A Pleasant Surprise: John Beaty's 'The Iron Curtain over America'

John Beaty’s ‘The Iron Curtain over America’ - which was published in 1951 and which has been reissued in new editions at least five times and had been reprinted eleven times between 1951 and 1954 according to the undated 5th edition that I have acquired in PDF (hence the lack of a full reference) - is unusual in English-language anti-Semitic literature and especially so in that genre after the conclusion of the Second World War. What makes it unusual is firstly the obvious erudition of the author; in that Beaty himself had acquired a PhD before the outbreak of said war and the amount of research that went into and is evident in ‘The Iron Curtain over America’ is considerable. Most post-Second World War anti-Semitic treatises are largely unreferenced and obviously lack any serious research into their subject matter in that they make use of commonly known anti-Semitic charges and the evidence to support them without trying to innovate or check their case only contributing at maximum a few newspaper references or reproductions in an attempt to appeal to the contemporary reader.

Beaty is decidedly different throughout ‘The Iron Curtain over America’. I was surprised and rather pleased to find that Beaty had used excellent sources for his case in so far as he quotes standard works such as the jewish Encyclopaedias, authoritative books on everything from the history of Russia and the Ukraine to the Haskalah movement and he doesn’t make any charges that he does not substantiate with some evidence. It is also of note that Beaty does not simply drag out old accusations, but rather creates a new thesis using parts of old evidence combined with new evidence. Whether we believe those charges nearly sixty years on is quite another matter, but Beaty has shown himself truly worthy of some attention because he bucks the trend for post-war English language anti-Semitic literature.

The key to Beaty’s thesis is simple in that he believes and offers evidence for the theory that firstly the Ashkenazi jews are not really Semites at all, but rather descendants of the Khazar Khanate (what we generally call Khazaria) which in Beaty’s opinion means that Zionism’s case for the creation of Israel boiled down to a historical fabrication at best and an outright lie at worst.

Secondly Beaty asserts - using Robert Wilton’s ‘Last Days of the Romanovs’ (as cited by Fr. Denis Fahey) and Nesta Webster (who may have also relied partly on Wilton and who certainly relied on sources similar to Wilton) - that the Bolshevik revolution was almost entirely dominated by Ashkenazi jews and therefore can be considered a jewish revolution.

Then Beaty moves onto the third part of his thesis and offers evidence - if at times somewhat thin - that Ashkenazi jews are heavily involved in working for the Soviet Union in the United States and are therefore a subversive threat to the United States and need to be dealt with accordingly where he concludes his thesis not taking it any further. Beaty also asserts - as an ancillary point - that US involvement in the Second World War was contrived and forced upon the country by Franklin D. Roosevelt and his cronies to support which he uses several published memories by senior members of Roosevelt’s administration - such as those by James Forrestal - as well as several works by leading historians of the time such as Charles Beard and Harry Elmer Barnes.

When Beaty wrote ‘The Iron Curtain over America’ the Khazar thesis was a somewhat esoteric idea among scholars of the jewish question and had been debated for many years in both the philo-Semitic and the anti-Semitic literature (at both the popular and academic levels). The Khazar thesis at the time that Beaty wrote was not a mainstay of anti-Semitic literature precisely (although it was part of the strongly Christian sub-genre), because it was viewed as rather irrelevant and it also suggested - in an age when intellectuals in general didn’t ignore the direct implications of evolution on humanity - that the [Ashkenazi] jews were just a bunch of either Slavs, Turks or Tartars. The Khazar thesis began to gain popularity from the formation of Israel in 1948 to provide anti-Semites with a way of attacking the jewish right to colonise Palestine and change it from an Arab country to a jewish country.

In effect anti-Semites realised that the basis of all Zionist ideology was the link between their Semitic heritage and the territory of Palestine so in order to attack this anti-Semites began switching to the Khazaria thesis for the origins of the Ashkenazim. It should also be noted that since before the Second World War anti-Semites had begun to largely ignore the two other major parts of the jewish community: the Sephardim and the Mizrahim.

This habit of focusing - to the exclusion of other jewish groups - on the Ashkenazim is of uncertain origin (as no author I have read or heard of has commented on this particular point), but is very likely the result of the reports of the jewish origin of the Bolshevik revolution in Russia combined with the large emigration of Ashkenazim from the Russian Empire from 1881 to 1914, which placed the Ashkenazim both at the centre of a shocking event - the communist revolution and the destruction of the old order in Russia as well as a challenge to Western destiny] - and also as an alien and often subversive mass at home (i.e., the habit of jews of confining themselves in self-created ghettos as well as providing considerable numbers of communist and left-wing activists and supporters). This combined with the lack of Mizrahim in Europe and the highly assimilated nature of the Sephardim lead to the focus being distorted and wholly aimed at the Ashkenazim who - although the largest of the jewish groups - were only part of the problem.

