RE: BETTINA APTHEKER'S AUTOBIOGRAPHY

 INTIMATE POLITICS: HOW I GREW UP RED,

FOUGHT FOR FREE SPEECH, AND BECAME A FEMINIST REBEL

By BETTINA F. APTHEKER, (Emeryville, CA: Seal Press, 2006)

                                          Rev. by Hugh Murray 

                     This is a provocative and honest autobiography.  Reading it closely, however, one can observe how ideology still shapes Bettina’s view of reality, distorting it to fit her leftist and feminist structure.

            When her book was first published in 2006, the media focused on her assertion that her father, Herbert Aptheker, for decades described as “the leading theoretician of the Communist Party, USA,” had sexually abused his daughter, Bettina, from age 3 to age 13.  Toward the end of her book, Bettina discussed this “nightmare” of abuse with her female lover, Kate, who like Bettina is also a feminist.  Upon hearing of some of Herbert’s reactions to these charges, Kate suggested that Herbert might have been molested as a child himself.  Bettina then writes, “I knew that my father had had an older brother named Alvin.  He and my father had been very close and they shared a room together as boys.  Alvin had committed suicide” when he was 28 and Herbert 20.(p. 513)

            I have no knowledge of Alvin or why he committed suicide at age 28.  But neither does Bettina.  And because some victims of child abuse later abuse children themselves is no reason to presume that Alvin molested Herbert – which she insinuates.  I submit that Bettina smears and convicts Alvin because of her ideology, not because of any verifiable facts.  Ironically, her family was a fierce opponent of “McCarthyism,” yet here we see her practicing a version of it more damaging than any conducted by the Wisconsin Senator.

            This paragraph’s meanness belies the declared aims of her autobiography: “…, I made the decision that I would write about particular individuals only from my direct experience with them, so that I would not engage in rumor or hearsay.”(5)  By including this smear against her uncle, Bettina weakens her allegations against her father.

 I must admit, I came to this book as a skeptic.  I suspected from the coverage of her “recovered” memory of fatherly abuse that it was all a feminist fantasy.  My Master’s thesis, completed in 1963, explored the Scottsboro rape cases of the 1930s, in which two white women alleged they had been raped on a freight train by nine Blacks.  The Communists defended the young men, agitating here and abroad, and hiring top-notch attorneys who proved – to almost everyone except Alabama juries – that the boys were innocent.  I am male, and totally reject the view enunciated by Nina Totenberg on National Public Radio during the Clarence Thomas hearings that women do not make up stories.  I was furious about the smear campaign against Thomas, and against the young nephew of Sen. Ted Kennedy, who was falsely accused by a woman in Florida after a night of partying.  I also had to endure the year-long hoax of charges invented by Tawana Brawley and supported by Rev. Al Sharpton & Co. and reported daily in the liberal media.  I questioned her veracity from the beginning, but the media dared not do so until much later.  And I was angry not only at the media, but the Duke University administrators who condemned the school’s lacrosse team as guilty the minute false charges were lodged.  All of these were examples of feminist injustice – smearing and destroying the reputations of men to reinforce the feminist ideology, and the feminist lie, - that women do not make up stories.

Though I am clearly opposed to the feminist approach, I do not go to the other extreme by maintaining that women always lie about charges of sexual harassment, abuse, and rape.  I consider each case individually, looking at the credibility of all those involved.  At present the media are quick to investigate the man’s background, searching for patterns or evidence of other indiscretions.  However, because of feminist inspired “rape-shield laws” the public is prevented from knowing the name and background of the woman, or even whether she has had a pattern of making false charges.  These feminist laws are unjust and should be repealed.

            As for Bettina’s father, Herbert, I also knew him personally, having met him at two lectures he presented in the summer of 1962, and  I worked for him on his W. E. B. Du Bois projects and at the American Institute for Marxist Studies from 1971 to 1975.  I was Aptheker’s employee and while relations with my boss were generally cordial, we were not close.  I was invited to his home on only one occasion, a small gathering that included (if I recall correctly) Herbert’s wife, Fay, another Du Bois researcher, Bettina, her husband Jack, and her child Josh.

