative, or a fellow traveller (and then there's just plain dupes).
Hiss was a spy.
Stone was an operative, aware of all of the benevolent actions of those fine gentlemen associated with the NKVD, who were interviewing him.
The Gray Lady's man in Moscow was a fellow-traveller.
Chris Dodd was a dupe.
Everybody happy?
You're basically equating Democrats with communists, no?
Similar to my previous point, its a lot more useful for a person or nation to scrutinize and try to improve your own actions than those of another. While "The [U.S.] Left" was powerless in regards to Soviet action, their efforts to criticize their own nation could effect change.
The defense of specific (guilty) individuals does not mean the defenders believe spies do not exist. Nor does the accusation of a witch hunt necessarily mean there are no witches.
Delong's Stone Apologism
And oh yeah, according to Delong the Holocaust >>>> Holomodor so aiding those responsible of the latter is sometimes ok!
Hey, if the shoe fits...
But seriously, there were many Democrats who recognized the commies for what they were. The Left, on the other hand... we see the residue of their past on display... right here in Bernstein's li'l ol' blog post.
And I tend to agree that those on the right were probably as bad as those on the left---but in a particular case/instant that is fairly irrelevant
If those peasants wanted to eat, they shouldn't have elected a Communist leadership. ... Hey, wait a minute...
Otherwise one might use a phrase that doesn't imply searching for a non-existent threat - however (possibly) over-zealously.
Nobody said that. They were talking about the Left, which back then was not considered the same thing. The Democrat party of the 50s and 60s was a whole different beastie than now. There were many Democrats who were just as, if not more, anti-Communist as your average Republican. Remember, the non-existent 'missile gap' was used by Democrats to pound on Eisenhower, a Republican President. People refered to Vietnam as 'Nixon's War', but recall that the heavy involvment in Vietnam was started by JFK, and greatly increased by LBJ, both Democrats, and the stated reason was to contain Communist expansion. In foreign policy, the Democrats of those days were a lot different than the current Democrat Party.
Easy, because the entire philosophy underlying the totalitarian governments that killed 100 million of their political opponents, and that their heroes consciously aided and abetted, is still quite alive and kicking here.
How many Marxists are on university faculties? Even our own president tells of how he sought them out in his own books. There are plenty who outright call themselves Marxists, but most don't. They prefer "feminist", or "historian" or "professor of education" and other progressive descriptions. Bill Ayers himself said 25 million Americans might have to be killed if they couldn't be re-educated. They still all believe in Karl, still enamored with current adherents like Fidel and Hugo.
And the rachet keep moving one way - towards the Collective that the left favors, while they distract us with arguments like this over minutiae about the adequacy of warning labels on the deck chairs as the deck begins to tilt...
Here we come, 1984. Back to the future.
Real question? I think we know the answer to that one.
Interesting how your "self"-criticism remains focused on people other than you. Maybe "The [U.S] Left was powerless in regards to Soviet action" - except inasmuch as it facilitated Soviet action by, you know, spying for the Soviets - but did the U.S. Left have any influence over the U.S. Left? Could admitting it was wrong about Stone (among others) "effect change"?
No need to drag Obama into this.
Oh wait, we're talking about Communists in journalism. I suppose it was inevitable that Obama would be mentioned.
It's not just that. This "silence" about the crimes of communists does not exist. Stalin's purges are taught in schools. Ron Radosh gets his papers about the excesses of American communists published in respected journals. Ann Coulter got her book defending McCarthy published and was featured on numerous television and radio shows promoting it.
Man, you are easily satisfied. Of course students learn about the purges, and the Ukrainian famine, and for that matter the Great Leap Forward and the Cultural Revolution, but on the scale of human crimes as taught in American public schools I don't think they rate very high. Well below Nazism, naturally; and possibly below McCarthyism, depending on the textbook used.
Wow, Ron Radosh has managed to refer to the "excesses" of American Communists in "respected journals"? I love the word "excesses" — it suggests that the CPUSA was just a little overindulgent, like an old gent who had one more glass of port than was good for him. That the CPUSA instantly shed all its opposition to Nazism the moment the Nazi-Soviet pact was announced might be called an "excess."
Oh, and Ann Coulter got a book published, and even managed to promote it. (Not terribly well, since this is the first I've heard of it, but there you are. Obviously I don't watch enough of the right [Right?] TV or listen to the correct radio stations.)
If Soviet totalitarianism really loomed as large in the average American mind as Hitler's regime did, don't you think the very mention of 1938 in connection with the USSR would cause a shudder? My God, that's the very depth of the Terror, and I'm supposed to believe that someone who had close contacts with high-level Soviet diplomats had no idea that the show trials were happening, or that they were show trials? That he was just an honest anti-Nazi trying to do his level best for the grand old cause? I'd almost rather believe that he deliberately hid the truth he knew, like Walter Duranty, than accept that he was that stupid. (Then again, Shaw and Wells both visited the USSR and believed what they were told, so maybe it just takes the will to believe.)
Well, I suppose it's theoretically possible that a Soviet press attache might *not* be a KGB agent, but shouldn't your working assumption be that he is one, at least until he proves otherwise?
A man of avowed anti-Fascist sympathies, and to my mind, still-foolishly naïve about Stalin and the Soviet Union, agreed on a couple of occasions to help those whom he believed to be actually fighting fascism. ... He stopped, however, immediately following the Hitler-Stalin pact of August 1939, when he wrote to a friend that there would be “no more fellow traveling” and employed his column in The Nation ... to condemn Stalin. ... Given what we now know about Stalin's horrific penchant for mass murder—every bit as bad as Hitler's—Stone's cooperation with whomever he thought he was cooperating with looks like a more significant moral misjudgment than it must have appeared at the time. But keep in mind that Stone’s decision to aid the Soviets against the Nazis was exactly the same one made by the United States government after Hitler’s Barbarossa invasion.
So Alterman, a self-described anti-Communist, thinks what Stone did was a "foolishly naive ... moral misjudgment." Where's the reflexive defense I was led to expect?
Im not a liberal (or a conservative for that matter). Nor do I understand your point. What power did US citizens have over Soviet policy? None. They could affect US policy.
Yeah, you're right: throwing around loose accusations that Ike was a conscious agent of the Community conspiracy (which is about the worst thing the JBS ever did) is totally equivalent to actually *being* a conscious agent of the Communist conspiracy (as Stone was). (And please remind me again why the left thinks blacklists are a bad thing, in light of the effort they are making to have people in California who contributed to Proposition 8 fired and boycotted.)
Your complaint seems to be that Stalin's crimes aren't as well promoted as the Holocaust is. That might be true (it also might be true about the Armenian genocide), but whining about comparative atrocities is silly. Educated people know full well what Stalin did, a point you concede.
I suspect what is really bugging conservatives is that what Stalin did didn't fundamentally discredit left-liberalism. But why would it? What child molesting priests did didn't fundamentally discredit Christianity. What Apartheid South Africa did (with the approval of many American conservatives) did not fundamentally discredit white conservatives.
Or perhaps what is bugging conservatives is that what Stalin did hasn't given the right a free pass with respect to McCarthyism and red-baiting. But again, why should it? Many people with misguided pro-Soviet beliefs (or who were falsely suspected of having such beliefs) lost their jobs and had their lives ruined by overzealous conservatives. That offense may not compare to Stalin's crimes, but it's still an offense.
But it seems to me, screaming "it's not fair, Stalin isn't seen as quite as big a villain as Hitler is" is a really silly discussion to be having, especially since you'd have to search far and wide to find that many Stalinists in America anymore.
You are overusing the term "conspiracy" to make it sound like Stone (and other US-based communist sympathizers) were equivalent to the people over in Russia committing those awful crimes.
I wouldn't defend anyone's decision to work on behalf of the Soviet government during the Cold War, but seriously, Americans in journalism and entertainment with ideological sympathy towards communism did zero actual harm to the country, even if they were in fact in cahoots with the Soviet government. In contrast, the red-baiters on the American right did quite a bit of actual harm, even if they did less harm than the Soviet government did.
[Alterman:]
But keep in mind that Stone’s decision to aid the Soviets against the Nazis was exactly the same one made by the United States government after Hitler’s Barbarossa invasion.
Well, not exactly the same, you know. Stone was "aiding the Soviets [putatively] against the Nazis" before the Nazis and the Soviets were at war, and FDR was doing so afterwards.
I do think Stone deserves credit for ceasing "fellow traveling" after the Nazi-Soviet pact. So many of his fellow fellow-travelers didn't.
The 1930s were a time in which many people for whom I otherwise have profound respect made what I consider to be glaring moral mistakes with regard to Stalin and Stalinism. Those mistakes do not erase the good in those people, any more than the good erases the flaws.
If that's a "whitewash," so be it.
Actually, the vast majority of his fellow fellow-travelers did exactly that.
Seems to me that, during the Cold War, U.S. citizens who aided the Soviet government were engaged in espionage if not treason. The Soviets' stated goal was, after all, a worldwide revolution leading to Soviet hegemony and the demise of regimes that were independent of Moscow (with the U.S. the main target). You can look it up.
U.S. fellow-travelers who may have expressed some vague solidarity with Moscow are different than those who provided tangible assistance to the Soviet government.
I'm not interested in atrocity-mongering; there are enough massacres in the last century that I'd rather try not to have more in this one than fight over whose was the biggest.
OTOH, I am very tired of the rubric by which Nazis and fascists are natural thugs without excuse, whereas American Communists and fellow-travelers have "misguided pro-Soviet beliefs." I've never yet heard a Nazi sympathizer or a fascist described as "misguided," but the word is applied willy-nilly to every Western admirer of every Communist tyrant.
If you have admired Stalin and given aid to his government during the very nastiest period of his rule, you aren't just "misguided"; you've made a very big mistake, somewhat as though you'd been rather enthusiastic about Hitler in 1933. Mistakes happen, mistakes can be forgiven. But you do have to admit them first.
I think, myself, that anyone who followed the CPUSA line about Germany in 1939 damn well deserved blacklisting. I would not like to hire someone whose opinion of Nazi Germany depended entirely on what foreign power had signed what treaty with her. But that's just me.
Cheers,
Cheers,
That's a deflection though. We are not talking about criminally prosecuting people; we are talking about historical judgment. And with respect to historical judgment, you can't lump Stalin and Soviet government officials who killed millions with communist sympathizers and Soviet agents in the US who didn't. They may very well have engaged in prosecutable conduct, but that is different from saying that they harmed the country. In contrast, the McCarthyites ruined lives and definitely did harm the country.