Once this focus became established in anti-Semitic thought the path was laid for anti-Semites to be able to adopt the Khazaria thesis without compromising their logic or focus (since the Sephardim and Mizrahim are of uncontested Semitic origin) to attack Israel. It is quite probable that with the lucid presentation of the Khazaria thesis, the link with communism (at a time when strong anti-Communism was expected among the ‘right wing’ in general and there was a strong belief in the conspiratorial nature of communism) and the large circulation of ‘The Iron Curtain over America’ that Beaty played a significant - perhaps key - part in spreading the Khazaria thesis among English-speaking anti-Semites.

This is suggested by the fact that non-English language post Second World War anti-Semitic literature has far less of a focus on the Khazaria thesis and often doesn’t mention it at all. Like English language anti-Semitic literature before the Second World War there is a sub-genre of Christian anti-Semitic literature where mentions are more frequent (i.e., because the Khazaria thesis can be used to attack the notion that the [Ashkenazi] jews are ‘the Chosen people’ of YHWH/Hashem). As I have encountered (or have heard of) no major anti-Semitic treatises - let alone popular ones - that were purporting the Khazaria thesis: I am forced to conclude that Beaty must have had a significant role in popularising this argument among anti-Semites particularly in relation to their arguments regarding the Ashkenazim and Israel.

The Khazar thesis continues to this day to be a standard anti-Semitic argument used particularly against the Ashkenazim and Israel, but unfortunately the Khazaria thesis for the origin of the Ashkenazim after a period of scholarly controversy from the 1960s to the 1980s has largely been discarded on the basis that genetic studies of Ashkenazim show little real trace of potential Khazar genetic material, but rather a clear majority of Semitic genetic material (to the extent that some have asserted that the Ashkenazim are the genetic cousins of the Arabs of Palestine).

This has all been neatly and ably summarised by the lay authority on the Khazars Kevin Alan Brook who concludes in his authoritative summary work on Khazaria (1) that there is very little real evidence for this thesis beyond the original cause of its creation: i.e., scholarly conjecture concerning the historical documents, which the genetic evidence has largely discredited (as well as fresh scholarly analysis which has persuasively argued that the Khazar conversion to Judaism only affected the elite and that the population in general maintained their beliefs, which were largely pagan but Islam and Nestorian Christianity were also strongly represented). Brook states this in spite of his overt sympathy for the Khazaria thesis for the origin of the Ashkenazim and as any good scholar: he refuses to let his personal feelings get in the way of his scholarship (an all too common occurrence among the slums of academia).

Unfortunately modern anti-Semites in general are not as intellectually rigorous as Beaty was in his time - we after all cannot blame him for using the Khazaria thesis since it was a valid intellectual position that could be supported by the academic research of the time - and have not investigated what they purport as thoroughly as Beaty looked into his arguments before he made them. Had they done so then they would look to evolve their arguments in the face of the literature that had discredited the Khazaria thesis and sought instead to deal with the scholarly reality rather than try to use Arthur Koestler’s ‘The Thirteenth Tribe’ (which Brook often addresses in his ‘The Jews of Khazaria’) and the jew Benjamin Freedman’s ‘Facts are Facts’ - which is largely just a rehash of the Khazaria thesis that predates Beaty by four years but was not as popular or as mainstream [i.e., Freedman’s work at this time was largely circulated around Conde McGinley’s ‘Common Sense’ milieu of which he was a financial supporter as a so-called ‘former jew’] - as evidence.

Freedman’s work in particular relies not on the presentation of evidence, but rather on his habit of claiming that as a jew and ‘insider in the jewish conspiracy’ he had a particular authority to comment on such matters without any other evidence.

I am tempted to think that modern anti-Semites are often just incredibly lazy and don’t want to do serious research into the jewish question. As if they weren’t lazy then they wouldn’t still be producing the same old arguments with the same evidence as was innovated in some cases as long ago as the early eighteenth century!

However then I remember that even in earlier epochs when serious research was more common among anti-Semites: the majority of anti-Semitic works simply repeated old charges - particularly those deriving from Christianity - such as Deicide [not that I am unsympathetic to the charge, but it isn’t exactly a useful argument in this day and age], and did not innovate new ones. The ones that innovated were the ones we tend to remember and that receive prominence in the discussions of anti-Semitic literature that are so common today in academia: what do not receive prominence at those works that simply repeated old arguments that were so common in Germany and France in the nineteenth century.