            I was shocked by Bettina’s charge of molestation.  We have only her account of this; not his.  None of us was there to substantiate her charge.  The evidence supporting Bettina’s claim is circumstantial, so what follows is speculation.

            In the 1980s the Isa family, Palestinians living in St. Louis, Missouri, came under suspicion for possible terrorist connections.  The US Government placed a bug on their telephone.  Though the Feds were listening for possible terrorist activities, in 1989 they inadvertently found themselves recording sounds of the father and mother engaged in a Muslim “honor killing” of their 16-year-old daughter, Palestina.  The daughter, also a Muslim, had assimilated into America life, taking a job and dating someone of whom the family disapproved.  The family believed it had no alternative but to kill her.

            Was the Aptheker home similarly bugged?  Aptheker was an open and prominent member of the Communist Party.  If the home had been bugged, and if the Feds overheard Herbert and Bettina “playing” their secret game, then the FBI would have been in the position to blackmail Herbert Aptheker.  Bettina’s memoir gives no hint of any FBI bugging or blackmail.   So, either 1) the FBI had not installed such listening devices in their home, or 2) they did, but the molestation did not occur, or 3) it did occur, but the bugs did not detect the “games.”  Barring future discovery of some old Govt. recordings, there seems to be no hard evidence to prove Bettina’s charges.  We have simply her word.

            Yet, reading her autobiography, I reluctantly conclude that Bettina’s “recovered memory” is probably accurate, that Herbert probably did abuse her when she was a child.  I admired Herbert, and in many ways still do.  But I concede that her description of his reaction to her accusation when she finally confronted him, - this has the ring of truth.  Sadly, I now think Herbert probably did what she accuses him of.

            There is another item, a strange insertion in Bettina’s story that raises questions that she did not attempt to answer.  She asserts that her father went to Mexico to “find” a Mexican Communist who had betrayed American Communist leader Gus Hall to authorities, so that Hall would face prison in the US.(23)  Hall had fled from the US after being found guilty on an anti-Communist charge, and in Mexico he had been captured.  If the US Govt. was unaware that prominent Communist Herbert Aptheker was going in and out of Mexico illegally in 1951 at the height of the Cold War, then the Feds probably had no clue as to what was going on in the Aptheker household when Herbert “played train” with Bettina.  This would reinforce the notion that the FBI would have no hard evidence of molestation, even if it had occurred.  It makes her charge more plausible.  Not only does it make the charge of molestation more likely against Herbert, it raises other, even more serious questions about his trip to Mexico.  But again, for both alleged events, we have only her word.

            I noted earlier that Bettina’s leftist ideology distorts her view of reality.  Let me illustrate.  Doing research, Bettina and her mate Kate had visited the Chicago home of Mrs. Duster, the daughter of famed civil rights leader Ida B. Wells-Barnett.  “…Mrs. Duster gave Kate and me very careful instructions about which streets in the neighborhood were safe to walk and which were not.  With this she directed us to the Regenstein Library at the University of Chicago…We set off and soon came upon the southern border of the university, which faced the ghetto.  Entrance to the campus from this side was impossible, as it was bordered by a huge wrought-iron gate, with spikes…and a literal moat such as one might expect…at a medieval castle.  I was too stunned even to speak; the racist message…was unbelievable.” (400)

Reading this, I concluded that what was unbelievable was Bettina’s denial of reality.  Mrs. Duster, daughter of a Progressive-era, civil-rights activist, Duster, who herself had been a social worker in Chicago, knew her neighborhood, and how unsafe it was.  Who made it unsafe?  Roaming bands of Ku Kluxers?  No, young Black males.  They were the violent criminals whom Mrs. Duster was directing Bettina to avoid.  They were the Huns of modern Chicago – so dangerous that an outpost of civilization, the city’s university, excavated a moat and installed a heavy gate to impede any invasion of the peaceful campus.  Without the moat there might have been no library to house the papers of Wells-Barnett.  With invasions of violent criminals, would the university have found it necessary to relocate to a safer area?  But Bettina can only see “racism.”  Has she really removed her red-tinted glasses she had inherited from her parents?

