McCarthyism Aims Right

...It was those tactics, they said, not the widely shared cause of anti-Communism, that deserved to be known by the distinctive name, "McCarthyism...

...These people, he said, are primarily "interested in . . . undermining confidence in our churches...

...They wrote: Last year, the FBI claimed to the House Intelligence Committee that there were "certain similarities" between the "Dissent Memorandum" saga and "other Soviet forgeries," adding that "It is known the Soviets attempted to surface this document in Central America through clandestine means...

...Kulturkampf takes its meaning from the anti-Catholic campaign in Germany in the 1870s...

...It is this stance, I believe, that draws the fire of political-religious groups financed by ultracon-servative foundations and wealthy entrepreneurs of the right...

...And there Rev...

...Contributions will be diverted from the United Methodist Committee on Relief and similar bodies to the coffers of the IRD...

...condemning racism and social injustice in South Africa...

...Cockburn and Ridgeway complained that Safer's implication was that "the churches and the KGB were-are-working hand-in-glove...

...A case in point has been the raging controversy over charges that the National and World Councils of Churches and their leading affiliated denominations have often aligned themselves with Communist or pro-Communist governments and causes...

...In a response to Rael Jean Isaac's article in Reader's Digest, 23 leaders of denominations belonging to the NCC charged that the IRD's goal is to "turn [the churches] away from the pursuit of racial and social justice...

...For the most part the critics want the churches to spend more energy and money on relief work and less on the myriad political activities that are today justified in the name of helping the poor...

...speaks about soup, soap, and salvation," the WCC preferred to challenge "the causes and structures of those societies which bring about oppression...

...Senator McCarthy, not one for undue self-effacement, used the term himself...

...to not use what are generally described as McCarthy tactics...

...McCarthy's most egregious tactics still flourish: they are used, often with impunity, provided that their target stands politically to the right of the attacker...

...The impugning of motives here followed the theme already made familiar by the NCC...

...The worst part of this, said these authors, is that the document in question is no forgery at all...

...In that election, the report's author, IRD board member David Jessup, served as the representative of the AFL-CIO to the Carter re-election campaign...

...Wall left it, without a single further word about the accuracy or implications of this fourth-hand information, only two paragraphs after having accused CBS of using "innuendoes...

...John Wicklein, associate director of the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, managed within the space of a few sentences in an article in Christianity and Crisis both to impugn motives and to indulge in some additional varieties of McCarthyism...

...It is true that both councils [NCC and WCC] characteristically side with the downtrodden and that they conduct programs aimed at alleviating social injustices and correcting human rights violations around the world...

...The IRD was a direct outgrowth of the so-called "Jessup Report" issued in April 1980, seven months before Reagan's election...

...Third, unsupported accusations...

...It is to these foundations presumably that Wicklein referred...

...Central Intelligence Agency...

...And there was more in this vein...

...Potter at the time nor the WCC in response to subsequent inquiries has offered a scintilla of evidence...

...Thus, NCC General Secretary Claire Randall issued a statement charging that critics of the NCC "seem to be saying that we should not give a cup of water or a crust of bread to another human being if he or she happens to be living under a government with which they disagree...

...Christian Century reports that Alan Walker, director of world evangelism for the World Methodist Council, has observed that attacks on alleged leftist church activity now span four continents-the U.S., Britain, Australia, and South Africa-prompting Walker to raise the question: "Is there a conspiracy against the churches which are speaking for the poor and are opposed to apartheid and nuclear armament...

...Brown added that the "60 Minutes" program had .also been aired on South Korean and South African television with the effect that it "might endanger the lives of Protestants exercising their social consciences...

...Grandiloquence aside, he meant that it designated a stance of uncompromising anti-Communism...

...No recitation of McCarthyisms would be complete without an example of a conspiracy theory/ (Ache-son and Marshall, said McCarthy, headed "a conspiracy on a scale so immense as to dwarf any previous such venture in the history of man...

...The Nation's Cynthia Brown indulged in the same combination when she described the IRD as a "fundamentalist -conservative coalition" which "disapproves of...

...If [General] Marshall were merely stupid, the laws of probability would dictate that part of his decisions would serve this country's interest," said McCarthy...

...The only such explicit bigotry in evidence in the current controversy was the declaration by a group of 33 female staff executives of major denominations that "60 Minutes" had "articulated a Gospel according to white American, middle-class, middle-aged males...

...has been determined to be a forgery...

...This confusion has plagued us ever since...

...spokesman testified before the House Select Committee on Intelligence that there were , "similarities" between it and other Soviet forger-ies, the F.B.I, refuses to confirm or deny that the paper is a forgery...

...They first appeared during the "60 Minutes" broadcast itself when, in an interview, Dr...

...The Salvation Army had said it was in protest against the WCC's controversial decision to give a cash grant to the Patriotic Front then waging a guerrilla war against the government of Zimbabwe/Rhodesia...

...It is known that the Soviets attempted to surface this document in Central America through clandestine means [emphasis mine...

