Jewish Influence in the Communist Party of America 1919-1926

[CrackSmokeRepublican]

Sunday, 9 January 2011

Jewish Influence in the Communist Party of America 1919-1926

One of the most frequent arguments used by anti-Semites historically as well as currently is that jews were inordinately involved in Bolshevism in the Soviet Union and in fact were involved well out of proportion to their numbers in terms of population. What has often been overlooked when making this argument; which although often massively overstated is often remarked on by historians of the Bolshevik revolution and the Soviet Union in general, (1) is the significant involvement of jews in the formation of the Communist Party of America in the crucial early years of 1919 to 1926 when it began to grow as an organised and conspiratorial force which eventually ran numerous spy and espionage networks for the Soviet Union as well as its own above and under ground parties. (2)

In the below list I have outlined; as far as I can, the influence of jews in terms of position and their relative numbers in the key positions that they occupied in the various formative parties and periods of the Communist Party of America. The most complete list I have been able to find was that offered by the Marxist Internet Archive (or MIA) which I have; with some reluctance, used to create this listing. (3)

The problems offered by this listing; and Communist history in general, are several:

Firstly due to the conspiratorial, subversive and generally paranoid nature of Communists internationally at this time; and the Communist Party of America were not an exception to the rule, pseudonyms were usually used in official and unofficial correspondence and documents so that it requires a large amount of backtracking and historical detective work to comprehend who is who in the documents concerned. This was exacerbated in the Communist Party of America by the raid at Bridgman on the 22nd of August 1922 (4) and leads to the situation; which has occurred in the MIA list, whereby we know the ethnic identity of an individual leader (due to whom they were representing usually) but we do not know their actual name.

Secondly parties of the far left; Marxist and non-Marxist, have historically tended to be extremely factious in nature and this has lead (and still leads to) numerous factional breaks and the creation of majority and minority groups within the parties themselves. This; in the case of the Communist Party of America, lead to numerous splinter groups, arguments, dissolutions, reformations and unity coalitions, which to a reader unacquainted with the tendencies of the far left can be seem utterly disconcerting and even confusing at times. Part of the reason that I opted to use the MIA list was due to the fact that it offered it in an easy to understand format so that the reader could check what I had said against the MIA master list.

Thirdly the tides of influence and power within the Communist Party of America (and the far left in general) are notoriously difficult to chart and we can only largely guess and extrapolate from events what the power shifts were and on what basis they came about. This can make relative numbers somewhat deceptive, but for the sake of clarity we should state the reader will notice that several jewish individuals were largely in power throughout the 1919 to 1926 period in the Communist Party of America. Jay Lovestone in particular deserves mention as he was an extremely influential jewish figure inside the Communist Party of America and was only removed due to his support for Bukharin against Stalin in the power struggles inside the Bolshevik Party in Russia. In fact had Bukharin won the power struggle then Lovestone would have become the leader of the Communist Party of America as opposed to Stalin's chosen acolyte: William Z. Foster. (5)

If we bear this slight caveat in mind that numbers do not necessarily equate power although they do give us a fair approximation of it. We can begin to see a pattern in the following list of jewish officials in the Communist Party of America from 1919 to 1926:


1919 Communist Labour Party of America

National Executive Committee: No jews out of six members. Two jews (Finkelberg and Benjamin Gitlow) out of five alternative members as of January 1920.

Editorial Board: One jew (Ludwig Lore) out of three members.

Labor Committee: One jew (Benjamin Gitlow) out of five members.


1920 Communist Party of America

International Delegates: No jews out of four members. Three jews (Daniel Elbaum, Alexander Bittelman and Jay Lovestone) out of four alternative members.

Additional Executive Committee Members: Five jews (Alexander Bittelman, Maximilian Cohen, Daniel Elbaum, Jay Lovestone and Rose Pastor Stokes) out of eight members. Three jews (Rose Pastor Stokes, Meyer Lunin and Morris Kushinsky) out of six alternative Additional Executive Committee Members.

Language Federation Secretaries: One jew (an unnamed jewish individual) out of seven members.

