A University of Sussex DPhil thesis Available online via Sussex Research Online: http://eprints.sussex.ac.uk/ This thesis is protected by copyright which belongs to the author. This thesis cannot be reproduced or quoted extensively from without first obtaining permission in writing from the Author The content must not be changed in any way or sold commercially in any format or medium without the formal permission of the Author When referring to this work, full bibliographic details including the author, title, awarding institution and date of the thesis must be given Please visit Sussex Research Online for more information and further details UNIVERSITY OF SUSSEX ‘Is It Good for the Jews?’ Jewish Intellectuals and the Formative Years of Neoconservatism, 1945-1980 Nadja A. Janssen SUBMITTED TO THE GRADUATE SCHOOL IN FULFILMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS for the degree DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY Field of American History, Literature and Social Studies Brighton, United Kingdom 11 January 2010 For my family Acknowledgements ! This work would not have been possible without the unflinching support, patient encouragement and constructive advice of Clive Webb and Jarod Roll. My gratitude also goes to Margaret Reynolds and Alun Howkins at the Postgraduate Centre of the School of Humanities for their alacrity in arranging financial assistance for research trips and conferences and to the American Studies Department for the provision of continued teaching throughout the past four years. Furthermore, I wish to thank the Sir Richard Stapley Educational Trust, whose funding enabled me to visit archives in the United States. I wish to express my gratitude to the following librarians for their excellent advice and help: Adina Anflick at the American Jewish Historical Society, Roberta Saltzman and her amiable colleagues at the Dorot Jewish Division of the New York Public Library, and Jennifer Brathovde and her teammates at the Manuscript Division Library of Congress. I thank Cyma Horowitz at the American Jewish Committee’s Blaustein Library for being ever so courteous with locating valuable material. Also of great help were Jennifer B. Lee at the Rare Books & Manuscript Library at Columbia University, as well as Ronald Bulatoff and Carol A. Leadenham at the Hoover Institution Archives. I would also like to thank my interview partners for the time taken out of their busy schedules to share their knowledge with me: Jonathan Sarna at Brandeis, Ruth Wisse and Nathan Glazer in Cambridge, Massachusetts, Irwin Stelzer in Washington D.C., Norman Podhoretz in New York, William Kristol at the Weekly Standard, Neal Kozodoy at Commentary, Joshua Muravchik at the American Enterprise Institute and Daniel Kimmage of Radio Liberty/Radio Free Europe. Thank you also to Michael Kimmage for introducing me to Ruth Wisse, to Tristan Stubbs for putting me in touch with Irwin Stelzer and to Leyre Gonzalez for arranging the interview. Finally, I want to thank Stephen Whitfield and Nathan Abrams for all the valuable advice given throughout the last four years. Moreover, I am thankful to those who helped me locate or provided me with accommodation while researching archives and libraries in the United States: Fabian Rühle, Richard Parker, Frank Janssen, Joshua Derman, John Woods, Kerstin Hofmann, Aila Hofmann-Woods, Michael Wood and family, Alain Vandepeute, Michael Kimmage, Karla Goldmann, Natasha Canlas and Brandon Erina. Last but certainly not least, my gratitude belongs to my family and my friends for their unconditional love, everlasting loyalty and indispensable support. I hereby declare that this thesis has not been and will not be submitted in whole or in part to this or any other university for the award of any other degree. Nadja A. Janssen 11 January 2010 Thesis Abstract ! This thesis re-evaluates the emergence of the neoconservative critique of American post-war liberalism from 1945 to 1980. Its original contribution to the scholarship on neoconservatism lies in the claim that a particular understanding of Jewishness fundamentally shaped the neoconservatives’ right turn, as well as neoconservative ideology. Few scholars have recognised the primacy of Jewish identity politics in the evolutionary history of neoconservatism. Those who have, have done so inadequately and unmethodically. Therefore, my thesis systematically analyses the Jewish dimension of early neoconservatism by placing particular focus on its two principal mouthpieces, Commentary and The Public Interest, while drawing on autobiographical writings, personal papers and oral interviews. Reconsidering neoconservatism from this angle also contributes to a re- evaluation of modern Jewish political history by debunking the myth that the American Jewish community is