JF Ptak Science Books Quick Post
In a year when the political leader of the United States and his spokespeople have tried to make themselves responsible for defining language and veracity according to their own needs, the word "faked" jumped out to me from the cover of this pamphlet. This doesn't have anything to do with the allegations of "fake news" today, when the presidential press person defines "fake news" as new that does not agree with the vision of the White House and the president himself s impossibly scourges entities like the New York Times as dealing in "fake news", as this is of a particularly high height of an attack on reason and logic. This "fake" is far more localized, and accuses the CIO and John Lewis of sharp moves in extorting money from union members as well as trying to coerce the U.S. into becoming a Soviet America.
Most of the contents of this pamphlet is summed up nicely on its back wrapper in the advertisements for other pamphlets sold by the publisher, the Constitutional Educational League. "Join the CIO and Help Build a Soviet America", "Communism's Iron Grip on the CIO", "Vote for John L. Lewis and Communism", and "Battalions of Death" are all part and parcel of the Leagues ambitious attack on the CIO and unions. (Later, in 1949, the League would publish "Hitler was a Liberal" by Joseph Kamp--he was a very prolific guy, writing from an outpost in a watchtower on the very far right. "The Hell with G.I. Joe!", printed in 1944, is another one--there must be three dozen little pamphlets that he wrote and published, warning against infiltration from the left, and even in the early 1950's wondering about whether Dwight Eisenhower would succumb to Commie urges.)
The thing is, however, that in 1942, the Constitutional Educational League--in business at this point for about 20 years--was one of 28 organizations indicated as having conspired against the U.S. as an agent of the Axis Powers. So there's that.
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