RONALD RADOSH
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"the possibility of subversive influences on Government policy." That
meant rallying around the "issue of civil liberties," and denying Con–
gress the right to investigate potential subversion, was in fact giving
comfort to Joe McCarthy-who would then be free to abuse power by
moving where others feared to tread. Imagine, she asked, if those
brought before the House Committee on Un-American Activities were
pro-Nazi, rather than pro-Communist. Mrs. Trilling pointed out
sharply that those liberals who were now so agitated when hearings
took place would be the last to object if the subjects of the hearings were
on the political far right. Trilling asked rhetorically: "Would the liberal
chorus swell so loud, or swell at all in defense of
these
victims of repres–
sion?"
As a tough-minded liberal anti-Communist, Diana Trilling reflected
sharply on the meaning of the indictment and conviction of Alger Hiss.
While to many liberals the Hiss case exemplified a Republican smear
job on the entire New Deal, Mrs. Trilling saw it in a very different way.
Indeed, she was hardly shocked at Hiss's conviction, which she saw as
a "retroactive victory" for the anti-Communist liberals, who had always
known that some Communists would be guilty of treason to their coun–
try. Yet, there was a dilemma to be faced . To cheer his conviction put
one in the same camp as the right wing. But the reality was that the lib–
eral had been thrown "into the same camp with forces he detests, or
should detest, as much as he detests Communists." Indeed, Mrs. Trilling
called the new "enforced alignment between anti-Communist liberals
and reactionaries" often "open and distasteful," and thus she sought a
way to differentiate their response from that of the political right, from
whom she sought a "clean break." Her method was one that would be
repeated for years, often to little avail. The anti-Communist liberal, she
wrote, must "insist on his right not to be labeled a reactionary just
because reactionaries agree with him on this issue." To our present day,
Diana Trilling's point has been ignored, despite many attempts to make
the same explanation .
Mrs. Trilling acknowledged that Joe McCarthy's own hearings
seemed to justify the claim of non-Communist and fellow-traveling lib–
erals that a "grand-scale witch-hunt for Communists" in which "inno–
cent liberals would be tarred with the Communist brush" was about to
occur. But she did not agree. Hiss, as she pointed out, was not an inno–
cent liberal. Acknowledging that perhaps McCarthy might smear some
innocent liberals, she reminded her readers "had it not been for the Un–
American Activities Committee, Hiss's guilt might never have been
uncovered." And thus she uttered what until then was the unthinkable:
