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[Rurik]

Continued from part I at: http://www2.swiftvets.com/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?p=137379#137379

Rurik’s Radical Bibliography, A Trilogy, Part 2 Domestic Radicalism

There are basically three categories of book addressing domestic radicalism. First the diatribes, polemics, manifestoes, and political rants of the leftist crazies themselves. The assorted works of Abbie Hoffman, Huey Newton, Noam Chomsky, etc., etc. ad infinitum. I have not included any of these volumes. They are too numerous, and tedious, pretentious, insufferably boring, and disingenuous, and I will not inflict them on myself or anyone else without absolute need. Reading such books without knowing how to dissect and understand them is merely to expose one’s self to the propaganda. There are other specialists who subject themselves to the careful deconstruction of these tomes. The specialists’ works are included here. Then when you are ready to tackle the original radical sources, you will be ready and know which ones interest you. There is one exception. Saul Alinsky, “Rules For Radicals”, Vintage 1989. This is not a book or analysis or of remembrance or ideology. This book is tactical guide for demonstrators and disrupters, written by an acknowledged master. Think of it as Clausewitz for Protestors. This book will serve you well as a guide to recognize what the enemy is doing, and to distinguish the planned from the rare spontaneous event. It will also serve you well as a Field Manual for organizing your own protests and demonstrations against the Left.

The second category of book is the objective study of domestic radicalism, either by an academic, or journalist, or some other researcher.

I begin with the third, and most interesting category, the memoir by the repentant former radical who has changed his mind and now seeks to analyze his past and help others understand how people are led into extremism. Some of these books have become classics. I recommend five such works. The first of these books is Whitaker Chambers, “Witness”, published 1952, reprinted by Regnery Gateway, the story of his life from childhood, through his membership in the CPUSA, his espionage, eventual disillusion and defection from the Party, culminating in his testimony against Alger Hiss, and his editorship at Time Magazine.

The second such book is Sidney Hook, “Out of Step, An Unquiet Life in the 20th Century”, Harper & Rowe, 1987. Sidney Hook entered intellectual life during the 1920s and became America’s foremost interpreter of Marxism, until his disillusionment in the late 1930s,after which he became Marxism’s leading theoretical opponent. The flyleaf of this autobiography lists his other 19 published books, in addition to which he published countless articles in journals. Hook, himself was not a street brawler, but one of the radical intellectuals who inspired their ideology. Primarily a contemporary of the Old Left, his work sets a useful base.

The third book of this group, is Norman Podhoretz, “Breaking Ranks, A Political memoir”, Harper Colophon, 1979. Podhoretz is most famed as the editor of “Commentary” magazine, and as the spiritual founder of Neoconservatism. However, during the 1950s he was one of the radical left-wing intellectuals, and one of the earliest outspoken leaders of the anti-Viet Nam War movement. During the course of the 1960s though Podhoretz became alarmed by the direction the Movement was taking and turned against it. Came to recognize the practical implications of radical theory, and became outspokenly anti-leftist. This book was a personal turning point. I discovered it not long after returning to graduate study in history. I was confused and disoriented by all the crazy ideologizing swirling about me, when I discovered this memoir, in which Podhoretz discusses the details of the battles which led to his break with the Left. I read it hungrily, annotating large portions with both yellow marker and with inked comments. Since then, my course has been adjusted but not fundamentally changed. I must also admit a special attachment since I read Commentary religiously until Podhoretz retired, and even had a significant letter published. This is the book, more than any other which opened my eyes and steeled my spine.

The fourth is Ronald Radosh, “Commies, a Journey Through the Old Left, the New Left, and the Leftover left”, Encounter, 2001. This book traces the author’s life from growing up as a red-diaper baby, through his career as a leftist, and his eventual disillusionment with the Left after documenting the case against the Rosenbergs. In his time, he knew everyone and was connected to everything important on the left.

