Multicultural Cold War: Liberal Anti-Totalitarianism And
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MULTICULTURAL COLD WAR: LIBERAL ANTI-TOTALITARIANISM AND NATIONAL IDENTITY IN THE UNITED STATES AND CANADA, 1935-1971 by Gregory Smolynec Department of History Duke University Date: April 24, 2007 Approved: ___________________________ John Herd Thompson, Supervisor ___________________________ Warren Lerner ___________________________ Susan Thorne ___________________________ Suzanne Shanahan Dissertation submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in the Department of History in the Graduate School of Duke University 2007 ABSTRACT MULTICULTURAL COLD WAR: LIBERAL ANTI-TOTALITARIANISM AND NATIONAL IDENTITY IN THE UNITED STATES AND CANADA, 1935-1971 by Gregory Smolynec Department of History Duke University Date: April 24, 2007 Approved: ___________________________ John Herd Thompson, Supervisor ___________________________ Warren Lerner ___________________________ Susan Thorne ___________________________ Suzanne Shanahan An abstract of a dissertation submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor in the Department of History in the Graduate School of Duke University 2007 Copyright by Gregory Smolynec 2007 Abstract In Cold War North America, liberal intellectuals constructed the Canadian and American national identities in contrast to totalitarianism. Theorists of totalitarianism described Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union as monolithic societies marked by absolutism and intolerance toward societal differences. In response, many intellectuals imagined Canada and the United States as pluralistic nations that valued diversity. The ways in which Canadians and Americans imagined their respective national identities also varied with epistemological trends that were based on the ideas of totalitarianism and its correlate, anti-totalitarianism. These trends emphasized particularity and diversity. Using archival sources, interviews with policy-makers, and analysis of key texts, Multicultural Cold War outlines the history of theories of totalitarianism, related trends in epistemology, the genealogy of the social sciences, and the works of Canadian and American proponents of cultural pluralism and multiculturalism. It centers attention on Canada and the United States where the unreflective ideology of anti-totalitarianism was widespread and the postwar enthusiasm for ethnicity and cultural pluralism became iv especially pronounced. In the U.S.A. this enthusiasm found expression among public intellectuals who defined cultural pluralism in their scholarship and social criticism. In Canada, discourses of multiculturalism originated in the hearings of the Royal Commission on Bilingualism and Biculturalism and the political thought of Pierre Elliot Trudeau. This dissertation shows that enthusiasm for sub-national group particularity, pluralism, and diversity was a transnational North American trend. v Contents Abstract.............................................................................................................................iv Acknowledgements……………………………………………………………………vii Preface.............................................................................................................................viii 1. Introduction ................................................................................................................. 1 2. Chapter 1 All About Totalitarianism .................................................................... 32 3. Chapter 2 The Spell .................................................................................................. 91 4. Chapter 3 American Social Science ...................................................................... 127 5. Chapter 4 Canada’s Policy of Official Multiculturalism ................................... 184 6. Chapter 5 Canada and the United States in Comparative Perspective .......... 239 7. Chapter 6 Conclusion ............................................................................................. 273 References ..................................................................................................................... 273 Biography...................................................................................................................... 