Executive Council (after January 20th 1920): Three jews (Maximilian Cohen, Jay Lovestone and Alexander Bittelman) out of seven members.

Executive Secretary (after July 20th 1920): Louis Shapiro

Central Executive Committee (at the end of 1920): Four jews (Maximilian Cohen, Louis Shapiro and two unnamed jewish individuals) out of nine members.

Editor of Party Publications (at the end of 1920): Maximilian Cohen

Language Federation Secretaries (at the end of 1920): One jew (Morris Kushinsky) out of six members.

Assistant Secretary (after February 20th 1921): Louis Shapiro

Editorial Committee (after February 20th 1921): One jew (Louis Shapiro) out of three members.

District Organizers: Two jews (George Ashkenazi and one unnamed jewish individual) out of six members.


1921 (Unified) Communist Party of America

Executive Secretaries (from May 31st 1921 to April 1923): Two jews (William Weinstone and Jay Lovestone) out of five appointees.

Central Executive Committee Members (from May 31st 1921): Three jews (William Weinstone, Jay Lovestone and George Ashkenazi) out of eleven members.

Central Executive Committee Members (from December 1921): Four jews (William Weinstone, Jay Lovestone, Meyer Lunin and Alexander Bittelman) out of ten members.

Central Executive Committee Members (from April 17th 1922): Two jews (Jay Lovestone and Alexander Bittelman) out of ten members.

Secretariat (from January 26th 1923): One jew (John Pepper aka Jozsef Schwartz) out of three members.

Executive Council (from January 26th 1923): Five jews (Israel Amter, Benjamin Gitlow, Ludwig Lore, Jay Lovestone and John Pepper) out of seventeen members.


1923 Workers Party of America

Executive Council: Three jews (Alexander Bittelman, Ludwig Lore and Moissaye Olgin) out of eleven members.

Central Executive Committee: Eight jews (Israel Amter, Alexander Bittelman, Jay Lovestone, Moissaye Olgin, John Pepper, Rose Pastor Stokes, Alexander Trachtenberg and William Weinstone) out of twenty-five members.


1924 Workers Party of America

Representative to Comintern (ECCI): Israel Amter

Central Executive Committee Members: Six jews (Alexander Bittelman, Benjamin Gitlow, Ludwig Lore, Jay Lovestone, John Pepper and Martin Abern) out of thirteen members.

Political Committee: Two jews (Jay Lovestone and John Pepper) out of seven members.

Organization Committee: Two jews (Martin Abern and John Pepper) out of five members.

Secretariat: One jew (John Pepper) out of three members.

Education Committee: One jew (Alexander Bittelman) out of three members.

Daily Worker Management Committee (as of May 1924): One jew (Moritz Loeb) out of five members.


1925-1926 Workers (Communist) Party

Central Executive Committee Members: Six jews (Martin Abern, Philip Aronberg, Jacob Stachel, Benjamin Gitlow, Jay Lovestone and William Weinstone) out of twenty members.

We can see from this list that as time went on the number of jews in positions of influence in power both increased and solidified with numerous jews; notably Alexander Bittelman, Jay Lovestone, William Weinstone, Ludwig Lore, Benjamin Gitlow and John Pepper, becoming exceptionally powerful and long-lasting in positions of power within the Communist Party of America. It is worth noting that while we have these members of enduring power we also have a considerable turnover of jewish individuals within the officials of the Communist Party of America with there being a particularly high general representation in the Central Executive Committees.

It is worth noting that when jews are represented at the highest levels of the Communist Party of America that they tend to be so in significant and disproportionate numbers. We see for example in the Central Executive Committee of 1923 to 1924 that the amount of jews is fifty percent of the total number of members and this is obviously wholly disproportionate to the amount of jews in America at this time.