The current Pope was a member of the Hitler Youth. And indeed, I think "misguided" is exactly the type of characterization that is applied to him.
The people who don't get the luxury of being labeled as "misguided" are people like, e.g., John Demjanjuk who actually committed Nazi atrocities. But plenty of people who supported the Nazis or endorsed Hitler or worked for the German government, but who did not have any specific complicity in the Holocaust, were able to rejoin public life after the war without a lot of recriminations.
Bear in mind that there is a huge difference between refusing to hire someone who you believe to have offensive political beliefs and having everyone in an industry get together and ensure that a person can't get a job anywhere and can't earn his or her livelihood.
Actually, the vast majority of his fellow fellow-travelers did exactly that [ceased "fellow traveling" after the Nazi-Soviet pact].
Did they? I know that the CPUSA switched positions radically once the alliance was announced, and switched back after Hitler invaded the USSR. If the vast majority of "fellow travelers" left the fold when the Soviets proved amenable to alliance with the Nazis, we can presume that they stayed out of it, right? I mean, when the party you have supported has proved capable of allying itself with Nazis, why would you ever go back to it?
And yet, there seem to have been a lot of bona fide CPUSA members still around in the 50s. Either they never left the Party, or they left and then rejoined. Which?
Cheers,
Perhaps they did zero actual harm precisely because they were exposed?
And Stone never stopped being a fellow traveller--he was still working for his Stalinist masters well after the war (e.g., his book that claimed South Korea invaded the North).
Straight from CPUSA talking points....
Yeah. I mean, the Rosenbergs and Alger Hiss? Guilty of utterly victimless crimes, I tell you. Never harmed the country in any way, shape, or form.
Ugh, I see the middle of the 20th century as more of a time when very bad people did very bad things. People like Stone, Buckley, and Hoover (all of whom go in the "bad people" category) were nothing compared to Hitler, Stalin, Mao, Hirohito, or even to third-rate butchers like Suharto and Videla.
The 20th century was an unmitigated disaster and we are well rid of it.
Bear in mind that there is a huge difference between refusing to hire someone who you believe to have offensive political beliefs and having everyone in an industry get together and ensure that a person can't get a job anywhere and can't earn his or her livelihood.
I know that it hurts a person not to be able to use his/her best skills and work at what s/he does best. All the same, it's a ridiculous exaggeration to say that anyone blacklisted "[couldn't] get a job anywhere and [couldn't] earn his or her livelihood." What they couldn't do was work in the film industry. The jobs that the remaining, oh, 99.9% [guessing here] of Americans do were open. Some of us actually do manage to survive as, oh, retail clerks or janitors or plumbers or people who mow lawns. Some of us even call such stuff "livelihood."
Well, I have no problem with the exposure of actual Communist agents and spies. Unfortunately, the right wing was a little overinclusive, shall we say.
Yeah. I mean, the Rosenbergs and Alger Hiss? Guilty of utterly victimless crimes, I tell you. Never harmed the country in any way, shape, or form.
You are deliberately taking my statement out of context. I was talking SPECIFICALLY about Soviet agents in journalism and entertainment. That's a very different issue than Soviet spies stealing American secrets.
I know that it hurts a person not to be able to use his/her best skills and work at what s/he does best. All the same, it's a ridiculous exaggeration to say that anyone blacklisted "[couldn't] get a job anywhere and [couldn't] earn his or her livelihood." What they couldn't do was work in the film industry.
1. You assume that the only blacklisting was in Hollywood.
2. Other industries and lines of work had loyalty oaths and investigations that were intended to root out communists. It wasn't as easy as you think for a blacklisted individual to change careers.
3. Even if it were just Hollywood screenwriters being unable to write, that's a very serious violation not only of their rights to express themselves as US citizens and their right to make a livelihood but also of the public's right to hear what they had to say.
IIRC, about 60-70% of the CPUSA's membership left after the Hitler-Stalin pact, so they weren't completely oblivious.
Do you happen to know how many came back after Hitler invaded the USSR? That's the number I don't know and would like to. I don't have any sense of what fraction of McCarthy's targets stuck with the Party line all through the war, and what fraction changed course, or only joined post-war.
Let's concede for argument's sake that absent a cloak and dagger, doomsday device activation and tiny cameras, there is no actual "spying." How do you then characterize the activities of someone who works for the government of his country's enemy. I believe the word is "traitor," owing to spying activities or otherwise."
For those attacking Stone, where does someone like Prescott Bush fit into this analysis? Is he better or worse than Stone? No snark please, no assumptions re where I fit on the Stone issue; just comments. As far as I understand, the activities of certain American bankers and financiers were critical in the industrialization and war preparation of the Third Reich during the 1930's. Are they better, worse, or the same as the Stones' of the period?
"But I certainly don't think the American Right comes off better than the American Left. Both sides made horrible blunders and had anti-liberty tendencies."
Wouldn't the appropriate categories here be the American Stalinists and the American Non-Stalinists? Why reflexively defend someone in the former category, whether you are Left or Right?
How in the world does doing so aid the cause of contemporary progressives? If one doesn't like being equated with Stalinists, and you certainly don't deserve to be so equated, it might help not to implicitly equate yourself.
1. You assume that the only blacklisting was in Hollywood.
2. Other industries and lines of work had loyalty oaths and investigations that were intended to root out communists. It wasn't as easy as you think for a blacklisted individual to change careers.
3. Even if it were just Hollywood screenwriters being unable to write, that's a very serious violation not only of their rights to express themselves as US citizens and their right to make a livelihood but also of the public's right to hear what they had to say.
(1) No, I don't; though that's the area that's gotten most attention.
(2) Hell, I had to sign a "loyalty oath" to be a teaching assistant at UC/Berkeley. I doubt, though, that even in the 50s you had to do so at any random retail job.
(3) No one, even Joe McCarthy, made Hollywood screenwriters "unable to write." Is it a "very serious violation" of my own rights as a US citizen that my chances of getting a screenplay of mine into production are, well, nil? (Particularly since I have not written one.) Is it a positive right of the public that Hollywood should broadcast to the public "what I have to say," at its own expense? If the public really wants to get its hands on my words, they will presumably not mind if they aren't accompanied by cinematography.
But when the spy is alive and in prison and convicted of spying for Israel, it seems that Mr. Bernstein's concerns about national security are somewhat more circumspect.
tarheel79:
Seems to me that, during the Cold War, U.S. citizens who aided the Soviet government were engaged in espionage if not treason....
Considering that they were our allies in WWII and that no one ever declared war on them since then, not sure where you get this."
I remember two Polish immigrant elementary school classmates at Immaculate Conception School showing me a pamphlet issued by the US Army during WWII entitled "Our Red Army Allies". That was an eye opener.
Tarheel and others:
How do you reconcile your positions on this issue with Prof. Volokh's posts on the role played by the Red Army (and populace) in defeating the German Army on the Eastern Front?
Because there's a big difference between believing in an ideology (and generally being blind to its faults) and actually causing tangible harm.
Lots of people on the left got caught up in Communism. That's not something the left should be proud of, and within a proper context, I have no problem with condemning that. But it also doesn't make them the moral equivalent of Stalin himself, and that's the move that conservatives are desperately trying to make.
This is a ridiculous comment. No one denies that Pollard spied for Israel. By contrast, various leftist historians and activist continue to deny that Stone and other mid-century communists spied for the Soviets. Also, spying for a democratic ally, while reprehensible and deserving of punishment, is not in the same league as spying for a totalitarian enemy.
Ironic that since we are discussing the great contest between capitalism and communism, you are defending outside interference with a transaction between a willing buyer and a willing seller. I would think that interference with such a transaction-- especially when it involves free expression-- is a pretty serious thing.
And that's the difference between the Hollywood Ten and you, Michelle. They had talent and the blacklisters were stopping otherwise willing buyers from buying their works and distributing them to the public.
I reject the Pollard analogy, because I think each spy case stands on its own merits.
Nonetheless, Ilya's second point is dangerously wrong. Just because a country is an ally doesn't mean that its clandestine activities can't compromise American national security. Indeed, the Soviets were our ally during WW2 and yet I don't think anyone on the right would say that would excuse anyone caught spying on their behalf during that period.
Nor does the fact that Israel is "democratic" mean anything in this context-- plenty of democratic countries engage in conduct that is detrimental to the interests of the US. Again, given conservative criticisms of France, this isn't a point that they would deny.
If Pollard's spying damaged US national security-- a fact I do not know myself but which I am aware that the US government claims to be true-- then it doesn't matter one bit whether it was for Israel or Saudi Arabia. We can't have double standards when it comes to spying, and double standards in favor of Israel are just as bad as the many double standards that are imposed to Israel's detriment.
No, Esper, you're putting yourself there, as the Left has for decades. You self-identify.
See, to avoid putting yourself there, you have to avoid spamming discussion topics like this one, with reflexive, ahistorical whining.
It's sorta like LBJ used to say, sometimes you have to be like a jackass in the rain, you just have to stand there and take it.
We who lived through this time, particularly we Democrats of the Cold War era, feel no reflexive urge. You do, and that should tell you something.
Wait a minute. Are you seriously comparing American Communists -- who, while seriously misguided or foolish or even bad-hearted -- didn't actually do anything, to those actually did carry out the Holocaust? You must have expressed yourself badly here; surely the better analogy is between American Communists and Fascist sympathizers like Joseph Kennedy or Father Coughlin.
The USSR was not an "enemy" of the US in any but an abstract sense in 1936-8 (the period in question for Stone). Moreover, as I understand it (and someone correct me if I'm wrong), the information Stone provided related solely to Nazi Germany. Why should I care if Stone passed along information harmful to Hitler, even if he passed it to Stalin?
Ironic that since we are discussing the great contest between capitalism and communism, you are defending outside interference with a transaction between a willing buyer and a willing seller. I would think that interference with such a transaction-- especially when it involves free expression-- is a pretty serious thing.
And that's the difference between the Hollywood Ten and you, Michelle. They had talent and the blacklisters were stopping otherwise willing buyers from buying their works and distributing them to the public.
But, Dilan, that's silly. It's like saying that I'm preventing a transaction between the composer of a viola sonata and the person who might want to hear it performed if I don't play it. (Not actually a bad analogy. There's a reasonably well-known San Francisco composer who did write a viola sonata, and also publicly donated money to David Duke. Would you believe that no one is interested in playing the piece around here? What a staggering conicidence!)
