An Open Letter to Mr. Norman Thomas [1957]

THIS DEFIANT REJOINDER to Norman Thomas’s critique of Paper 34 was written by invitation of The New Leader, a New York weekly and one of the leading organs of American “Cold War liberalism”. It was published as “The State of U.S. Civil Liberties”, 40, no. 7 (18 Feb. 1957): 16-18 (B&R C57.04) and reprinted many years later in Yours Faithfully, Bertrand Russell (2001), pp. 265-9. Russell was not exaggerating when he remarked that he and Thomas (1884-1968) were “on the same side in most matters” (175:2-3). The veteran leader of the Socialist Party of America was a vocal critic of McCarthyism and a keen supporter of disarmament who later in 1957 co-founded the Committee for a Sane Nuclear Policy (SANE). He had contested every presidential election from 1928 to 1948, and his long career on the margins of American politics was framed by forthright opposition to the First World War and to the Vietnam War.