Finally, the is David Horowitz, “Radical Son”, A Generational Odyssey”, Free Press, 1997. Here we arrive truly at the New Left. David Horowitz was born and raised another red-diaper baby, and during the 1960s was the Editor of the hyper-influential “Ramparts” magazine. A true intellectual and political leader of the New Left, and active conspirator, this is a man next to whom, John Kerry shrinks to near insignificance. But by the end of the 1970s Horowitz had seen friends killed and betrayed, and the disillusionment set in. The climactic break came at the beginning of 1995 when he published, with his long-time friend Peter Collier, “Lefties For Reagan” in the Washington Post. This article marked both a decisive break with the left, and a declaration of war upon it. Previously the Left’s most articulate and confrontational polemicist, Horowitz now placed those same skills at the service of Conservatism, though now he was even more effective, since he knew all the secrets of his new foes. Currently he continues to crank out books and pamphlets, and has a series of web pages based around the Center For the Study of Popular Culture.

Historically, there seem to have been three great waves of American radicalism. The first great wave occurred during the latter part of the 19th century and involved the Anarchists, Syndicalists, and various other socialist movements, including the famous, violent, and much romanticized International Workers of the World, the IWW or Wobblies. Also many of the early labor unions were involved, at least until Samuel Gompers did this country the inestimable service of redirecting the labor movement away from social revolution and back toward the goal of advancing the union members’ working conditions and pay. Substantially, this first wave of American radicalism died out in the wake of the Great War, the Bolshevik coup, and the subsequent Palmer raids against radicals in this country. During the 1920s, American radicals seem to have been drawn back toward the moderate left by the legacy of Gompers or being pulled further to the hard left by joining the Bolshevik-directed Communists. The revolutionary left seemed to get little traction during the Roaring’20s. They came alive again during the 1930s, during the period of the Great Depression and the much romanticized Soviet Five Year Plans. The Roosevelt administration took a much more benign view of Soviet Russia than before. Recognition of the USSR facilitated Communist penetration, and the support of their allies. A number of prominent members of his administration have subsequently been revealed as secret Communists, and most of the others were generally sympathetic. Certainly America’s intellectuals were ,and Communism became trendy. One popular slogan is that “Communism is Twentieth Century Americanism”, another, “Communists are just liberals in a hurry”. They also invoked the Struggle against Fascism and the Popular Front (Naziism was not mentioned by that name, because invoking National Socialism would have let the cat out of the bag.). At least until August 1939 and the Nazi-Soviet Non-Aggression Treaty. Then the Communists suddenly joined the isolationists until June 1941, when the USSR was invaded. This second wave of Communist radicalism continued until after World War II, when the victorious Soviets became a threat instead of an ally against Hitler. There were hearings about subversion, that culminated in the McCarthy hearings, the Hiss trial and the beginnings of our modern era. Then during the 1950s there followed the Korean War, the death of Stalin, the admissions of Khrushchev’s secret speech and the rebellions in Easter Europe and the beginning of the Cold War. The Communists were discredited, and most slunk back into the earth, and many became disillusioned and even came over to the anti-communist camp.

A couple of classics, from this period, long out of print, though sometimes in antiquarian bookstores, are Eugene Lyons, “the Red Decade, the Stalinist Penetration of America”, Bobbs-Merrill, 1941, and Rebecca West, “The New Meaning of Treason”, Viking, 1947.

During the early 1950s there were perhaps there big causes, long mythologized by the left, but now examined by scholars. The case of the atomic spies is covered in Ronald Radosh & Joyce Milton, “The Rosenberg File, a Search For Truth”, Random House, 1983. Radosh began his study intent on proving the leftist dogma that the Rosenbergs had been framed because of anti-Semitic hysteria and anti-Semitism. However, the evidence led him to exactly the opposite conclusion, and this book has become the definitive account. Parenthetically, its hostile reception by his old friends on the left, opened Radosh’s eyes further, driving him out of the movement and into the arms of the Horowitz anticommunists. Allen Weinstein, “Perjury, the Hiss-Chambers Case”, Knopf, 1978, is a similar story. The author began believing the established account that Alger Hiss was innocent and unjustly destroyed by Whitaker Chambers and Richard Nixon. But he, too, was an honest historian who changed his mind as the evidence unfolded.

