The Red Scare Is American Past and Present
If we want to understand how we arrived in this authoritarian moment in 2025, we need to understand one of the central pathways that brought us here: McCarthyism.
13 Article(s) by: Benjamin Balthaser
Benjamin Balthaser is an associate professor of multiethnic US literature at Indiana University, South Bend. He is the author most recently of Citizens of the Whole World: Anti-Zionism and the Cultures of the American Jewish Left from Verso Books.
The Long Anti-Zionist History of the American Jewish Left
In the last year and a half, thousands of left-wing American Jews have protested Israel’s crimes against Palestinians. They are taking part in a long tradition of anti-Zionist Jewish radicalism in the United States.
The Communist Who Reimagined Jewish Life in America
The Jewish communist Ben Gold’s recently reissued 1944 novel, Your Comrade, Avreml Broide, offers a glimpse into a world in which a radical tradition of egalitarianism and cosmopolitanism overshadowed Zionist nationalism.
The Past, Present, and Future of Left Jewish Identity
The kind of Jewish identity on display in Jewish-led Palestine solidarity demonstrations organized by groups like Jewish Voice for Peace is part of a long history of Jewish identity being bound up in leftist politics.
The Red Scare Scarred the Left — But Couldn’t Kill It
The postwar Second Red Scare successfully smashed the American left. But in the midst of its devastation, a small number of old leftists refused to be shut up by the climate of fear. Without their heroism, the New Left could never have emerged.
Mark Levin Wants a New Red Scare
Mark Levin’s American Marxism is full of absurd inaccuracies about socialists. But accuracy isn’t his aim — Levin wants a sweep of “Marxists” from every layer of American society, a 21st-century rerun of McCarthyist authoritarianism to attack the Left.
Mike Gold, the Writer Who Believed Workers Could Speak for Themselves
Cold War hysteria meant that Communist writer Mike Gold has been universally denounced in life and death. But Gold’s pioneering work created a working-class literature written for, by, and about working-class people — and it should be celebrated today.
A Jewish Goodbye to David Graeber
David Graeber’s intellectual legacy is enormous and wide-ranging, but his recent writings on antisemitism deeply moved me. He knew that antisemitism was far from dead — and he also knew that only a democratic left could stop it.
The Forgotten History of the Jewish, Anti-Zionist Left
The roots of modern Zionism are in colonialism. This was the foundation of the Jewish left’s opposition to Zionism in the 1930s and ’40s, on the grounds that it is a form of right-wing nationalism and imperialism that is fundamentally opposed to working-class internationalism.
Our American Zion
The racism and red-baiting of Bari Weiss’s latest book, How to Fight Anti-Semitism, isn’t an accident. It reflects her deep conflation of her own Judaism with American exceptionalism and the US global empire.
Antisemitism and the Crisis of Liberalism
Contemporary antisemitism must be confronted. Yet liberals who insist on equating leftists like Jeremy Corbyn with the open antisemitism of right-wing figures like Donald Trump are not only blatantly dishonest, but prevent us from fighting anti-Jewish bigotry.
Modernism or Barbarism
The answer to the miseries of modernity isn't to reject modernity — it's to demand more of it.
Colonies and Capital
The work of Native American activist Archie Phinney shows how Marxism can help advance indigenous struggle.