The History of Occupied Washington

M. Stanton Evans has written a spirited defense of Diana West’s book American Betrayal for CNS News. Some excerpts are below.

In Defense of Diana West
By M. Stanton Evans

Out of the public eye and far from the daily headlines, a fierce verbal battle is currently being waged about the course of American policy in the long death struggle with Moscow that we call the Cold War.

At ground zero of this new dispute is author Diana West, whose recent book, American Betrayal (St. Martin’s), is a hard- hitting critique of the strategy toward the Soviet Union pursued in the 1940s by President Franklin Roosevelt, his top assistant Harry Hopkins, and various of their colleagues. Ms. West in particular stresses the infiltration of the government of that era by Communists and Soviet agents, linking the presence of these forces to U.S. policies that appeased the Russians or served the interests of the Kremlin.

For making this critique, Ms. West has been bitterly attacked by writers Ronald Radosh and David Horowitz, Roosevelt biographer Conrad Black, and a considerable crew of others. The burden of their complaint is that she is a “conspiracy theorist” and right wing nut whose views are far outside the mainstream of historical writing, and that she should not have presumed to write such a book about these important matters.

Though the professed stance of her opponents is that of scholarly condescension, the language being used against Ms. West doesn’t read like scholarly discourse. She is, we’re told, “McCarthy on steroids,” “unhinged,” a “right-wing loopy,” not properly “house trained,” “incompetent,” purveying “a farrago of lies,” and a good deal else of similar nature. All of which looks more like the politics of personal destruction than debate about serious academic issues.

From my standpoint, however, what is going on here seems to be something more than personal. Having delved into these matters a bit, I think I recognize the process that’s in motion: the circling of rhetorical wagons around a long accepted narrative about the Second World War and the Cold War conflict that followed.

This narrative sets the limits of permissible comment about American Cold War policy, bounded on the one side by Roosevelt and Hopkins, representing generally speaking the forces of good (appeasing Moscow, e.g. , only in order to win the war with Hitler), and on the other by Sen. Joe McCarthy of Wisconsin, the supposed epitome of evil. Between these boundaries, variations are allowed, but woe betide the writer who goes beyond them. Ms. West has transgressed in both directions, sharply criticizing Roosevelt/ Hopkins and speaking kindly of Joe McCarthy.

Read the rest at CNS News.

Previous posts about the controversy over American Betrayal by Diana West:

2013   Aug   11   Diana West: On the Question of “Scholarship”
        13   Yet Another Circular Conservative Firing Squad
        14   Cordon Sanitaire: FAIL
        15   On Reading the Book
        16   Banishing the Cathars
        18   Form and Substance
        22   “It’s All in Plain Sight”
        30   When Should a Book Not Be Written?
    Sep   3   Recognizing the Wrong People
        6   The Totalitarian Impulse
        6   The Rebuttal: Part One
        7   Rebuttal: The Summary
        8   The Rebuttal: Part Two
        8   An Army of Kooks
        10   The Rebuttal: Part Three
        12   Too Much Schnapps
 

5 thoughts on “The History of Occupied Washington

  1. I followed the rest of the story at CNS.

    The author says:

    Diana West’s important book is a valiant effort to break through this wall of secrecy and selective silence…[o]n issues where our researches coincide-and these are many-I find her knowledgeable and on target, far more so than the conventional histories compared to which she is said to be found wanting . As the above suggests, her notion of wartime Washington as an “occupied” city, and the data that back it up, are especially cogent.

    And a commenter said:

    The bottom line is that the critics of West, such as Radosh and others, want to control the historical narrative. They think they are the supreme directors of all that is Cold War/Soviet Espionage expertise. They also don’t want to give McCarthy an inch. Radosh is a long-time liberal/leftist masquerading as an impartial historian. Horowitz is an ex-Trotskyite who thinks he knows all there is to know about communism and about everything else too. How dare Diana West presume — presume! — to write about a liturgy they want untouched.

