The Case of Latimore and the McCarthyite Movement

[S5.5 E3] Anti-Capitalist Chronicles: The Return of McCarthyism (Part 1)

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Professor Harvey discusses the persecution of the scholar Owen Lattimore at the hands of Joseph McCarthy. Owen Lattimore was editor of Pacific Affairs, a journal published by the Institute of Pacific Relations. Lattimore taught at John’s Hopkins University from 1938 to 1963 and then from 1963 to 1970, he was the first Professor of Chinese Studies at the University of Leeds in England. Professor Harvey had the opportunity to visit Lattimore in London.

While doing ethnographic research in Afghanistan in 1950, Lattimore was met by the US consular official who said, you'd better rush back to the United States because Senator McCarthy has fingered you as one of "the top Russian espionage agent in the United States." He was called up in front of the House Un-American Activities Committee and subjected to years of interrogation based on false charges. The Senate Internal Security Subcommittee (the Senate version of HUAC), headed by Pat McCarran, came to the absurd conclusion that China was “lost” not because of Mao or because of the Chinese masses, but China was “lost” because of a small group of academics and intellectuals and State Department officials.

Lattimore was red-baited and persecuted for many years. It is important to understand this history, because what we are seeing right now is a return to that paranoid style of American politics.

David Harvey's Anti-Capitalist Chronicles is co-produced by Politics in Motion. Politics In Motion is a nonprofit organization founded in May 2023 by Prof. David Harvey and Prof. Miguel Robles-Durán, along with Dr. Chris Caruso, instructional technologist, and noted writer and art curator Laura Raicovich. Our anti-capitalist media platform offers piercing insights and thought-provoking analyses on political, social, spatial, cultural, environmental and economic issues through a range of engaging mediums, including YouTube streams, podcasts, and live events.

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David Harvey's lastest book "A Companion to Marx's Grundrisse" (Verso 2023):

https://www.versobooks.com/products/2930-a-companion-to-marx-s-grundrisse

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