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On 9/29/14 9:40 AM, Richard Kreitner via Marxism wrote:
To cite only late
Godkin and Eric Alterman as evidence that*The Nation* has been
"problematic from its inception" is not a serious reading of history.
But it has been problematic from its inception, although not exclusively
on the racism question.
Early on, the magazine relied on financing from a railroad baron:
On July 1, 1881, Villard returned to journalism, his first passion, and
bought two NY publications with capital gained from his growing railroad
empire: The New York Evening Post, a daily, and the Nation Magazine that
had been instrumental in his rise to power. He put Carl Schurz, a former
Radical Republican and Nation Magazine editor E.L. Godkin, in charge of
the Post, while he gave his son Oliver Garrison Villard the job of
running the Nation. By now Schurz, Godkin and the Nation were firmly in
the camp of business as usual.
Villard's fortunes increased with each passing year. In 1889 he teamed
up with Thomas Edison and German bankers to form Edison General
Electric. In 1892, close to the time of his death, Villard threw himself
into politics once again. He sought the repeal of the Sherman Anti-Trust
Act, which he viewed as an impediment to his fortune-building goals in
railroad and electricity. He became an enthusiastic supporter of the
Democratic Party candidate Grover Cleveland, who was the very symbol of
the Gilded Age.
Villard died in 1900 of what the doctors called an apoplectic stroke.
Donations and bequests in Villard's name still go to Harvard, Columbia,
the American Museum of History, the Metropolitan Museum and many other
august institutions.
full: http://www.columbia.edu/~lnp3/mydocs/origins/villard.htm
---
Then, fast-forwarding, I found the Nation Magazine's reporting on
"trouble spots" most troublesome:
In 1952, shortly after Mossadegh had been voted into power in Iran, the
Nation took it upon itself to persuade the secular nationalist to pay
proper respect to Western powers. In the aptly titled "A New Deal for
the Middle East" (the magazine was an institutional pillar of FDR's 4
term presidency), long-time editor Freda Kirchwey describes the
Godfather like deal being put forward by London and Washington. The US
would grant a $10 million loan and Britain would withdraw the economic
sanctions imposed a year earlier in exchange for a favorable deal
involving Shell and all the other gangsters. "But," Kirchwey wrote,
"reports from Teheran give little reason for optimism." He might be
better advised in fact to cut a deal where he gets part of the pie
rather than the whole thing. Missing entirely from this equation is the
right of the Iranian people to decide to do with their own resources.
Within a year Mossadegh, whom the Nation would eventually dub a
"dictator", would be overthrown by a young leader they characterized as
"well-meaning" and "progressive." His name? Reza Shah Pahlevi.
On June 25, 1955, Sam Jaffe, their "roving correspondent" in Southeast
Asia, filed a report on "Dilemma in Saigon: Which Way Democracy" that is
filled with the kinds of self-flattering illusions satirized in Graham
Greene's "The Quiet American" as well as fulsome praise for the dictator
Ngo Dinh Diem:
"In Saigon there is one man with a solution. But he admits it must be
put into effect quickly or all will be lost. I am not permitted to give
his name, but he is an American official who works around the clock
attempting to whip the Diem government into shape. He has a deep belief
in America and its great past, which, he reminds you, was the result of
its success in throwing off colonial rule. He also has a deep belief in
the Asians. He feels strongly that our Asian foreign policy should not
be to support any one group or government but the will of the Asian peoples.
"He speaks of concrete plans now under way in Vietnam for the
reconstruction of the country. These include the resettling of over
800,000 refugees. Land will be granted them and money given them to
build new homes—if needed, more money can be obtained through a
low-interest loan. He speaks with enthusiasm, of the work being done by
TRIM, the American Training Relations and Instructions Mission under the
able command of Lieutenant General John W. O'Daniel, in helping the
Vietnamese build and maintain a strong military force. He hopes for much
from the teams of Americans under USMO, the United States Operations
Mission, who go into the Vietnamese countryside to ascertain the wants
of the people. Their reports are filled with the need for schools,
bridges, communications, hospitals, sanitation, and the many other
necessities of life that might stem the tide of communism."
Perhaps it would be too much to expect the Nation Magazine to have
simply recognized the USA had no business in Indochina whatsoever in
1955. But one would think that by 1966, when the antiwar movement had
reached massive proportions, that they would have gotten out of the
business of meddling in the affairs of the Vietnamese people, even under
the auspices of that fabled "world-community" alluded to in the dressing
down of the Egyptian masses above.
full: http://www.columbia.edu/~lnp3/mydocs/american_left/tainted_nation.htm
There's much more than that, including the magazine's affinity for
Joseph Stalin in the 1930s but let's leave it at that.
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