governed by consensus based on political identification with liberalism. My thesis shows that neoconservatism not only contributed to the rise of conservatism and the fall of liberalism on a national level, but also played an important role in post-1945 Jewish intra-communal contentions about which political affiliation best expresses modern Jewish American identity. Accordingly, it demonstrates that Jewish political culture is more diverse than is usually appreciated and that neoconservatives draw on a tradition of Jewish conservatism, which has so far received little attention from scholars of modern Jewish history. CONTENTS ! Introduction 1 Chapter 1 ‘Unparalleled Opportunities’: From Anxious Subculture Into the Mainstream, 1930-1945 17 Introduction 17 ‘Still a Distinctive Race’: American Jewry in the 1930 23 Franklin D. Roosevelt and the ‘Jew Deal’ 31 The Impact of the Second World War and the Destruction of European Jewry on American Jews 39 Conclusion 50 Chapter 2 ‘Exile and Homecoming’: Commentary and the Renegotiation of Jewish American Identity, 1945-1959 53 Introduction 53 ‘An Act of Faith in America’: The Birth of Commentary Magazine 58 ‘Is America Exile or Home?’: Pro-Americanism, Anti-Communism and the Legacy of the Holocaust 74 ‘What Is Good for Israel is Good for America’: Israel and Commentary Magazine 87 Conclusion 97 Chapter 3 ‘Liberal Judaism is a Contradiction in Terms’: Commentary and the Anti-Progressive Backlash, 1960-1965 99 Introduction 99 Norman Podhoretz: ‘The Meir Kahane of the Intellectuals’ 104 The ‘New Commentary’: A Voice of Radicalism? 109 ‘A Study in the Perversity of Brilliance’: Hannah Arendt’s Eichmann in Jerusalem 116 The Civil Rights Movement and Commentary Magazine 122 ‘The True Democrats Are the Few’: Old versus New Radicals 132 Conclusion 141 Chapter 4 ‘A Crisis in Values’: The Public Interest and the Limits of Liberalism, 1965-1972 143 Introduction 143 The Public Interest: ‘A Middle-Aged Magazine for Middle-Aged Readers’ 147 The Defence of the Bourgeois Populist Order against Countercultural Millenarians 168 Commentary, the Spectre of Anti-Semitism and Jewish Radicals 175 ‘Come Home Democrats’: The Coalition for a Democratic Majority and Democrats for Nixon 186 Conclusion 191 Chapter 5 ‘Come on in, the Water is Fine’: Towards a Consolidation of the Neoconservative Critique, 1972-1980 194 Introduction 194 ‘Into the Right’: Neoconservative Institution- and Coalition Building 198 ‘Reverse Discrimination’: The Neoconservative Case Against Affirmative Action 209 ‘Who Is Kosher and Who Is Treif’: Israel, Anti-Semitism and Jewish Radical 222 ‘The Culture of Appeasement’: A Resurgence of ‘the Spirit of Munich’ 231 Conclusion 243 Conclusion ‘Outsiders Still’: Neoconservatives, American Jews, and the New Right 246 Bibliography 263 List of Abbreviations 302 Introduction ! In 1988, the traditionalist conservative Russell Kirk predicted that, “within a very few years we will hear no more of the Neoconservatives”.1 A couple of years later, the self-professed “godfather” of neoconservatism, Irving Kristol, seemed to agree. Kristol claimed that neoconservatism had been but “a generational phenomenon”, which had been “absorbed into a larger, more comprehensive conservatism” by the mid-1990s.2 Similarly, in March 1996, one year after he had stepped down as editor-in-chief of the “neocon bible” Commentary, Norman Podhoretz, “the mandarin general” of neoconservatism, wrote, “neoconservatism is dead…it no longer exists as a distinctive phenomenon”. Yet he also warned the liberal “enemies” of neoconservatism that this was not cause for celebration, since the legacy neoconservatives had left behind would “continue to plague them for a very long time to come”.3 With the World Trade Center bombings of September 2001 and the subsequent war on terror, neoconservatism found a new lease on life.4 In the years following 9/11 the term 1 Russell Kirk, “The Neoconservatives: An Endangered Species”, Heritage Lecture 178 (Washington, D.C.: The Heritage Foundation, 1988, http://www.heritage.org/Research/PoliticalPhilosophy/HL178.cfm (accessed August 30, 2009). 2 Irving Kristol, “Neoconservatism: An Idea Whose Time is Now”, Esquire, February 13, 1979, 23-42; Irving Kristol, Neoconservatism: The Autobiography of an Idea (Chicago: Ivan R. Dee, 1995), 40. 3 Max Boot, “What the Heck Is a ‘Neocon’?” Wall Street Journal, December 30, 2002, http://www.opinionjournal.com/editorial/feature.html?id=110002840 (accessed June 18, 2009); Sidney Blumenthal, The Rise of Counter-Establishment: From Conservative Ideology to Political Power (New York: Union Square Press, 2008), 121; Norman Podhoretz, “Neoconservatism: A Eulogy”, Commentary, March 1996, 19. 4 Until September 11, 2001, neoconservatives were junior players in the Bush administration. John Micklethwait