In Denial: Historians, Communism, & Espionage

Rating:
Summary: "In Denial" is Undeniable
Review: "In Denial" is one of the seminal books written in our lifetime. While the book's main topic concerns communism and the right and wrong sides in the Cold War, the questions asked in this book can nonetheless be extended to many important questions facing our country today. For example, we potentially face a more lethal and dangerous adversary than international communism, namely Third World and Islamicist terrorism -- yet many refuse to acknowledge this fact. It is not surprising that one of the historians most "in denial" about communism and the Cold War, Eric Foner, was also a leading apologist for the 9/11 terrorists immediately after the event and the subsequent strikes against them in Afghanistan.

This leads to the larger question raised by "In Denial" that applies to any economic, political, geostrategic, or other important current topic: how do we determine truth, what do we do when certain people refuse to admit truth, and what do we do when those people who refuse to admit truth are disproportionately involved in the inculcating of values and teaching of history to current and future generations?

At one point in our existence, we believed that the Sun revolved around the Earth and that the Earth was flat. Once upon a time, Leftist elites in American society and the Western world -- predominantly newspaper editors and reporters, historians, college and university professors, broadcasters -- all believed that socialism and communism were inevitable and superior to American-style capitalism. This dream died in 1989 with the tearing down of the Berlin Wall. But dreams die hard, and the Left has been busy engaging in intellectual skullduggery, distortions, and lies against any non-Leftist personalities or institutions: HUAC (controlled by Democrats during virtually all of it's 40-year run), Joe McCarthy, Ronald Reagan, and that small but courageous band of anti-communist liberals led by Hubert Humphrey and Harry Truman.

This book concerns the inability of Leftist academics and elites to admit they were wrong on The Big Picture of Soviet communist penetration of American institutions through the American Communist Party (CPUSA). Haynes and Klehr meticulously research many of the dominant Cold War issues that dominated from 1945-1990: the Alger Hiss Case, Elizabeth Bentley and Judith Coplon, Lauchlin Currie and Harry Dexter White, the Abraham Lincoln Brigade's Spanish activities, etc. The subservience of the CPUSA to Moscow domination on all matters ranging from Leon Trotsky and the Nazi-Soviet Pact is clearly documented. Contrary to some detractors, any errors in the book are minor typographical errors or non-material name or date errors that do not change the substantive arguments. Indeed, one of the individuals whose support for New Deal fellow travelers is dissected in "In Denial" has written a review here and despite some disagreements with Haynes & Klehr, still gives the book an overall favorable rating and review.

One of the interesting factoids brought out by Haynes & Klehr is that many of the people who are historically ignorant about American communism, the CPUSA, and the Cold War are not even historians by training. Many are professionals in other fields who for political and cultural reasons believe they are qualified to comment on subjects outside their normal teaching disciplines. These are the people who are most likely to refuse to believe the evidence tying the CPUSA to Moscow domination, subversion, and espionage. Professional historians like Isserman and Schrecker are less likely to deny the voluminous evidence released since the fall of the Berlin Wall; instead, they attempt to justify the actions of treason and espionage by saying the Soviet Union was a wartime ally, the United States was spying on the U.S.S.R, the documents stolen weren't that important, the CPUSA wasn't that big a deal, etc. Imagine some right-wing apologist excusing the Final Solution and Nazi Germany atrocities because Hitler supported national health insurance and you get a feel for the strained and convoluted arguments put out by supporters and apologists of the CPUSA and detractors of America during the Cold War.

It must be very difficult to believe a certain point of view for many years or decades, only to be suddenly thrust with information that shows you were wrong. How would one react if their religious faith were to be factually debunked, or if a wife found out that after decades of what she believed to be a loyal and happy marriage that her husband has led a secret life with another woman? Certainly many academicians have adjusted their political views in the face of new evidence: old-line neoconservatives like Irving Kristol, Sydney Hook, and Norman Podhoretz, and of course, Whittaker Chambers in his seminal biography "Witness" details his conversion away from the lies of the Left.

"In Denial" is written by John Early Hanes and Harvey Klehr. They are two of American's foremost historians specializing in American communism, espionage, the Venona transcripts, etc. Politically, I believe they would describe themselves as anti-communist liberals, perhaps neoconservatives (understand that most neoconservatives are former liberals who found that their former allies drifted Leftward rendering them without a home except for modern conservatism). Haynes and Klehr -- like Allen Weinstein of NYU (a liberal) in "The Haunted Wood" -- simply allow the facts to speak for themselves in a non-partisan, objective manner. They focus mostly on historians and somewhat obscure academic journals -- many of which are now accessible on the internet -- and are not as interested in politicians, newspaper editorial writers, broadcasters and reporters, etc (for these individuals' blind spots, check out Mona Charen's "Useful Idiot").

Haynes & Klehr have once again written a powerful expose on facets of American communism, espionage, and the Cold War. As important as those concepts are, the fundamental question asked and lurking below the surface of "In Denial" -- namely, how can people refuse to accept the truth in the face of powerful evidence to the contrary? -- is itself a potent question that this book will cause readers to think about on many important questions of the day.