Opponents and detractors of anti-Semitism may try to explain away such notable disproportionate involvement as this, but their arguments are usually based more on begging the question (asking why it is significant in the first place) rather than actually providing a reasonable thesis for why it is the case. The idea that the jews were oppressed is a common argument of type, but this ignores the fact that if we consider the jews to have been oppressed then we cannot specifically answer why they should turn to the Communist Party of America in significant and disproportionate numbers and the equally oppressed Germans, Swedes, Irish, Italians and others should not turn to the Communist Party of America. Let alone of course rise to the top of the Communist Party of America which jews certainly did disproportionately and in significant numbers as this list illustrates.

This is yet to be reasonably explained by opponents of anti-Semitism and has tended to be attacked as 'baseless conjecture' by some: the tendency has been to show that jews were significantly and disproportionately involved in far left wing politics in the United States throughout its long and nefarious history and not to look at the two pieces of information together. In so far as if the Communist Party of America was an openly subversive and revolutionary organisation and the jews; as a group, were significantly and disproportionately represented in its leadership then we can only conclude that jews acted the part of a hostile elite in the Communist Party of America much as Kevin MacDonald has argued they did in early Soviet Russia. (6)

References

(1) On this point please see Benjamin Pinkus, 1988, 'The Jews of the Soviet Union: The History of a National Minority', 1st Edition, Cambridge University Press: New York and Erich Haberer, 2004, 'Jews and Revolution in Nineteenth-Century Russia', 2nd Edition, Cambridge University Press: New York.
(2) On this point please see Harvey Klehr, John Earl Haynes, Fridrikh Igorevich Firsov, 1995, 'The Secret World of American Communism', 1st Edition, Yale University Press: New Haven.
(3) http://www.marxists.org/history/usa/eam ... cials.html [Last Accessed: 04/01/2011]
(4) A very useful and readily available contemporary account of just what was found in this raid can be found in R. M. Whitney, 1924, 'Reds in America', 1st Edition, The Beckwith Press: New York (reprinted in abridged form; largely removing the mention of jews, in 1970 by Western Islands: Belmont [a John Birch Society affiliated imprint]).
(5) For more on Jay Lovestone please see Ted Morgan, 1999, 'A Covert Life: Jay Lovestone, Communist, anti-Communist and Spymaster', 1st Edition, Random House: New York.
(6) This list should be seen in the conjunction with the numerous jews involved in spying and espionage activities in the United States who were directly and indirectly named by Whittaker Chambers, 1952, 'Witness', 1st Edition, Random House: New York and Louis Budenz, 1950, 'Men Without Faces: The Communist Conspiracy in the U.S.A', 1st Edition, Harper & Brothers: New York.
Posted by Karl Radl at Sunday, January 09, 2011



Saturday, 8 January 2011

Jewish Communist Espionage in the United States according to Whittaker Chambers


Whittaker Chambers; former Communist, probable homosexual (1) and convert to Christianity, was the man at the centre of the two Alger Hiss trials which lead to the uncovering of several considerable Soviet espionage apparatuses operating in the United States government from the 1920s to the late 1940s. (2) Chambers is interesting to us in that he wrote his experiences and thoughts down in two large volumes; 'Witness' (3) and 'Cold Friday', (4) however since the latter is largely a recap of the former with some updated information we shall take our information from the former.

'Witness' being autobiographical in nature simply names names; although in some places Chambers notes that he has substituted the individual's real name for an assumed one for various different reasons (usually to do with not hurting them for activities they have long past ceased to engage in), but from those Chambers does name we get a decidedly jewish flavour.

At this point many a detractor and opponent of anti-Semitism will wish to reflexively claim that Chambers was an anti-Semite and a general 'jew hater'. However this is obviously incorrect as Chambers' own wife; Esther Shemitz, was jewish and he spends a large portion of 'Witness' paying direct or indirect homage to her. Shemitz also seems to have been a Communist; or at the very least a Marxist, for most of her life (5) as indeed was her brother. (6) Chambers also does not name (as a general rule) obviously jewish individuals to have been jewish and he really does seem to have been rather blind to the fact that many of his 'comrades' in the underground were members of the tribe. This is; of course, somewhat to be expected but never-the-less it is surprising that Chambers did not mention this obvious aspect of the underground. Perhaps he was conscious of his own wife's jewishness and the effect such revelations might have on the political situation in America with an anti-Communist frenzy in the offing or perhaps Chambers really was oblivious to the origins of those around him. It is difficult to which is the more likely, but on balance this author would tend to lean towards the former possibility rather than the latter. (7)

As it would be beyond this scope of this article to go into the very significant jewish involvement in Communism in the United States the structure that I have adopted is to list the jewish individuals concerned along with their principle role and activities in the Soviet underground and/or the official Communist party according to Chambers as an informed source. This is both for ease of reference and to allow any doubting Thomas' to easily check Chambers' own statements from my references.

