A Mass of Lost History Uncovered

...A mass of lost history is hidden behind that papier-mâché mask of McCarthyism—which, a little like the "Funny Face" mask in front of the old Steeplechase Park in Coney Island, convinces the casual passerby that beyond it there must be a funny place, or maybe a funny farm...

...At times it has seemed as though the entire range of antiCommunist impulses has been eclipsed by the malevolently grinning features of...

...In fact, his lively mind is quick to seize on the quirks of human nature, making this volume compulsively readable...

...This is just such a book...

...Within the union movement, the American Federation of Labor was staunchly anti-Communist prior to World War II, and remained so throughout the conflict...

...When an author deals with matters as emotionally charged as these, to say that his treatment is "balanced" and "objective" might sound like damning with faint praise...

...As Peter Collier and David Horowitz argued in their devastating essay "McCarthyism: The Last Refuge of the Left" (Commentary, June 1988), whole episodes from the recent past have been removed from political discussion as a result of the belief, common among the half-informed, that any critical mention of Communism somehow violates a taboo against McCarthyism...

...In urging that the danger of Communism be taken more seriously by policymakers who seemed to have other things on their minds, the author himself maintains, anti-Communists of all stripes were "unacknowledged allies" (abhorrent though the idea was to many of them...

...They were hardly a "tightly disciplined pressure group," he writes...

...Sirgiovanni's depiction of anti-Communism as a persecuted and besieged faith during the War suggests a provocative thought: Even in its period of greatest strength—probably the post-war years to 1954—it was essentially what we would speak of today as a protest movement...

...Reviewed by Richard Gid Powers Professor of history, City University of New York...

...The notes alone amount to a comprehensive guide to the literature of American Communism and anti-Communism...

...Even in the more militant CIO, Sirgiovanni points out, the Communists lost ground because they advocated anti-strike pledges and production-boosting piecework systems...

...An Undercurrent of Suspicion rests on original research into the primary materials of wartime anti-Communism, but its survey of the secondary materials is one of the finest I have read...

...They raged over FDR's lack of concern for Eastern Europe—rightly, in Sirgiovanni's opinion: "However limited one believes FDR's options to have been, the fact remains that he did not fulfill the promises of the Atlantic Charter, at least not in Eastern Europe...

...Sirgiovanni pays particular tribute to the "Socialist perspective" on anti-Cornmunism...

...Indeed, there was surprisingly little ideological cohesion among them...

...He never forgets, either, that the people he is dealing with, whatever their political beliefs, are human beings...

...For them Communism was evil whether or not the Soviet Union was an important ally...

...During World War II, many fell prey to the delusion that because the USSR was performing prodigious work defeating Hitler—and because Stalin's loyal henchmen in the American Communist Party were supporting the War with Stakhanovite fervor—the Bolsheviks had been redeemed, and the CPUSA was now a loyal band whose patriotism made the American Legion look like one-worlders...

...For their pains they were denounced as collaborationists, traitors and Nazis...

...Against these serious misconceptions a"hardy, irascible" collection of anti-Communists protested loud and hard...

...It is rare to come away from a book feeling that a spirited writer capable of careful judgments has done exactly what he set out to do with distinction, and that the job was an important one...

...well, you know who...

...less well known are the charges leveled at the Republicans by the CIO's Political Action Committee, headed by Sidney Hillman—e.g...

...Smith...

...nevertheless, in this instance the words apply precisely...

...Sirgiovanni reminds us that America has always been a pluralistic society, and that American anti-Communists reflected their different ethnic, religious and class backgrounds...

...Yet not all of the blame rests with the Left, he hastenstoadd: "Beyond question, the Rightwing press misused its freedom by grossly exaggerating Communism's power in America, then claiming that FDR was part of this vast conspiracy...

...Dewey and his running-mate, John William Bricker, were reviled by the Communist Political Association as "appeasers and defeatists" who were plotting to "bring about a compromise peace with Nazism-Fascism and to establish a proFascist government within the United States...

...Now, in his path-breaking and enormously satisfying An Undercurrent of Suspicion, George Sirgiovanni explodes the idea that anti-Communism was ever a monolith, that figures such as, let us say, Sidney Hook, Joe McCarthy and Gerald L.K...

...For despite their basic dissimilarities and disagreements, they shared the conviction—later amply confirmed —that American interests were being sacrificed for Soviet benefit, especially at Teheran and Yalta...

...And he goes on to demonstrate this in painstakingly researched, thoroughly documented and brilliantly written anatomies of labor union anti-Communism, Catholic anti-Communism, fundamentalist Protestant anti-Communism, Socialist anti-Communism, and the anti-Communism of the Rightwing (where, finally, we do come to the proto-McCarthyite variety...

...author, "Secrecy and Power: The Life of J. Edgar Hoover" The myth of monolithic anti-Communism has perhaps been of even more consequence than the much-debated (though hardly mythic) notion of monolithic Communism...

...The Nation, the New Republic, and the writer George Seldes also seemed to take particular pleasure in taunting Right-wingers as being pro-Nazi...

...Although Sirgiovanni is certainly antiCommunist in his sympathies and has a knack for the memorably acid phrase, he avoids obtrusive theorizing and manages to maintain a consistently fair tone...

...That Thomas E. Dewey Red-baited the New Deal in the 1944 Presidential campaign is well known...

...With restrained indignation, Sirgiovanni shows how Communists and their fellow travelers used false charges of Fascist sympathies to lower the level of political life over the course of the War...

...Sirgiovanni's book deserves a place on the same shelf as Harvey Klehr's Heyday of American Communism and Joseph R. Starobin's American Communism in Crisis...

...Catholics launched their battle against the ideology long before the Russian Revolution, both as amatter of religious belief and because of the persecution the Church had suffered under revolutionary regimes...

...that "Joe Goebbels wasn't listed on the program, but the ideas of Hitler's master propagandist found expression in every major address delivered at the Republican National Convention...

...Smith all belonged to the same Konklave...

...Still, the different anti-Communist persuasions were never overtly cooperative, and any affinities among them were far less apparent than their antagonisms...

...I am impatient to see where George Sirgiovanni will next apply his gifts...

...In the United Auto Workers Walter Reuther consolidated his power by positioning himself against Communist proposals of this kind, all strongly opposed by the rank and file...

...This scurrilous charge was every bit as inaccurate as the claim that FDR was a Communist," notes Sirgiovanni...

...Taking up the Right, the author finds much that is reprehensible but he presents its arguments fastidiously, separating valid insights and honest motives from the activities of demagogues like Gerald L.K...

...In the years after Pearl Harbor, Sirgiovanni observes, the Right-wing press was "feverishly antiRoosevelt, anti-Communist, and antiSoviet...

...They worried that "the Soviet-American alliance would blur the politico-ideological lines and confuse Americans into accepting Communism as a respectable, even benign philosophy...

...Socialists were far better informed than anti-Communists to their Right, although no less vehement in their warnings about Stalin's designs on Europe...

...American Communists, inturn, "now in a pro-Administration phase and still second to none in their capacity for slanderous vituperation, accused the Right-wing press of contributing to the propaganda campaign being waged by the Axis...

...The Right-wing, Catholic and fundamentalist anti-Communists seldom refrained from Red-smearing those in the Socialist and labor camps, and the latter two could not help looking with revulsion at the political baggage the conservatives carried with such enthusiasm...