[lbo-talk] Got book reviewers? bloggers?

Carrol Cox cbcox at ilstu.edu
Sun Nov 3 09:29:58 PST 2013


Wikipedia is not a very good source, but this excerpt from its account of F.O. Matthiessen includes a nice surbordination of McCarthy to the Red Hunt.

Carrol

****Matthiessen committed suicide by jumping from a Boston hotel window in 1950.[1][4] He had been hospitalized once for a nervous breakdown in 1938-1939. He continued to be deeply affected by Russell Cheney's death. Commentators have speculated on the impact of the escalating Red Scare on Matthiessen's state of mind. Inquiries by the House Un-American Activities Committee into his politics may have been a contributing factor in his suicide. Writing in 1958, Eric Jacobsen referred to Matthiessen's death as "hastened by forces whose activities earned for themselves the sobriquet un-American which they sought so assiduously to fasten on others".[15] However, in 1978 Harry Levin was more skeptical, saying only that "spokesmen for the Communist Party, to which he had never belonged, loudly signalized his suicide as a political gesture".[12]

There is no doubt that Matthiessen was being targeted by anti-communist forces that would soon be exploited by Senator Joseph McCarthy. Clear evidence of this is reflected in the April 4, 1949 edition of Life Magazine. In an article subsection titled Dupes and Fellow Travelers Dress Up Communist Fronts, Matthiessen is pictured among fifty prominent academics, scientists, clergy and writers, including Albert Einstein, Arthur Miller, Lillian Hellman, Langston Hughes, Norman Mailer and fellow Harvard professors, Kirtley Mather, Corliss Lamont and Ralph Barton Perry.[16] He spent the evening before his death at the home of his friend and colleague, Kenneth Murdock, Harvard's Higginson Professor of English Literature. In a note left in the hotel room, Matthiessen wrote, "I am depressed over world conditions. I am a Christian and a Socialist. I am against any order which interferes with that objective." [17]****

-----Original Message----- From: lbo-talk-bounces at lbo-talk.org [mailto:lbo-talk-bounces at lbo-talk.org] On Behalf Of Jim Farmelant Sent: Sunday, November 03, 2013 10:58 AM To: lbo-talk at lbo-talk.org Subject: Re: [lbo-talk] Got book reviewers? bloggers?

And we shouldn't forget the Bertrand Russell case of 1940. Russell had been appointed to a professorship at City College in NYC. A local Episcopalian bishop took exception to this appointment and he initiated a campaign against the famous philosopher's appointment which was soon joined by many other Protestant and Catholic clergymen, then got hyped by the Hearst press,

and enjoyed the support of many Tammany Hall politicians. Russell was heavily atheist-baited and red-baited, even though he was no Communist. This (successful) campaign helped to set the stage for similar campaigns against other progressive academics in later years.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Bertrand_Russell_Case

Jim Farmelant http://independent.academia.edu/JimFarmelant http://www.linkedin.com/in/jimfarmelant www.foxymath.com Learn or Review Basic Math

-------------------------------------------------- From: <knowknot at mindspring.com> Sent: Sunday, November 03, 2013 11:38 AM To: <lbo-talk at lbo-talk.org> Subject: Re: [lbo-talk] Got book reviewers? bloggers?


> Carrol Cox said in part:
>
> > Truman. Eisenhower. Humphrey. Those are the names that correctly
> > focus the Red Hunt.
> > * * *
> > State loyalty oaths for teachers were also independent of Joe
> > [McCartyy]'s shenanigans.
> >
> > The Red Hunt was inseparable from the launching of the Cold War --
> > not McCarthy's concern.
>
> This is all too true . . . at the national level. But the title of the
> book in question refers to N.Y., and one might wonder whether the "Red
> Apple" portion of the title pun-ingly refers especially to N.Y. City.
>
> In any event, especially in N.Y. City besides state-wide, the
> Rapp-Coudert Committee of the early-1940s engaged in rabidly
> anti-communist and anti-[assertedly] comunist [sympathizing] public
> school teachers and public college professors. And communist
> -with/against- anti-communist wars in the N.Y. labor movement,
> especially within the largest unions in N.Y. apart from construction,
> the ILGWU and, later, Amalgamated Clothing Workers, besides the Furriers
and, later, the Fur & Leather Workers'
> unions predated the 1950s.
>
> Its complicated; and whether the book's title is "vicious" remains to
> be seen.
>
>
>
>
> ___________________________________
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