No one, however talented, has the right to the use of other people's work to make his or her own work known. Obviously I don't think any writer ought to be censored; but neither does anyone have a positive duty to realize anyone's screenplay, however good it is. And you know as well as I do that had the Hollywood Ten been, say, members of the British Union of Fascists, we wouldn't be having this discussion at all.
Again, Michelle, nobody's denying the right of individual producers to refuse to do business with communists. The problem with blacklisting is that it is a group boycott, which occurred with support from elements of the US government.
There were willing buyers who were forced NOT to hire people they would have otherwise hired due to outside pressure engineered in part by government officials. Recasting this in the way you do misses that fundamental point.
The problem with that argument, Professor Bernstein, is that the fact that a group boycott occurs because of a climate of fear doesn't make it any less damaging to the folks that could not get jobs.
Your position presumes we should sympathize more with a rich studio executive afraid of a public backlash than we should with a person who was driven out of his career for over a decade because of his political beliefs. That's a warped sense of morality if I've ever seen one.
Yes, I meant American Nazi/fascist sympathizers, of whom there were a good many. I did express myself badly; my apologies.
But you see the point. You will not find many people here (or, indeed, anywhere) talking about the likes of Father Coughlin and his loyal listeners as well-intentioned but misguided dupes. No one argues that, well, sure, there were some excesses in Nazism, but you can see why people saw something positive in it.
You didn't respond to my point. The Pope was a member of the Hitler Youth. Does any serious thinker think he was anything worse than "misguided"?
As for me, I have the world's tiniest violin available for the real Stalinists who were boycotted in the 50s, including the Hollywood Ten, but real sympathy for those who were unjustly swept up by, e.g., FBI loyalty programs that targeted homosexuals on the ground they were security risks and the like.
The government role in establishing the Hollywood blacklist is the only thing conceivably wrong with it. That it was a group boycott is surely not a problem, unless you think collective action is always wrong, which I rather think you do not.
I'm not sure whether to take this question seriously, but I will anyway.
At the end of WWII, the alliance between the Soviets and the U.S. ended. In case you hadn't heard.
You didn't respond to my point. The Pope was a member of the Hitler Youth. Does any serious thinker think he was anything worse than "misguided"?
Well, many who purport to be "serious thinkers" do apparently regard Benedict XVI as a crypto-Nazi. But we're talking about a kid in a youth group vs. adults who managed to look at the Soviet Union at its worst and like what they saw. Adults honestly smitten with Stalin really do have some 'splainin' to do. I can't think of a good excuse for Pablo Neruda, or Paul Robeson. Except that the one was a fine poet and the other a magnificent singer. (Great art; bummer about the Stalinism.)
I understand your point, and somewhat agree, but there are important differences. Because communism has been much more prevalent, and because the holocaust was such a singular horrific event, communism doesnt have the same stiga. Nazism is generally thought of as the holocaust, and not much more, so its not surprising that people are more forgiving of communist sympathizers than nazi sympathizers.
I am not a fan of organized boycotts. Individual purchasing decisions are one thing; organized boycotts are another.
That said, there's a couple of distinctions here that are important: (1) it's very different to boycott a particular WORKER, and thus deny a person a livelihood, than it is to target a large corporation, and (2) the blacklists had support and assistance from some government officials (such as conservative members of Congress) and that makes them a lot worse than what happens when like-minded individuals get together and decide to protest something as a group.
As for me, I have the world's tiniest violin available for the real Stalinists who were boycotted in the 50s, including the Hollywood Ten, but real sympathy for those who were unjustly swept up by, e.g., FBI loyalty programs that targeted homosexuals on the ground they were security risks and the like.
I am glad you are willing to talk about the people who were swept up (many on the right will not do that), but Professor, even a Stalinist ought to be able to have a job.
And, btw, on the morality point, I was responding to your claim that "They had talent and the blacklisters were stopping otherwise willing buyers from buying their works and distributing them to the public." The point is, it was the studio executives who were the buyers, and they were not, in fact, willing.
Again, there's a big difference between studio executives being unwilling to hire these people in the first instance and being pressured into not hiring them by outside forces and group pressure. The blacklisting was NOT a result of studio executives simply feeling that they could not, in good conscience, hire communists.
But we're talking about a kid in a youth group vs. adults who managed to look at the Soviet Union at its worst and like what they saw.
He was certainly old enough that he ought have understood what the Nazis stood for and what they were doing.
Look, I am quite willing not to harp on Benedict's membership in a group of Nazi loyalists. But it does show you that people ARE in fact given passes for their past support of Hitler just as they are given passes for their past support of Stalin.
I was actually going to bring up Demjanjuk. Nobody seems to have a problem sending a man his age to prison, yet in the case of Communist atrocities, it's suddenly considered reasonable to question whether the woman should go to prison. After all, it was so damn long ago, and she's so old....
Another comparison I would make is the treatment that Augusto Pinochet gets compared to that of the former Communist leaders. Notably Erich Honecker, who was allowed to go into exile -- in Chile. But also Gorbachev, who should be facing questioning in Lithuania for his role in the events of January, 1991 ordering the military to attack people defending the state broadcaster and trying to keep its transmission tower out of Soviet hands. The chattering classes seemed to have no problem with the idea that Pinochet should be hounded into standing trial in Spain, but there's very little talk of a trial, or even questioning, for Gorbachev.
As is true of American Communists, I'm willing to refer to them that way depending on the time frame. There is, after all, a pretty significant difference between supporting Hitler in 1933 (foolish, even reprehensible) and doing so in, say, December 1938 (utterly reprehensible).
The larger truth, though, is that I rarely see people like Father Coughlin even mentioned today. The Left (whatever that means) doesn't harp on him the way the Right tends to harp on his left-equivalents.
Look, I am quite willing not to harp on Benedict's membership in a group of Nazi loyalists. But it does show you that people ARE in fact given passes for their past support of Hitler just as they are given passes for their past support of Stalin.
You are lying about the Pope. He was forced to join the Hitler Youth. He also deserted it. He did not have any "past support of Hitler" AT ALL. A brief summary:
Stop lying about the Pope.
The Hollywood Ten could get jobs writing for the stage, or writing under pseudonyms: see Dalton Trumbo's Oscars for Roman Holiday and The Brave One.
And Trumbo did ruin some movies by putting cheap propaganda in them. Check out the wonderful One Man's Journey and its heavy-handed, Trumbo-penned remake A Man to Remember. Ginger Rogers claimed Trumbo was writing agitprop for her in Tender Comrade, and was able to get the screenplay changed to have other characters deliver those lines.
The summary does not support your claims. According to the summary, he joined the Hitler Youth in 1941 and remained a member, joined the German army in 1943, and basically only "deserted" when it was clear that the war was going to be over and he wasn't going to be fighting in it.
Look, I don't hold any of this against him-- I suspect that like many young Germans, he didn't think much of the Nazis and was trying to survive in a society run by an awful government.
But he didn't exactly cover himself in glory either, and it is quite wrong to paint him as some sort of Sophie Scholl character.
Trumbo also gave us "Johnny Got His Gun" and Ring Lardner, Jr. gave us "M*A*S*H"-- I'd hardly say that the record of the Hollywood Ten is nearly as bad as you claim.
In any event, not all of the Ten got jobs, and many other blacklisted people NEVER got jobs.
You want more? I will bury you on this. Have you done no research on this at all? Saying that someone has "past support for Hitler" and thinking you'll escape that? Either you don't give a crap about the truth, in which case you are damning your credibility, or you are deliberately LYING:
New Pope Defied Nazis as a Teen During WWII (published in the New York Times - is that lib enough for you?)
He was in the Hitler Youth, he was in the German Army (for a couple of years!!!), and he didn't "desert" until it was clear that the war was over and he wasn't going to fight.
There were, indeed, courageous Germans, including young people like Sophie Scholl, who put their lives on the line protesting the Nazis. Benedict is far from that.
Again, does this make him evil incarnate? Not at all. But it does mean that your attempts of defending his war record seem more than a little desperate (especially when you accuse me of lying without showing that a single fact that I posted in a comment was untrue, as opposed to you simply disagreeing with my opinions).
You called him "misguided" and said he had "past support of Hitler." Misguided suggests that he had SOME support of the Nazis that fuller knowledge would have rectified. That is clearly not the case. He knew they were evil, he did his best to avoid them when he could. There was no "past support of Hitler" at ALL, and it is a well known fact that he was not "misguided." He did not support the Nazis, period.
I get angry when you imply that the Pope even might have supported the Nazis a little when it is clear from the facts that he did not. He knew they were evil, he wasn't merely "misguided." This is not merely a difference of opinion, as anyone familiar with the facts would know. If you want to have an opinion that he was "misguided", how can you reconcile that with the fact that he didn't attend their meetings, was an ardent Catholic whose father hated the Nazis, and was only involved because they forced him to join?
And what is so f&*$ing desperate about getting angry when someone says that the Pope was a misguided Hitler supporter in clear contradiction to the facts!? Are you daft? I never said he put his life on the line, he didn't have to. But it pisses me off to no end that people like you have no problem slandering the truth of the matter if it makes you feel better in bashing Catholics.
FYI - there were millions of Germans who WERE misguided, and I don't blame them for that. But I get mad when someone doesn't bother to check the facts, and slanders a known Nazi opponent as one of those misguided Hitler supporters.
A man of avowed anti-Fascist sympathies, and to my mind, still-foolishly naïve about Stalin and the Soviet Union, agreed on a couple of occasions to help those whom he believed to be actually fighting fascism. ... He stopped, however, immediately following the Hitler-Stalin pact of August 1939, when he wrote to a friend that there would be “no more fellow traveling” and employed his column in The Nation ... to condemn Stalin. ... Given what we now know about Stalin's horrific penchant for mass murder—every bit as bad as Hitler's—Stone's cooperation with whomever he thought he was cooperating with looks like a more significant moral misjudgment than it must have appeared at the time. . . .
Among other things, there is to me a difference, morally, between (i) supporting the Soviets in the early-mid 1930s, when I think it was possible for people of good will to be mistaken/naive/uninformed about what was going on there, and to believe the idealistic propoganda (e.g., about racial equality) and (ii) supporting the Soviets after the Hitler-Stalin pact and especially during the cold war, when the horrors of Soviet communism were much clearer to the whole world.
Stone is in the former category. It still was, as Alter says, a significant moral misjudgment and foolishly naive. But it's not the same thing, morally, as being a Soviet spy in the 1950s.