            When her parents lived in Brooklyn’s Crown Heights, Fay was mugged twice, and Herbert was knocked to the ground by a thief who used a knife to cut open his pockets in search for valuables.  Herbert was in denial.  He told me it was all political.  Though one cannot preclude anti-communism as a possible motive, it is far more likely that the mugger had simply targeted a white.  Black racism is rampant, but to the left, which dominates the academedia complex, Black racism does not exist.  Black crime is ignored, or excused.  So the left cannot analyze the reality of big cities.  When I was living in Brooklyn, I resided one subway stop from the Apthekers, and I left the neighborhood after a mugger broke my jaw (which decades later still causes problems).  After their muggings, Fay and Herbert separated themselves from the violent criminals of Brooklyn – not by a moat away, but by a continent away, to California.  Could they even admit to themselves that Black racism and Black crime motivated them to flee their home?  Bettina evaluates the moat as “racist.”  How does she evaluate her parents escape from crime?  Is white flight a symptom of racism?  Or a survival technique – seeking to escape from a hostile environment infected with Black noise, Black aggression, Black bullying, Black crime, Black terror.  (I certainly do not mean that all Blacks do these things, but most vote for the pro-crime politicians that refuse to crack down on illegal activities, resulting in mounting crime in those areas, and crime causes more poverty.)

            Another example of how the leftist ideology distorts Bettina’s view of reality: “I heard white students scapegoating students of color, blaming them if their white friends had not been admitted to university.  I used this as an example, named it as a form of racism.  This lecture brought the white students up short…Only then, I saw, when we were out of denial about how pervasive racism is, could I teach the history and begin a fruitful dialogue.”(461)  In her view, the charge of racism closes debate and brings white students (or Blacks like Louisiana-born Ward Connerly) up short!  Clearly, Bettina did not want dialogue any more than did President Bill Clinton during his “Dialogue on Race.”  What both want is a monologue on race, rationalizing policies that in the name of civil rights and equal opportunity deny civil rights and equal opportunity to white men and others.  (This is not what the civil rights movement stood for when I sat-in at Woolworth’s lunch-counter in the first New Orleans sit-in in 1960.)

            One must wonder about Bettina’s university classes.  She wrote, “Teaching became a form of activism for me,…”(406)  She was helping to create the feminist studies’ curricula, not only for her classes, but for emerging, growing field.  “I created a teaching style that established boundaries of trust and respect…I think this was possible because of the feeling of unconditional love that welled up in me as each class began…Whether or not students agreed with me on any particular subject didn’t matter.  What mattered was offering then a space…to come to their own conclusions.  What mattered was that they learned to love themselves ‘regardless,’…”!? 459)  In a history class, one might (or might not) learn history; sociology class, sociology; engineering class, engineering.  In the feminist class, one learns to love oneself.  Are you kidding me?  Should one receive university credit for learning to love oneself?

            Despite my objections and criticism, I found this to be an enjoyable book.  For brevity I shall mention a few other points.  As a child she bemoaned the execution of the Rosenbergs, the “alleged” atomic spies.(21)  Alleged!  In 2012 Russian leader Vladimir Putin spoke thanking the Western atomic scientists who had delivered suit cases of secret files to the old USSR to help the Soviets develop the bomb.  Putin emphasized “suitcases full.”  Bettina whitewashes the Black Panther Party(221).  For a better description of that murderous organization, read Destructive Generation by David Horowitz.  Bettina praises Mario Savio’s commitment to the First Amendment(129) during the Free Speech Movement at Berkeley, but omits his support of the suppression of free speech at U. C.  Berkeley  years later when the campus paper printed an editorial critical of affirmative action, and the left confiscated and destroyed all copies of the paper.  Free Speech Movement?  But only for the left.

