In any case, I was asking for some textual evidence that Hofstadter held "that popular movements are necessarily fascist." That's an extraordinary claim, and I'm asking for a quote or two to substantiate it.
And the second was a quote from a famous essay by Hofstadter about the base of McCarthy's support that is rather at odds with your implication that he didn't think that Tailgunner Joe found support at elite, not mass, levels.
By the way, elements of organized labor in Wisconsin either supported McCarthy or stayed neutral in his first election to punish LaFolette, whom they saw as too anti-Communist. McCarthy won his first election by a 2-to-1 margin, so he evidently had some mass support.
Doug
On Oct 17, 2006, at 4:36 PM, Jesse Lemisch wrote:
>
> ----- 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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