Another major theme of the time was the “Hollywood blacklists”, and the suppression of simple progressives in the movies. Kenneth Lloyd Billingsley, “Hollywood Party, How Communism Seduced the American Film Industry in the 1930s and 1940s”, Prima Forum, 1998, gives the whole story. This book will be of special interest to people interested in anti-Communism, in Ronald Reagan, or movies. Related in time period and theme is Stephen Koch, “Double Lives, Spies and Writers in the Secret Soviet War of Ideas Against the West”, Free Press,1994, which covers the communist attempt to manipulate the literary intelligentsia.

Another fascinating special study of this second period, though with some tendrils into even the 1980s, is Joseph Finder, “Red Carpet”, New Republic, 1983. Based on Finder’s doctoral dissertation at Harvard, this book examines the connection between the Soviet rulers and six American businessmen/politicians, Armand Hammer, Averill Harriman, Cyrus Eaton, David Rockefeller, and Donald Kendall. He explores the differing reasons these capitalist businessmen sought to do business with the Kremlin, and how well the actually did.

Next we come to some academic studies written by Harvey Klehr, professor of political science at Emory University. His first book, “Communist Cadre”,1978, I have been unable to find. However, more available are Harvey Klehr. The Heyday of American Communism, the Depression Decade”, Basic Books, 1984, Harvey Klehr, John Earl Haynes, & Fridrikh Igorevich Firson, “The Secret World of American Communism” Yale Press,1995, and Harvey Klehr, John Earl Haynes,& Kyrill M. Anderson, “The Soviet World of American Communism”, Yale 1998. The later two books make extensive use of newly opened Soviet Communist Party archives.

Also highly relevant is John Earl Haynes & Harvey Klehr, “Venona, Decoding Soviet Espionage in America”, Yale 1999. Venona was the code name given to intercepted Soviet secret transmissions of the 1940s, a major source for revealing the identities of American Agents and communists under the control of Stalin. Herbert Romerstein and Eric Breindel, “The Venona Secrets, Exposing Soviet Espionage and America’s Traitors”, Regnery ,2000, is another study of this topic, which gives a death blow to many of the leftist myths of American history.

Richard Gid Powers, Not Without Honor, The History of American Anticommunism”, Free Press,1995, and M. J. Heale, “American Anticommunism, Combating the Enemy Within 1830-1970, Johns Hopkins, 1990, look at the conflict from the other side, studying the anticommunist opposition, and finding it far more honorable, and less irrational than popular myth tells us.

William L. O’Neill, “A Better World: The Great Schism: Stalinism and the American Intellectuals”, Simon & Schuster, 1982, is an excellent overview of the period of the 1930s to the 1950s. O’Neill, a professor at Rutgers, came to an interesting conclusion. While condemning the excesses of McCarthy, and some of the other militant anticommunists, he lays much of the blame directly the feet of the Liberals for deliberately ignoring a genuine, and obvious problem which they could have addressed themselves without the excesses had they so chosen, instead of abandoning the problem to extremists. This is a book from which the Democrats and other liberals ought to learn.

