Balder Ex-Libris

Author : Jeansonne Glen
Title : Women of the Far Right
Year : 1996

Link download : Jeansonne_Glen_-_Women_of_the_Far_Right.zip

Women of the Far Right is an outgrowth of two decades of research on twentieth-century American politics, work that began with my ph.D. dissertation. Reared in Louisiana, an idiosyncratic state where politics is a more popular spectator sport than football, I wrote my dissertation on the life of Leander H. Perez, one of the state’s leading bosses. That study, subsequently published, led to biographies of Gerald L. K. Smith and Huey P. Long, other Louisiana political figures with national influence. Like Perez, Smith was a reactionary of the right. Long had traits of the right and the left, yet he shared some traits with Perez and Smith, two of his lieutenants. All three biographies, and this book, are critical of their subjects. When asked, “Why write about people you dislike?” I can simply answer that the far right fascinates me. Often, however, I respond that one’s intellectual diet is enhanced by variety, which includes digesting some ideas that one dislikes. Balanced history requires studies of villains, heroes, and those who combine heroic attributes with tragic flaws. Further, individuals who are heroes to some are villains to others. Nonetheless, it is not essential for one to agree with one’s subjects to understand them. Sharing an identity with one’s subject-gender, race, or nationality-might enhance empathy, but it is not a prerequisite to writing a fair book (indeed, it might prejudice one in favor of the subject). One of the more penetrating studies of American democracy, for example, was written by the Frenchman Alexis de Tocqueville. At first, I intended to trace far-right women from the 1930s to the 1980s. I found little evidence of such women after World War II, however, at least not on the scale of the 1930s movement. Yet people who had not done research on the far-right women of the 1930s wanted a book more like the one I had planned originally. This reminded me of the problem Rick Nelson described in his song “Garden Party.” His audience at the party wanted to hear the songs that evoked memories of when he had been Ricky Nelson in the happy family of the Ozzie and Harriet television show. But Rick Nelson had matured and changed; he wanted to sing other songs. Nelson concluded that since he could not please everyone, he might as well please himself. I do not agree entirely with Nelson—after all, a historian hoping to be widely read must write for more than personal gratification—although I can understand his feelings, for I could not accommodate those who wanted me to put the 1930s movement into the context of contemporary women conservatives, or of feminism. Women of the Far Right is not a study of conservatives. These women had only limited relevance to mainstream conservatism, in their times or now. Such terms as “extremists,” “bigots,” and “reactionaries” properly describe them. They contradict those feminist scholars who consider right-wing women insincere or mere pawns of men. Nor does the movement fit within the parameters of feminism, as I will show. Some might object to the use of the word “mothers” and the phrase “mothers’ movement” in referring to the isolationist women and their groups. I do not intend to imply that these women were typical mothers. Yet “mother” is appropriate because many of the women were mothers who based their agitation upon maternal arguments against war. The participants themselves used “mother” to define the movement. Those who monitored and opposed the movement, including journalists, commentators, the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), politicians, and Jewish organizations, likewise used this description. Women of the Far Right posed organizational problems because I knew a little about various leaders of the movement but not a great deal about any individual. I could not write detailed biographical profiles, so I decided to integrate the stories of the leaders with their organizations. My introduction and conclusion establish a context for the mothers and analyze the movement. The middle chapters combine a narrative of one or more groups with an interpretation of the principal figures. I compare and contrast the groups and leaders, examine regional variations, and discuss the ideology and activities of the movement. The epilogue is an analysis of prejudice, especially anti-Semitism, emphasizing anxiety as a contributing factor. I try to show the implications of my ideas for combating bigotry. An additional problem in writing this book was a paucity of information, in primary as well as secondary sources. Only Elizabeth Dilling and Cathrine Curtis left papers, which reveal nothing about their private lives. Oral history proved infeasible. No membership lists existed in the public domain to guide me to living participants, and because most of these would have been in their nineties, their recollections would likely have been vague, limited, and of dubious credibility. I contacted relatives of the participants, to no avail. Most were children during World War II, dimly aware of their mothers’ activities, and they consider the movement an embarrassment that should not be publicized. Kirkpatrick Dilling, for instance, refused to cooperate with me, fearing that an academician’s book would be hostile to his mother’s views (an understandable concern). The chief sources were investigative reports compiled by the federal government and organizations such as the American Jewish Committee, the Anti-Defamation League of B’nai B’rith, and the American Jewish Congress, but these contain nothing about the mothers before or after their isolationist crusades. The transcript of the 1944 mass sedition trial, in which Dilling was a defendant, was consulted, yet like FBI records, it had to be used carefully because of questions about its reliability. Other papers and reports were found in the Minnesota Historical Society. Newspaper articles provided facts, although the accounts were repetitious and included little analysis. The books of investigative journalists such as Avedis Derounian were used prudently. Sometimes written in a hyperbolic style, these works contained only brief accounts of various women and few details about individuals. Still, problems of organization, source limitations, and the stress of writing were less worrisome than my conclusions. Particularly troubling were my reflections on the scope of anti-Semitism and my pessimism, expressed in the epilogue, about efforts to fight prejudice. After twenty years as an academic historian, several religious metamorphoses, and almost a decade of marriage to a theologian, I have concluded that God created the world to confound humanity and that historians are his or her accomplices after the fact. With this book, I might have made a modest contribution toward that end. ...