[lbo-talk] Noam on intellectuals

[Yoshie Furuhashi]

On 2/12/07, Arash <arash at riseup.net> wrote:
> "I remember in the 1960s, sometimes I would sign an international
> statement against the war in Vietnam—signed by me here, Sartre and some
> other person in Europe, and so on. Well, in Paris there'd be big
> front-page headlines; here nobody paid any attention at all, which was the
> only healthy reaction. Okay, so three guys signed a statement; who cares?
> The statement signed by 120 intellectuals in the time of the Algerian War
> was a major event in Paris. If a similar thing happened here, it wouldn't
> even make the newspapers—correctly."

Before the 1960s, though, the US government really cared about where
intellectuals -- both organic intellectuals and traditional
intellectuals -- stood politically, and it indeed combed through
petitions they signed as well, among many other things.  The Red Purge
was about purging left-wing intellectuals of both kinds, from the
labor movement, governments, universities, bar associations,
Hollywood, and so on.
-- 
Yoshie
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