The third wave of American radicals was the New Left. Whereas economic radicalism had been the foundation of the revolutionary left till now, the New Left was based more on social radicalism, particularly the Civil Rights organizations, and the small but persistent anti-nuclear and Peace Movements of the 1950s. all these movements disavowed any connection to the Communists, even if they had been infiltrated, and occasionally controlled by communists. Some people wee genuinely not communists, and only concerned with their stated social justice goals. Later some of these people, but not all, moved along to other protest groups, and often became radicalized by their experiences of confrontation. There were other people who were deeply sympathetic to communist ideology, but were repulsed by the ugly face of Soviet Communism as revealed beyond ignoring during the 1950s; such people were looking for a different, “purer” form of revolution. Still others remained committed to the CPUSA, but believed that the tactical needs of the cause required them to disguise their beliefs. And then there were the Trotskyists, followers of Leon Trotsky, who were openly revolutionary communists, but also antagonistic toward the Soviet Party, dating back to the split between Trotsky and Stalin during the 1930s. During the 1960s as many of the original grievances of the Civil Rights movement, legally enforced segregation, denial of voting rights and such, were addressed by changes in the laws, protestors looked for new issues to protest, and found the Viet Nam war.

In addition, while the old left had appealed to working class people, the new radicals most often came from a privileged background, with college education paid for by parents or scholarships. They also moved on from the proletarian fol-singing of Pete Seeger to rock-n-roll. Free, or dirty speech, free sex and illegal drugs also became aspects of the new countercultural lifestyle, which distinguished this new wave from the old radicals, sometimes with genuine alienation. Seeking to distance themselves from the old Communists even while taking up the same banner, they dubbed themselves the New Left. Later, after a number of failures and disappointments highlighted some of the weaknesses of their movement, the New Left unobtrusively returned to the Old Left while keeping their new label. It is a point of disagreement how genuine the separation ever was in reality. some scholars insist that, the Communists were always in charge, pulling the strings from behind, while others believe that the New Left originally was independent, but fell under the influence of true communists later. Nixon’s ending of the draft deprived the Movement of a major issue as did the winding down of the Viet Nam War. It may not be a coincidence that it was just at this point that “protection of the environment became a major radical cause, or that Earth Day just happens to coincide with Lenin’s Birthday. From the environment, to disarmament, to attacks on anticommunism, to support of a host of Third Word insurgencies, successors to the Viet Nam War, the Movement continued to evolve without fundamentally changing from the 1970s till the fall of the Soviet Union. Since then they have struggled to maintain their old revolutionary cause while searching for new enemies of America to support.

Harvey Klehr, “Far Left of Center, The American Radical Left Today”, Transaction, 1988,gives a good overview of some of the main radical players of there 1980s, Part 1 covers the CPUSA, its structure and activities. In Part 2,he considers the Trotskyists, Maoists, and other radical Communist Sects. In part 3,he examines a number of nominally independent groups, such as CISPES, Clergy and Laity Concerned, Mobilization For Survival, National Lawyers Guild, Rainbow Coalition, and Institute for Policy Studies.

Joseph Conlon, The Troubles, a Jaundiced Glance Back at the Movement of the 60’s”, Franklin Watts, 1982, is an overview of the development of the different 1960s radical movements and how they related to each other and affected society.

John H. Bunzel, editor, “Political Passages, Journeys of Change Through Two Decades,1968-1988”, Free Press,1988, comprises chapters by a number of former radicals, including Bunzel himself, and also Martha Bayles, Peer Collier, James Finn, Jeffrey Herf, David Horowitz, Carol Iannone, Julius Lester, Michael Novak, Ronald Radosh and Richard Rodriguez, recounting their experience of the Movement years and how they came to reject heir radical past for a new conservative outlook. These authors, all subsequently important figures came from a variety of backgrounds both before becoming radicals and during their time in The Movement.

David Horowitz, former co-editor of Ramparts Magazine with Peter Collier, is the true graphomanic of the Ex-Left, and doubtless the most eloquent and knowledgeable expert. Peter Collier & David Horowitz, “Destructive Generation, Second Thoughts About the ‘60s”, Summit, 1989, was the first book by this pair of authors after their dramatic break with the left described above. It remains one of the most devastating examinations of the New Left, and what actually happened as opposed to the romantic myth. Also by the same authors, “Deconstructing the Left, From Vietnam to the Clinton Era”, Second Thoughts Books, continues their previous work, examining various causes and themes in detail and demonstrating how mistakes of the 1960s bore rotten fruit in the 1990s. Collier and Horowitz are among the authors who stress that the role of Communists in the New Left was always far more important than anyone admitted. They were in a position to know.