I'm not sure whether to take this question seriously, but I will anyway.
At the end of WWII, the alliance between the Soviets and the U.S. ended. In case you hadn't heard."
One of the more frustrating aspects of this blog is the apparent inability of some to respond to questions without snark or sarcasm. Yes, re Stone (and Prescott Bush)I am talking about the pre-1945 period. I am not talking about the Rosenbergs or Dalton Trumbo or McCarthy. Wasn't the USSR an ally of the US at various times during this period?
The impact of the Great Depression was enough to make any well-meaning left-of-center political individual to look to the Soviet Union as a legitimate alternative. Based upon the information readily available at the time, anyone who remained in the Soviet communist camp, or admired the Soviet Union, through at least 1936 cannot be faulted for ignoring evidence - it wasn't readily available. And evidence of the ravages of National Socialism and Fascism was readily available.
Starting in 1936, with the first public purge trials, a "progressive" individual should have started to have doubts about "The God That Failed." The continuing purges through the late 1930's should have heightened those doubts. And the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact of August 1939 should have been the final straw. In my mind, anyone who remained in the Soviet Union's camp after that date, other than as our partner against a common enemy 1941-45, is contemptible.
Izzy Stone, like Alger Hiss and Lillian Hellman, falls into the contemptible category.
Since no one else has commented, and assuming agreement with everything you describe, how do you evaluate the actions of Prescott Bush? Better, worse, or the same as Stone?
Or, stated differently:
I basically agree with your timeline and the moral judgments that should be made. But according to Alter, Stone did abandon communism because of the Hitler-Stalin pact. So doesn't that make him something less than contemptible? Or are you saying Alter was wrong? Or am I misreading you (or Alter)?
As is true of American Communists, I'm willing to refer to them that way [as misguided dupes] depending on the time frame. There is, after all, a pretty significant difference between supporting Hitler in 1933 (foolish, even reprehensible) and doing so in, say, December 1938 (utterly reprehensible).
The larger truth, though, is that I rarely see people like Father Coughlin even mentioned today. The Left (whatever that means) doesn't harp on him the way the Right tends to harp on his left-equivalents.
Ummm... the "Right" harps on the "left-equivalents" of Father Coughlin because so many of them are idolized even now, as Father Coughlin and Ezra Pound and the rest of that ilk are not. I'm not saying that no one regards our homegrown fascist sympathizers as heroes and martyrs (you can find someone willing to believe practically anything), but there's no well of admiration comparable to the one the Hollywood Ten enjoy.
The other thing is that you have to decide where you're going to put your dividing line once and for all. You say that it was maybe foolish to admire Hitler in 1933, definitely reprehensible in 1938. Well, when did it become definitely reprehensible to admire Stalin? How much did you have to know to reject Stalinism? By what date was it reasonable to assume that everyone knew, practically speaking, what Stalinism was?
Stone seems to have been lending his assistance to the Soviet government during the very period that it was busiest killing off all of its even potential internal opposition. But maybe the show trials were very well managed, so that they looked like fair trials?
But surely after the Nazi-Soviet pact the veil was torn, right? Evidently not, or there would have been no Hollywood Ten. So when is it fair to assume that someone ought to have known the truth about the Soviet Union? 1956? 1968? 1980? 1991?
This is what I said:
The current Pope was a member of the Hitler Youth. And indeed, I think "misguided" is exactly the type of characterization that is applied to him.
That passage is true.
But apparently, any passage that even uses the word "Pope" and "Hitler" in the vicinity of each other sets you off and causes you to erupt with false accusations of anti-Catholic bigotry. You need to grow a thicker skin.
In any event, you aren't really worth arguing with about this, as it wasn't really the point of the discussion.
The impact of the Great Depression was enough to make any well-meaning left-of-center political individual to look to the Soviet Union as a legitimate alternative. Based upon the information readily available at the time, anyone who remained in the Soviet communist camp, or admired the Soviet Union, through at least 1936 cannot be faulted for ignoring evidence - it wasn't readily available. And evidence of the ravages of National Socialism and Fascism was readily available.
It doesn't hurt that "the information available at the time" consisted largely of Soviet government economic reports that were almost entirely fraudulent.
And I think we can fault those who visited the Soviet Union in the 1930s and either averted their eyes or deliberately misreported what was happening — Wells, Shaw, Duranty among others. They are the reason others had no "evidence."
I would be surprised if fascist Italy was actually quite the Hell that the USSR was during the 30s. But I imagine it was rather easier to get in and write critical journalism about it.
Maybe not Father Coughlin, but there's a pretty strong cottage industry on the right arguing that Joe McCarthy was misunderstood and was a great man who was largely right.
Look, if anything, this thread proves my point, which is each side wants to go back into the past and select the particular historical examples that make the other side look bad. It's a silly, nonproductive exercise.
Maybe not Father Coughlin, but there's a pretty strong cottage industry on the right arguing that Joe McCarthy was misunderstood and was a great man who was largely right.
By which you mean that Ann Coulter wrote a book, and others are hyping it. As I said a bit earlier, they aren't hyping it particularly well, because I never heard of it before this morning.
[double take] OK, finally Googled it. You mean Treason? From six years ago? That book? Currently No. 59,368 on the amazon.com sales list? Yeah, that's a live issue.
How was he misguided? I reiterate: if you want to state he was "misguided", how can you reconcile that with the fact that he didn't attend their meetings, was an ardent Catholic whose father hated the Nazis, and was only involved because they forced him to join?
You also said this: Look, I am quite willing not to harp on Benedict's membership in a group of Nazi loyalists. But it does show you that people ARE in fact given passes for their past support of Hitler just as they are given passes for their past support of Stalin.
You implied that he had "past support of Hitler" in a "group of Nazi loyalists." That is demonstrably false, and you know it. You are flat-out wrong on this.
If you don't want to argue about it, then you shouldn't have brought it up, especially when you're clearly in the wrong. To think that you can just be cavilier about this is ridiculous - especially when regarding supposed sympathies for the Nazis. Who do you think you are that you can tell lies or have such a disregard for the truth, especially when you're throwing around suggestions of someone being a "Nazi loyalist"? Not to be clichem, but have you NO decency at all?
Being in the Hitler Youth and the German Army = objective past support of Hitler.
He may have done other, more minor things, to oppose the Nazis (like not showing up for meetings and listening to Allied radio). And maybe his father was a big-time protester of the Nazis. But the Pope wasn't some resistance figure-- he was a guy who, like many Germans of his day, joined the Hitler Youth and the German Army. There's no getting away from that fact.
"Treason" sold quite well, actually, and was accompanied by the usual round of guest appearances on all the right wing media outlets. But it isn't exactly a lone voice in the wilderness, either. There's plenty of pro-tailgunner Joe sentiments among the right, and you can easily find them if you use google.
Take a deep breath, read the Mitrokin archives, then patiently consider how best to adjust your worldview given the new data. It really is a game-changer, and you don't seem as on your game as usual on this field.
It happens. I used to enjoy listening to Hannity. The ground changes.
Take a deep breath, and consider the difference between (1) spies who damaged American national security by stealing secrets and giving them to the Soviets and (2) people in the entertainment or journalism industry whose "work" for the USSR consisted of advocating leftist causes.
The entire right-wing game on this issue is summed up in this syllogism:
1. The USSR did evil things.
2. Some leftists in Hollywood and journalism worked for the USSR.
3. Therefore, leftists in Hollywood and journalism were evil.
Unfortunately, there's a whole bunch of logical leaks there.
I confess that I haven't noticed this groundswell of McCarthy support. I don't think he's any sort of iconic figure even on the very far right. (Che Guevara's image is everywhere, but I haven't the foggiest idea what McCarthy looked like, though I do know which of the two personally executed his political enemies.)
What is true is that people have been reassessing him somewhat as what we know about American Communism in the 40s and 50s increases. As David Bernstein implied way up-thread, the big difference between hunting witches and hunting Communist agents is that there weren't any real witches. McCarthy was wrong about practically everything, but not about there being agents of a foreign and hostile power ostensibly working for our government.
Michelle Dulak Thompson - you are correct, people like Duranty who had the facts and covered them up have no excuse. I'm talking about those in the West that didn't know about what had really been going on in the Soviet Union in the late 1920's and early 1930's.
But what's there to "reassess"? I don't have any problem with getting the history straight, which includes being accurate about who was a Soviet agent and the extent of any Soviet infiltration of American institutions. But McCarthy was just a bully and a liar (the supposed "list of names" never existed) and he led a movement that needlessly ruined people's lives. (Even Professor Bernstein conceded upthread that there were completely innocent non-Stalinists who were driven out of their jobs because of the Red Scare.)
Indeed, I would think, to be honest, that right wingers should want to distance the legitimate cause of opposing communism from the tactics of Tailgunner Joe, HUAC, the Blacklist, Roy Cohn, and other excesses of that era. These people did a lot to discredit the right wing's claims about communism, which is something you really didn't want if you were concerned about a communist threat. And some conservatives are indeed horrified by these aspects of the Red Scare. But many others are engaged in the "reassessing" project, which aims to rehabilitate the image of some very bad people who ruined a lot of people's lives because of their political beliefs.
I realize you are just having some fun with your pope-hitler line, but I think you are making a small error in that he was drafted into both the hitler youth and the army. If my understanding of the time is correct, it was very difficult to not be enrolled in these youth groups and then drafted into the army, and it was a dangerous bet to desert the army. Agian I may be misremembering but I beleive the germans were shooting deserters. So please just give it a rest I think you have worked enought people up with that line.
THanks
BCN
1. The USSR
did evil thingswas evil.2. Some leftists in Hollywood and journalism
worked forsupported the USSR.3. Therefore, leftists in Hollywood and journalism who supported the USSR were supporting evil.
Just out of curiosity, what's your opinion of Elia Kazan?
Look, I don't doubt that it was difficult to protest the Nazis. Nonetheless, I don't doubt that whatever protests Benedict allegedly engaged in were pretty slight. And he certainly didn't get out of the German army until it was pretty clear that he wasn't going to have to serve in the war.
As I said, in the end, I don't really hold this against him. But I also don't think he covered himself in glory in this period.
Anon:
Look, a lot of liberals think the Vietnam War was evil and that Bush's torture policies were evil. If the issue is just supporting evil, that's an accusation that gets thrown around in politics all the time.
