McCarthyism as anti-Semitism

[EIM]

I'm reading The UnAmericans, a book I was put onto by someone off here, imp possibly. It's a series of short stories concerning Jewish life that alternates between Israel and America. A number of the stories deals with communism and the McCarthy witch-hunts of the 1950s.


Given that McCarthy targeted Hollywood, which was largely Jewish controlled, and given that Communist/radical left politics in the USA was largely supported by the Jewish community (Correct me if I'm wrong, I'm largely fronting on nowt based on a documentary I saw on YouTube once) to what degree was the Communist witch-hunt actually an anti-Jewish witch-hunt?

I could be way off line here, of course, but it occurred to me to on an internal flight on holiday, particularly the term "Un-American Activities" and the way it was mirrored in the title of the book, coupled with the current talk of existential threats facing British Jews.

[EIM]

Bit Diablo Rouge this thread, innit?

[Amor de Cosmos]

Given that targeted Hollywood, which was largely Jewish controlled, and given that Communist/radical left politics in the USA was largely supported by the Jewish community (Correct me if I'm wrong, I'm largely fronting on nowt based on a documentary I saw on YouTube once) to what degree was the Communist witch-hunt actually an anti-Jewish witch-hunt?

McCarthy's lawyer/henchman (and Trump's mentor,) Roy Cohn was Jewish of course. Though that doesn't necessarily mean you're wrong.

[G-Man]

The Jewish heads of the studios cheerfully collaborated with the HUAC. They, like Jack Warner, were rabidly anti-communist, and so ideologically were close to HUAC. And, just two decades after yielding to the threat of boycotts from moralists, they were driven also by the bottom-line. The moguls were very much on HUAC's side. So there was no reason for HUAC to be anti-Semitic. The target always was "Bolshevism".

That campaign started to take on the form of what was to come in the early 1930s, led by a guy called Dies and a New York Jew called Samuel Dickstein (who, it later turned out, was paid by the Soviets for spying!). So at its roots, HUAC was not driven by anti-Semitism by by ideology, which does not preclude anti-Semitic attitudes in the details, of course.

[Nefertiti2]

Michael Freedland (father of Jonathan Freedland of the Guardian) agreed with you, EIM

n the floor of the House of Representatives itself, Congressman John Rankin made a speech which consisted of virtually nothing more than a list of Jewish names. The wife of the actor Melvin Douglas, Congresswoman Helen Gahagan Douglas — whom a certain HUAC member named Richard Milhous Nixon had insulted by saying she was “pink, down to her underwear” — asked which films the committee really believed were helping the Communist Party. Rankin answered by reading some of the names that had appeared on a petition to congress: “One is Danny Kaye,” he began. “We found his real name was David Daniel Kaminsky. Then there was Eddie Cantor. His real name was Edward (sic) Iskowitz. Edward G Robinson, his name is Emmanuel Goldenberg.” The final cut was when he added, almost as an afterthought, the name of the congresswoman’s husband: “There’s another one here who calls himself Melvyn Douglas, whose real name is Melvyn Hesselberg.”

[N est à?]

Roy Cohn was a mentor of the young Trump, as it goes.

[Bizarre Löw Triangle]

I'm reading The UnAmericans, a book I was put onto by someone off here, imp possibly. It's a series of short stories concerning Jewish life that alternates between Israel and America. A number of the stories deals with communism and the McCarthy witch-hunts of the 1950s.

Given that McCarthy targeted Hollywood, which was largely Jewish controlled, and given that Communist/radical left politics in the USA was largely supported by the Jewish community (Correct me if I'm wrong, I'm largely fronting on nowt based on a documentary I saw on YouTube once) to what degree was the Communist witch-hunt actually an anti-Jewish witch-hunt?

I could be way off line here, of course, but it occurred to me to on an internal flight on holiday, particularly the term "Un-American Activities" and the way it was mirrored in the title of the book, coupled with the current talk of existential threats facing British Jews.