    Yes. It is indeed about the narrative and the smackdown is meant to serve as a warning not to interfere with the narrative they have created…

    But eventually a new generation comes along and puts paid to the old story.

  2. This is smashing, and provokes the thought that Washington is an occupied city again. Because we always fight the last war, in every area of nonviolent warfare too, we don’t even see, dare not see, that occupation. After all, Communist Party members or agents are not there, North Korean troops are not marching down Pennsylvania Avenue, so how dare one speak of “occupation”? The fate of the author of THIS book will be far worse than Diana West’s.

  3. Re: “provokes the thought that Washington is an occupied city again.” Although this may not come out as clearly as I’d like to express, I’ll give it my best shot.

    I’m still in the process of reading Diana West’s book, however, in small doses as even modern medicine can do only so much to control hypertension.

    Bottom line. . .it is only now, as I read these varied posts on the critical fallout of this book that the intense animosity towards the Reagan revolution begins to fall into place. I couldn’t understand it all back then. Like a puzzle with all the pieces in the same color, the reason there was no Nuremberg type trial for communism’s major war criminals yet the animosity against Ronald Reagan was off the charts – it all starts to make sense now, thanks to Diana West.
    I truely wish more would be written to expose these hidden if uncomfortable truths, as done by Takuan Seiyo earlier this week.

  4. I think we are at least on the way to being “occupied” if we are not already. The Muslim Brotherhood goes into various western countries, notably the U.S., and sets up–or inspires the formation of–not one but perhaps a dozen or so organizations. The Islamic Society of North America and Muslim Students Association are just two of these. CAIR is a MB affiliate or front group. Members of these groups “occupy” positions in the White House, the State Department and even the Pentagon. They advise the White House and the State Department. And they insisted that our government scrub all references to “Islam,” “radical Islam,” “Jihad,” etc. from governmental training manuals, including FBI training manuals (in 2011). Government employees are supposed to only talk about or write about “extremism” or “radicalism” without any mention of Islam or Islamic Jihad. So when FBI agents interviewed the Tsnarnov brothers, they didn’t know what they were looking for.

    I’m probably not saying anything that many reading this blog don’t already know. But Hillary’s close friend and aide, Huma Abedin, is most probably a MB operative, in my opinion. Her father was MB. Her mother is a member of the MB women’s organization. Her brother is MB. And she, herself, worked on a Muslim Brotherhood publication for some years. And she, according to approving Democrats, is a person to whom her “faith” is important and she is close to her family. And we all know that these people do not allow their daughters to marry an ethnic Jew (even if he’s secular) unless there is an ulterior motive. Before her husband’s (Anthony Weiner, he of the unfortunate name) career imploded, there was talk about Huma’s running for office. If Hillary becomes president, Huma Abedin is very likely to be her chief of staff or occupy another important position.

    When the Muslim Brotherhood tells Obama to jump, he asks “How high?” He seems extraordinarily willing to do their bidding. He insisted that the MB be present in the audience at his first big presidential speech in Cairo. He delivered Egypt into their hands. By report, Libya is slowly coming under their control. Remember, Hamas is their more militant wing and important Qaida leaders have come from the ranks of the MB.

    At the present time, the Obama Administration is sending arms to the Syrian rebels, many of whom are al Qaida affiliate or Muslim Brotherhood. Assad is a murderous dictator (his father was a monster) but at least he gave some protection to the Christian minority (perhaps because he’s an Allawite, another minority group).

    This is a frightening situation.

    • Yeah, it is pretty scary sometimes. I’m paranoid enough to think that when the Muslim Marchers who’d planned to show their strength on 9/11 found out about the pushback those bikers were planning…well, they just kind of faded into the wallpaper and let the bikers have their victory.

      Those folks have a long memory and can outwait even the most stalwart of us, the naïve patriots. So they’ll be back when the auspices are more … umm…”favorable”…Lots of time. From here to eternity if necessary.

      Meanwhile their guy is in the White House itself, now locked against the public, saying the Shahada. Wonder if he knows the direction of Mecca from the Oval Office? I’ll bet he does…

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