Historians In Denial About Communism

FrontPageMagazine.com ^ | 1/06/04 | Jacob Gershman, NY SUN

[kattracks]

This story illustrates how the domination of the university and literary culture by the political left protects Communist totalitarians and their apologists in today’s academy. -- David Horowitz.

The book was called “an indictment of the historical profession.” It was hailed as an “explosive expose” that would “send shock waves” through American history departments.

But four months after it was published, In Denial: Historians, Communism, and Espionage hasn’t generated much of a reaction in academia.

Far from igniting a firestorm of debate, John Earl Haynes’s and Harvey Klehr’s 316-page condemnation of “revisionist” historians of American communism has fallen victim to silence.

The authors say they have received little response from the scholars they criticize in the book for glossing over communism’s crimes and the American Communist Party’s involvement in Soviet espionage.

Liberal mainstream publications largely ignored the book, with reviews mostly appearing in conservative newspapers and magazines, such as the Washington Times, Commentary Magazine, and the Weekly Standard.

“I anticipated there would be more reaction than there has been,” Mr. Klehr, a professor of history and politics at Emory University, said. “I thought we made some fairly serious charges against a large number of historians. We accused some of these people of being the equivalent of Holocaust deniers.”

The lack of reaction to In Denial is a reflection of the difficulty that anticommunist historians, such as Mr. Klehr and Mr.Haynes, have had in challenging the academic establishment on its assessment of American communism.

“Those who disagree with it are at the margins of the profession,” Mr. Haynes, a 20th-century political historian in the Manuscript Division of the Library of Congress, said.

In recently written books, The Secret World of American Communism and Venona: Decoding Soviet Espionage in America, Mr. Klehr and Mr. Haynes used information they collected from newly opened Soviet archives to show how the American Communist Party was heavily involved in Soviet espionage. In Denial takes aim at historians who “have failed to confront new evidence.”

A number of the historians targeted by Messrs. Klehr and Haynes say they haven’t read the book.

Several said the authors misrepresented their views, but few have offered a rebuttal.

Some expressed surprise they were mentioned at all.

“It amazed me that anybody would devote that much attention to my work,” Ellen Schrecker, a professor of history at Yeshiva University, said.

The book quotes her stating that anti-communism “tap[ped] into something dark and nasty in the human soul” and that “whatever harm may have come to the country from Sovietsponsored spies is dwarfed by Mc-Carthy’s wave of terror.”

In an interview with The New York Sun, Ms. Schrecker said the history of American communism was no longer a “live issue.”

“Where is communism today? Where is the contemporary relevance?” she said.

Ms. Schrecker said she is “as anti-Stalinist as the next person.”But she remains opposed to anti-communism, which she says has “tended to support a lot of political repression.”

The book accuses Paul Buhle, a senior lecturer at Brown University, of making up claims that American communists provided military assistance to Israel in 1948.

Mr. Buhle told the Sun he hasn’t read the book. “I’m not fretting about it,” he said. “To be attacked by neoconservatives is a badge of honor.”

Mr. Klehr and Mr. Haynes also go after Victor Navasky,publisher and editorial director of The Nation and a professor of journalism at Columbia University, accusing him of justifying Soviet espionage and “excusing those who engaged in it.”

They quote Mr. Navasky stating that most those who spied for the Soviet Union were “patriots.”

Mr. Navasky called the book “wrong and just false. [The authors] were factually incorrect. Of course, I believe there was Soviet espionage.”

Mr. Haynes maintains his book’s accuracy.

Another target, Eric Foner, a historian of the Civil War and Reconstruction at Columbia University who has written about American communism, says he hasn’t read In Denial.

“I don’t even know why they are picking on me,” he said.

[backhoe]

That Bloody Century Pass'd-

[Support Free Republic]

Support Free Republic!

[justa-hairyape]

“To be attacked by neoconservatives is a badge of honor.”

That should read
'To be defenseless when under attack from neoconservatives is a badge of dishonor'.

Apparently they are even having problems with getting present day events correct.

[chicagolady]

Liberal Wacko's.......


You have to believe that the only reason Communism hasn't worked
anywhere it's been tried is because the right people haven't been in
charge.

[ppaul]

You have to believe that the only reason Communism hasn't worked anywhere it's been tried is because the right people haven't been in charge.

Yep.
That's what just about every public school teacher told me from third grade through high school.

[Arthur Wildfire! March]

Did the author of this book ask Hannity for an interview? That's been the key to successful anti-leftist books lately. Sounds to me that they are looking for the fox to arrest itself for being in the hen house.

[samtheman]

Sounds to me that they are looking for the fox to arrest itself for being in the hen house.

My thought exactly. What's the complaint here, that the criminal leftists professors aren't helping the authors publicize a book exposing criminal leftist professors? That's a silly complaint.

Go out and do the publicity yourself. Contact conservative student organizations. Get the word out on campuses around the country. Of course the criminal leftist professors aren't going to help you do that.

[RaceBannon]

On a few website bulletin boards, I have used the term PEACE NAZI to describe the peace movement in general, and one person asked me for an explanation as to what the term means and why I say it. Here is my answer:

It is intentionally derogatory, and I use it because I believe it has to be said.

It has to do with the foundation of the PEACE movement in the US and abroad and their Communist foundation, and how the majority of the signs held and slogans chanted are not about peace or genuine concern for the people of two warring countries, it is about the anti-American attitudes and the violence-inducing signs and slogans calling for violence against American Troops and President Bush.

