On Oct 10, 2006, at 5:23 PM, Jesse Lemisch wrote:
> there was and is no truth to the idea of H and of so many others
> that popular movements are necessarily fascist
I'm still waiting for the textual evidence for this claim.
An hour earlier, Jesse wrote:
> continuing the discussion of Hofstadter, the point of
> Rogin et al is that the orgins of "McCarthyism" (note the quotation
> marks)
> were not with what you call the "toiling masses." This offers the
> possibility that mass movements from below might be seen more
> optimistically
> than Hofstadter and his gang saw them.
This is from "Pseudo-Conservatism Revisited - 1965," an essay included in the Paranoid Style volume (pp. 69-70):
"Part of McCarthy's strength lay in his ability to combine a mass appeal with a special appeal to a limited stratum of the upper classes. As compared with Coughlin, whose following had been almost entirely from a low-status public, McCarthy was able to win considerable support from the middle and upper ranks of society, mobilizing Republicans who had never accepted the changes brought by the New Deal and whose rage at the long exclusion of the party from presidential power was reaching a peak. There is evidence also that McCarthy had a special appeal to the postwar newly rich. Most prophetic of the future of the right wing was his strong appeal to fundamentalist-oriented Protestants...."