Stanley Rothman & S. Robert Lichter, “Roots of Radicalism, Jews Christians, and the New Left”, Oxford University Press, 1982, is a social science academic study of American and German leftists, focusing on the psychological and sociological factors that differentiate the radicals of the New Left from their peers. Though difficult and dry, this is an important book fro understanding radicalism, and particularly for seeing beyond its political posturing.

The confluence of Peace, pacifism, and Religion and the Left has been an important topic for a long time. Here I recommend Guenter Lewy, “Peace & Revolution, The Crisis of American Pacifism”, Eerdmans,1988. Lloyd Billingsley, “The Generation That Knew Not Josef, A Critique of Marxism and the Religious Left”, Multnomah Press,1985. G. Russell Evans & C. Gregg Singer, “The Church and the Sword, How the Churches and Peace Movement are Disarming America and What You Can Do About It”, New Puritan Library, 1983. And James L. Tyson, “Prophets or Useful Idiots, Church Organizations Attacking U.S. Central American Policy”, Council for the Defense of Freedom, 1986. This last book concentrates on naming names and connections, and documenting activities. It should be especially valuable for anyone studying the religious left.

James L. Tyson, Target America, The Influence of Communist Propaganda on the U.S. Media”, Regnery, 1981, may be the single most valuable book on this list for a researcher. Aside from detailing the war communist front groups propagandized a number of specific stories, Tyson also explores in great depth the links between the various radical groups and their interlocking directorates. If you want organizations, names, and cross-pollination, this is the book.

Similar and complementary are Dr. Susan Huck, “Legal Terrorism, the Truth About the Christic Institute”, New World Publishing, 1989. “Communists in the Democratic Party”, published 1990 by Concerned Voters, Inc. an affiliate of Accuracy in Media, gives names, lists, organizations, and affiliations.

For auditing Journals one should particularly search old issues of Accuracy in Media, the Washington Inquirer, and The Review of the News. If it can be found another particularly valuable source should be John Rees “Information Digest” a semi-monthly publication focusing on the activities of extremist groups an their supporters. During the 1970s-1980s, Rees took on the job of tracking these groups and keeping private records after the FBI had been forced to discontinue such activities.

Today, thee are many sites on the internet, but Front Page Magazine, managed by David Horowitz http://www.frontpagemag.com/ should be singled out for its hard-hitting and critical coverage of the Left.
_________________
Hating John Kerry continuously since 1971.

Essayons!
Fight Build and Destroy

[Beatrice1000]

Rurik - thanks so much! I've been holding my breath for this Part II. This is exactly the stuff I'm stumbling thru right now and feeling quite overwhelmed, not knowing what the heck I'm reading.... Your sequencing of events -- the overview, will help a lot, and all the good references. I'm actually looking forward to all the reading this winter. Your work is much appreciated!

[Hammer2]

Rurik,
I would add "Masters of Deceit" by J. Edgar Hoover to your list along with Saul Alinsky's "Rules for Radicals". It's an old one but a good one!
_________________
"The price of freedom is eternal vigilence" - Thomas Jefferson
"An armed society is a polite society" - Thomas Jefferson
"The beauty of the Second Amendment is that it won't be needed until someone tries to take it away." -- Thomas Jefferson

[Kimmymac]

Professor Rurik: How many credit hours is this post worth, and will the test be open book?
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The last refuge of scoundrels is not patriotism; it is finicky liberal humanitarianism.--Martin Paretz

[Barbie2004]

Fabulous post, Professor Rurik.

Thank you very much!

[Rurik]

[Rurik]

Kimmymac, Barbie 2004

Don't call me Sir - I work for a living. Drop and push out fifty!


Don't call me Professor - I tell the truth.
_________________
Hating John Kerry continuously since 1971.

Essayons!
Fight Build and Destroy