----- Original Message ----- From: "Doug Henwood" <dhenwood at panix.com> To: <lbo-talk at lbo-talk.org> Sent: Tuesday, October 17, 2006 3:56 PM Subject: Re: [lbo-talk] Why Richard Hofstadter Is Still Worth ReadingbutNotfor the Reasons the Critics Have in Mind
>
> 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.
>
WHAT TEXTUAL EVIDENCE DO YOU NEED FOR THE CLAIM THAT POPULAR MOVEMENTS ARE
NOT NECESSARILY FASCIST. I BELIEVE YOU HAVE LIVED THROUGH A COUPLE YOURSELF,
DOUG.
> An hour earlier, Jesse wrote:
>
YOU SEEM TO BE SUGGESTING SOMETHING; PLEASE INDICATE WHAT YOU SEE TO BE THE
PROBLEM. AND CERTAINLY, LIKE YOUR REPEATED DEMANDS, I'LL NEED FULL
CITATIONS, PREFERABLY BOTH TO THE KING JAMES AND THE REVISED STANDARD
VERSIONS.
> > 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...."
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