299 vi Acknowledgments I am very grateful to the members of my committee, Professors John Herd Thompson (my supervisor), Warren Lerner, Susan Thorne, and Suzanne Shanahan, for their insightful comments, criticism, suggestions, and support. During my research trips to the National Archives in Ottawa, Myron Momryk helped me considerably. It was Myron who first suggested that I look at multiculturalism in the context of the Cold War. Several people have provided me with homes away from home during my travels while working on this dissertation. My thanks go to Roman Poluha, Chris Wade, and Tom and Hannah Rogers. I am grateful to my parents, Michael and Polina Smolynec, for their support throughout my long career as a student. My daughters Esmé and Elsa gave me inspiration. Most of all, I thank my wife Sandra Hartnell. Together we have overcome the disruptions and dislocations that came our way when I decided to go back to school. With love and gratitude, I dedicate this dissertation to Sandra. vii Preface In the early morning hours on June 3, 2006 Canadian police arrested seventeen young Canadian Muslims in Toronto. They were accused of being members of a “homegrown” terrorist cell inspired by al-Qaeda and faced accusations of plotting attacks on several Canadian targets. According to the police, they had planned to attack the Canadian Parliament, take the Prime Minister hostage, and behead him if he did not order the withdrawal of Canadian troops from Afghanistan. For days the arrests were the subject of sensational headlines in Canada and the United States. The fact that the accused were born in Canada or were long-term Canadian residents was especially disconcerting to commentators. Editorialists began to question whether Canada’s policy of multiculturalism was responsible for fostering the attitudes of the Toronto jihadists. The National Post, for instance, ominously declared that the problems of Canadian multiculturalism go “well beyond the encouragement of Muslim extremism.” The Ottawa Citizen implored Canadians to “abandon the viii cultural relativism of the multiculturalism” in response to the presence in Canada of Islamist fundamentalists.1 Stephen Harper, the Prime Minister of Canada, took a different view. On the day of the arrests he ventured that it was precisely Canadian diversity that was the object of jihadist hatred. “We are a target,” he said, “because of who we are and how we live, our society, our diversity and our values."2 Two weeks later, Harper made the arrests and diversity the central theme of a major speech he delivered to the United Nations World Urban Forum in Vancouver. The Prime Minister issued a ringing defense of cultural diversity, Canadian multiculturalism and immigration. He categorically rejected the argument that Canada’s cultural policies had made Canadians more vulnerable to terrorism. “I believe the exact opposite is true,” he declared. “Canada’s diversity, properly nurtured, is its greatest strength.” Harper offered the international audience an 1 http://www.canada.com/nationalpost/news/issuesideas/story.html?id=0d7e614b- 786b-4aae-9535-2c588ca13a1e accessed June 26, 2006. http://www.canada.com/ottawacitizen/news/story.html?id=40465c85-ce6a-48ab- 8274-5c8801a316e6&p=6 accessed July 3, 2006. 2 http://www.cbc.ca/story/canada/national/2006/06/03/terror-suspects.html accessed June 26, 2006. ix assessment of Islamist terrorism. Jihadists, he said, misused the symbols of culture and faith to justify crimes; and they were motivated by a hatred for diverse and democratic societies like Canada because their objective was exactly the opposite: a closed, homogeneous and dogmatic society.3 Whether he realized it or not, Prime Minister Harper was echoing ideas about the value of cultural diversity that had been developed by North American social theorists in the mid-twentieth century. Then the rhetoric of diversity and pluralism had been directed against Nazi and Stalinist totalitarianism. Canadians and Americans first came to value diversity and to re-imagine Canada and the United States as democratic nations characterized by diversity in reaction to twentieth century totalitarianism. Recently, Islamist fundamentalism has come to replace Nazi and Soviet totalitarianism as the enemy to which many North Americans contrast themselves.4 Then, and now, a putatively closed, 3 Glenn Bohn, “Diversity makes us safer: PM” The Gazette, June 20, 2006. 4 President George W. Bush has referred to Islamist terrorism as “totalitarian” on many occasions. In a speech at Johns Hopkins University, he explicitly linked Cold War totalitarianism to Islamist totalitarianism. [T]oday's war on terror,” he said, “is like the Cold War. It is an ideological struggle with an enemy that despises freedom and pursues totalitarian aims.” x homogenous, and dogmatic enemy has provided the alterity - “Other”- through which Canadian and American identity has been constructed. This dissertation is a history of how North Americans came to value diversity in the twentieth century. Canadians and Americans may have understood diversity to mean different things; but for all its various meanings, multiple forms, and ambiguities, diversity came to be regarded as a social ideal. The kinds of diversity they valued included ethnic and ‘racial’