I think that conservatives are looking for something more grandiose than that, i.e., a claim that the USSR was basically a big criminal conspiracy and thus you can pin all the deaths resulting from international communism on the Hollywood types and journalists who worked with the Soviets. And that's the move that's clearly wrong.
"On the Waterfront" was one of the great films in history, and makes a powerful case for what he did. And I didn't really like the protests of him winning that honorary Oscar either.
That said, there also seems to me to be a compelling case that the people who didn't name names were right, because the investigations were off the rails and the result of naming names was that a bunch of innocent people got hauled before HUAC and ended up on the blacklists.
So Kazan is a great artist who may have done a bad thing.
So many? Most people today can't name a single person or event of those days. Mention the "Hollywood Ten" to the average person on the street and they'll guess you mean Paris Hilton's posse. There's no "idolization" of anyone.
And, as Dilan has pointed out, the Ten never did anything harmful; they were "guilty" of thought crimes.
McCarthy, OTOH, is still today defended by M. Stanton Evans, and was regularly defended by Buckley.
But going back to the '30s, I can't name anyone from that era who's celebrated as a Communist. There are artists who are celebrated for their art (Paul Robeson, Pete Seeger), but none for being Communists.
I doubt it's helpful to try to draw precise lines; history just isn't that neat and clean. It's easy for us to look back and criticize when we know a lot more than people of the time. I try to be charitable, within limits, just as I do with other historical issues like slavery. It's easy to become self-righteous about these judgments, but we today may look pretty bad 300 years from now (well, not me of course; I'm on the cutting edge of history).
In any event, I think it would have been reasonable to begin judging people harshly when the facts of the liquidation of the Kulaks and/or the show trials began to become public (I can't identify a precise date). Stone seems to have continued as a fellow traveler after that time, and he deserves criticism for that. But passing on "secrets" about Hitler doesn't strike me as something to condemn him for, even if he did pass them to Stalin.
There weren't a lot of Nazi sympathizers whose other work has held up worth a damn, is part of the problem.
If you want to throw out everyone who ever flirted with the Popular Front in the 1930s, you need to throw out a hell of a lot of people who did a hell of a lot of good. If all we're going to say about WEB DuBois and Pete Seeger (and Dorothy Parker, for chrissakes) is that they were Communists for a while, and thus permanently unclean, we're going to miss a big part of the story of the American 20th century.
A lot of the people who bumped up against the CPUSA in the 1930s -- and even after -- did so because they fundamentally misunderstood the nature of Stalinism. They weren't supporters of Stalin's atrocities, they were oblivious to them. Should they have been so oblivious? No. But they were.
Remember that the Communist Party was doing a lot of good and important work in the US in the 1930s. Say it was for bad reasons, but you can't say it didn't happen. A lot of people were drawn to the CP because of their work on behalf of the Scottsboro Boys, for instance. That case was a travesty, and the CP was on the right side of it -- not just writing articles, but in the courtroom, fighting for those men's lives. And there are plenty of other examples I could name along those lines.
American fascists had no comparable justification for their errors.
1. The USSR did evil things.
2. Some leftists in Hollywood and journalism worked for the USSR.
3. Therefore, leftists in Hollywood and journalism
were evilshould no longer be lionized, which was the original topic of the thread.It's not just "the Right", Dilan. I could give too figs what "the Right" thinks. What I care about is what it says about liberalism when a supposedly liberal icon is idolizing a system which thinks a "free press" is one that just finished crushing one liberal's balls and hasn't moved on to the next one yet.
I don't think these people are "lionized" for being leftists. Some are lionized for their journalistic (IF Stone) or creative (Dalton Trumbo) accomplishments quite apart from their politics, and certainly some are remembered as First Amendment martyrs (Hollywood Ten) because they were persecuted because of their political beliefs.
But it's a pretty small rump that still believes in Soviet Communism, and I dare say that most liberals and leftists these days think these folks were, at best, pretty damned misguided and, more likely, obtuse and willing to excuse and justify evil.
I would hardly call them martyrs. The Hollywood Ten and others suffered because they had been held in contempt of Congress. They had every opportunity to plead the 5A, but choose not to for political reasons. Read the Waldorf Statement released by Eric Johnston, president of the Motion Picture Association.Let's also note that the Hollywood Ten were generally following instructions from Moscow on how to act. Had Moscow told them to do something else they would have. They behaved a lot differently towards Hollywood Trotskyists-- again following instructions from Moscow they were only too happy to provide compromising information about this particular breed of Communist.
"some are remembered as First Amendment martyrs (Hollywood Ten) because they were persecuted because of their political beliefs."
When those beliefs include laughing at the pathetic naivete of the First Amendment itself, are you sure they are the martyrs you're looking for?
"But it's a pretty small rump that still believes in Soviet Communism, and I dare say that most liberals and leftists these days think these folks were, at best, pretty damned misguided and, more likely, obtuse and willing to excuse and justify evil."
As if non-Soviet Communism has proven itself any more liberal! The rump might be small in Dilan's age cohort (although my experience is otherwise), but we've just raised a generation in their Che t-shirts that believes that Communists were by and large merely liberals in a hurry, to be condemned only for their naivete and extremism in defense of equality, which, after all, is hardly a vice in such an allegedly unequal society as our own.
Our willful blindness to the past, fog or no fog, condemns that generation to repeat it, in all its banality. We have abdicated our duty to adequately warn them otherwise, in our reluctance to come to terms with that blindness.
Anyone who supported it ever, for whatever reason, supported evil and deserves our scorn.
Scorn is deserved, too, for those who still apologize for people like Stone or the Hollywood Ten who supported evil.
Fixed that for you.
Ratzinger did not join the Hitler Youth of his own free volition, he was compelled to sign up, and under the Nazis compulsion was compulsion. His family was anti-Nazi. Whatever you may think of him and his conservative religious views, "misguided" doesn't pertain in the least where he and Naziism are concerned.
Let us at least agree to celebrate those who deserve celebration, and leave it at that.
This is a deliberate dodge made by conservative cowards who don't have the courage to admit that their movement was wrong. It doesn't matter who gave the Hollywood Ten instructions-- NOBODY should have been asking them to rat out their friends, especially since when names WERE named, the people named got persecuted whether or not guilty of anything.
As if non-Soviet Communism has proven itself any more liberal! The rump might be small in Dilan's age cohort (although my experience is otherwise), but we've just raised a generation in their Che t-shirts that believes that Communists were by and large merely liberals in a hurry, to be condemned only for their naivete and extremism in defense of equality, which, after all, is hardly a vice in such an allegedly unequal society as our own.
Yes, Che is on t-shirts. But do you think any of those people who are wearing them are Stalinists?
You can't assert that lots of people believe this romantic tale about communism without some actual polling data. Do you have any ACTUAL evidence that people think the USSR was benign? You have constructed a delusion in your mind and are arguing from that delusion.
It's misguided to join the Hitler youth. Properly guided would have been to join the resistance. Benedict joined the German army and was ready to fight for the Nazi cause, only deserting when the war was lost.
That's not courage-- that's either cowardice or endorsement.
Again, I don't think I would have done any better, so I don't hold this against him. But let's not pretend that he was some sort of hero of the resistance-- his war record is quite dishonorable overall.
That the subject (spies) is of no interest to bernstein unless it offers him a chance to take potshots at a leftist. In other words, the underlying belief seems to be this: it's not that spies are bad; it's that leftist spies are bad.
I think it's not that simple:
also:
You're implying that Stone was tried and mistakenly acquitted. But he was never tried, or even charged. Right? A bit misleading on your part.
===============
dilan:
"Joe McCarthy, American Hero!" You can have the t-shirt, or the baseball jersey.
There's also "Joe McCarthy Was Right," in a long-sleeve T.
From a different vendor, we also have "I Love Joe McCarthy."
And maybe Jonah has those shirts in his closet:
We should also check Joel Surnow's closet. He's a self-proclaimed "right wing nut job" and producer of the Fox series "24." From a profile of him in the New Yorker:
Surnow is well-connected. The article explains how he hangs out with people like Limbaugh and Rove. All people who think of McCarthy as a hero, I guess.
wisdomfoolishness surrounding the man.McCarthy was a typical Wisconsin progressive: he was on to something in the abstract, but was clueless when it came to the concrete and ended up going after all the wrong people. Sort of like some of our progressives here, come to think of it. One can say he was right, in a general sense, without claiming that he was great.
"You can't assert that lots of people believe this romantic tale about communism without some actual polling data. Do you have any ACTUAL evidence that people think the USSR was benign? You have constructed a delusion in your mind and are arguing from that delusion."
In my experience, not much of what you might characterize as thinking actually occurs, frankly, and what there is tends to disassociate itself with the USSR, per se, in lieu of claims that of course true Communism has never been tried. What is generally agreed is that the Red Scare (which already loads the question) was a right-wing plot along the lines of the Salem witch hunt bravely chronicled by on-the-scene eyewitness Arthur Miller, and that the anti-communist forces were motivated largely by their animus to peace, love, and understanding, not, as was actually the case, the illiberalism of communism itself, which would be a contradiction in terms.
Going on two generations have now been indoctrinated in this Salem/McCarthy equivalence orthodoxy in the face of the Mitrokin evidence. Still happening. I'm a teacher. I see it every day.
Of course, Stone was never tried, if indeed anything he is alleged to have done would have amounted to a prosecutable crime. I was reacting to levisbaby, who for his own suspect reasons emphasized Pollard's conviction in a court of law for spying, unlike Stone, who was never tried, let alone convicted of anything. I am not persuaded that OJ isn't a murderer because a jury found him not guilty, nor am I persuaded that Bill Ayers did not commit serious crimes for which he should have gone to prison, though he was never tried. While there might have been a clearer historical record if Stone had ever been formally charged and tried (and again, I don't think there were grounds to do so), I don't see it as either here or there for purposes of this discussion that he was never tried.
Well said, Desiderius.
I don't believe we've absorbed that work yet, and some seem to wish we never do. The Iron Curtain fell across Europe, and there were stagehands in this country helping.
"why was Martin Luther King such a villain to so much of the anti-communist right wing in the 1950s and 1960s?"
Again, studentactivist, who gives a flying fuck what the right-wing thought? The thread is about who the left and/or liberals should celebrate and who we should let drift into a well-deserved obscurity.
Maybe so many of your fellow students wouldn't be so maddeningly inactive if we could get our story straight as to the historical facts. No enemies to the Left? Whatever. But certainly no heroes to the brazenly illiberal.