James Allen (nee Sol Auerbach)

Foreign Affairs Correspondent for the 'Daily Worker' (Chambers, 'Witness', Op. Cit., pp. 241-242)
Chief Editor of 'International Publishers' (Chambers, 'Witness', Op. Cit., pp. 240-242)

Boris Bazarov (Chambers knew him as Boris Bykov)

Head of GRU (Soviet Military Intelligence) in United States from 1935-1937 (Chambers, 'Witness', Op. Cit., pp. 439; 443) Chambers explicitly states he was jewish.

Alexander Bittelman

Member of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the United States of America (Chambers, 'Witness', Op. Cit., p. 206)

Benjamin Gitlow

Socialist Member of New York State Legislator (Chambers, 'Witness', Op. Cit., p. 203)
Member of the Communist Party of the United States of America

Michael Gold (nee Itzik Granich)

Editor of the 'New Masses' (Chambers, 'Witness', Op. Cit., p. 264)

Felix Inslerman

Photographer for and Member of Washington D.C. Soviet Spy Ring (Chambers, 'Witness', Op. Cit., pp. 41; 423)

Samuel Kaufman

Judge of the First Hiss trial (Chambers, 'Witness', Op. Cit., p. 670)

Nat Kaplan

Foreign Affairs Editor of the 'Daily Worker'(Chambers, 'Witness', Op. Cit., p. 258)
Soviet –trained agent born in America (Chambers, 'Witness', Op. Cit., p. 258)

Paula Levine

Member of Paris Soviet Spy Ring (Chambers, 'Witness', Op. Cit., p. 290)
Fled to Soviet Russia in 1933 (Chambers, 'Witness', Op. Cit., p. 290)
New York apartment used as Communist underground safe house (Chambers, 'Witness', Op. Cit., p. 290)

Maxim Lieber

Member of Washington D.C. Soviet Spy Ring (Chambers, 'Witness', Op. Cit., p. 44)
Created Soviet spy rings in Great Britain and Japan (Chambers, 'Witness', Op. Cit., pp. 44; 355; 367; 388; 437)

Jay Lovestone (nee Jacob Liebstein)

National Secretary of the Communist Party of the United States of America until 1929 (Chambers, 'Witness', Op. Cit., p. 206)

Eugene Lyons

American Correspondent of TASS (the official Soviet News Service) until 1928 when joined UP as correspondent in Moscow (Chambers, 'Witness', Op. Cit., p. 366)

Abe Magill

Correspondent for the 'Daily Worker' (Chambers, 'Witness', Op. Cit., p. 240)

Ben Mandel (known to Chambers as Bert Miller)

Business Manager of the 'Daily Worker' (Chambers, 'Witness', Op. Cit., p. 226)
Later Research Director of the House Committee on Un-American Activities America (Chambers, 'Witness', Op. Cit., pp. 207; 536; 558; 600)

George Mink

Head of Communist Party's Seamen's Association (Chambers, 'Witness', Op. Cit., p. 302)
Nephew of Solomon Lozovsky (Chambers recalls him as George Lozovsky) jewish head of the Profintern (Chambers, 'Witness', Op. Cit., p. 303)
During the Spanish Civil war Mink was responsible for the murder of numerous anti-Communists and anti-Stalinists in Republican prisons (Chambers, 'Witness', Op. Cit., p. 303)

Josef Peters (known to Chambers as Alexander Goldberger)

Head of the National Underground of the Communist Party of the United States of America (Chambers, 'Witness', Op. Cit., p. 32)
Replaced as Head of the National Underground of the Communist Party of the United States of America by Rudy Baker (nee Rudolph Blum); who was also jewish, in 1938.