We have a similar issue when we come to the second part of Beaty’s thesis in that much of his argument - although sourced- is dubious in the light of modern research. The ‘jewish Bolshevik’ lists of Wilton are well-known to be incorrect: hence there is a need to go back over them in detail with the exception of saying that prior to previous assertions Lenin does indeed appear to have been part jewish on his mother’s side (his maternal grandfather to be precise). They are however completely unreliable as they bring together large amounts of individuals from different time periods between 1917-1921 without putting them in the context of their individual administration, invent ministries and individuals and misstate the activity, position and/or importance of many of the individuals that did in fact exist.

This doesn’t stop these lists of being a normal anti-Semitic argument and being used as ‘proof’ of the ‘jewish nature’ of Bolshevism. This rather obscures the intellectually valid that jews were significantly overrepresented in the both the Russian revolutions of 1917 and has allowed numerous jewish academics writing on the subject in detail or in passing to assert that jewish involvement was minimal, which has been put down rather generously by Erich Haberer to be a reaction to ‘anti-Semitic demagoguery’. (2) Where-as on a personal level I would ascribe it in part to this, but more to the conscious need to reduce the role of the jews in such a controversial event to prevent harm from coming to the jewish academics themselves as well as the additional consideration of providing a way to promote their work as being ‘anti-anti-Semitic’ (and hence being cited, lauded and purchased by those seeking to discredit the anti-Semitic arguments and evidence on this point).

Beaty here is simply repeating what had been argued for over thirty years before the publication of ‘The Iron Curtain over America’ and was then still regarded as quite probably true given that the information was from eyewitnesses who had been there at the time (3) and the Soviet Union of Joseph Stalin wasn’t exactly forthcoming about the role of jews in the Bolshevik revolution.

It also worth noting that Beaty’s book was published just before the beginning of the ‘purge’ trials of 1952-53, which were directly towards ‘rootless cosmopolitans’, which included a significant proportion of communist jews. Therefore we cannot blame Beaty for giving credence to these assertions as the sources he cites were good quality at the time (as both Denis Fahey and Nesta Webster were amongst the minority of anti-Semitic authors who spent a considerable amount of time meticulously researching their work [and hence should be respected for doing so]), but their evidence has only been called into question and debunked in the decades after Beaty published ‘The Iron Curtain over America’ in 1951.

Therefore although we can’t fault Beaty for his assertion: we can fault those who would use Beaty or his sources - like Fahey and Webster (both of whom are regularly read and cited by anti-Semites) - as ‘proof’ of the ‘jewish Bolshevik’ thesis. Perhaps it is easier to cite such lists than to have to sit down and read around the area and come up with a water-tight case? (4) Whatever the reasons for their use: these lists should not be used in any way, shape or form to make an anti-Semitic argument: the result will only be to discredit anti-Semitism as an intellectually valid position and open yourself up to attack.

The third part of Beaty’s thesis that large numbers of jews were involved in working for the Soviet Union against the United States is on far safer ground as we need only recall the espionage trials of the 1940s and 50s to realise that numerous jews did indeed work for the Soviet Union as spies in the United States. Names such as Judith Coplon, Morris and Lona Cohen, David and Ruth Greenglass, Harry Gold, George Koval, Morton and Helen Sobell, Julius and Ethel Rosenberg etc are not uncommon (and all of whom were jewish by-the-way), but we also note that this thesis is slightly overstated by Beaty in so far as yes a significant number of those spying for the Soviet Union in the United States were jews, but there were also numerous spies who were not jewish such as Alan Nunn May, Kim Philby, Guy Burgess, Donald McClean etc (all four of whom were British, but served the Soviet Union in part in the United States).

It is also undeniable that many non-jewish spies did have close contact with jews as for example Whittaker Chambers’ wife Esther Shemitz was jewish and Klaus Fuchs’ (who was German not jewish as often alleged) Soviet handler Ruth Kuczynski was also jewish. It is also worth noting that Kim Philby’s first wife Alice ‘Litzi’ Friedman was jewish (as well as a Soviet agent), but she and Philby split up when Philby buried his past to allow himself to become part of British Intelligence although they didn’t officially divorce till 1946 and were friends for years afterwards. (5)

However this does not concur wholly with Beaty’s position that jews were necessarily a threat as Soviet spies since there were many prominent anti-Communist jews at this time of which Roy Cohn - the famous associate of Senator Joseph McCarthy and the probable cause of McCarthy’s attack on the army and his ultimate downfall - and Isaac Don Levine - the editor of ‘Plain Talk’ which claimed among other dubious things that Karl Marx was an anti-Semite - (6) are perhaps the best known along with former jewish communists turned strong anti-communists such as the previously mentioned Arthur Koestler.