As I understand it, Stone didn't "spy" (pace Prof. Bernstein) on the US. The information he supplied related only to Nazi Germany. So it appears Stone was not "spying" against the US at all.
If anticommunists were, in fact, motivated in their animus by hatred of illiberalism, I would expect them to have embraced the civil rights movement and repudiated the forces of Jim Crow, hostile as white supremacists were to democracy and civil liberties. And yet, to the extent that one can generalize, the opposite held true.
This strikes me as a blindingly obvious fact that does serious damage to your thesis regarding the motives of the anticommunists.
"You can't assert that lots of people believe this romantic tale about communism without some actual polling data."
I'd put it at 10% tops. For the great mass who smell the rat in the present orthodoxy, its just another brick in the wall that convinces them that liberal education is bunk, that Somin's ignorance is indeed rational, and that they're perfectly justified in doing what it takes to get their credentials stamped on the way to an unexamined life of narrow self-interest.
The tragedy is that the 10% who we blithely send off on actual witch-hunts of various right-wing boogeymen are the ones with the potential to carry on the great liberal tradition, to make it real to their colleagues, to persuade them that the examined life is very much worth the effort, that ignorance of our liberal institutions is ultimately irrational, that this house divided against itself will fall, is indeed falling.
That house was built on truth, while we abandon them to Pilate's fog, imagining it to be postmodern, when in fact it is the oldest trick in the book.
You must be proud.
But your insistence on taking ad hominem pot-shots at me rather than engaging with my specific critiques of your arguments speaks volumes.
I'd put it at .1% tops. An estimate of .001% would likely be more accurate.
Your snarky comment about studentactivist is dodging a very real point. The alliance between racists and anti-communists, left and right, was very real and has done permanent harm to the American Right (less so to left wing anti-communists, but certainly JFK's reputation suffers today for his inaction on civil rights).
It's "hard to reconcile" only if you take one phrase out of context and oversimplify its meaning. But I guess that's what you teach your students to do, right?
Here's a more complete passage (from p. 106 of "Robert Kennedy and his times," which can be browsed at books.google):
In "Robert Kennedy" by Judie Mills we find this (p. 49):
The fact that Bobby felt personal affection for McCarthy tells us nothing deep or important about McCarthy as a political figure or McCarthyism as a political phenomenon.
Gosh, why does that sound so familiar? Maybe because of this:
And this:
And this:
And this:
It's suddenly fashionable to claim that Bush was something very different from a 'true conservative.' That requires forgetting what William F. Buckley Jr. said on 3/26/04: that it's wrong "to denounce Bush and his policies 'in the name of conservatism,' " and that there is nothing (or not much) "about Bush's policies that makes them unworthy of conservative benediction," and that it's wrong to claim that "a true conservatism would take a stand against everything that is identified with George W. Bush's policies."
(And we heard something very similar from Fred Barnes on 8/18/03: "the case for Bush's conservatism is strong.")
Did Bush drastically change his stripes in the next four years? Because about four years later, what we heard, instead, was this: "Bush … is not really a conservative, either in principle or in temperament." And we heard this: "Bush was a big-government type who betrayed conservatism."
But it didn't really take four years to forget what Buckley said. It only took two years for Buckley himself to forget what Buckley said:
Was Bush more "extravagant in domestic spending" in 2004-2006 than he was in 2001-2004? I don't think so. Bush signed Medicare Part D on 12/8/03, "estimated to cost $400 billion over the next 10 years." And this is what we found out on 2/9/05:
So people like Buckley and Barnes were perfectly willing to claim that Bush was a 'true conservative' when Bush's ratings were hovering around 50% and there was an important election coming up. But now that we see the way Bush's policies have driven us over cliff, it's convenient to say that 'true conservatism has never been tried.' Interesting how that works.
I know this is off-topic, but your sarcastic line ("true communism has never been tried") was too good to waste.
Obviously courts make mistakes, and the OJ case is perhaps the most famous example. But that doesn't mean that the presence or absence of a conviction is meaningless. So as a general rule, if one is upset about spies, one should be more upset about a convicted spy, as compared with a suspected spy.
Thanks for being so gracious about it. The things you just learned about Pollard are things I also just learned. I knew not much but became curious about him as a result of reading this thread (even though he had not been mentioned). I did not mention him here until after I had learned those negative things about him. I probably would not have mentioned him if I had not learned those things.
I think it's pretty clear that Pollard's spying did more damage to the US than Stone's 'spying.' But Bernstein is going out of his way to condemn the latter because the latter is a leftist. Which tells me that Bernstein's real problem with Stone is not Stone's 'spying' but rather Stone's leftism.
Any given Wikipedia article is either well-sourced or not, and it usually doesn't take that much work to separate the weak claims from the solid ones. It's a mistake to accept Wikipedia claims without doing a little critical thinking, but that's true for any source. And I find in general their standards are pretty high.
If you were familiar with his track record, you would have seen this coming.
That's not courage-- that's either cowardice or endorsement.
Again, I don't think I would have done any better, so I don't hold this against him. But let's not pretend that he was some sort of hero of the resistance-- his war record is quite dishonorable overall.
Joseph Ratzinger did not join the Hitler Youth. Somebody else signed him up. Joseph Ratzinger did not join the German army. He was conscripted. On a libertarian site it is not unusual to refer to conscription as involuntary servitude. Deserters from the German army were hanged.
Is it your contention that any German who was not executed by the SS behaved dishonorably? That seems like an unreasonably high standard.
Ah, yes, let the character assassination begin. Must be frustrating how many times you need to kill this messenger, JBG.
"But I guess that's what you teach your students to do, right?"
I'm a math teacher, hot shot, and, unlike some colleagues from your ideological neck of the woods, I work hard to encourage my students to think for themselves. Which is why, I guess, that you guys get to hear all the bitching. They don't.
Mitrokin:
No, Bobby, you weren't, not that anyone much cares anymore. For the sake of the movement, of course.
Markfield,
You chase your boogeymen, I'll chase mine. But again, if you want to do a Che vs. Lester Maddox t-shirt frequency contest, I'm game. Just don't tell Randy R. what party Mr. Maddox hailed from.
And I'm sorry to report its not just the t-shirts. I may be tiresomely pedantic here with the grown-ups, but I do listen (usually exclusively) to what the students have to say, and what I report here is a significant portion of the general jugendgeist, from conversations over the last decade on college and high school campuses, often among the best and brightest.
As a jugend myself, I traveled in Eastern Europe during the revolutions there witnessing first-hand the liberal wonders of the system my professors back at Man U. were busy extolling and my textbooks taught me were at least comparable, and, of course, superior in the areas of health-care and equality, to their western counterparts. My fellow students were, if anything, more bully.
We can't afford to continue getting things that wrong.
studentactivist,
"But your insistence on taking ad hominem pot-shots at me rather than engaging with my specific critiques of your arguments speaks volumes."
There was nothing ad hominem about it. I decried the association of anti-communism with the right-wing. You show up and start associating anti-communism with the right-wing. I point to the example. I know nothing of your person, only your words, which illustrated my point. Good to know you're on the team. Play better.
In the 1950s and 1960s, vocal anti-communism was more common on the right end of the American political spectrum than the left, so if we're going to explore the nature of anti-communism as a political phenomenon, the right wing is a pretty good place to start. And whether we're looking at liberals or conservatives, my own strong sense is that vocal anti-communists were less likely to embrace the black-led civil rights movement in the 1950s and early 1960s than otherwise similarly-situated political actors who were not notably anti-communist.
Once again. Many of the most prominent American anti-communists of the mid-20th century were hostile to the civil rights movement. If their opposition to communism was truly motivated by a love of freedom, democracy, and civil liberties, this is a fact that certainly needs explaining.
In my experience, kids wear Che shirts because (a) they like the art work; and (b) they know it pisses people off. They have no idea what Che stood for and wouldn't support it if they did.
Desid, you are quite right about RFK, who, like his brother, was able to have his faults papered over by dying young and tragically.
But that doesn't really justify right-wing lionization of tailgunner Joe.
My position is that the honorable thing to do-- certainly the thing a man chosen by God would do-- is to refuse induction and join the German resistance, risking capital punishment if necessary to do the right thing.
Now, would I have done this? Probably not. But then, I have no guts and I'm not Pope.
So then your answer is yes. By not being dead, Joseph Ratzinger does not meet your, IMO, unreasonably high standard of behavior when living in a murderous totalitarian dictatorship.
St.Peter, fearing for his life, denied Jesus three times before the cock crowed and yet Jesus saw fit to make him the first Pope. Lucky for Peter that he merely had to meet the standard set by Jesus and not the Dilan Esper standard.
So your belief is that not a single German who resisted the Nazis survived WW2?
Do you seriously believe this bunk?
Upon reflection: apologies for how I treated you upthread. If you're actually a student, it was a direct refutation of how I claim I typically interact with students. If not, it was still pretty shabby. I'm a Churchillian liberal - I heap no end of scorn upon the Left, but when the chips are down I know who my friends are. Character flaw. Among several, as JBG so helpfully documents.
As for your points. My concern is the extent to which (often knee-jerk) defenses of the likes of I.F. Stone or the Hollywood Ten, reinforced by generations of indoctrination likening the Red "Scare" to the Salem witch trials, with the usual suspects as the witch-hunters, leave the impression that anti-communism was a right-wing endeavor, along the lines of opposing the (rightly) beloved Dr. King, or supporting Jim Crow.
There are two problems with this.
(1) It obscures the very real concern many felt (and feel!) about Communism that was not of a piece with reactionary politics (I characterize this as a just distaste for the clear illiberalism of the Comintern). After all, the Civil Rights movement succeeded and we won the Cold War. Certainly there must be some overlap in the two efforts. I know many of them personally.
Portraying anti-communism as a predominantly right-wing phenomenon gives the Right too much credit. They could not have won the Cold War alone, as they learned the hard way in Iraq.
(2) Given Mitrovkin, it undermines the credibility of the liberal narrative vis-a-vis everything from Civil Rights to the misdeeds of our own government. We can't afford such glaring whoppers, given human nature and how much we would all like to forget other unpalatable truths.
"They have no idea what Che stood for and wouldn't support it if they did."
Guess I hang out with smarter, if not yet particularly wise, kids.
Dilan,
"Desid, you are quite right about RFK, who, like his brother, was able to have his faults papered over by dying young and tragically."
What, that he had a fondness for McCarthy? So what? I've got a fondness for you - what does that say about me, I shudder to think?