Rating:
Summary: Negative Reviewers STILL can't face the facts...
Review: ...and the facts are that the CP's own records clearly show the depth of treason and espionage these apologists try and ignore.

Rating:
Summary: An Apt Title
Review: After reading the comments from the reader from New Haven, it becomes clear why this book's title is a perfect fit.

Rating:
Summary: Excellent review of the corruption of historians
Review: As a person studying to be an historian this book was a breath of fresh air. It was also very disturbing, that so many historians have defended, explicitly, Stalin, Lenin, and so on. Their point is well taken, historians who apologized for Hitler would be laughed out of the profession, but those who apologize and downplay the crimes of the Soviet Union and the murderous and amoral ideology of communism (which any objective review will tell you is hardly distinguishable from fascism) are hailed as respectable historians. Hopefully, this work and others will help towards laughing those "historians" who ignore the facts to promote communism and all of its watered down welfare statism variants out of the field.

Rating:
Summary: Haynes & Klehr Love McCarthyism
Review: Haynes and Klehr are hacks committed to overlooking the fact that Joe McCarthy hunted and destroyed American progressives working for racial equality. They don't want us to notice that McCarthy ruined peoples lives and never caught any spies. Now they want us to attack historians who don't work for CIA funded institutions like their own. This is dreary work that is little more than polemical excuses for right wing policies.

Rating:
Summary: The Truth--Finally!
Review: Haynes and Klehr tell a story that few acknowledge and it concerns the fetish that many of our professiorial anti-elite have towards the Soviet Union. These academics lie and minimize, and follow it up with indoctrinating those youth who are unfortunate enough to take their classes at the university. They recognize that a solid study of communism and the USSR would result students being eternally grateful that they live in the west as opposed to elsewhere. This may be precisely the reason that radicals distort and relativize objective history. Kudos to Klehr and Haynes for producing this valuable work. Incidentally, some of you may recognize a section that is quite familiar concerning the way the left manufacted the phrase "Premature Antifacists." It was supposedly stamped on the army files of those who served in the Abraham Lincoln Brigade in Spain after they then enlisted in the American army during WW II. It's a nice tale but that's exactly what it is. This ruse was merely a way to demean our military. The chapter originally appeared in a 2002 article in The New Criterion and it is an engaging page turner. In Denial is worth every penny.

Rating:
Summary: The Truth--Finally!
Review: Haynes and Klehr tell a story that few acknowledge and it concerns the fetish that many of our professiorial anti-elite have towards the Soviet Union. These academics lie and minimize, and follow it up with indoctrinating those youth who are unfortunate enough to take their classes at the university. They recognize that a solid study of communism and the USSR would result students being eternally grateful that they live in the west as opposed to elsewhere. This may be precisely the reason that radicals distort and relativize objective history. Kudos to Klehr and Haynes for producing this valuable work. Incidentally, some of you may recognize a section that is quite familiar concerning the way the left manufacted the phrase "Premature Antifacists." It was supposedly stamped on the army files of those who served in the Abraham Lincoln Brigade in Spain after they then enlisted in the American army during WW II. It's a nice tale but that's exactly what it is. This ruse was merely a way to demean our military. The chapter originally appeared in a 2002 article in The New Criterion and it is an engaging page turner. In Denial is worth every penny.

Rating:
Summary: Heynes and Klehr are right on
Review: Heynes and Klehr finally expose the lies that academia has been feeding to its students for years. A superb read for anyone who wants to know the truth about communism in this country and in the world.

Rating:
Summary: Face the Truth
Review: I had never heard of Venona or the Soviet archives that were opened before reading this book, but I had heard of the "evils" of McCarthyism. Read this book and you will understand why it was warranted. I just wish we had the same sense of urgency about socialism today. It is quietly encroaching all around us.

Although this book is loaded with information, I thought it was a bit unorganized. I will cut the authors some slack given the amount of data to organize, but the reader gets the message repeatedly pummeled into them. Don't get me wrong, people need to hear this message, but I would consider this more of a reference book than a good read.

I would definately read other works by the authors on this subject.

Rating:
Summary: Fabulous debunking of liberal nonsense
Review: I hate to say it, but the liberals got it wrong AGAIN. (OK, maybe I don't hate it that much, really...)

Despite the complete victory of the U.S. and its capitalistic, free allies in the Cold War, these far-left academics refuse to acknowledge that they were wrong. They still cling to the radical notion that Americans who joined the Communist Party did it just because they believed in "social justice" or "progressive politics" -- instead of the truth, which is, as Haynes & Klehr have shown in their research, that many American Communists were spies for the Soviet Union and wanted the U.S. to be defeated in the Cold War.

Reading someone like Ellen Schrecker (one of Haynes and Klehr's primary villians) makes you realize just how out of touch these people are with reality. She lives in a fantasy world where, somehow, believing that the good guys won the Cold War is a form of "triumphalism," to quote from the title of her latest offering.

Haynes and Klehr have, admittedly, written a polemic, though a well-researched one. Other works of theirs have already systematically demolished the airy suppositions of those who argue American Communists weren't so bad.

I can't say enough good things about this. Buy it now!