            Some quibbles.  Bettina writes that her dad was homophobic and describes an incident where he insulted a long-haired man at a concert.  Yet, in all my dealings with him, he was usually cordial.  I worked for him for several years and do not recall him uttering a word demeaning to gays.  However, around early 1975 I brought the subject up when I submitted to him a possible introduction to a collection of his articles.  In the introduction I criticized Herbert on several issues, including his silence about gay oppression.  He blew up, shouting at me as never before.  He screamed at me that he was leading the fight inside the Communist Party to change its position to make it more tolerant of gays.  As I was not a member of the Party, I had no way of judging the veracity of his claim – which was made in anger.  In September 2012 I emailed Bettina, our first contact in about four decades.  I asked her about this specifically.  She graciously replied to me, writing that she has uncovered nothing in her research on gays and the CP to substantiate her father’s assertion to me about his efforts to liberalize the CP stance on gays.  When Herbert returned my introduction in 1975 in that heated encounter, he did not fire me on the spot.  Yet, I felt the atmosphere had changed, and began to search for other work.

            Bettina mentions that her grandfather was a major founder of one of the oldest synagogues in Brooklyn (426), but she omits that he acquired a building on Manhattan’s Fifth Avenue and 28^th Street – a building he got around 1928 and lost after the market crash of 1929.  She is good in describing how as an only child, she was like a 3^rd adult in the family.(34)  I had a similar experience as an only child.  She blames the fall of Communist East Germany on corruption; I blame its demise on socialism.  Indeed, without the presence of Soviet troops, it would have fallen long before 1991.

Her autobiography should have had an index, but that is a minor point.

            What is good about her book?  She presents an inside view of the Free Speech Movement protests in California, which would have repercussions by allowing the left to be heard on numerous campuses throughout the nation.  She is good at showing the struggles by a lesbian to conform to her parents’ religion (Communism), and how, in the end, she could no longer live a lie with her husband.  Her lesbian feelings were a major chink in the armor of Communism, one that allowed her to free herself from some of that heavy, rigid ideology.  It was not easy, and she writes of her problems with paranoia, self-loathing, and depression – problems I too have experienced as a gay man.  Once freed from the red armor, she was lucky to find a lesbian partner, Kate, and if they did not live “happily ever after,” at least they lived together happily.  Her chapter on the death of her parents is moving.  The confrontation with her father, Herbert, about the abuse, is wrenching.  Her description of driving on a bridge in California just as an earthquake rumbled beneath her provides a depth absent from the 20 seconds of TV images shown during such natural calamities.

            Her narrative of her conversion to Buddhism is interesting but left me cold.  One tenet of the religion is enough to close my mind on the issue – thou shall not kill insects.  As one who grew up in New Orleans swatting mosquitoes, crunching cockroaches, and using matches to burn ants, I utterly reject the ideal of not killing vermin.  When my Hindu friends gently remove a bug from a table, I roll my eyes.  I, too, wear my own set of blinders.

            As much as I disagree with Bettina’s politics, I enjoyed reliving her era – for it is mine as well.  We fought some of the same battles, yet arrived at different destinations.  Yet, I suspect we are both a bit more tolerant now than we were decades ago.  That she would even answer my emails, knowing that I’m now a conservative, attests to her tolerance.  Overall, Bettina’s book is an honest work about iconic figures of the left; one notes her courage in various movements, her struggles within her immediate family, and her wider family (the Party).  Finally she emerged as a lesbian mother and an academic for feminism and the left.  One need not agree with her to learn from her.  Bettina’s story covers not only the Berkeley protests, but some of the changes in the US, and the flexibility within the American system that contrasts with the rigidity of the Communist Party.  Hers is a volume that tells volumes.

            Addition, 10 March 2015.  Bottom line – Bettina’s autobiography raises two disturbing charges against her father, Herbert Aptheker: 1) Did he molest her?  2) Was he a hit man (not just a philosophical debater) for the Communist movement?  Do Federal Agencies have any tapes or information related to either of these charges?