...United Methodist Bishop John B. Warman wrote that the IRD is dependent for its very existence upon contributions from those individuals and tion: "These charges are as old as the moment when Jesus taught the Good Samaritan parable...

...There are certain similarities of this operation with other Soviet forgeries...

...Yet though the taboo is widely observed there is much confusion about what actually constitutes "McCarthyism...

...Another is that Joshua Muravchik has written for Commentary, the New Republic, Policy Review, and other publications...

...And despite their care it did...

...The Nation said that the criticisms of the churches are "reminiscent of the 1950s," with the IRD having taken the place of the "unscrupulous Senator from Wisconsin...

...Perhaps the explanation isthat these people don't recognize the tactics they are using for what they are...

...This difference, so misrepresented by NCC leaders, was acknowledged on "60 Minutes" by the WCC's Dr...

...This, too, has not been lacking...

...Morley Safer of "60 Minutes" had reported that two church-supported organizations helped to circulate a purported leaked State Department "dissent memorandum...

...But there were precious few specifics...

...She put it: Although an F.BJ...

...Bishop James Armstrong, President of the NCC, recently corporations it can make unhappy with the churches...

...Fifth, misrepresentation of documents...

...Potter when he said that while "the Salvation Army...

...Phillip Potter, head of the World Council of Churches, exposed the real reason for the Salvation Army's withdrawal from the WCC...

...Cockburn and Ridgeway wrote that the IRD "was expressly founded as part of the Reaganite kulturkampf, similar and indeed connected to Ernest Lefever's Ethics and Public Policy Center...

...On the other hand, parts of the church establishment and the left-wing press that have defended church support for far-Left causes have exhibited less care...

...Their counterattacks have been replete with examples of all manner of McCarthyisms...

...He said it was synonymous with "the fight for America...

...Nor has the Salvation Army been alone in having its motives impugned...

...Spokesmen for the establishment have responded with feigned obtuseness-treating the criticism as if it were an objection to the very idea of aiding the poor...

...He contrasted Isaac and Safer to "people who take their Christian faith seriously, who seek to be loyal to biblical standards and New Testament teachings...

...These protests had far more to do with the subject the IRD, CBS, and Reader's Digest were broaching than with their methods...

...Drew Pearson, said McCarthy, is a "Communist spokesman...

...Although McCarthy is long gone, his side of the argument has been kept alive by some on the Left who have their own reasons for preserving the notion that McCarthyism and anti-Communism are inextricably linked...

...He reported that the IRD received the largest part of its income from the Sarah Scaife Foundation, and then followed with this: An article in the February 4 National Catholic Reporter, citing both the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette and the Columbia Journalism Review, points to apparent links between Richard Mellon Scaife, the chairman of the Scaife Foundation, and the U.S...

...Cynthia Wedel, an American who is one of six presidents of the WCC, that "the Institute for Religion and Democracy is supported almost entirely by the government of South Africa," a charge Dr...

...In the Nation, Cynthia Brown wrote that the IRD has received grants from the Smith Richardson Foundation which, she said, without offering any explication or evidence, "has ties to the Defense Department and the Central Intelligence Agency...

...The NCC raised this tactic to perhaps its highest form when it dismissed the criticisms with this assercounseled his fellow bishops to disregard criticism emanating from "the Rael Jean Isaacs and Morley Safers of this world," whom he described as "secular sociologists and professional cynics," warning that they are not people who "can be trusted...

...He added: "The FBI says this document is a forgery, precisely the same forgery the KGB tried to circulate earlier in Central America...

...The South African angle figured in another hybrid McCarthyism, this one combining innuendo and conspiracy theory...

...And on the whole "60 Minutes" was careful.t as was Rael Isaac and as the IRD had been-all of them aware that to raise the issues they ?See also, "Sanctifying Revolution: Protestantism's New Social Gospel," by Rael Jean Isaac and Erich Isaac, in the May...

...Thus by omitting the key sentence while quoting snippets from all around it, the Voice and the Nation ingeniously gave the blatantly false impression that the FBI had stopped short of stating something that in fact it had asserted flatly...

...The Village Voice's Alexander Cockburn and James Ridgeway accused "60 Minutes" of "one of the most delirious spasms of open red-baiting and intimidation since the McCarthy era...

...now managed to have me investigated five times...

...Thus [60 Minutes] took an FBI speculation one stage further...

...He wrote: Twenty^vears ago...

...Wedel refused either to substantiate or withdraw after being informed that the IRD's financial disclosure shows no support at all from South Africa...

...They said that McCarthy's unsavory tactics served only to succor the Communists and to undermine the cause of anti-Communism...

...But the truth, according to Dr...

...Cynthia Brown picked up this point...

...I heard the same charges now being recycled by the IRD, Reader's Digest and 60 Minutes...

...Thompson noted that the Embassy of South Africa had distributed reprints of an August 1982 Reader's Digest article critical of the World Council of Churches, and that the IRD was featured in Rael Isaac's January 1983 article on the NCC...

...Lattimore was a sympathizer...

...Acheson was a patriotic public servant with whose policies McCarthy disagreed...

