70
PARTiSAN REVIEW
fluence of Communists on American culture and politics (look at
The Freeman
and
The American Mercury,
or at
M cCarthy and His
Enemies
for illustration ) . Moreover, this new right possesses that con–
venient and perhaps essential feeling of martyrdom which its very
presence gives to many liberal intellectuals: it sees itself as a minority
suffering for its desire to enlighten the people (Peter Viereck has re–
ferred to the "bleeding hearts of the right" ) .
But the parallel is far from complete. For the left and the liberals
in
their days of influence really wanted something: they had specific
reforms in mind, and specific legislation. The new right, with its few
intellectuals trying to create a program for it, wants at best an at–
mosphere: it really has no desire to change the face of the nation;
it is much more interested
in
changing the past, in rewriting the his–
tory of the New Deal, of the Second World War and its aftermath,
or, in more ambitious efforts, of the whole modem movement. Here
again the comparison of the new right with the Communists is in–
structive, for the latter too, in this country have been preoccupied
with a state of mind: they have aimed to make Americans sympathe–
tic to the Soviet Union, or at least unsympathetic with its enemies
here and overseas. To this end, their greatest efforts have been in
rewriting recent and current history, in presenting a certain picture
of the world in which big business, on the one side, supported fascism
and anti-Semitism, while the Soviet Union, on the other side, protected
Negroes, Jews, and other minorities, and defended the working class.
American domestic politics have been useful to the Communists in
providing object-lessons for this general theory and in recruiting stal–
warts for its further propagation. In the same way, one can read or
listen to the organs of the new right and find nothing that amounts
to a legislative program: the bills they want passed are those which
give expressions to their feelings about the past, such as the Bricker
Amendment, or withdrawing Hiss's pension and otherwise harrassing
Communists (often in ways that such veteran Communist-hunters as
Governor Dewey think unjust and unwise) - the fight for these
measures is an educative fight in re-interpreting the past. When it
comes to coping with world Communism, this group has nothing to
propose in the way of strengthening anti-Communists abroad-noth–
ing but withdrawal or muted quasi-suicidal hints of preventive war.
In fact, the hatred this group feels for the modern world, as mani-
