McCarthyism a Bogeyman Horowitz

Radical Son: A Generational Odyssey, by David Horowitz. 1998

Jews in Communism, the McCarthyism Bogeyman, Political Correctness, and Cultural Marxism

Owing to the fact that there already are many reviews that describe the main contents of this work, I do not repeat them. Instead, I focus on a few themes.

By way of introduction, the author’s grandfather, probably named Gurevitch, hailed from Mozir, Ukraine, when it was under tsarist Russian rule. (p. 9). It became “Horowitz”. The author’s mother’s side also originated in Ukraine, but first spend time in Romania before coming to the USA. (p. 12).

THE AUTHOR”S TURN FROM THE POLITICAL LEFT

David Horowitz rejects the rosy view of the New Left being an outburst of idealism. It was nothing more than the creation of a new form of Marxism to replace the increasingly-discredited Old Left. (p. 104, 106).

It soon becomes apparent that there was no single turning point in David Horowitz’ thinking about leftist ideology in general. One important event, however, had been the influence of Polish philosopher Leszek Kolakowski and his defection to the West. Kolakowski pointed out that the stated leftist goal of eliminating social inequality, in and of itself, creates a new privileged class, (quote) But the class of people who decided who would be made equal, and at what rate, would–by the very fact of that power–become a new ruling caste. The quest for equality would create a new INequality. (p. 272). (Emphasis in original). The latter has, in other contexts, been called the NOMENKLATURA.

This has modern implications. “The fight to end inequality” is a never-ending slogan repeated by cultural Marxists and the former Obama Administration, and is a never-ending excuse for more and more government power and social engineering.

LEFTIST CHARACTER-ASSASSINATION TACTICS

Now consider political correctness, and the process of de-legitimization and demonization of those who dare express disagreement with leftist shibboleths. Although Horowitz does not use the term political correctness, he makes obvious the long history of political correctness, (quote) Lenin said that the object of a political argument was not to win a debate but to wipe out one’s opponent from the face of the earth. (unquote). (p. 360).

THE BOGEYMAN OF MCCARTHYISM

The McCarthy era is awfulized to this day by the political Left. In fact. the Left is more indignant about McCarthy, under whom nobody died, than about the millions of people murdered by the Communists.

David Horowitz provides some sanity on this issue, (quote) What actually happened to my father and American Communists in general bears little resemblance to these lurid images. They were neither executed nor tortured, and spent hardly any time in jail. In the entire Cold War period less than two hundred leaders and functionaries of the Party ever went to prison, in most cases serving less than two years. This was not a small number or an insignificant price to pay for their political allegiances. But, considering the Party’s organizational ties to an enemy power armed with nuclear weapons poised to attack America, it was not a large one, either. (unquote). (p. 69).

Let us now go back to the author’s formative years:

THE LEFTIST FLIP-FLOPS ON FASCISM AND NAZISM

David Horowitz describes the political gymnastics of the American Communist Party, as experienced by his Communist parents, (quote) “I heard about the Hitler business after I left Chicago,” he [father] wrote, referring to Germany’s repudiation of the Versailles Treaty. In the eyes of the Party, the Nazi threat was a myth invented by the capitalist ruling classes for their own agendas (a line that would be reversed in 1936 with the Popular Front and against in 1939 with the Nazi-Soviet Pact). (unquote). (p. 29).

(Quote) They [his parents] had postured as pacifists and then as antifascists in the Thirties, but then opposed the fight against Hitler as “an imperialist war” after Stalin made his pact with the devil. After Russia was attacked, they made ANOTHER about-face. Becoming superpatriots, they turned on their former political friends who failed, in their eyes, to support America’s war effort with sufficient zeal. (unquote). (pp. 62-63). (Emphasis in original).

COMMUNISTS CALLED THEMELVES “PROGRESSIVES”. SOUND FAMILIAR?

David Horowitz thus writes about his father, (quote) In fact, I never heard my father use the word “Communist” to describe himself or his political agendas. Nor was he alone in this. All my parents’ friends were Party members, but in identifying themselves to the political GOYIM they invariably used the term “progressive.” (unquote). (p. 43).

The author continues describing his parents, (quote) The Soviet Union was the land of their dreams, and they had pledged their allegiance to its political future. It was not my parents’ idealism that elicited fear and provoked hostility from the GOYIM. It was their hostility toward the GOYIM, and indeed everything the GOYIM held dear, that incited the hostility back. (unquote). (p. 44).

ZYDOKOMUNA. ARE JEWISH COMMUNISTS STILL JEWS? DEFINITELY YES

There is nowadays a curious argument–advanced by the likes of the media-acclaimed Jan T. Gross–that Jewish Communists were not really Jews. Horowitz sheds light on this matter.

David Horowitz’ father thought of his Jewish identity as representing a legacy of superstition and prejudice. (p. 67). The author grew up in a home where there was no synagogue attendance and no one dressed up for the Jewish Sabbath. (p. 35). Objections to bringing Christmas trees into the home could involve concerns about desecrating the memory of Holocaust victims. (p. 41). However, all of the foregoing is immaterial. Nonobservant and nonreligious Jews are still Jews.

Ironic to the “Jewish Communists are not really Jews” notion, the Horowitz family was involved in activities that integrated Judaism and Communism. The author comments, (Quote) The dispute spread to the Party, and led to the creation of a SHUL, which held classes in the afternoons…The SHUL was designed to teach us our Jewish heritage from a radical perspective, without religion. Even the Yiddish we were taught at SHUL was a way of dividing our tribe of radicals from nonprogressive Jews…At the SHUL, the Jewish festivals we celebrated were each given a political interpretation. When we performed a play about the Maccabees for CHANUKAH, it was to showcase them as revolutionaries lifting the yoke of oppression. (unquote). (p. 42).

As a further irony to the “Jewish Communists are not really Jews” exculpation, the American Communist Party not only recognized the Jewishness of Jewish Communists, but made it a point to highlight their Jewishness as the purported reason for their “persecution” by the American government. When eight teachers were suspended because they were Communist Party members, and certainly not because they were Jewish, a Party leaflet accused the USA of moving towards fascism by suspending eight Jewish teachers. (pp. 66-67). When Julius and Ethel Rosenberg were executed for their atomic espionage, the Party framed it as an execution of two Jews for their political beliefs. (p. 78).

The author was impressed by Jewish Communist Isaac Deutscher’s ideas–ones that connect Jewishness and Communism (p. 153, 227)–and which are presented in The Non-Jewish Jew. (Read my review.).

RAMIFICATIONS OF JEWISH INFLUENCE

David Horowitz reported being influenced by John Murray Cuddihy’s book, THE ORDEAL OF CIVILITY. This book had won a National Book Award. Cuddihy had argued that the theories of Freud and Marx were part of a strategy to deconstruct societies–as part of the drive of Jews to be fully accepted into society by erasing ethnic identities. Freud attempted to show that bourgeois civility was a cover for sexual repression, while Marx attempted to show that bourgeois civility was related to economic exploitation. (pp. 274-275).

Although Jews were only 3% of the U. S. population, they constituted more than half of the freedom riders going to the southern states. Despite this, African-American organizations spurned the Jews, and this contributed to Horowitz’ disillusionment with the political Left. (p. 275).