In essence Beaty’s argument is that because many of the communists who came to the United States from the 1880s to the 1940s were jewish: therefore we must see the jewish community as being a threat because it has provided a disproportionate amount of these recruits. This however is not cogent in so far as many of the spies were also of Russian or German origin - if one is determining origin by country of birth - and that therefore Beaty’s pro-German hymn - which forms Chapter I of ‘The Iron Curtain over America’ - is hypocritical for one could easily label many of Soviet agents as German and/or jewish. So should the United States have taken special action against the German-American or Russian-American community accordingly? The answer is of course no, but what is cogent about Beaty’s thesis on this point is that it assumes that jews are biologically different to Europeans and therefore think differently.

Therefore Beaty implies that we cannot consider them to be of the same mental processes as say a German or a Russian. Beaty never goes into this in detail, but if he had done so then his thesis would have been far more cogent (if perhaps less popular) in so far as it would have offered a rationale as to why the jews should receive special attention from the intelligence and security services and for why the German or Russian communities should not receive the same.

That said however one cannot tar the jews with all being communists or all communists being jews (as Nesta Webster herself rightly pointed out), but rather one can notice that a significantly disproportionate amount of Soviet agents were jewish and that communism - or rather Marxism in general - was one of the two most important political movements inside the jewish community - along with Zionism and various points in-between - in both the United States and abroad. However Beaty did not argue this in detail so to go into it beyond what has been said would be beyond the scope of this discussion. It should not be said I am not sympathetic to this thesis, because I am but I find it to be intellectually incorrect, which is why it requires criticism.

So although we can say that jews were significantly and disproportionally involved in sabotage and espionage for the Soviet Union: we cannot hold the equation that Beaty tries to make - i.e., of communism and bolshevism being totally jewish phenomena - as being valid. That said however we can reasonably argue that jews have historically formed a subversive ‘fifth column’ in their host society and that the significant and disproportionate amount of Soviet agents of jewish origin can be held to be an extension of this.

In summary then Beaty’s ‘The Iron Curtain over America’ is an excellent example of what anti-Semitic literature should be: it is well-researched and well thought out. It is written in a clear and concise style that makes it very readable and it doesn’t sacrifice much content to maintain its flow. That is what anti-Semitic literature should be like and I can well imagine that in 1951, when it was first published, ‘The Iron Curtain over America’ would have made very convincing reading and that is as it should be (this is indicated by the fact that it went through eleven printings in three years, which is without doubt close to a best seller). However in 2010 we cannot hold Beaty’s thesis to be cogent any longer, because much of its facts and arguments have been discredited by scholarly research that Beaty himself could not have possibly predicted and Beaty thesis itself is rather overstretched in terms of the evidence he presents to support. However when all is said and done: Beaty’s ‘The Iron Curtain over America’ is truly an admirable bit of work that we cannot help but admire the author, John Beaty, for producing and doing so well out of.

References

(1) Kevin Alan Brook, 2006, ‘The Jews of Khazaria’, 2nd Edition, Rowman & Littlefield: New York

(2) Erich Haberer, 2004, ‘Jews and Revolution in Nineteenth Century Russia’, 1st Edition, Cambridge University Press: New York, p. xi

(3) See my ‘Sources on the Jews and Communism’: https://archive.org/details/karl-radl-primary-source-reader-russian-revolution

(4) See my articles: https://karlradl14.substack.com/p/jews-and-communism-in-latvia-1918; https://karlradl14.substack.com/p/jews-and-communism-in-moldovamoldavia; https://karlradl14.substack.com/p/jews-and-communism-in-moldova-june; https://karlradl14.substack.com/p/jews-and-communism-in-lithuania-1918; https://karlradl14.substack.com/p/jewish-influence-in-the-communist; https://karlradl14.substack.com/p/the-jews-behind-fidel-castro-and

(5) See my article: https://karlradl14.substack.com/p/kim-philby-and-the-jews

(6) Zygmund Dobbs, 1949, ‘Karl Marx: Father of Modern Anti-Semitism’, pp. 400-404 in Isaac Don Levine (Ed.), 1976, ‘Plain Talk: An Anthology from the Leading Anti-Communist Magazine of the 40s’, 1st Edition, Arlington House: New York