Joseph Pogany (nee Josef Schwartz)

Comintern Representative to the Communist Party of the United States of America (Chambers, 'Witness', Op. Cit., pp. 214; 246-247)
Was former Commissar for War in the Hungarian Soviet Government of Bela Kuhn (also jewish) (Chambers, 'Witness', Op. Cit., p. 246)

Juliet Stuart Poyntz

Member of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the United States of America until 1937 (Chambers, 'Witness', Op. Cit., p. 36)
Member of the National Underground of the Communist Party of the United States of America (Chambers, 'Witness', Op. Cit., p. 36)
Murdered; by the GRU (Soviet Military Intelligence), in 1937, because of her potential break with the Communist party over Stalin's purges in the Soviet Union (Chambers, 'Witness', Op. Cit., p. 36)

Phillip Rosenblatt

Dentist and Member of the Washington D.C. Soviet Spy Ring (Chambers, 'Witness', Op. Cit., pp. 237; 435-436)
Assisted in espionage against the US Army (Chambers, 'Witness', Op. Cit., p. 319)

Meyer Schapiro

Professor of Fine Arts at Columbia University (Chambers, 'Witness', Op. Cit., p. 193)
Member of the Washington D.C. Soviet Spy Ring (Chambers, 'Witness', Op. Cit., pp. 193; 415-416)
Helped in attempt to set up a London spy ring (Chambers, 'Witness', Op. Cit., p. 376)

Sam Shoyet

Member of the National Underground of the Communist Party of the United States of America (Chambers, 'Witness', Op. Cit., p. 244)
Member of Washington D.C. and Tokyo Soviet Spy Rings (Chambers, 'Witness', Op. Cit., p. 245)
Member of Paris Soviet Spy Ring (Chambers, 'Witness', Op. Cit., p. 311)

Abraham George Silverman

Research Director of the Railroad Retirement Board (Chambers, 'Witness', Op. Cit., p. 27)
Economic Advisor and Chief of Analysis and Plans to the Assistant Chief of the Air Staff (Chambers, 'Witness', Op. Cit., p. 60)
Active Source to and Member of the Washington D.C. Soviet Spy Ring (Chambers, 'Witness', Op. Cit., pp. 40; 416)
Secretly paid dues to the Communist Party (Chambers, 'Witness', Op. Cit., p. 380)
Aided in the recruitment and placing of Soviet spies into positions of the authority in the US government. (Chambers, 'Witness', Op. Cit., p. 40)

Alexander Trachtenberg

Chief Executive Officer of 'International Publishers' (Chambers, 'Witness', Op. Cit., pp. 242; 264)
Member of the Central Control Commission of the Communist Party of the United States of America (Chambers, 'Witness', Op. Cit., p. 242)
Head of Cultural Activities of the Communist Party of the United States of America (Chambers, 'Witness', Op. Cit., p. 264)

Alexander Ulanovsky

Chief of the GRU (Soviet Military Intelligence) in the United States between 1931 and 1934 (Chambers, 'Witness', Op. Cit., p. 264)

William Weinstone

New York/New Jersey District Organiser of the Communist Party of the United States of America (Chambers, 'Witness', Op. Cit., p. 230)

Harry Dexter White (nee Weit)

Assistant to the Secretary of the Treasury (Chambers, 'Witness', Op. Cit., p. 27)
Head of World Bank (Chambers, 'Witness', Op. Cit., p. 500)
Active Source to the Washington D.C. Soviet Spy Ring (Chambers, 'Witness', Op. Cit., pp. 334; 370; 383-384; 405; 416; 420-422; 429; 544)
Came up with a new monetary structure for the Soviet Union (Chambers, 'Witness', Op. Cit., p. 430)

