On Thanksgiving night; 1915; a small band of hooded men gathered atop Stone Mountain; an imposing granite butte just outside Atlanta. With a flag fluttering in the wind beside them; a Bible open to the twelfth chapter of Romans; and a flaming cross to light the night sky above; William Joseph Simmons and his disciples proclaimed themselves the new Knights of the Ku Klux Klan; named for the infamous secret order in which many of their fathers had served after the Civil War. Unsure of their footing in the New South and longing for the provincial; patriarchal world of the past; the men of the second Klan saw themselves as an army in training for a war between the races. They boasted that they had bonded into "an invisible phalanx...to stand as impregnable as a tower against every encroachment upon the white man's liberty...in the white man's country; under the white man's flag." Behind the Mask of Chivalry brings the "invisible phalanx" into broad daylight; culling from history the names; the life stories; and the driving passions of the anonymous Klansmen beneath the white hoods and robes. Using an unusual and rich cache of internal Klan records from Athens; Georgia; to anchor her observations; author Nancy MacLean combines a fine-grained portrait of a local Klan world with a penetrating analysis of the second Klan's ideas and politics nationwide. No other right-wing movement has ever achieved as much power as the Ku Klux Klan of the 1920s; and this book shows how and why it did. MacLean reveals that the movement mobilized its millions of American followers largely through campaigns waged over issues that today would be called "family values": Prohibition violation; premarital sex; lewd movies; anxieties about women's changing roles; and worries over waning parental authority. Neither elites nor "poor white trash;" most of the Klan rank and file were married; middle-aged; and middle class. Local meetings; or klonklaves; featured readings of the minutes; plans for recruitment campaigns and Klan barbecues; and distribution of educational materials--Christ and Other Klansmen was one popular tome. Nonetheless; as mundane as proceedings often were at the local level; crusades over "morals" always operated in the service of the Klan's larger agenda of virulent racial hatred and middle-class revanchism. The men who deplored sex among young people and sought to restore the power of husbands and fathers were also sworn to reclaim the "white man's country;" striving to take the vote from blacks and bar immigrants. Comparing the Klan to the European fascist movements that grew out of the crucible of the first World War; MacLean maintains that the remarkable scope and frenzy of the movement reflected less on members' power within their communities than on the challenges to that power posed by African Americans; Jews; Catholics; immigrants; and white women and youth who did not obey the Klan's canon of appropriate conduct. In vigilante terror; the Klan's night riders acted out their movement's brutal determination to maintain inherited hierarchies of race; class; and gender. Compellingly readable and impeccably researched; The Mask of Chivalry is an unforgettable investigation of a crucial era in American history; and the social conditions; cultural currents; and ordinary men that built this archetypal American reactionary movement.
#2033758 in Books Ezra Mendelsohn 1993-11-04Original language:EnglishPDF # 1 9.19 x .36 x 6.06l; .61 #File Name: 0195083199184 pagesOn Modern Jewish Politics
Review
1 of 3 people found the following review helpful. On Modern Jewish PoliticsBy Nathan FuchsThe book arrived promptly; on time for a class; and was in good shape as advertised.1 of 1 people found the following review helpful. A Reflective View of the Pre-WWII Politics of Poland's Jews. Why Jews and CommunismBy Jan PeczkisThe Litvaks (Litwaks; LITVAKES in Yiddish) were long the objects of not only Endek but also Jewish preoccupation: "...in the Jewish world of Eastern Europe these Litvaks were celebrated--or damned--for their well-known tendencies toward modernization; secularization; radicalism; and the logical extension of all this; namely; modern nationalism." (p. 42).Although Mendelsohn devotes much of his work to condemning Polish anti-Semitism; he comes to a point where he cuts the Poles some slack: "How could a Polish state successfully cope with a huge non-Polish population comprising something in the nature of 40 percent of all its citizens?" (p. 131). Before touching on the state of Israel; Mendelsohn senses a bit of hypocrisy in Jews attacking Poland when they never were in a position of having to deal with recalcitrant minorities: "It is easy to accuse certain Poles--and even the interwar Polish state--of chauvinism...But Jews of the national persuasion--Bundists...or Zionists...can hardly be accused of such crimes and misdemeanors as they ruled over no one." (p. 112).Interestingly; the author sees the use of Yiddish; by religious as well as secular Jews; not so much an end in itself as a means by which Jews enforced their aggressive separatism (or what I call self-imposed apartheid): "The famous Chinese wall separating Jew from gentile...at least in Eastern Europe; a devotion to Yiddish; not because this language was regarded as a basis of modern secular Jewish nationalism but because its preservation reduced the likelihood of close contacts with the non-Jewish world." (pp. 23-24).The author prefers the term integrationism to assimilation. Mendelsohn believes that Jews failed to integrate more into Polish society not only because of Polish hostility and Jewish separatism; but also because of Poland's situation: "A backward social structure dominated by remnants of the old aristocracy; the established church; and the peasantry is not one that will facilitate Jewish integration." (p. 39). However; Mendelsohn tacitly agrees with the Endek premise that integration into Polish society does not necessarily make a Pole out of a Jew: "But this was usually a case of acculturation without integration--the worst of all worlds; and no victory for the Poles and Romanians of the Mosaic faith." (p. 117). Interestingly; Mendelsohn contends that Jewish nationalists generally agreed with Dmowski and the Endeks that Jews were not; and could never; become Poles. (p. 19).As in many of his other works; Mendelsohn shows that Jewish support for Communism went far beyond membership in the tiny; outlawed Communist party. Isaac Bashevis Singer is quoted as calling Poale Zion Communist. (p. 53). In 1920; the Poale Zion split into pro-Communist and anti-Communist factions (p. 69); and the Bund; which Mendelsohn identifies as a Marxist organization (p. 72); lost some of its members to Communism. (p. 69).Antisemitism by itself cannot be the main reason that Jews found Communism appealing. After all; the political left had been anti-Semitic in its hostility to Jews as a capitalist class. (p. 96). Karl Marx was one of the left-wing heroes and martyrs of Jewish origin; "...whose blatant and inconvenient anti-Semitism was ignored or explained away." (p. 32).As for combatting bigotry; Jewish Communists found bigotry by Jews as objectionable as bigotry against Jews. The author quotes Sydney Hook; who saw Jewish Communists as; "`...a vanguard; liberated from the exclusionist and chauvinistic principles of their forefathers...'" (p. 97). Mendelsohn (pp. 98-99) elaborates on this theme; and adds; "Hatred in this context means; among other things; hatred of the gentile; the drunken and violent GOY of the Jewish imagination. Judaism; at least the Judaism as shaped by the rabbis; meant despising the non-Jew..." (p. 99).Was it; in the end; all about the Jewish acquisition of power and influence? Mendelsohn thinks so; albeit in a positive sense: "The alliance with the gentiles signified not only comradeship but also power...For Jews on the left the longed-for alliance with the international working class signified their transformation from a despised and powerless minority into an integral part of a mighty force; potentially the majority of mankind." (p. 100).Now consider the impending German-made Holocaust. The author assesses Zionism. He believes that the main reason significantly more Polish (and German) Jews did not emigrate to Palestine before WWII owed less to British resistance than to the Jews' lack of desire to do so--even those professedly sympathetic to Zionism. (p. 116).
