Blacklisting

When most of us see or hear the term “blacklisting,” we remember some aspects of the systematic elimination of certain Hollywood figures—actors, screenwriters and others—who were suspected of involvement in the Communist Party or even approval of its ideas. Of course they were not really “eliminated” but lost their jobs and many of their previous supporters. Some were never heard from again, a few even managed to regain some of their previous influence.

What I learned from Chris Hedges’ book, “Death of the Liberal Class” (featured in my Issue#39) is that the practice was much more widespread than we knew. It was actually a nationwide eradication of anyone who had ever expressed approval of any support for what were considered “radical” ideas. I need to quote rather extensively from Hedges’ book, because I can’t boil it down to a few sentences:

“The final purges of radicals included the blacklisting of writers, actors, directors, journalists, union leaders, politicians such as Henry Wallace, government employee, teachers, artists, and producers in the American film industry in the late 1940’s and early 1950’s. The purge was done with the collaboration of the liberal class. Americans for Democratic Action (ADA), for example, backed the witch hunts. These purges proved useful to the most ambitious, and often most morally suspect, people within liberal institutions, especially those who wanted to dispose of rivals. ‘In the course of this battle, liberals attacked liberals with more venom than they had ever directed at any economic royalist’,’ observed an ADA supporter. Wallace was discredited and finally exiled from political life as a communist sympathizer.

The complicity of the liberal class was, in part, a product of insecurity, especially since so many reformers and liberals had flirted with communism during the Depression, given the breakdown of capitalism in those years. But it was also the product of a craven careerism and desire for prestige and comfort.”

A desire for prestige and comfort, indeed! In fact, those two lures were major elements in the complete collapse of the liberal class in the remainder of the Twentieth Century, which is probably a good thing after all, because, as I have been saying throughout this digest, what we really need is a Radical Progressive Party, dedicated to reforming our entire financial and political system.

The ideal political system would be three parties: Progressives, Reactionaries and Moderates, Then, presumably, the Moderates could engineer reasonable compromises between the two more extreme parties. Our present two-party system is no longer viable.

Spoiler Alert: This is my final issue. Enough is enough.

I have said pretty much everything I wanted to say, without any significant effect. It would be fair to say that I have been somewhat disappointed by the nearly complete absence of any feedback (with a couple of much appreciated exceptions—you know who you are, thanks). If you read George Orwell’s quote that opened my next-to last issue, you know that I have always been well aware that my goal of undermining the (not so) Common Wisdom was doomed from the start, so I have been sustained by my long-standing belief that the process of writing and publishing my ideas provided the primary therapeutic benefit.

So, if any of you who are still reading this did appreciate it, I would welcome a few farewell good wishes. Any comment in the space provided at the bottom of this document is immediately forwarded to my email. If anyone thinks any of this digest is worth sharing, please suggest that they enter shorey.substack.com into their browser, and they will arrive at my “dashboard,” which provides immediate access to all the issues of my digest, including this one. Thanks. It has been fun…..