Mike Gold
Copyright © 2000 by Hugo S. Cunningham, or by original authors
first posted 001208
last updated 001212
From
Gold, Michael (edited, with introduction by Micheal Folsom), Mike Gold: A Literary Anthology, International Publishers, New York, 1972; cloth, 322 pp.
P. 228
Reprinted from article "The Gun is Loaded, Dreiser!", condemning Theodore Dreiser for tolerating anti-Semitic remarks at a symposium in the "American Spectator" (not the modern version) 17 April 1935. MG's article appeared in "New Masses," 17 May 1935.
"Any theory of nationalism which forces cultural assimilation of its citizens is a big step toward fascism...
"In the Soviet Union, there is no such cultural imperialism. The Jews who have nationalist feelings have been given a great territory of land, large as France, for their own autonomous republic. Other Jews are scattered throughout the Soviet Union, in factories and collective farms. Those who wish to carry on the old Jewish culture are helped to do so. Those who wish to be assimilated find no prejudices in the way. The choice is free; but Mr. Dreiser points his chauvinist gun at the head of this racial minority, the Jews, and says, 'Either assimilate or get the hell out.'"
P. 271-272
From chapter 3, "Renegades: A Warning of the End" of The Hollow Men, International Publishers, 1941.
This article ferociously denounced many of America's leading left-wing authors, those who did not faithfully adhere to the Communist Party line.
"Edmund Wilson accidentally opened a curtian on the renegade psyche, in the course of a review of Hemingway's lastest novel in a recent 'New Republic'.
"There is, furthermore, in For Whom the Bell Tolls something missing that we still look for in Hemingway. Where the semi-religious exaltation of Communism has failed a writer who had once gained from it a new impetus, a vacuum is created which was not there before and which for the moment has to be filled. In Hemingway's case, there has poured in a certain amount of conventional romance."
"Edmund Wilson is mistaken in two facts: communism is not a religious movement, but the most completely humanist movement on the face of the earth; and second, since ratting on communism generally means that the humanity in oneself must first be amputated, this cannot prove merely a temporary vacuum."
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