In Denial: Historians, Communism, and Espionage
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In this brilliant and impassioned work, John Earl Haynes and Harvey Klehr document how, beginning in the late 1960s, the study of American communism was taken over by "revisionist" historians who attempted to portray the United States as the aggressor in the Cold War and saw the American Communist Party (CPUSA) as an admirable force for promoting democratic values. Today, more than a decade after the death of communism, revisionists remain dismissive of Stalin's crimes and seriously understate the degree to which the CPUSA apologized for Stalinism and gave assistance to Soviet espionage. Under their influence, the leading historical journals persist in teaching that America's rejection of the Communist Party was a tragic error, that American Communists were actually unsung heroes working for democratic ideals, and that those anticommunist liberals and conservatives who fought against the CPUSA in the 1950s were contemptible.
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In Denial by John Earl Haynes, Harvey Klehr
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For seventy years, leftwing scholars provided cover for those who wanted to deny that American Communists were thoroughly complicit with the vicious totalitarianism of Soviet Communism. Despite the repeated defenses of Soviet atrocities that were repeatedly exposed after being denied, despite the u-turn of American Communists on opposing, then defending the Nazis that was tied to changes in Soviet foreign policies, and despite numerous convictions of American Communists as Soviet spies, leftist writers and historians were always there to whitewash, obfuscate, and gaslight.
In the 1990s, the case against American Communists broke decisively with the release of the Venona intercepts and the KGB archives. The release of this information established unimpeachable, independent corroboration that every claim that had ever been made against communists was true. Alger Hiss was guilty; the Rosenbergs were guilty; the Soviets pumped millions of dollars per year into their American Communist Party spy rings.
This book reviews this interesting history, but it goes on to expose what a corrupt and dishonest mess the American history profession has become. In the 1970s, the history profession was taken over by leftwing “revisionists” who were ideologically committed to ascribing every evil to the United States, which meant defending the Soviet Union and all its works. These revisionists took over the journals that cover the Cold War period and have made sure that articles critical of American communism do not get printed, whereas apologetic pieces do get published.
This book documents in detail the evasions and circumventions that revisionists have engaged in to keep their faith in communism alive. This book was writen in 2002. It is frightening to see how twenty years later the same techniques of censorship and control have moved from the academic world to the broader political world of nearly half the American population.
The trend of habituated self-deception is frightening.
