Sidney Hook’s Heresy Yes, Conspiracy No, published in 1953, tried to weave a way between the excesses of McCarthyism and what its author took to be the naive indifference to the real dangers of Soviet communism rampant among American liberals. Mostly known now as an embarrassing if well intentioned attack on Academic Freedom at the hight of the Red Scare, the book is actually an insightful exploration of the limits of liberal tolerance and the paradoxes of the liberal impulse to embrace illiberal beliefs in the name of free speech. If nothing else it can be read now as a reminder that today’s culture wars have deep roots. But Hook’s insights find eerie echos in todays shrill and divided politics.
Cultural Vigilantes and Tribal Liberals
Hook was convinced international Communism posed a serious risk to the US in the 1950s. Pointing to a blueprint laid down by Lenin himself, Hook describes how Communist Party members were intent on infiltrating “all organizations without exception…(political, industrial, military, cooperative, educational, sports).” Once embedded, these operatives would subvert the aims of these organization so that they would promote the interests of the USSR while undermining support for the American democracy. In the limit they would become organs of sabotage and espionage. Hook was also convinced that, as of the early 50s anyway, the US had mustered only a lackluster and ineffective response to this danger. While Americans across the political spectrum had rallied against Hitler even before the full horrors of Nazism had been revealed, a frustrated Hook felt nearly alone among prominent intellectuals in speaking out against the by then undeniable evils of Stalinism.
To what extent Hook’s fears were warranted I will leave to historians to decide, though we can certainly say the dangers were not imaginary—the CPUSA and its front organizations really were doing the things Hook was accusing them of doing. What is of interest here though is Hook’s desire to place at least part of the blame for Communist successes on two kinds of Americans who, he firmly believed, were equally bad at reading the signs of the times. The ‘Cultural Vigilante’ is one kind, the anti-Communist himself as typified by various clownish people like Joseph McCarthy. The other was the ‘Ritual Liberal’, the kind of progressive who could be counted on to muster more righteous outrage at the usually hapless antics of the vigilantes than the genuine horrors of Moscow and its minions.
Hook captures perfectly the dance of these two sides in the early incarnation of what we now call the Culture Wars. While motivated by real dangers, the vigilantes quickly came to lump a motley group of dubious evils under the increasingly meaningless label of ‘Communist’ and quickly excelled at finding imaginary subversives wherever they looked, which was pretty much everywhere. Most distastefully, more than a few on this of the divide deliberately stoked and exploited people’s fear to fight perfectly legitimate political policies they opposed:
With growing boldness, they see to exploit the perfectly legitimate opposition of the American community to Communist influence and penetration, in order to make it appear that those who differ with them on subjects which have no relevance whatsoever to communism are consciously or consciously giving aid and comfort to subversion…Teacher, government officials, editors and others in positions of quasi-public trust are pilloried because they do not see eye to eye with these groups on issues with would have been open, controversial questions even if Russian democracy had never be overthrown by the Bolsheviks.
Even when well intentioned, the work of American anti-Communism was often at odds with the nation’s historic commitment to civil liberties. The chilling effects of McCarthyism and red baiting, and laws such as the Smith Act, were real enough to provoke a legitimate response from the liberal left, which is where Hook’s sympathies were to be found. He agreed there was a fight to be had in preserving freedom of speech, due process, and academic freedom even in the struggle against Communism.
But Hook was equally incensed by the tribal liberals who pretended the range and depth of civil freedoms in mid-Century America were no better than what was found in the USSR or Hitler’s Germany. Nor did he have any sympathy for those who would casually throw the word ‘fascism’ around when describing the American right:
On the basis of one or another deplorable incident, loud outcries have been raised in the press and on the platform that we are on the verge of fascism. Orators with greater eloquence than discriminating judgment announce that we are already living in a police or garrison state, and that our traditional Bill of Rights functions only as a deceptive ritual to conceal the ugly facts of repression. Predictions have been freely made that before long we will be officially burning books in the street.
Hook targeted in particular Intellectuals who pretended the US was no better than a colonial power or a fascist or Stalinist state who he felt were contemptible in their dishonesty and little better than deliberate fellow travelers. By providing the Kremlin with ready made anti-American propaganda, these people were effectively doing its bidding regardless of their declared political leanings
The dynamics between the two groups were inescapable. Anti-Communist silliness—an ill considered firing in a “small college in the West” or a circus of a Congressional hearing or a philistine attack on an unobjectionable book or popular film—would provoke an overheated response from the tribal liberals in academia or Congress or the entertainment business. They would issue dire warnings of the authoritarianism on the rise in America and express their sympathies with the supposed Communists. This in turn would encourage further exaggerations of the extent of Communist infiltration in schools and colleges and Hollywood, producing another round of dubious firings or political hearings or attacks on school boards or libraries. And so it went. And in the meantime the real Communist threat—ignored by both sides—grew apace. Or so it seemed to Hook.
Contemporary Parallels
By now America’s mid-Century worries of Communist infiltration, and the rightwing backlash those worries encouraged, are topics of historical research. The names of those embroiled in Red Scare witch hunts, HUAC hearings, and Hollywood blacklists are mostly forgotten, as are never much enforced pieces of legislation that once excited J. Edger Hoover and horrified liberals. The political dynamics Hook describes, however, seem to have lingered and are enjoying a remarkable resurgence.
Yesterday’s anti-Communism now campaign against Critical Race Theory, Wokeness, Cancel Culture, Marxism, Cultural Marxism, the Frankfurt School, Critical Theory, Hegel, Kant—the list goes on, and seems to grow daily. The perceived threats are just those Hook saw in real Communism—infiltration of cultural institutions, the indoctrination of the young into anti-American ideologies, and the eventual overthrow of American democracy in the name of some kind of socialist alternative.
Immediately familiar too is the litany of overreactions to which this side of the culture wars is prone: ill-considered laws of dubious constitutionality, indiscriminate targeting of politicians and professors and school boards and books, reckless accusations about the left wing agenda of the Democrats, Hollywood and social media, indifference to the guilt and innocence of individuals targeted for termination or public harassment, and the deliberate inclusion of everything disliked by the political right under the umbrella of CRT, wokeness, cancel culture, or—still, when all else fails—Communism. Aside from the shifting vocabulary, the biggest difference between todays vigilantes and those of 1953 is the stunningly open cynicism and contempt for liberal institutions of the former.
Today’s liberals too often play to type as well. Finding ever new ways to convict American conservatives of being ‘literal fascists’ animates more than one prominent Twitter account and remains a reliable route to a book contract and social media notoriety. The reduction of American history to the worst of its racists dimensions wins Pulitzer prizes and provides America’s current ideological rivals with easy anti-American propaganda, while the drum beat of anti-wokeness inanities are paraded as evidence of an immanent authoritarian clampdown. Meanwhile, the strains in contemporary American progressive thought with no more respect for the ideals of expressive freedom than state legislators banning Critical Race Theory are ignored or downplayed or excused.
Le plus ça change indeed.