Let the record show that I have something that goes beyond fondness for the Kennedy brothers, if not so much for the Kennedy father. Unlike JBG, I'll refrain from providing a Chappaquiddick link at this point.
"But that doesn't really justify right-wing lionization of tailgunner Joe."
Fair enough. Perhaps "lionizing" has been tossed about too freely. To the extent it goes on re: McCarthy, its the usual Right exhibitionism, which gives liberals too easy an out to avoid some needed self-examination. We like doing that, remember?
It's not just that he was a McCarthy supporter-- RFK also tapped Martin Luther King's phones, and was a big time supporter of the Vietnam War. RFK had, at best, a rather late-in-life conversion to a more progressive liberalism, and who knows how sincere it ever was?
Yep. Me and the other billion Catholics.
By the way, it is generally considered impolite to refer to other people's articles of faith as bunk. I realize that this is the internet and I don't expect people to be polite but if you are using your own name, a future potential employer might do an internet search and be more thin skinned about that sort of thing.
Really? So you are telling me with great certainty the minute details of things that supposedly happened 2,000 years ago which weren't even written down for decades, and which are actually quite disputed by many, many other believers, let alone nonbelievers (indeed, even many Catholics reject the claim that Jesus actually "made Peter the first Pope" in a literal rather than metaphorical manner). And yet if I claim that such a belief is "bunk", I'm the one committing the great social breach?
Mark, seriously, grow a pair. If you choose to believe in flatly implausible things, you are going to run into people who point out that they are implausible. And if you are truly offended by that, that is basically proof that you know it is all BS and that your beliefs are so fragile that they cannot stand someone pointing it out.
Now please get back to the topic at hand, unless you feel like telling me how Jonah really did live inside that whale.
I am sure that there were a few who survived but that would not be the way to bet.
Over the years I met a number of people who lived in Nazi Germany. For the most part they say that they just tried to keep their heads down, their mouths shut and to avoid the attention of the authorities. Interestingly enough, I have met a number of people who had lived in some of the countries that were governed by I.F.Stone's favorite political system. They pretty much said the same thing.
True enough. And I don't mind characterizing Benedict's activities in WW2 in terms of placing the right bet. I freely admit that I am a coward and probably would have done the same thing.
But that is a far cry from "resisting the Nazis", which is what his defenders want the characterization to be.
Yes, Dilan, I do believe that God sometimes performs miracles which are by definition not only implausible but actually impossible by ordinary laws of physics and probability.
It does not particularly bother me either that you don't believe or that you are not polite.
Actually most of his defenders just want to refute the characterization that Joseph Ratzinger was an enthusiastic Nazi which is where you came in.
But feel free to try to move the goal posts.
I never said he was "enthusiastic", just that he supported it.
And criticizing religion is not "impolite". Religion is no different than any other factual claim, and it is just as subject to criticism as anything else.
What you want is a special rule of politeness for religious beliefs. But that, I think, betrays that in fact you know it is BS. Because if your beliefs were defensible, you wouldn't need them to be protected from criticism.
In any event, with all respect to your religious beliefs, they, with all due respect, unfortunately do not stand up to any factual scrutiny. There, polite enough for you?
Yes, it's tu quoque, but shouldn't we consider how much anger we should have for the Commie Symps in the '30s in light of our own predecessors in political interest too?
Cheers,
In fact, I'd think that a fair number of people here might even have some sympathy for one of the communist ideals: According to communist theory, the state will wither away when the people take up the reins of production themselves. They won't need any direction from on high; either from the bosses or the gummint but will instead do what needs to be done as they see fit and necessary according to the maxim "from each according to their ability". Sounds almost ... well, "libertarian".
And in fact, various communal societies run things along these lines; kibbutzim are generally rather egalitarian and democratic.
Of course, when people start leeching off the "commons", or even if we get to the "tragedy of the commons" (see the vaccination post earlier), or start saying "I'm special, what's in it for me, meee, meeeeeeee?", this all tends to break down a bit. But that hardly make communism anything intrinsically terrible, even if difficult to implement in a satisfactory manner in any large and heterogeneous society.
Cheers,
Joseph Ratzinger was signed up into the Hitler Youth by somebody else when he turned 14. He was conscripted into the German army and would have been hanged if he did not serve.
By your logic black slaves on an Alabama plantation in 1864 could be described as supporting the Confederacy. Slave laborers in an underground factory building V-2 rockets could be described as supporting the Nazi war effort. In some sense that is true but it is not the way most people use the word "support".
There is a difference between saying that I believe you are wrong and saying that I believe you are stupid. Like I said before, it does not bother me if you are impolite on the internet. From time to time, I am impolite on the internet but I like to think that I am aware when I am doing it. I got the impression that your impoliteness was inadvertent. If you meant to be rude, I apologize for missing your intent.
No, he is not implying that Stone was tried and mistakenly acquitted. Nothing he said could lead a reasonable person to infer that. Completely misleading on your part.
...he says, linking to a Wikipedia entry. Except, oddly, just a few posts later in the thread, he says that "if one is upset about spies, one should be more upset about a convicted spy, as compared with a suspected spy." And yet he cites a wikipedia entry with all sorts of things that Pollard was not convicted of. As far as spying for foreign countries other than Israel, Pollard is merely a 'suspected spy,' rather than a 'convicted one.'
It is astonishing to me how certain right-leaning people will seize upon and exaggerate youthful indiscretions of a left-leaning nature and demonize a man of such huge talent and, frankly, huge wisdom. To call Stone a Stalinist, as so many in this thread have, is a display of first class, mean-spirited ignorance.
No one who has read Stone's last book, The Trial of Socrates, with half an open mind, would attack his character. The ignorance and malice on display here is truly lamentable.
BTW, thank you, juke, for the cites @ McCarthy. Very interesting, and it shows--and I think this is quite germaine to the thread--that people generally are far more complicated and nuanced than we think. It ought to caution us about making assumptions, or worse, summary judgements.
To the extent that your character has been assassinated, the wounds are all self=inflicted.
There's no need to kill something when it's DOA. And watching you be yourself over and over again isn't frustrating. On the contrary. You just keep confirming what you demonstrated a long time ago.
What you do is self-documenting, and requires no help from me. I have nothing to do with it, aside from letting you know that I notice.
It's always fun to see a nice example of paralipsis.
You are claiming that Mitrokin demonstrated that "there was a serious internal security threat to the United States." Really? I guess it depends how you define "serious." But I hope you'll tell us exactly what Mitrokin said that amounts to proof of "a serious internal security threat to the United States." Because surely this is not yet another instance of you stating a 'fact' that turns out be nothing more than a vague, unsubstantiated "recollection."
===================
Regarding the Pope and the Nazis:
===================
zuch:
RPT did mention Prescott a few times, but the people upset about Stone seem to have no interest in discussing Prescott.
===================
nieporent:
Except that I didn't put any words in anyone's mouth. I just noticed what words are in Bernstein's mouth (words critical of Stone as a 'spy'), and what words aren't (words critical of Pollard as a spy). This is a fact, and I described my interpretation of that fact. If you have a different interpretation, good for you.
And you've said nothing to demonstrate that my interpretation is wrong, let alone "dishonestly" wrong.
Bernstein ignoring the Pollard case is a lot more than "a single data point." The ignoring has been going on for years, even though Bernstein often writes about American-Israel relations, and even though Pollard is an important part of that history, and even though Pollard's name comes up in connection with current events.
Do you have some kind of a point buried in there somewhere? I hope you'll tell us where it's hidden, because I can't find it.
Yes, it makes sense to be more concerned about a convicted spy, as compared with a suspected spy. That's what I said. That doesn't mean there's no reason at all to be concerned about a suspected spy. Why are you "dishonestly" suggesting that I said something I didn't say?
And the point about Pollard is that he's both a convicted spy and a suspected spy. He was convicted of spying for Israel, and suspected of spying for other countries.
There are a number of reasons, but here's one that's glaringly obvious: "stealing secrets and giving them to the Soviets" is illegal. "Advocating leftist causes" is not. Then again, if you think there's nothing "significant" about the difference between legal behavior and illegal behavior, that tells us something about the kind of lawyer you are.
"Do you seriously believe this bunk?"
Yes. And its far worse than bunk.
"BTW, thank you, juke, for the cites @ McCarthy. Very interesting, and it shows--and I think this is quite germaine to the thread--that people generally are far more complicated and nuanced than we think. It ought to caution us about making assumptions, or worse, summary judgements."
I would concur. Do you have any links to passages where I.F. Stone shares your characterization of his earlier (or later) feelings vis-a-vis Communism and/or Stalinism?
zuch,
"shouldn't we consider how much anger we should have for the Commie Symps in the '30s in light of our own predecessors in political interest too?"
We, kimosabe? Not much anger here, just lack of enthusiasm for sympathy with illiberal ideologies, and knee-jerk defense thereof. And I don't think its the 30's that are the problem. Dreadful decade.
Interesting point about the common ground between some flavors of Marxian analysis and libertarianism. CALPERS always struck me as a more profound example of the public ownership of the means of production than anything envisioned by Marx, or at least his followers. Now if we could all just agree on that withering away of the state business.
There's also this, from an unexpected source:
"the Russian Revolution liberated the idea that politics are governed by economics - the idea which John Adams held to so staunchly, and which marked him as being a century and a half ahead of his time."
Albert Jay Nock, Memoirs of a Superfluous Man, pg. 87
"To the extent that your character has been assassinated, the wounds are all self=inflicted."
Still, its useful to have a party minder around to prevent the innocent from being unwittingly corrupted by my heresies. Give yourself some credit. Maybe even work a binge or two in with the purging. You've earned it.
"It's always fun to see a nice example of paralipsis."
Yeah, that fell pretty flat. To be clear: by beyond fondness I mean respect and admiration. As for Chappaquiddick, a jury of a hell of lot of Teddy's peers have been acquitting him every six years or so for going on half a century now. They know him better than I do, so good enough for me.
Your obligatory linking to my alleged crime (Can't you find some new ones, just for variety's sake? I'm sure they're out there.) just put me in mind to the behavior of certain commentators on the Right when discussing the youngest of the Kennedy brothers.
