Oh, If I Could Only Be a Communist

One of the stranger features of the current university scene is a nostalgia for the Popular Front alliance between liberalism and Communism that began in 1935. For example, Ellen Schrecker, who teaches history at Princeton, has recently published a book, No Ivory Tower, about the post-World War II struggles over Communists in the academy. She has done a good, scholarly job of researching the various cases and committees; she sets down who was fired, who took the Fifth Amendment, who cooperated with the investigations, and so forth. If you need information in this area, No Ivory Tower is your major source. But the weird thing about the book is that Ellen Schrecker, teaching history at Princeton, apparently does not think there is anything wrong with being a Communist. In fact she seems to think the Popular Front Communists of the 1930s were among nature’s noblemen.

Now I don’t suppose any reader of national review needs to be reminded that in 1935 Josef Stalin noticed the increasingly looming presence of Adolf Hitler on his doorstep and decided to make a survival alliance with liberal democrats in the Western democracies. These liberal democrats suddenly were no longer “social fascists” but “men of goodwill” and “honest liberals.” Earl Browder, instructed by Moscow, declared that Communism was twentieth-century Americanism.

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Jeffrey Hart

Jeffrey Hart is a contributor to National Review.

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One of the stranger features of the current university scene is a nostalgia for the Popular Front alliance between liberalism and Communism that began in 1935. For example, Ellen Schrecker, who teaches history at Princeton, has recently published a book, No Ivory Tower, about the post-World War II struggles over Communists in the academy. She has done a good, scholarly job of researching the various cases and committees; she sets down who was fired, who took the Fifth Amendment, who cooperated with the investigations, and so forth. If you need information in this area, No Ivory Tower is your major source. But the weird thing about the book is that Ellen Schrecker, teaching history at Princeton, apparently does not think there is anything wrong with being a Communist. In fact she seems to think the Popular Front Communists of the 1930s were among nature’s noblemen.

Now I don’t suppose any reader of national review needs to be reminded that in 1935 Josef Stalin noticed the increasingly looming presence of Adolf Hitler on his doorstep and decided to make a survival alliance with liberal democrats in the Western democracies. These liberal democrats suddenly were no longer “social fascists” but “men of goodwill” and “honest liberals.” Earl Browder, instructed by Moscow, declared that Communism was twentieth-century Americanism.