Decline of D. West - Her latest book

THE REBUTTAL: DEFENDING ‘AMERICAN BETRAYAL’

FROM THE BOOK-BURNERS (Washington, DC: Bravura Books, 2013)

By DIANA WEST

Rev. by Hugh Murray

            A book should stand on its own merits, and by this criterion, Ms. West’s REBUTTAL fails. The book’s organization is chaotic; consequently, there is much repetition.  But the repetition does not necessarily lead to better understanding – just a retold version of events again and again, which by book’s end leaves the reader more confused.  West includes no index, so one cannot easily recheck to note slight variations in the retelling.  Worse, over 60% if the book is taken from the blogosphere, but in the book’s visual presentation of this net scape, it is often difficult to distinguish who is writing from whom they are quoting, for a blogger may include several paragraphs by another author.  These are serious drawbacks to any book.

            The reason for West’s REBUTTAL is to defend her previous book. AMERICAN BETRAYAL, from a series of scathing reviews beginning with that of historian Ronald Radosh on the FrontPage website of David Horowitz.  Horowitz actually pulled a favorable review of her book by Mark Tapson and replaced it with the lengthy attack by Radosh.  In her REBUTTAL, West notes some of the nasty, unacademic words that Radosh and other neo-conservatives used to denigrate her, such as “unhinged,” and “loon.,”  In the title of his review, Radosh indicates he is not a far-right conservative, “McCarthy on Steroids,” linking West to the Wisconsin Republican Senator.  Horowitz summarized his view of West’s AMERICAN BETRAYAL in one sentence, “This book should not have been written.”  Others smashed her book in reviews while admitting that they had not bothered to read it.  In short, the fault line seems to be, the more one adores Franklin Roosevelt, the less one thinks of Diana West’s work.  Her research led her to conclude that FDR’s Administration contained so many Soviet agents, Communists, and fellow travelers, that Washington was an “occupied” government.  Some of the disputes between her and her critics hinged on words like “occupied,” and “agent,” or whether Roosevelt’s close advisor Harry Hopkins was or was not Agent 19.  In this work West defends her critical view of the FDR leadership and Hopkins in particular.  She recounts an episode in which FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover wrote Hopkins about FBI information that a Soviet embassy agent conferred with leaders of the Communist Party, USA.  Hopkins then warned the Soviet Embassy that the FBI was listening to some of its agents.  Agent 19 or not, Hopkins was revealing highly classified information to the Soviets and to the detriment of the US Government.

            West includes many tantalizing tidbits strung throughout her REBUTTAL, but they fail to generate a full argument.  Here are some:  US aided in Operation Keelhaul, returning escapees from Stalin’s workers’ paradise, forcing their return to the USSR to gulag and/or death (p. 40, 151); Soviet refusal to return to the US American POW’s captured by the Axis and then “liberated” by the Soviet’s advancing armies (44); Pres. Harry Truman’s promotion of Soviet agent Harry Dexter White at the same time his Dept. of Justice was considering charging anti-Communist whistle-blower Whittaker Chambers with perjury (59); The CPUSA paid for many of the expenses of participants in the 1968 Days of Rage at the Democratic Convention in Chicago in 1968 (101); Gen. Sikorski, leader of the anti-Communist government of Poland may have been murdered by Soviet agents in Gibraltar in July 1943 - not a victim of a mere airplane malfunction (155-59); J. Robert Oppenheim may have been a secret member of the Communist Party (171).  These are all tasty crumbs, but where is the cake?  Unfortunately, not in this book.

            The saddest item in this work concerns the firing of a blogger who wrote approvingly of West’s AMERICAN BETRAYAL.  Clare Lopez was fired from her post at the Gatestone Institute’s website, allegedly for recommending West’s earlier book.  The new CEO of Gatestone at the time was former UN Ambassador John Bolton(135-38).  Too bad that conservatives cannot be more open-minded.

            Does West make her case in THE REBUTTAL?  Because of the acrimony, she probably could not reprint Radosh’s 10-page hostile review in full.  So the reader is left with only one side of the argument.  It is a rebuttal, but one should read the other side before coming to a judgment.
(I hope to have a review of her book AMERICAN BETRAYAL later this year.  Hugh Murray)