Joel A Lewis Youth Against Fascism.pdf

YOUTH AGAINST FASCISM
53. John Earl Haynes, Harvey Klehr and Kyrill M. Anderson, The Soviet World of American Communism (New Haven: Yale
University Press, 1998). Outside of scholarly collaboration on a variety of projects, Haynes and Klehr authored a 1992
publication that closed with the statement that, "American communism is a sad tale of wasted commitment and wasted
life." To their scholarly credit, Haynes and Klehr included a lengthy chapter addressing the role and development of the
YCL and their interaction with other youth movements. See John Earl Haynes and Harvey Klehr, The American Communist
Movement: Storming Heaven Itself (New York: Twayne Publishers, 1992), 182.
54. Ellen Schrecker, "Review of The Soviet World of American Communism," The Journal of American History 85, no.4
(March, 1999): 1647-1648.
55. See John Earl Haynes and Harvey Klehr, Venona: Decoding Soviet Espionage In America (New Haven: Yale University
Press, 1999).
56. For a revisionist critique of Haynes and Klehr and the larger phenomenon of Cold War "triumphalism" see Cold War
Triumphalism : The Misuse Of History After The Fall Of Communism, ed. Ellen Schrecker (New York: New Press, 2004).
To their credit, Haynes and Klehr deemed Senator McCarthy's campaigns "reckless," but have concluded that the intense
anti-communist campaigns were completely warranted.
57. See John Earl Haynes and Harvey Klehr, In Denial: Historians, Communism, & Espionage (San Francisco: Encounter
Books, 2003). Haynes and Klehr did identify Maurice Isserman as an example of what they considered a "good revisionist,"
but posited their blanket denunciations against all other historians who questioned their conclusions and approach.
58. Propaganda analysis became intimately linked with totalitarian theory during the Cold War. Prior to the Cold War, propaganda
analysis made extensive use of communist literature to explain the phenomenon of Western communism, not to explicitly
condemn it. In a 1939 article, two of the pioneering American theorists of propaganda studies defined propaganda
as "the manipulation of symbols to influence controversial attitudes." Within the same journal in 1951, propaganda came
to be accepted as "defined broadly as ranging from agitation to political education, becomes the means of transmission, the
essential link of expression, at once highly rigid and infinitely flexible, which continually enlightens the masses, prepares
them, leads them gradually to join the vanguard." This trend within propaganda studies was not new within the Cold War,
but was greatly intensified by totalitarian theory. The tactic of linking together the Communist and Fascist movements as
totalitarian relatives became a regular feature of propaganda studies that still survives after the end of the Cold War. During
WWII, William Garber evaluated the roots and implications of "propaganda studies" contending: "The Institute for
Propaganda Analysis, which devoted itself to the critical survey of current propaganda, has suspended its operations for
the duration of the war. The reason given is interesting: that the approach utilized by the Institute might serve to disturb the
unity needed for the war effort. This serves to raise several questions. Was there not something defective about the type of
analysis employed by the Institute that its directors were forced to the conclusion that they might be hindering national defense
Might not propaganda analysis be employed to strengthen a democracy's unity and morale Was there not something
fallacious in the Institute's definition of propaganda, in that it made no distinction between truth and falsity, between
good and evil, but labeled as propaganda everything which is "the expression of opinion or action by individuals or groups
deliberately designed to influence opinions or actions of other individuals or groups with reference to predetermined
ends"" See Harold D. Lasswell and Dorothy Blumenstock, "The Volume of Communist Propaganda in Chicago," The
Public Opinion Quarterly 3, no. 1 (Jan., 1939), 63; Jean-Marie Domenach, "Leninist Propaganda," The Public Opinion
Quarterly 15, no. 2 (Summer, 1951), 265; J. A. Lynch, "The Role of Propaganda in a Liberal Democracy," Peabody Journal
of Education 17, no. 6 (May, 1940), 370-371; William Garber, "Propaganda Analysis-To What Ends" The American
Journal of Sociology 48, no. 2 (Sep., 1942), 240.
59. Marvin Bressler, "Mass Persuasion and the Analysis of Language: A Critical Evaluation," Journal of Educational Sociology
33, no. 1 (Sep., 1959): 18-19.
60. See V.I. Lenin, "The Three Sources and Three Component Parts of Marxism," in V.I. Lenin Internet Archive
.
61. V.I. Lenin, "The Tasks of the Youth Leagues: Speech Delivered At The Third All-Russia Congress of The Russian Young
Communist League," in The V.I. Lenin Internet Archive .
62. On the subject of political newspapers Lenin stated, "In our opinion, the starting-point of our activities, the first step towards
creating the desired organisation, or, let us say, the main thread which, if followed, would enable us steadily to develop,
deepen, and extend that organisation, should be the founding of an All-Russian political newspaper. A newspaper is
what we most of all need… The role of a newspaper, however, is not limited solely to the dissemination of ideas, to political
education, and to the enlistment of political allies. A newspaper is not only a collective propagandist and a collective
agitator, it is also a collective organiser. In this last respect it may be likened to the scaffolding round a building under
construction, which marks the contours of the structure and facilitates communication between the builders, enabling them
to distribute the work and to view the common results achieved by their organised labour. With the aid of the newspaper,
and through it, a permanent organisation will naturally lake shape that will engage, not only in local activities, but in regular
general work, and will train its members to follow political events carefully, appraise their significance and their effect
on the various strata of the population, and develop effective means for the revolutionary party to influence these events."
See V.I. Lenin, "Where to Begin," in The V.I. Lenin Internet Archive .
63. For communists, propaganda promoted a certain form of political education that linked theory with concrete practical
activities. At the Second Comintern Congress, Willie Münzenberg of the YCI, who later became the chief Comintern
propagandist in Western Europe, reflected on the differences between the three Internationals in terms of propaganda and
activities stating, " If the First International predicted the development of the future and tried to find the paths it would
take, and if the Second International rallied and organised the proletariat, then the Communist International is the International
of open mass action, the International of revolutionary realisation, of the deed… That is the great practical success
of revolutionary propaganda, and it is far more valuable for the proletarian revolution than the issue of a thousand new
party cards." See "Minutes of the Second Congress of the Communist International: Evening Session of July 29," in The
History of the Communist International Internet Archive ;
Helmut Gruber, "Willi Munzenberg's German Communist Propaganda Empire 1921-1933," The
Journal of Modern History 38, no.3 (September, 1966): 278-297.
64. Linda Colley, Britons: Forging the Nation 1707-1837 (New Haven: Yale UP, 1992), 5-6. For a recent study on the evolution
of communist identity see Cris Shore, Italian Communism: The Escape From Leninism (London: Pluto, 1990).
65. William Glaser reflected on the "dualist" nature of political propaganda during the Cold War era. Glaser reflected on how
communist propaganda invoked a "two-valued orientation" that "characteristically arrange all the approved concepts in
one pile and all disapproved concepts in the another. They then use the concepts with the favourable connotations to de-
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