I recently read in Brian Jones's article in the most recent ISR that Tennessee passed a law in 1951 mandating the death penalty for anyone espousing revolutionary Marxist ideas. That's right.
For more info check out Belfrage, Cedric. (1973) The American Inquisition or Caute, David. (1978) The Great Fear: The Anti-Communist Purge Under Truman and Eisenhower.
Showing posts with label red scare. Show all posts
Showing posts with label red scare. Show all posts
Sunday, March 7, 2010
Death Penalty for Marxists
Sunday, March 15, 2009
How Cold War Propaganda Lives On
I've just returned from an all-too-short road trip in the southwest. One of our stops was Las Vegas. Though we were there only briefly, we were able to visit the Atomic Testing Museum near the campus of UNLV.
From the 1950s through the 80s, the heart of the Cold War, a site a few miles outside the city of Las Vegas was used for atmospheric nuclear weapons testing (meaning, above-ground, radiation could drift and kill you with the slightest shift of wind). Civilian spectators as nearby as 7 miles would watch the blasts and subsequent mushroom clouds and it became quite a tourist draw.
The history of the nuclear testing site has always been fascinating to me, especially because of the voyeuristic aspect of the story. Tourists watching with awe and amazement as weapons that they knew had caused unbelievable pain and destruction are detonated. I'd hoped for some perspective on that craziness and maybe the overall madness of the Cold War era and the arms race.
But as has happened at historical museums time and time again, I was struck by how very propagandistic the narrative at this museum was. One placard justified the arms race by stressing that this wasn't an aggressive thing the U.S. was doing by openly testing nuclear arms by the hundreds, that this was defensive posturing--after all, the Soviets were "set on forcing Totalitarian Communism on the entire world." The exhibit included a pretty positive take on McCarthyism. And in a video presentation with interviews from the dedicated workers who ran the test site, one gentleman told the audience with tears in his eyes that it was entirely upsetting to him that in the 1970s, when fears of radiation and an anti-war movement created vocal protestors at the site, "people didn't understand that my work at the site was done to protect the very rights they were using by protesting." In what way did nuclear weapons testing protect anyone's free speech?!
In another video on how important knowing the history of the testing is today, one scientist who had worked at the site mentioned that he would be afraid to live in a world where people weren't regularly reminded that the U.S. still has the power of a nuclear strike. "I think it's important that people see what nuclear weapons are capable of and remember that they have something to fear. It scares me that this history is being pushed aside in a world where we face so many threats." Are we still a nation that wants to use nuclear attacks as a threat?!
It isn't just that people who go to this museum are being subjected to Cold War-like propaganda, but that the style of thinking of the museum is so persistent in our contemporary war/peace dialogues. The unchallenged narratives of the Cold War have justified our wars in the middle east. That somehow pre-emptive violence or the threat of preemptive violence makes us safer instead of making us a target...That doing anything associated with formal "national security" is in the spirit of protecting Americans' freedoms. This thinking still persists all around us, in our museums, and unfortunately, in our text books and our public dialogues.
In better news, I was able to buy this awesome tin of "Commie Mints" at the museum's gift store. And in true Commie fashion, I made sure to distribute the mints fairly to my whole party :)
Tuesday, March 10, 2009
A few quick thoughts
1-I just don't see how anyone can think Obama is secretly not all about the free market. I mean, it's not like this one interview finally convinced me, but I just can't see how progressive can continue to kid themselves into thinking this guy shares their socioeconomic values.
President Obama: Just one thing I was thinking about as I was getting on the copter. It was hard for me to believe that you were entirely serious about that socialist question. I did think it might be useful to point out that it wasn’t under me that we started buying a bunch of shares of banks. It wasn’t on my watch. And it wasn’t on my watch that we passed a massive new entitlement – the prescription drug plan without a source of funding. And so I think it’s important just to note when you start hearing folks throw these words around that we’ve actually been operating in a way that has been entirely consistent with free-market principles and that some of the same folks who are throwing the word socialist around can’t say the same.If the implication of this quote isn't that Obama likens himself as more of a free marketer than his hot shot predecessor, I must be speaking a different English language.
2-Yes, it is stupid for a publication like the New York Times to even humor (see interview above) the thought that Obama is secretly a socialist (it's fear mongering, and not at all based in reality). But can we see any actual engagement with the ideology Joan Walsh is so hell bent on dismissing as a dated wim of the past, or are we all just going to snigger at the thought of creating actual justice from here on out?
3-If you never watched Showtime's The L Word and you'd been meaning to because you'd heard so much about it, please save yourself hours and hours of anger and don't bother. Sunday's finale was the most frustrating series finale I've experienced since Seinfeld and one of the most frustrating series ever. Now, it may have taken me watching the entire series to come to this conclusion, which may indicate there's something of value there, despite the overall shitty writing and shitty assassination of previously likeable characters. Okay, there is definitely value there. But I still wouldn't let a friend get involved...
