“
>I’ve always wondered: why was it so important for so many on the left to
believe that the Rosenbergs really weren’t spies? After all, the accusation
was that they shared information with the USSR, during WWII, when it was an
ally of the US.
Julius R was apparently a spy. Ethel was framed and innocent. (Julius was
framed and guilty.)
> This kind of issue has always seemed like the left at its sillier,
At the time the issue was whether the CP was simply an fifth column of the USSR at the height of the cold war, and implicitly whether the New Deal was tainted by being run by Commies. (That was the big deal with Hiss even more than the Rs.)
jks “
but that was a very long time ago. By the sixties that was hardly and issue, and by the time Radish’s book (I knew him when he was a leftist, and always called him Radish, saying “Red outside, white inside.”) came out it ought to have been possible to say: “So what if the Rosenbergs were spies?”
I was intrigued also, by Judis’ comments on Marx and other authors. He’s right, for example on William Julius Wilson, unjustly maligned as a rightist. Lasch is more problematic, as his last book seems to be a long paean to white blue-collar ressentiment.
Christopher Rhoades Dÿkema
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