Jewish Organizations' Response to Communism and to Senator McCarthy
Jewish Organizations' Response to Communism and to Senator McCarthy

Author: Aviva Weingarten

Publisher:

Published: 2008

Total Pages: 180

ISBN-13:

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In February 1950, Senator Joseph McCarthy launched an anti-communist that lasted for more than four years. His attempts to unmask communists in the American administration and governmental agencies gave rise to actions that infringed on democratic procedure and civil liberties. As the Cold War grew, fear of communism at home and abroad meant that minorities were particularly under threat, as tensions and frustrations were channelled towards the handiest scapegoats. American Jewish organizations, who were having to come to terms with the Holocaust in Europe, were forced to contend with the real possibility of a serious anti-Semitic outburst at home. Jewish presence in the American Communist Party was conspicuous; although the overwhelming majority of Jewish Americans did not sympathise with its politics, there was concern that anti-communism would develop into anti-Semitism. McCarthy's anti-communist campaign endangered the very civil liberties that protected minorities, but criticism of McCarthy and his actions could be interpreted as support for communism. In order to convey the message that Jews were patriotic Americans concerned about both national security and civil liberties, Jewish organizations chose to present a united front, whilst also cooperating with non-sectarian American bodies. By doing so they professed an alternative anti-communism to the hardline McCarthy. This book sheds new light on McCarthy's attitudes to the Jews, to the Jewish organizations and to the Jewish individuals identified with communism.

Demagogue
Demagogue

Author: Larry Tye

Publisher: Houghton Mifflin

Published: 2020

Total Pages: 629

ISBN-13: 1328959724

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The definitive biography of the most dangerous demagogue in American history, based on first-ever review of his personal and professional papers, medical and military records, and recently unsealed transcripts of his closed-door Congressional hearings In the long history of American demagogues, from Huey Long to Donald Trump, never has one man caused so much damage in such a short time as Senator Joseph McCarthy. We still use "McCarthyism" to stand for outrageous charges of guilt by association, a weapon of polarizing slander. From 1950 to 1954, McCarthy destroyed many careers and even entire lives, whipping the nation into a frenzy of paranoia, accusation, loyalty oaths, and terror. When the public finally turned on him, he came crashing down, dying of alcoholism in 1957. Only now, through bestselling author Larry Tye's exclusive look at the senator's records, can the full story be told. Demagogue is a masterful portrait of a human being capable of immense evil, yet beguiling charm. McCarthy was a tireless worker and a genuine war hero. His ambitions knew few limits. Neither did his socializing, his drinking, nor his gambling. When he finally made it to the Senate, he flailed around in search of an agenda and angered many with his sharp elbows and lack of integrity. Finally, after three years, he hit upon anti-communism. By recklessly charging treason against everyone from George Marshall to much of the State Department, he became the most influential and controversial man in America. His chaotic, meteoric rise is a gripping and terrifying object lesson for us all. Yet his equally sudden fall from fame offers reason for hope that, given the rope, most American demagogues eventually hang themselves.

Holocaust Memory and the Cold War
Holocaust Memory and the Cold War

Author: Anna Koch

Publisher: Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG

Published: 2024-10-21

Total Pages: 332

ISBN-13: 3110672650

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Even before World War II had ended, survivors, historians, writers, and artists tried to make sense of the Holocaust. To do so, they relied on belief systems and narratives that, as the bloc confrontation intensified, were increasingly shaped by Cold War thinking. Foregrounding the Cold War's role in shaping Holocaust memory, this book highlights how the global conflict between East and West influenced research, legal proceedings, and collective as well as individual memories of the murder of European Jews. Contributions focusing on different parts of the world reveal commonalities, differences, and entanglements between Eastern and Western memories of the Holocaust. Examining Holocaust memory from various disciplinary perspectives, the authors highlight the many ways in which scholars, writers, artists, and survivors both countered and contributed to dominant narratives shaped by oppositional ideological stances. While such distinct ideological positions often mattered greatly, at other times a shared interest in bringing perpetrators to justice, commemorating victims, and providing testimony to the atrocities committed against Europe's Jews led to cooperation and exchange across the Iron Curtain.

The Nazi Card
The Nazi Card

Author: Brian Johnson

Publisher: Lexington Books

Published: 2017-01-25

Total Pages: 231

ISBN-13: 1498532918

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The Cold War began almost immediately after the end of World War II and the defeat of the Nazis in Europe. As images of the Nazis’ atrocities became part of American culture’s common store, the evil of their old enemy, beyond the Nazis as a wartime opponent, became increasingly important. As America tried to describe the danger represented by the spread of Communism, it fell back on descriptions of Nazism to make the threat plain through comparison. At the heart of the tensions of that era lay the inconsistency of using one kind of evil to describe another. The book addresses this tension in regards to McCarthyism, campaigns to educate the public about Communism, attempts to raise support for wars in Asia, and the rhetoric of civil rights. Each of these political arenas is examined through their use of Nazi analogies in popular, political, and literary culture. The Nazi Card is an invaluable look at the way comparisons to Nazis are used in American culture, the history of those comparisons, and the repercussions of establishing a political definition of evil.