Monday, January 26, 2009
Redbaiting Obama's Climate Czar
From the (always reactionary) Washington Times:
Stephen DinanYes... 'global governance'. What a frightening idea! That governments might join together in halting the unbrideled quest by the barons of global capitalism to ravage the environment and burn down the last tree on the planet to enable their stock to increase by 1%.
Until last week, Carol M. Browner, President-elect Barack Obama's pick as global warming czar, was listed as one of 14 leaders of a socialist group's Commission for a Sustainable World Society, which calls for "global governance" and says rich countries must shrink their economies to address climate change.
By Thursday, Mrs. Browner's name and biography had been removed from Socialist International's Web page, though a photo of her speaking June 30 to the group's congress in Greece was still available.
Socialist International, an umbrella group for many of the world's social democratic political parties such as Britain's Labor Party, says it supports socialism and is harshly critical of U.S. policies.
[...] "
Socialist International says it 'supports socialism'. What a revelation! *An accusatory, balding old white man's voice snarls*: "Carol Browner, are you or have your ever been a member of the Communist Party? Are you a member of the Screenwriters Guild of America?"
The sort of 'socialism' supported by the Socialist International is the most tepid, third-wayist, reformist incarnation of European labor/social-democratic parties on offer in the world. (Like most social-democratic european parties, their statement of principles is more attractive than the actual (neoliberal) policies they support).The group does have a few semi-radical parties as members, but these are not to be found on the Continent. The German SPD (who is now in a coalition with the CDU and whose leadership leans more toward the CDU than Die Linke, the only serious leftist party in Germany), the pathetic Parti Socialiste Francais, the Blair-ized British Labour Party and the now powerless Italian Democratic Party (formerly Democrats of the Left, formerly the PCI (the party of Gramsci) back when Italian Eurocommunism was a serious movement) are all members of the Socialist International. How ignorant would you have to be to think that Browner's membership in this organization was in any sense subversive (nevermind that subversive should be a term of praise rather than rebuke!)?
"Mr. Obama's transition team said Mrs. Browner's membership in the organization is not a problem and that it brings experience in U.S. policymaking to her new role."Gasp! You mean he didn't find her when he found out that she was a Stalinist agent!?
"Her name has been removed from the Gore organization's Web site list of directors, and the Audubon Society issued a press release about her departure from that organization."
Good thing. Gore and Audubon sure wouldn't want to have to admit that they had a dirty Stalinist thug in their organizations.
Most Americans don't have any clue what socialism is. And how would they? Our culture, history books, etc. are all saturated with Cold War tropes... meanwhile the tradition of home-grown radical movements (like the IWW, the Socialist Party under Debs, the Black Panthers, etc.) is completely occluded from most mainstream sources of information.
Even in graduate-level political theory courses, you can frequently hear 'progressive' students wondering out loud why anyone would mention Marx anymore given that we've "been there and done that". The equation of Marxism with Stalinism and Socialism with the Soviet Union didn't emerge from thin air... neither did it emerge from any particular student's 'individual critical faculties.' Tropes of this kind represent the most crude legacy of Cold War ideology, pure and simple. Flavor-of-the-month fans of gentrified versions of post-structuralism (itself born of a reaction against a particular kind of Marxism and the experience of post-68 Maoism) would do well to canvass the history of ideas once in a while.
Seriously though, the WT article is truly disgusting... this sort of Redbaiting makes my stomach turn. When will this kind of garbage end? The Washington Times is famous for this kind of trash, but it would hardly surprise me if this had been printed in the Washington Post or the New York Times.
Wednesday, September 17, 2008
Remembering the Rosenbergs and the Reds
The history and executions of Julius and Ethel Rosenberg have always been simultaneously fascinating and horrifying to me. Part of what keeps me so intrigued with the story is that my Generation Y brain can just not wrap itself around the time period and context that produced such a sad, sad scandal. The New York Times has an article today that helps humanize the Rosenbergs' side of the story a little more than I've ever heard before, by highlighting the Rosenbergs' sons' (who are both apparently committed socialists) reactions to new information which confirms their father had spied for the Soviets. There are the unanswered questions that remain: Did Julius actually give the Soviets nuclear secrets? Did Ethel Rosenberg actually commit any crime?
But what still seems to bother me about this case is I really cannot grasp the fear and passion that led to the federal government's orphaning Michael and Robert by electrocuting their communist parents. It's almost like the more I read about it, the more bizarre and other-dimension-like the entire event seems. How can there be such a historical disconnect in my imagination just a generation after the infamous case? How much had to change in just a few decades in the historical and political thought 0f the nation to make this context so out of reach for me? Obviously I know the by-the-book history of the Cold War and McCarthyism...but...I still can't make all the pieces add up.
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