...And he added an innuendo: that the critics are doing the dirty work of the wealthy by trying to stymie the march of social justice which threatens to redistribute the wealth...

...Cockburn and Ridgeway's term "Reaganite" was less ugly, but no more accurate...

...One wonders if that is how Wicklein identifies himself...

...Owen Lattimore, who might justly have been called a Communist sympathizer, was instead called by McCarthy, the "top Soviet espionage agent'' in America...

...Potter, was that "the Salvation Army depends for its aid work . . . [on] large contributions from powerful groups that are involved economically and militarily in these countries," an accusation for which neither Dr...

...Finding such tactics as these employed in the pages of the Nation or the Voice will surprise few who have read those journals...

...During the course of the "60 Minutes" broadcast, Morley Safer observed that "one is careful in this kind of report...

...The issue over which the church establishment has most often impugned the motives of its critics is the charge by the critics that church resources allocated to-aid the poor have been used instead to underwrite far-Left political causes...

...Yet elsewhere in the same speech, he also impugned the motives of some critics who surely do "take their Christian faith seriously," Rev...

...What the FBI testified was this: The document...

...Reverend James M. Wall combined innuendo and guilt-by-association in a single editorial in Christian Century...

...Almost always, these were offered to the press by right-wing fringe groups...

...Or exaggerated ones...

...Perhaps we could find no better way to memorialize next year the thirtieth anniversary of the Senate's censure of Senator McCarthy than with an educational campaign designed to remind ourselves that the "ism" which bears his name is best identified by the form of an attack, not by its direction.e is best identified by the form of an attack, not by its direction...

...Scaife was the last owner of Forum World Features, a British-based news service which closed after its exposure as a CIA front...

...These charges were first aired by the Institute on Religion and Democracy.* They gained considerable amplification earlier this year when they were laid out in an article in Reader's Digest by Rael Jean Isaac and then on CBS's popular program, "60 Minutes...

...Readers of the Voice and Nation could thus see for themselves how CBS had exaggerated . . . except, that is, if they bothered to read the Congressional Hearings to which both the Voice and the Nation referred...

...We approach the thirtieth year since -Senator Joseph McCarthy passed from the political limelight, but there are still few sins writers and speakers are more loath to be accused of than "McCarthyism...

...The author was William P. Thompson, the Stated Clerk, or highest official, of the United Presbyterian Church...

...Fourth, innuendo...

...The innuendo in turn was embellished by what was at best an exaggeration-Wicklein's reference to "ultraconservative foundations and wealthy entrepreneurs of the right...

...To call them ultraconservative is equivalent to calling Wicklein ultraliberal...

...The prize for the best misrepresentation of a document in this controversy will, have to be shared by the Voice and the Nation...

...1981 American Spectator...

...Second, guilt by association...

...But the neatest example of guilt-by-falsely-imputed-association was the statement by Dr...

...But finding them in the statements of responsible church leaders and in the pages of the religious press is surprising...

...were raising would likely bring the charge of McCarthyism...

...I hold in my hand a list," said McCarthy more than once while waving paper containing something other than what he said it contained-) Each of these devices has been in evidence in the controversy surrounding the churches...

...She apparently based this charge on a July 1980 Nation "expose*" that did not even purport to show that the foundation had received or channeled CIA money, but rather that the foundation was the principal benefactor of a leadership training institute to which the CIA and the military have sent some of their executive personnel for workshops, as have a variety of colleges, universities, and corporations...

...The sad result will be that many who would have been cared for will die from disease and starvation while the critics drive by in their Cadillacs unseeing...

...His opponents in the Senate disagreed...

...In addition, Wicklein attributed guilt by association, when he said that what today's critics say sounds like what he remembers the right-fringe saying twenty years ago...

...If there were any truth to this line of attack, it would still be unduly self-righteous, but there is no truth to it at all...

...Though there is no consensus regarding the tactics that constitute McCarthyism, a basic list would include the following: First, impugning the motives of one's critics...

...According to Thompson, "The similarity of perspective and the coincidence in timing of these two articles raises questions," but he left it to his readers' imaginations to discover just what those questions, and their answers, might be...

...Ed Robb, theologian Richard Neuhaus, and other leaders of the Institute on Religion and Democracy...

...One result of the confusion is to inhibit criticism of pro-Communist attitudes for fear of the accusation of McCarthyism...

...McCarthy spoke of the "Acheson-Latti-more-Vincent-White-Hiss group.'' Hiss and White were Communists...

...McCar-thyism, they know, is an abomination, but they also know it is something aimed right to left, not left to right...

...The reference to Lefever's center was original to Cockburn and Ridge-way, but they offered no evidence, combining the tactics of false accusation and guilt-by-association...

...Said McCarthy, on the eve of his censure, about the Senate committees that had investigated his behavior: "The Communists have For a detailed examination of the "60 Minutes" program and the criticisms of it, see my "Pliant Protestants" in the New Republic, June 13,1983...

...The IRD has relied heavily on two highly respected foundations, Smith Richardson and Sarah Scaife, both of which have supported conservative causes...

...Vincent resigned from the State Department for having shown poor judgment in his relations with Communists...