A curious thing about the stacking and categorizing of books at… a local prominent bookstore.  There is this huge swarth of books pegged under the category “Culture Wars”.  These books are almost universally useless, affirmative to your tribe I suppose.  Across the aisle, the books get divided into — say — “Conservative”, “Liberal”, “Far Right”, and then there’s “Marxist” and “Left”.  Arguably, your “Culture Wars” can be slotted around these parts, but the management appears to have come to a judgement call not to put the latest Glenn Beck book next to Edmund Burke.  (But, I guess, Horowitz fits the bill?)

And then things get a little fuzzier.  A couple of months ago, I picked up, read a few pages, then put down “The Whole of Their Lives”, a 1965 republishing of a 1948 ex-Communist work.  This time, I picked up one of their two copies and bought it — sold due to the inside first page stamp which identified the book as having been part of the library of the local chapter of the John Birch Society.  I think the publisher imprint — “Americanist Library” — follows the book as published by them, but I’d have to do that quick google search to find out.  (Answer in the affirmative.)

Why is this under “Conservative Studies”?  It is a jeremiad against a “left-wing” creature — the American Communist Party.  I suppose at the mark of the mid point of the last century, American Conservatism was defined as largely a negative force opposed to foreign and domestic Communism, and yet go over to the section marked “Far Right” and very few of these books on fascism, Militia Movement, or the Klan are pro-fascism, militia, or Klan.  Though, to puzzle the category further, sitting there — somewhere alongside a book extrapolating out a Pat Buchanan presidential victory in 1996 forty years to a Dark Fascist Future — why, it’s the 1960 and 1961 editions of the John Birch Society White Book!

Oh.  And in case, you are curious.  Children of Satan.  The book atop card tables four or six years ago, all of your “Children of Satan”s bound into one handy volume for your “Children of Satan” needs.  The cover holds “Suggested donation: #15”.  Leaf through it, and I see that the previous owner went to a few “progressive” sounding things in San Francisco.  Must have been a Right wing nut.

I read a couple paragraphs, where these bookmarks leave me, and I learn that the DLC was formed as a way for the Democratic Party financiers to deal away with the surging “Larouche Wing” of the Democratic Party.  I feel stupider for having read it.  As I do round about here.:
2010 is the year all those who agree with LaRouche must come out publicly and say so, and support the LaRouche Plan. […i] Join us on the front lines, and enjoy striking a blow for freedom.
Wait.  The Larouche Party World Superstructure (German cadres Unite!) is now going to get out of the submerged Underground!  Fantastic!  Now that everyone’s been instructed to come out full force, we’ll now have a full reckoning of numbers in support.

A quick check, and the recentish publication of Chaitkin/Tarpley Bush book is no longer available.  Or maybe there is a copy or two over in the Conspiracy section alongside the various David Icke books.  A couple of curious things about this categorizing — for various presidents — the two Bushes are dropped into “Bush Family”.  Though, the two Bushes fare better in that regard than Gerald Ford, who disappears with the Nixon books ending and the Carter books beginning with a slider reading “Nixon — Carter”.

As for the Benjamin Gitlow book.   A few things.  He almost thinks that the Communist Party (USA) was practically solely responsible for the demonization and scape-goating of Herbert Hoover to the Great Depression.  Granted, Hoover’s main fault was residing as president in that particular time-slot, but really he gave his old cohorts too much credit.  Then there is the great crux of the Communist Conspiracy, the final sentence of the final (and hastily written due to rapid changing of events — he set out to write a chapter covering Earl Browder, and then saw him dumped, such that our emerging Communist Dictator changes:

The Eugene Dennis of today may become the saber-rattling Moscow gauleitier acting as the President – dictator of a Communist America tomorrow.

Or, maybe he won’t.  Actually my mind is a bit stuck there.  I reel from Foster to Browder to Gus Hall.  I somehow manage to skip past Eugene Dennis.  Eugene Dennis is the Gerald Ford of the American Communist Party.

Okay, the Gitlow book.  Of interest to me, perhaps the most extreme case of cognitive dissonance in political history — American Communist rank and file reaction to Stalin’s Pact with Hitler.
It must be kept in mind that the Communist Party is organized on a totalitarian basis.  Members are not permitted to voice criticism against the leadership and its policies.  To utter an exclamation against Stalin brought about one’s expulsion from the Party.  The members came together to take orders and carry them out, not to voice an opinion.  Yet, at the meetings in which the Pact was discussed, members were violent in their criticism and heaped abuse upon the Party leaders; member after member pointedly asked the party leaders whether, if the workers did not want to follow Stalin into the camp of Hitler, Stalin wanted them to sacrifice the workers for the Nazis.

Radwanski, one of the editors of the Novy Mir, the Party’s Russian language paper, head of the Polish section of the Party, formerly secretary to Dzerjinsky, the founder of the OGPU, a fanatical Bolshevik, threw up his hands in the Party office and exclaimed: “This, that they have done to us, cannot be worse.”

Markoff, the director of the Party’s school, the Worker’s School, kept quiet, but to a few of his most intimate friends he conveyed his great disillusionment over the signing of the Pact.  Under the constant pressure of Party pleadings, he gave his support to the Pact, and then succumbed to a heart attack.

Henry Gannes, the foreign affairs expert of the Daily Worker, inwardly opposed the Pact, but in the coumns of the Daily Worker became its most outspoken advocate.

A number of members of the staff of the Freiheit, including some of the trade union activists, not only resigned from the Party, but attempted to carry on a campaign among the Party members and sympathizers for a repudiation of the Party and Stalin’s leadership. […]

All the Jewish leaders of the Party were called together for a secret meeting.  Foster, the Chairman of the Communist party, presented the new line.  Instead of defending himself, he launched into a sharp attack upon the Jews, declaring that they were narrow and chauvinistic in their viewpoints on the Pact.  The Jews in the Party, he charged, because of Hitler’s anti-semitism had allowed that to determine their attitude and had lost sight of the bigger and by far more important considerations involved.  He demanded that the Jews take a stand as communists on the question and not as Jews.  The tension in the meeting held the Jewish leaders glued to their seats.  Many showed the strain of great mental and spiritual agitation — hands clutched the chairs in front of them tightly.  The top leaders of the Party had come to club the Jewish leaders into submission, not to argue the question with them.

The Communists Jewish leaders were torn between two loyalties, loyalty to their people, who were the innocent victims of Nazi anti-semitic bestiality, and loyalty to the cause of communism, upon which they had placed their hopes for the liberation of all mankind, including the Jews.

Foster gave them no time to think.  He pounded away at them with blows that stung.  They knew that to oppose Foster meant to be made a target for vicious attacks and to be driven out in disgrace from the movement that they had given their lives to serve.

When Foster finished, a resolution endorsing the Soviet – Nazi Pact in unequivocal terms was presented for adoption.  Foster insisted upon an immediate vote.  The Communist party does not allow its members the privilege of taking time in making up their minds.  The Communist party leaders who were Jews had listened to Foster.  Now they must vote for the resolution; abstaining from voting for the resolution or voting against it was tantamount to expulsion from the Party.

The few who asked questions or expressed their doubts, during the discussion, became the targets for attacks by the Party leaders, who were unrestrained in their abusive viciousness against them.  They were given to understand that the Jews, more than any other element in the Party, were expected to give the new line their wholehearted and enthusiastic support.  Foster summoned up with the full weight of Stalin, the Soviet Union, the Comintern and the Party in back of his words, and bludgeoned the Jews into complete submission to the resolution.

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