I think you need to situate anti-communism as a current in the US - from the first red scare, through McCarthyism and COINTELPRO, to current panics about the extreme left - within US racial politics.

US anticommunism - both the first and second red scares (the first one to a greater degree imo) - took on antisemitic characteristics. It also had homophobic characteristics and anti-black characteristics. To say it was an anti-Jewish witch hunt imo misrepresents how antisemitism functions within anticommunism. Anticommunism is the search for sedition; for deviance. Jews, by their cultural and religious differences, by their - in many cases - recent migrant background - were marked as deviant. But so were many other groups of people - queer people, anyone who refused to accept segregation as a fact of life, all flavours of leftists.

[Nefertiti2]

But very few of those worked in Hollywood at that time. Jews did.

[Bored Of Education]

Didn't realise that Nixon was a member of the HUAC but it shouldn't surprise me.

[EIM]

Why did the HUAC go after Hollywood so aggressively though? Because it was high profile, or because it had a higher concentration of dastardly pinko? There must have been industries with as many communists involved?

I should probably read a book about all this.

[ursus arctos]

Because there have always been people in this country who believe that Hollywood is “evil”, “licentious” and even “Satanic” ever since the film industry moved West.

While the centrality of the industry to US popular culture at the time meant that wall to wall media coverage was guaranteed (which wasn’t the case with their attacks on diplomats, academics and other lower profile targets).

[G-Man]

During WW2, Hollywood was an effective propaganda machine. It still shapes perceptions powerfully. If you are fighting an ideological enemy, you go for the means by which they might propagate that ideology.

[NHH]

There’s a really good series of podcasts in ‘you must remember this’ on the Hollywood red scare. The last Is on Nixon and Gahagan-Douglas and shows how much he used her to burnish his rep to get on in the world.

[Satchmo Distel]

Antisemitism became far less acceptable after the discovery of the Jewish corpses in camps liberated by the Americans in 1945. HUAC dovetailed in 1947 with the Berlin crisis when it did really look to Americans as if the USSR was a great Satan willing to rape and pillage Europe and the US. Then from 1949 the Chinese Revolution and Korean War meant it could be combined with anti-Asian racism. But it's also true that the late-1930s HUAC gained strength from America First and Lindbergh, which was antisemitic (as are its current "anti-Globalist" versions).

There was still antisemitism from southern Congressmen like Rankin, who'd been raised on Henry Ford's "The International Jew" (1920) and I think in 1955-68 it was revived by Jewish support for the Civil Rights movement. And Jews were still subject to exclusion from housing and clubs in many parts of the South, such as Palm Beach, FL.

[Pérou Flaquettes]

Interesting thread.

In the French weekly Marianne #1043 of March 2017, there’s a long piece on McCarthy (photos below). It explains how the “The Torquemada of the Midwest” as Marianne calls him first cosied up to the press & media by feeding them “a generous ration of headlines” to hook them in, all his accusations were purely based on insinuations naturally such as that infamous list of name of 205 civil servants allegedly bankrolled by Moscow with Washington’s assent (list was reduced to only 5 people who were totally absolved of having any such links after an investigation). And, as is customary, the seagulls then followed the trawler because they knew juicy bits would be thrown overboard.

While this Marianne feature mentions Ethel and Julius Rosenberg, it doesn’t go into any case of antisemitism. In summary, the article explains that once McCarthy had hunted down “Communists” and “traitors”, Hollywood figures, homosexuals, academics, the Protestant Church (guilty of supporting communism) etc. McCarthy was running out of targets. He thought himself untouchable and then targeted the army but it backfired spectacularly with Ralph Zwicker. Public opinion turned against him and the vile attention-seeking fucker died shortly after of a pickled liver at only 49.

