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A Good Life Rule for Leftists: Never Talk to the FBI

Michael Myerson Jacobin
Being a leftist — or worse, a child of leftists — in the mid-20th century meant constant harassment from the FBI. From my childhood in the 1940s and ’50s through the upheavals of the ’60s, I only told them one thing: take a hike.

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The Red Scare Scarred the Left — But Couldn’t Kill It

Benjamin Balthaser Jacobin
The postwar Second Red Scare successfully smashed the American left. But in the midst of its devastation, a small number of old leftists refused to be shut up by the climate of fear. Without their heroism, the New Left could never have emerged.

We Are Long Overdue for a Paul Robeson Revival

Peter Dreier Los Angeles Review of Books
In the 1970s, Robeson’s admirers — boosted by the upsurge of black studies and black cultural projects, the waning of the Cold War — began to rehabilitate his reputation with various tributes, documentary films, books, concerts, exhibits, and a play

Tidbits - Oct. 21, 2021 - Reader Comments: Worker Strike Wave, John Deere; Dismantle Missile Systems; India Walton Sabotaged by Dems; Socialists and 50s Civil Rights Movement; CUNY’s Alleged Wrong Doings; Black and Puerto Rican History;

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Reader Comments: Worker Strike Wave, John Deere; Dismantle Missile Systems; Democratic Primary Winner India Walton Sabotaged by Dems; Socialists and 50s Civil Rights Movement; CUNY’s Alleged Wrong Doings; Black and Puerto Rican History In Action;

The Working-Class Cinematic Legacy of Film Noir

Leonard Pierce Jacobin
In the stiflingly reactionary cultural atmosphere of postwar America, most filmmakers didn’t talk much about class. But there was one significant exception: film noir was the most class-conscious genre of motion picture America has ever produced.
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