Desiderius, I've been pondering this all morning. You see, I am a huge fan of I.F. Stone and I have many of his books, including the collections of his weekly newsletter from the 1960's. Many times in the past, in the course of political discussions and debates, I have reached for those volumes (my favorites: Polemics &Prophecies and In a Time of Torment) to grab a quotation or to do a bit of spot research. My favorite book of all time is The Trial of Socrates. Truly a master work, and Stone's parting gift to the world. It is a brilliant history of the birth of democratic gov't in ancient Greece and as a bonus to small d democrats like myself it pokes a giant hole in the myth of Socrates. Using journalistic skills honed over a lifetime, Stone teaches himself ancient Greek, goes back to the available original texts, and shines a bright light on Plato's misanthropic, anti-democratic mouthpiece.
Unfortunately, because of the mundane circumstances of my life, those books are now packed away in boxes and not easily accessible. I can tell you reliably that Stone devoted a couple of essays--from the early 60's I believe--to criticizing the Soviet Union in harsh terms. "This is not a good society" are among the words he used after a visit as a reporter around that time. Stone was not bashful about describing his ideals as a "synthesis of Marx and Jefferson", he also frequently cited Kropotkin (whom I know nothing about) as a source of inspiration. Granted, as time goes on--this is my personal opinion--Marx's writing looks worse and worse in the sense that his criticisms and analysis of capitalism seem less and less sophisticated. I give Stone some slack on that based on his generation. And I think that the progressive community, as time goes on, has gotten more sophisticated in its understanding of market economics and so on.
Indeed, if you don't mind me saying so, I think Democrats as a rule have a better appreciation for how to take care of a market economy than Republicans. I cite the global financial crisis as exhibit A in my case.
July 1963
I am, I suppose, an anachronism. In this age of corporation men, I
am an independent capitalist, the owner of my own enterprise, subject to
neither mortgager or broker, factor or patron. In an age when young men,
setting out on a career of journalism, must find their niche in some huge
newspaper or magazine combine, I am a wholly independent newspaper-
man, standing alone, without organizational or party backing, beholden to
no one but my good readers. I am even one up on Benjamin Franklin—I
do not accept advertising.
You are, again, messing around with the truth when you suggest that your problem is 'heresy.' Your problem is messing around with the truth.
If it was really "good enough" for you, you wouldn't have mentioned it. Twice.
It's not a "crime." It's disingenuous behavior. And it's not one instance. It's multiple instances. And it's not alleged. It's proven. Aside from that, your remark is right on the money.
I'm sure I could, if I saw some reason to do so. But once something's been proven multiple times, there's no need to keep gathering more proof.
And I guess you have no intention of substantiating your claim about Mitrokin. Which you have made repeatedly in this thread. But I guess it must be based on nothing more than a vague, unsubstantiated "recollection."
============
mattski:
From "The Best of I.F. Stone." Browsable at books.google. P. 131:
Emphasis in the original.
In that light, it's ironic to notice that "Rush and his boys are doing what Gene Debs and his comrades never really could. In tandem with Wall Street, they are building socialism in America." When people like Rush condemn socialism, they make it look good.
Many thanks. It's as I feared - a kindred spirit. Looks like I've got much homework to do. Then again, he wouldn't be the first kindred spirit with which I've utterly disagreed (a concept foreign to JBG, evidently). Indeed, the disagreement is likely part of the kinship, disagreeable sorts that we are.
My first hypothesis is that the Comintern remained dear to his heart even as the luster faded from the Soviet rose. Not unlike some of the best KGB. We'll see how that holds up.
JBG,
I respect and admire Ted Kennedy and, say, John McCain (who left his first wife under shameful circumstances, and also left his first wife under shameful circumstances - have I done my penance, Father?), while substantially disagreeing with both, as I do not respect and admire, say, Robert Wexler or Rush Limbaugh.
Just getting started but this is awesome:
"I looked down on college degrees and felt that a man should only do what was sincere and true without thought of mundane achievement. This provided a lofty reason for not doing homework. I majored in philosophy with the vague thought of teaching it, but though I revered two of my professors, I disliked the smell of college faculty... ....Then, after affirming his own objections to the intolerance and violence pursued by some in the antiwar and civil rights movements, he concluded, "I feel about the rebels as Erasmus felt about Luther. Erasmus helped inspire the Reformation, but was repelled by the man who brought it to fruition..."
From JGB's Best of I.F. Stone link. Thanks both.
This guy could use some better defenders.
;-)
With attackers like you and Bernstein he hardly needs defenders. This is like what I said about Rush inadvertently promoting socialism by criticizing it. It's the concept of the negative endorsement.
You're welcome about the link, but all the thanks really go to matt for mentioning the quote and to google for hosting the book online.
You're two of my favorite commentators here, and I learn a lot from both of you. I don't think your squabbling brings out the best in either of you.
Best to all.
Oh, yeah. With that in mind, Desiderius, it would be instructive to go back to the top of the thread and take a fresh look at the staggering mindlessness of the critics, starting with Professor Bernstein himself. It really is hard to believe people can run their mouths like that...
War's over, gang. You can come out now. No need to defend the useful idiots, traitors, and dupes... you're free of all that now. Plus, with what we've learned over the decades, you gotta be running out of rocks by now anyways.
"You're two of my favorite commentators here, and I learn a lot from both of you. I don't think your squabbling brings out the best in either of you."
Thx, but I not so sure that you're a credible source.
Though I do think you're right. Such is the way with negative-sum games, which is why I'm not so hot on an ideology that assumes that they're the only game in town. They're known as "struggles".
Thanks for giving me an excuse to shut this one down.
Yeah, but its the useful geniuses that are a more interesting case.
He wasn't 14 when he was in the German army.
"a thaw in relations"
Unlikely, unless a future JBG comes back to the present to convince me otherwise.
JBG is Rush with twice the brains, three times the diligence, all of the logical coherence that Rush lacks and none of the self-awareness the Rush doesn't. Not that Rush's helps him much. What they both have in common is an utter inability to imagine the full humanity of those with which they disagree.
I think its just time I tuned him out.
The last time I tried this, his response was "promises, promises", but I made it for a month or two. This time my goal is six.
"It really is hard to believe people can run their mouths like that..."
You should meet my family.
Many 16 year olds have valiantly resisted tyranny, David.
Look, again, I am not really condemning the guy-- I know damned well that I wouldn't do any better. But the guy's defenders seem to want to go to great length to exonerate him from a couple of dishonorable acts in World War II, and there's not really any justification for doing that.
You're right. Way too subtle. I had a friend, years ago, who worked for the American government, and his job was to extract, openly or deviously, the same from any American, including academics and journalists, who the American government thought knew something about the USSR.
Stone was a fool and a dishonest polemicist, but he was also a good reporter.
If you're trying to demonstrate that you want to turn over a new leaf and be nice, you're off to a bad start.
Any adult definition of "full humanity" includes lots of rotten things, like dishonesty and bad behavior. So when I notice those rotten things and address them directly, what I'm doing is the exact opposite of an "inability to imagine."
Love Lee Marvin, but not my namesake.
If your takeaway from this thread is that the Left reflexively leaps to defend commie stiffs, then of course you'd find that hard to understand. Caricaturing your opponents tends to piss them off. Ironically, it may even encourage them to embrace the caricature. Call me a "commie lover," and at least for that moment I may like commies more than I like you.
I could say things that are 100% true, and far more provocative than anything that's been said here in defense of Stone. For example, my utopian ideal is socialist, and I don't particularly "like" capitalism. If this thread were more active it's a good bet that would get me labeled anti-American, Stalinist, or something of the like.
But what didn't I say? I didn't say I support socialism or oppose capitalism, because neither is true. The latter works and former doesn't (thanks, in my opinion, to some less than admirable human qualities), and that's that. You can't legislate human nature, so I'm avidly pro-capitalist and anti-socialist. I also expressed no sympathy, much less support, for repressive, authoritarian governance, but in these threads that sort of distinction is too nuanced by half, with "socialist," "communist," "Stalinist," "Soviet," "Maoist," and you can fill in the rest, conflated into a single, repressive, mass-murdering bogeyman.
I also expressed no sympathy, much less support, for any nation or government that's hostile to our own, irrespective of its economic or political system, but again....
With the Cold War ended or ending, we have remaining only the task of bayoneting the wounded. I've long since lost my wrath over the pinks in this country, so you can speak freely about it if you're motivated. Stand up straight, keep walking, and you should be fine. Stumble into the last generation's com-symp talk... and out comes the blade. Too much money spent, too many lives spent, too much stolen liberty, for it to be otherwise.
"Love Lee Marvin, but not my namesake."
As do I Bill Murray. Thanks for reminding me of that movie's existence - sort of a bizarro Groundhog Day.
And as a teacher, that movie also brings to mind Mr. Holland's Opus, another fave.
"Stone was a fool and a dishonest polemicist, but he was also a good reporter."
Woot! I get to be left of Eagar for once. Perhaps our dire need for the latter might excuse some of the former these days, whichever way the foolishness runs.
Rosetta,
"Let's toss you in with the lefty leapers. ;-)"
Just because I like lefties doesn't mean that I agree with them. The Comintern was as illiberal as the Soviets, just in a different way.
"Too much money spent, too many lives spent, too much stolen liberty, for it to be otherwise."
As I'm sure that others will soon point out, the com-symps no longer have that particular market cornered.
Thanks for making my point.
Something my rightwing colleagues managed to avoid doing, for the most part, even after Stone had found them.
When he turned to analysis/polemic, as in his Korean war book, he was a silly man.
As my father told me, during the '30s, from the point of view of workers, it did not seem so clear that capitalism was, in fact, on their side. He decided it was, but it is revisionism to say that there were no arguments against it.
Lenin was right, at least, about the rope.
And thank you for the reminder, Des. We do seem to be moving into another segment along the boundary between liberty and its opposite. But, the boundary is the same (I hope.).
And perhaps, Leo, you'll be of service along this segment. Remember the boundary.
When did they ever?
You, Sir, are indescribably stupid.
"When did they ever?"
In Rosetta's world? Until roughly 2003, I'd guess.
Rosetta,
"Back for more, eh, trollski?"
No trolls left, Rosey. Just us chickens.
Which is of course a dodge. I was meeting Rosetta where he's at. Had he followed me around for weeks waving a bloodless shirt in an attempt to destroy my credibility, I'd not have taken the trouble.
I'd say it was that Saturday morning in about 1991 or so, when Bush I ordered SAC to "stand down" from their historic mission.
A nice thing, not having a hair-triggered thermonookoolar holocaust over your children's head, constantly, with full com-symp support.
I guess I'm too dense to understand that I've been met, as well as the desire for this troublesome meeting.
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