References

(1) David Johnson, 2004, 'The Lavender Scare: The Cold War Persecution of Gays and Lesbians in the Federal Government', 1st Edition, University of Chicago Press: Chicago, p. 33; Whittaker Chambers, 1952, 'Witness', 1st Edition, Random House: New York, p. 206
(2) There is a considerable literature on this subject, but for a succinct overview please see John Hayes, 1996, 'Red Scare or Red Menace? American Communism and Anticommunism in the Cold War Era', 1st Edition, Ivan R. Dee: Chicago and Harvey Klehr, John Earl Haynes, Fridrikh Igorevich Firsov, 1995, 'The Secret World of American Communism', 1st Edition, Yale University Press: New Haven
(3) Whittaker Chambers, 1952, 'Witness', 1st Edition, Random House: New York
(4) Whittaker Chambers, 1964, 'Cold Friday', 1st Edition, Random House: New York
(5) Chambers, 'Witness', Op. Cit., p. 25
(6) Ibid, p. 48
(7) Similar accounts; which ignore the jewishness of much of those they describe, can be found in two autobiographies of former high-ranking underground communists, which are Jan Valtin, 1941, 'Out of the Night', 1st Edition, Alliance Book Corporation: New York and Louis Budenz, 1950, 'Men Without Faces: The Communist Conspiracy in the U.S.A', 1st Edition, Harper & Brothers: New York.
Posted by Karl Radl at Saturday, January 08, 2011
Labels: American Communist Party, anti-Communism, anti-Semitism, anti-Semitism 2.0, Cold Friday, espionage, Esther Shemitz, jews, marxism, Whittaker Chambers, Witness

http://semiticcontroversies.blogspot.co ... ty-of.html

[CrackSmokeRepublican]

Interesting note that Alfred Kohlberg a Jew was close to McCarthy and founder of the John Birch Society... He also had a lot of factories in China.. --CSR


Alfred Kohlberg

Alfred Kohlberg (1887 – 1960) was an American entrepreneur and staunch anti-communist -- being the head of the so called "China lobby", a close ally of Joe McCarthy, a guide to Robert Welch and founding director of the John Birch Society.[1]

Kohlberg was also a board member of the Institute of Pacific Relations, which he thought was infiltrated by communists. He was the financial backer of Plain Talk, which merged with The Freeman in 1950.

[CrackSmokeRepublican]

Key Accomplices

Roy Cohn

Roy Cohn was McCarthy's key aide


Joseph McCarthy could not have persecuted so many individuals without the help of his staff members and supporters. Some of the key players in McCarthy's aggressive witch-hunting campaigns were Senator Pat Mcarran, Roy Cohn and Alfred Kohlberg.

Alfred Kohlberg

Alfred Kohlberg was a former FBI agent. He compiled piles of information about the Communist Party's connections between writers and public officials. Kohlberg was another anti-Communist who accused the State Department of downplaying the Communist threat in China and not giving enough aid to Chiang Kai-Shek.
Roy Cohn

Starting from 1953, Roy Cohn was Senator McCarthy's key aide. Before his tenure with the senator, the 26-year old was the US Attorney. Cohn had played a prominent role in the trial that sent Ethel and Julius Rosenberg to the electric chair in 1951. As a Jewish, Cohn could also protect McCarthy from charges of anti-Semitism.

Cohn held an immense amount of power during his appointment in the Senate Subcommittee on Investigations. The young attorney gained a reputation for aggressively questioning individuals who were suspected of carrying out "Un-American" activities.

Roy Cohn was a really close friend to Private First Class G. David Schine. Taking advantage of his position, Cohn tried to pressure the army into giving Schine special privileges. This eventually intensified the clash that McCarthy will eventually have with the army.

Cohn was deeply loyal to McCarthy. In the 1980's, Cohn wrote a book to defend McCarthy and criticized a movie for portraying McCarthy negatively.

www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/USAcohn.htm

Herzstein, Robert E. (2006-06-01). "Alfred Kohlberg: Counter-Subversion in the Global Struggle against Communism, 1944-1960". Globalization, Empire, and Imperialism in Historical Perspective. University of North Carolina. Retrieved 2006-08-02.