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April 4, 2005
Book Review - "Commies", by Ronald Radosh
Some of the most revealing insights into the minds of true communists can be had by reading the testimonials of those who once believed but have had "second thoughts." "Witness", Whittaker Chambers autobiography, is perhaps the best-known of this genre. It set the standard by which all others are measured. Although not at that level, "Commies: A Journey Through the Old Left, the New Left, and the Leftover Left" (2001), by Ronald Radosh, makes a valuable addition to our knowledge of the communist mindset and is well worth purchasing.
Born a "red diaper baby" in 1937, he grew up surrounded by communists. He went to "commie camp", where he saw guests such as Paul Robeson and Pete Seeger perform. Among campers were the children of Julius and Ethel Rosenberg. It was a matter of faith that the Rosenbergs were innocent victims of American fascist repression.
Radosh adopted the communist viewpoint on all political matters and became an activist at a young age. In college he helped found and write for several far-left publications. He pursued graduate studies, eventually obtaining his PhD and becomming a professor at the Queensborough Community College, part of the City College of New York.
Radosh was a member of the "New Left", which formed during the 1960's. They used this term to distinguish themselves from what they then called the "Old Left", who were the communists of the 1920's and 30's and who's primary allegiance was to the Soviet Union. The New Left had no love for the Soviets, but saw the future of the revolution embodied in states such as Castro's Cuba or North Vietnam. However, like the Old Left, and in keeping with good communist tradition, they saw their main enemies as being those who we today would call "liberals". The problem with liberals is that they wanted to reform the system, not overthrow it.
Radosh was quite active in his opposition to the Vietnam war, joining a group that advocated unilateral American withdrawal. But despite their pacifist rhetoric, their true purposes were quite different: "Our intention was never so much to end the war as to use antiwar sentiment to create a new revolutionary socialist movement at home. David Horowitz, a contemporary of Radosh and today the conservative editor of FrontPageMag.com, wrote much the same thing in his autobiography, "Radical Son".
Three events led to Radosh's break with the left. The first was his wife's experience as a professor in her women's studies department where she was a professor. Allis, his wife, believed like any good liberal that women needed their own studies department. However, while she argued that a conservative as well as a liberal or leftist could be a feminist, her collegues vociferously disagreed. Black lesbian left-wing feminists claimed to be the most oppressed, and demanded that everyone else go along. Those who did not were made to feel guilty.
The second event was a trip to Cuba he took with fellow leftists. They took the standard-government organized sight-seeing tours to hospitals and factories, all designed to make Castro's "workers paradise" look as good as possible. Many or most on the trip accepted what their guide told them, but several others, including Radosh, began to have doubts. As he relates, "over and over on the junket we saw workers accepting dreadful working conditions without any precepible complaints." They went to a psychiatric hospital where homosexuals were kept (imprisoned, really) alongside insane patients. And they could not help but to notice that their trip leader, Sandy Levinson, received extra-special treatment in her hotel room, even to the point of getting daily shipments of otherwise illegal marijuana.
The last straw was the demolishing of the myth that the Rosenbergs were innocent of espionage. This had been an article of faith among leftists. Radosh had bought into the myth, and by his own account it had preoccupied him for most of his life. When Radosh started to reseach the case himself, it was with the avowed intent to prove that they were the victims of a government frame-up. What he found shocked him to the core: that far from being innocent political victims, they were in fact spies for the Soviet Union.
Eventually he published his findings in a book co-authored with Joyce Milton called "The Rosenberg File" (1983). In the book they lay out their findings, which are essentially that although the government did act badly, their trial was not entirely fair, and their lawyer missed many opportunities, their was no doubt as to their actual guilt.
The book provoked a backlash among the left, and Radosh was essentially drummed out of the movement. He held onto some leftist beliefs for several years, initially supporting the Sandinista communists in Nicaragua, for example. Eventually, however, he came to see the truth about them and ended up supporting their overthrow.
Radosh does not make his current political beliefs clear. Unlike David Horowitz, he may not had become a conservative, although he is listed as a columnist for Horowitz' frontpagemag.com
All in all, while not a book of earthshattering insight, it makes a valuable addition to my collection and is recommended reading.
Posted by Tom at April 4, 2005 10:10 AM
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