Jews and the Left
Jews and the Left

Author: P. Mendes

Publisher: Springer

Published: 2014-05-20

Total Pages: 476

ISBN-13: 113700830X

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The historical involvement of Jews in the political Left is well known, but far less attention has been paid to the political and ideological factors which attracted Jews to the Left. After the Holocaust and the creation of Israel many lost their faith in universalistic solutions, yet lingering links between Jews and the Left continue to exist.

Jews and the Left
Jews and the Left

Author: P. Mendes

Publisher: Springer

Published: 2014-05-20

Total Pages: 348

ISBN-13: 113700830X

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The historical involvement of Jews in the political Left is well known, but far less attention has been paid to the political and ideological factors which attracted Jews to the Left. After the Holocaust and the creation of Israel many lost their faith in universalistic solutions, yet lingering links between Jews and the Left continue to exist.

The Un-Americans
The Un-Americans

Author: Joseph Litvak

Publisher: Duke University Press

Published: 2009-11-25

Total Pages: 306

ISBN-13: 0822390841

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In a bold rethinking of the Hollywood blacklist and McCarthyite America, Joseph Litvak reveals a political regime that did not end with the 1950s or even with the Cold War: a regime of compulsory sycophancy, in which the good citizen is an informer, ready to denounce anyone who will not play the part of the earnest, patriotic American. While many scholars have noted the anti-Semitism underlying the House Un-American Activities Committee’s (HUAC’s) anti-Communism, Litvak draws on the work of Theodor W. Adorno, Hannah Arendt, Alain Badiou, and Max Horkheimer to show how the committee conflated Jewishness with what he calls “comic cosmopolitanism,” an intolerably seductive happiness, centered in Hollywood and New York, in show business and intellectual circles. He maintains that HUAC took the comic irreverence of the “uncooperative” witnesses as a crime against an American identity based on self-repudiation and the willingness to “name names.” Litvak proposes that sycophancy was (and continues to be) the price exacted for assimilation into mainstream American culture, not just for Jews, but also for homosexuals, immigrants, and other groups deemed threatening to American rectitude. Litvak traces the outlines of comic cosmopolitanism in a series of performances in film and theater and before HUAC, performances by Jewish artists and intellectuals such as Zero Mostel, Judy Holliday, and Abraham Polonsky. At the same time, through an uncompromising analysis of work by informers including Jerome Robbins, Elia Kazan, and Budd Schulberg, he explains the triumph of a stoolpigeon culture that still thrives in the America of the early twenty-first century.

Jewish American Chronology
Jewish American Chronology

Author: Mark K. Bauman

Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing USA

Published: 2011-06-07

Total Pages: 170

ISBN-13: 0313376050

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This comprehensive and analytical history of American Jews and Judaism from the Colonial Era to the present explores the impact of America on Jews and of Jews on America. Covering more than four centuries from the Colonial Era forward, Jewish American Chronology offers an introduction to the history of American Jews and Judaism, using individual examples, personality profiles, and illustrations to bring fundamental patterns and major themes to life. Arranged chronologically, the entries illustrate how a variety of different Jewish groups and individuals have adapted to America, both changing in accordance with time and place and retaining tradition and culture, even as they became thoroughly American. Readers will learn how Jews have created community and institutions, confronted anti-Semitism, and interacted among themselves and with other groups. They will read about immigration, migration, and socioeconomic mobility. And they will discover how Jews have filled critical economic niches, contributed disproportionately in a variety of endeavors, and changed over time and in reaction to circumstances. In this wide-ranging work, Jewish Americans are depicted in a balanced and accurate manner, describing Nobel Prize winners and standout economic success stories as well as those who achieved fame and notoriety in other ways.

Ethnicity and Beyond
Ethnicity and Beyond

Author: Eli Lederhendler

Publisher: Oxford University Press

Published: 2011-03-08

Total Pages: 246

ISBN-13: 0190208414

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Volume XXV of the distinguished annual Studies in Contemporary Jewry explores new understandings and approaches to Jewish "ethnicity." In current parlance regarding multicultural diversity, Jews are often considered to belong socially to the "majority," whereas "otherness" is reserved for "minorities." But these group labels and their meanings have changed over time. This volume analyzes how "ethnic," "ethnicity," and "identity" have been applied to Jews, past and present, individually and collectively. Most of the symposium papers on the ethnicity of Jewish people and the social groups they form draw heavily on the case of American Jews, while others offer wider geographical perspectives. Contributors address ex-Soviet Jews in Philadelphia, comparing them to a similar population in Tel Aviv; Communism and ethnicity; intermarriage and group blending; American Jewish dialogue; and German Jewish migration in the interwar decades. Leading academics, employing a variety of social scientific methods and historical paradigms, propose to enhance the clarity of definitions used to relate "ethnic identity" to the Jews. They point to ethnic experience in a variety of different social manifestations: language use in social context, marital behavior across generations, spatial and occupational differentiation in relation to other members of society, and new immigrant communities as sub-ethnic units within larger Jewish populations. They also ponder the relevance of individual experience and preference as compared to the weight of larger socializing factors. Taken as a whole, this work offers revisionist views on the utility of terms like "Jewish ethnicity" that were given wider scope by scholars in the 1960s, '70s, and '80s.