As a post-Shoah Jew, whose family in the old country had been wiped out in the purges but mainly by Hitler, I was entirely sympathetic to the Zionist project, though in listening closely to the UN debates on Palestine I was impressed by the arguments and style of the Saudi representative Baroody equally with those of Abba Eban. In 1948 I actively supported the Wallace campaign, despite my unease with his increasing dependence on the Stalinists and his failure to condemn the Prague coup. I was happy when Wallace quit his cabinet and ran for president against the “Truman Doctrine,” his rotten compromises with Democratic racists and Republican reactionaries, and his embrace of Bevin’s British imperialist maneuvers in the Middle East and India. Once the war was over, with the horror of the atomic bombs, I quickly realized the bad nature of the Truman regime. Kaltenborn or Walter Winchell, and the liberal, Drew Pearson. Especially the Stalinist radio voices of types like Johannes Steel and Elmer Davis, but also right-wingers like H.V.
But like everyone else, I was submerged by the war propaganda pervading every medium. When Pearl Harbor was hit I rejoiced because we would finally, actually, fight Hitler. I “knew” that the Republicans were isolationists and the Democrats were Tammany Hall crooks and that Stalin was a friend and ally of Hitler. Politics was only talked of in Yiddish, and not in front of the children. My family were largely nonreligious socialists, Norman Thomas voters, but not involved with any political organization. We picked up the New York Times every morning, and frequently the liberal/Stalinoid daily PM, or the Left-liberal New York Post, in the afternoon.
My dentist father’s waiting room was in the middle of our apartment, and its table was always covered with magazines like Life, New Republic, Esquire, National Geographic. A nursemaid’s comment on a May Day in 1937, as a beautiful silver object (that I mistakenly called Graf Zeppelin-I had never yet heard of Hindenburg) crossed the Manhattan sky on its way to Lakehurst, New Jersey: “I hope it blows up and kills all those Nazis.” I learned to read, in part, from the backs of “War Cards” showing scenes from the Spanish Civil War, the Maginot Line, the “impregnable” Belgian fortress of Ebben Emmael, etc. Shane Mage: I was never “politicized.” By the age of four I knew very well who and what Hitler was. What follows is an edited version of their discussion.Ĭam Hardy: How were you politicized? What were the questions or issues that got you involved in the Left? Mage was an original member of the Revolutionary Tendency within the Socialist Workers Party (SWP, U.S.) which became the Spartacist League and is a contributor to recent debates on Marxist theory in the Monthly Review. Cam Hardy and Daniel Jacobs interviewed Shane Mage by letter.
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