U.S. Politics & Government - 20th Century, 20th Century American History - Politics & Government - General & Miscellaneous, 20th Century American History - Cold War, Communist Parties & Movements

Not Without Honor

Name: Not Without Honor
Author: Richard Gid Powers
ISBN: 9780684824277

by Richard Gid Powers

Write a review

Overview

In the first full-scale history of American anticommunism, Richard Gid Powers - author of a widely praised biography of J. Edgar Hoover - reminds us what this struggle was really about. Bringing to life such figures as Whitakker Chambers, Sidney Hook, Hamilton Fish, Roy Cohn, and Clare Booth Luce, Powers documents the complex history of this volatile movement - with its ethnic and religious antagonisms, political warfare, and ideological crusades - and reveals it to be not a marginal alliance of eccentrics, superpatriots, and xenophobes but a mainstream political movement that was as varied as America itself. There were Jewish anticommunists, Protestants, blacks, and Catholics; there were Socialists, union leaders, businessmen, and conservatives; there were ex-Communists and former fellow travelers. They quarreled among themselves about philosophy, tactics, and everything else except the evil of communism itself. For above all, Powers shows, theirs was a movement whose ideas and political initiatives were rooted not in ignorance and fear, but in real knowledge and experience of the Communist system.

Ironically, the Western victory over communism has led us to conclude that the Soviet Union was never a serious threat, and that the decades-long "Cold War" was fueled by misguided hysteria. In this first, full-scale history of the volatile American anticommunist movement--with its ethnic and religious antagonisms, political warfare and ideological crusades--Powers forcefully reminds us what this struggle was all about. Photos.

Reviews

There are no reviews yet. Log in to write one.

Editorials

Gilbert Taylor

In the author's view, the Red scares lent cartoonish discredit to sober anticommunism, so Powers means to rehabilitate the "ism" during the years 1917 to 1989 by telling what Americans were anticommunist, why, and what publicity they generated. Powers' stage is wholly domestic politics, with context about international events tacked on, and on that stage, Powers discerns a quartet comprising the anticommunist cast: "countersubversives" such as the FBI, liberal internationalists, labor unions, and the Catholic Church. Opposing them were the real domestic communists, until they petered out after their 1930s heyday, succeeded by the "anti-anti-communists," personified in civil libertarians and exemplified in the Carterian ridicule of Americans' "inordinate fear of communism." That phrase may stand as the standard of complacency about communism, with McCarthy-type conspiracymongers exemplifying reds-under-our-beds hysteria. In this factual rendering of organizations and their leaders, Powers proceeds far toward separating the real anticommunists from the crackpot fringe, making this a capable addition to the oeuvre about communism. Students will be principal users, followed by the occasional browser.

Sean Wilentz

"[jPowers's] provocative narrative history bring[s] to life certain segments of anti-Communist opinion that have largely been forgotten." -- New York Times Book Review