Carrying signs calling on troops to kill their officers, to bomb Texas, for Bush to choke on a pretzel and die, for troops to shoot their officers, signs that call for communist revolution, starting fights with people who disagree with you while carrying a peace sign, trying to steal my money in Boston while carrying a peace sign and then telling me because you were shamed into giving back the money that means you are ok after all...

Things like that.

I will NOT stop using it. It is intended to make the peace protestor think.

After all the horrors we found in Iraq, you should all be thankful we went in and invaded to remove that madman. Yet, the mantra has changed, it is now against occupation! Still, not one PEACE NAZI has apologized and admitted we were right. All they do is complain that a people that were under slavery for 30 years have gone looting, and who do they blame? Why the US!! We did nothing to stop it! Maybe because we stayed out of the crowd because the PEACE NAZIS would have complained we didn’t let them vent their anger??

(As a side note, people who are now called PEACE NAZIS didn’t call on the LAPD or Federal Troops to stop the LA riots after the Rodney King riots, did they? They told us all to step back and let them vent their anger, yet all of a sudden, we are supposed to go in and use force to stop rioters in Iraq?)

We never intended to occupy a country like SYRIA has the last 20 years, and where are the PEACE NAZIS and their signs calling on SYRIA to leave Lebanon? They are non existent. The Syrians killed tens of thousands, chasing little children into bedrooms and shooting them point blank.

Did you know there was a Christian Community in Beirut before 1985? Now, they are almost either all killed or fled from the Syrian backed Junta, and not a peep from the PEACE NAZIS, only against American forces sent to Beirut to keep peace. Why arent the PEACE NAZIS arguing for the return of the Christian Community back to Beirut where they lived for 2 Millennium?

In fact, there is not a single country that we ever went to war with that we stayed as the government power for more than 10 years! We always returned it to the people.

And that brings up another point: PEACE NAZIS are NOT against war, they are against wars that the US is engaged in to overthrow pro-Communist or PRO-radical Islamic regimes or PRO-Maoist/PRO-Stalinist regimes.

My point here, is simple: These COMMIES are not for peace. If they were, they would have been screaming about Clinton killing innocents to keep his sexual scandals off the tv,

they would have been screaming for the Hutus and Tutsis to make peace,

they would have been screaming for that madman Saddam to stop killing Kurds or Iranians,

they would have been screaming for the Turks to stop killing Kurds or Greeks,

they would have been screaming for the Chinese to stop killing Vietnamese in 1982,

they would have been screaming for the Angolan Army to stop killing with the help of the Cuban Army in the 1980's,

they would have been screaming for the Muslims to stop killing Christians in Indonesia

They would have been screaming for the Sudanese to stop the torture and slave trade which continues today

They would have been screaming when the Syrians invaded Lebanon in 1985

They would have been screaming when Pol Pot started a genocide in 1975,

They would be screaming now about Mugabe killing all the white farmers in Africa in Zimbabwe

They would have been screaming at the murders caused by the African National Congress and their necklacing of prisoners and at Winnie Mandela who was convicted of murder, yet the communists are silent

They would have been screaming about Tiananmen Square, but they are silent.

They would have been screaming about the repression in Cuba and why so many people have chosen to flee in rickety little boats, but instead they lionize that dictator, Castro

They would have been screaming about the invasion of South Vietnam where the north started a genocide campaign in direct violation of the Paris Peace Accords of 1973 and caused over 2 million Vietnamese to flee in little boats that got picked up by ships like mine in 1981

They would be screaming at the Palestinians for their suicide bombings that intentionally target innocent school age children


Except, the only time they scream is when the US is at war against a tyrant who is support by Russia.

And since NAZI is one of the most vile insults you can give someone in our last two generations, I call them PEACE NAZIS, for they are not for peace, they are for war, they are for the overthrow of my country and into communism and anarchy, and they are a violent bunch who base their foundation on lies and the telling of lies and the repeating of lies.

[maestro]

Historians In Denial About Communism

naw,...not scientific,Darwinist,Pavlov,Freud,Jung,Evolutionist,...Godless-Jesus-hating,...Nazi-Socialist-Communism?

naw,....can't be......oops,

Gotta go now and watch Amerikan Media T.V.,....movie

/sarcasm

[ClearCase_guy]

bump for later

[Ronly Bonly Jones]

“Where is communism today? Where is the contemporary relevance?” she said>>

Ask the Red Deans. Ask the Stalinists who exterminate the children. Ask the sodomists who want your daughter to not be married to a man because marriage is judgmentally Krischun.

[iopscusa]

Thanks RaceB,
This has to one of the all-time Best rants, only wish I could express my distaste for these Peace-Nazi / Socialist / Stalinist fools as well as you.

[sauropod]

read later

[Just mythoughts]

So true, one can only imagine what the past 3 years would have been like if algore had stolen that election.

[Molly Pitcher]

You read this book recently, didn't you?

[PGalt]

Outstanding! Thanks.

[StonyBurk]

I enlisted in the US army in June of 1969 --after the enemy
within had begun to dismantle the Citizen Soldier -Code Blue programs. Thankfully the military is loath to ever get
rid of anything once introduced --and so we benefitted from
fragments of that training.It seems to me as if we won the
Cold War-- but have been defeated by an enemy we refused to
comprehend.As with many of my peers I entered active duty
from an America that no longer existed by end of my tour of
active duty.Those who feared most what McCarthy exposed,
have won a nation-but they have broken trust in so doing.

[Gunrunner2]

Damn. . .good one.

[The Raven]

Yep....actually have a couple of chapters to go.