McCarthy was a rabid neo-reactionary before the word had even been coined probably and there ain’t many people these uber-misanthropes have time for, they make a point of constantly finding new enemies in order to renew their material and keep their roadshows alive and kicking. Because these people are in the business of inciting and spreading hatred sometimes indiscriminately, it can be hard to isolate particular components in their poly-hatred.

My question is this: have we got any (soft or hard) evidence to label McCarthy anti-Semitic or, if we haven’t, should we consider that he was just a horrible, all-around “hater” who hated Jews, along with so many other groups? (if that makes sense)

[ursus arctos]

McCarthy was a horrible human being interested only in his own advancement.

While he is highly unlikely to have harboured positive feelings towards Jews, he didn’t have the long record of anti-Semitic words and deeds that other Midwestern politicians of his era did (while Wisconsin had plenty of Bund members and sympathisers, McCarthy wasn’t among them).

For McCarthy then, the second Red Scare was all about “building his brand” rather than demonising Jews. That doesn’t mean, of course, that other participants weren’t more motivated by anti-Semitism or that McCarthy ever hesitated from ruining Jewish lives.

[Felicity, I guess so]

There were academic studies of McCarthyism in Hollywood about 15+ years ago which did try to recast it as anti-semitism. I skimmed the chapter headings and index of one, and had access to some key quotes from another as I covered a History of Film class for a colleague (her notes).

must admit my prejudiced assumption at the time was that (not for the first time) liberal career academics were keen to promote identity politics to cover up the fact they didn't really have any...

[Bizarre Löw Triangle]

Why did the HUAC go after Hollywood so aggressively though? Because it was high profile, or because it had a higher concentration of dastardly pinko? There must have been industries with as many communists involved?

I should probably read a book about all this.

Despite (or perhaps because of) the CPUSA adopting a no-strike policy during World War II and enthusiastically supporting Roosevelt, they were comprehensively defeated by their right wing adversaries within the trade union movement in the late 1940s, and then purged from major unions with the help of federal legislation. From that point on, they were an extremely marginal force within the labour movement. I think they had some involvement with the UFW during the Delano Grape Strike.

Because the CPUSA was openly organising within unions, whereas in Hollywood its influence was more clandestine, purging them was relatively straightforward.

And, of course, the FBI could just have people murdered or locked up in other industries, in a way they couldn't in Hollywood.

[Satchmo Distel]

There were academic studies of McCarthyism in Hollywood about 15+ years ago which did try to recast it as anti-semitism. I skimmed the chapter headings and index of one, and had access to some key quotes from another as I covered a History of Film class for a colleague (her notes).

must admit my prejudiced assumption at the time was that (not for the first time) liberal career academics were keen to promote identity politics to cover up the fact they didn't really have any...

I read the Reagan-era literature on McCarthy and it included a lot of overstretched comparisons between McCarthy and Reagan that didn't stand up. Although Reagan was clearly trying to heat up the Cold War to 50s levels to justify taking over half of Latin America, the 80s seem like a beacon of academic freedom compared to the policing of academia and demonization of all liberal discourse the Trumpists are promoting.

The literature itself was written by Jews about Jewish victims, but these were obviously non-religious Jews whose first loyalty was to the Left rather than the ethnic group and I think the persecution complex in that literature was political not ethnic. They were expecting a new McCarthyism under Reagan that never happened, despite the blustering from Buchanan (as speechwriter) about "cultural Marxism".

A parallel strand is apologetics for the Rosenbergs and Alger Hiss, who were clearly ritualized show trial sacrifices (Nixon heavily involved) but were not exactly angels. Their blindness to Stalin's crimes as late as 1945 makes me lose much of my sympathy for them and the Hollywood Ten.

[ursus arctos]

I would suggest that process actually started with Nixon, in part because anti-Nixonian animus was a major reason I wrote a long paper on McCarthy in 1970 (seventh grade). Nixon was an easier target given his service on HUAC and history of red-baiting, and one can of course argue that Trumpism takes many of its cultural cues from Buchanan.