Aug 23, 2023
Alger Hiss is taken to
prison
Alger Hiss’s conviction — technically for perjury, but
effectively for treason — was a major event. It was a
disaster for The Establishment, especially liberal Democrats, and
vindication for Republicans and populist Democrats. The 18
month labyrinth of HUAC hearings, depositions in Hiss’s libel suit,
grand jury proceedings, and two criminal trials were the long, long
overture to the so-called McCarthy Era. Senator McCarthy, in
fact, gave his famous “I have a list . . .” speech just weeks after
Hiss’s conviction. This Podcast gives an overview of the many
and complex reactions to the guilty verdict. Everyone, it
seems, accepted the factual correctness of the verdict. But
many liberals could not help making up excuses for Hiss, or damning
Chambers for being fat and melodramatic. And many
conservatives and populists could not help painting all liberals
and Harvard graduates with the black pitch of Hiss’s treason.
Most interesting and encouraging to me, a significant number of
liberals and Democrats were sufficiently mature and morally alive
to engage in genuine introspection and self-criticism, to admit
they had ‘blown it big time’ when it came to Soviet traitors in our
midst, and to resolve to fashion a liberal anti-communism that was
just as vigorous as what Republican conservatives had been offering
for decades.
FURTHER RESEARCH
The McCarthy Era, although sparked by this Case, is an oceanic
subject beyond the scope of these Podcasts. If you want to
read about it, among the best conservative books are George H.
Nash’s “The Conservative Intellectual Movement in America Since
1945” (Basic Books 1976), esp. 84-130; and Richard Gid Powers’ “Not
Without Honor: The History of American Anticommunism” (Free
Press 1995), esp. 191-272.See also Professor Harvey Klehr’s essay
“Setting the Record Straight on Joe McCarthy,”
https://archives.frontpagemag.com/fpm/setting-record-joe-mccarthy-straight-harvey-klehr/.
Among the far more numerous, totally anti-McCarthy books are
David Caute’s “The Great Fear:The Anti-Communist Purge Under Truman
and Eisenhower” (Touchstone 1979), esp. 56-62; Fred J. Cook’s “The
Nightmare Decade:The Life and Times of Senator Joe McCarthy”
(Random House 1971); Victor Navasky’s “Naming Names” (Viking 1980)
(especially the early pages); I.F. Stone’s “The Truman Era:
1945-52” (Little Brown 1953) (Stone was himself a secret agent of
the Soviet Union); and James A Weschler’s “The Age of Suspicion”
(Random House 1953). I must note that it was a stroke of
genius for the minimizers of Communist treason to name the era
after anti-Communism’s most irresponsible big name. This is
as if racists had succeeded in labeling the civil rights movement
The Al Sharpton Movement.
Concerning the impact of the Hiss verdict in particular, Dean
Acheson, in his autobiography “Present at the Creation: My
Years at the State Department” (Norton 1987), titles his pertinent
chapter (at 354) “The Attack of the Primitives Begins.”
Alistair Cooke (at 340) also saw nothing good coming from Hiss’s
conviction. A more mature view, at page 267 of Walter
Goodman’s “The Committee:The Extraordinary Career of the House
Committee on Un-American Activities” (Farrar, Straus & Giroux
1968), is that the Hiss-Chambers Case “whip[ped] up a storm which
did not last long but left ruins in its wake.” Other more
realistic analyses of the Case’s impact on America are in Weinstein
at 529-47 (chapter titled “Cold War Iconography I: Alger Hiss
as Myth and Symbol”); the best single essay on this Case in my
opinion, Leslie Fiedler’s “Hiss, Chambers, and the Age of
Innocence” at 3-24 of his “An End to Innocence: Essays on
Culture and Politics” (Beacon Press 1955) and Diana Trilling’s
essay “A Memorandum on the Hiss Case,” first published in The
Partisan Review of May-June 1950 and re-published at 27-48 of
Patrick J. Swan’s anthology of essays on this Case, “Alger Hiss,
Whittaker Chambers, and the Schism in the American Soul” (ISI Books
2003). The latter two essays I highly recommend.
Questions: If you had been adult when Hiss was
convicted, what would have been your reaction to his
conviction? ‘Justice at long last,’ ‘a miscarriage of
justice,’ ‘guilty but a fair trial was impossible,’ ‘technically
guilty but with an excuse,’ or something else? Would your
reaction have been purely emotional/political/tribal, or would you
have cited one or more facts to support your reaction? Would
you have been totally certain that your reaction was the right one,
or would you have harbored some doubts?