Language:
German
Year of publication:
2018
Titel der Quelle:
Jahrbuch des Simon-Dubnow-Instituts
Angaben zur Quelle:
17 (2018) 117-144
Keywords:
Lasky, Melvin J.
;
Arendt, Hannah,
;
Anti-communist movements
;
Totalitarianism
;
Cold War
Abstract:
This article focuses on the ambivalent relationship between two crucial protagonists of the cultural Cold War: the political theorist Hannah Arendt and the less known editor and networker Melvin Lasky. It thereby scrutinizes for the first time the common path taken by the famous scholar of totalitarianism and the American-born Cold War liberal. Besides illustrating a hitherto less studied facet of Arendt’s biography, the paper seeks to determine her role in the anti-communist struggle in general. Although Arendt supported Lasky’s ardent struggle against the Soviet Union in principle, her understanding of the Holocaust as an unprecedented crime as well as her distrust of Cold War liberalism led her to a unique political position. By examining three contexts of encounter – the common milieu of the New York intellectuals, their collaboration in the liberal highbrow magazine Der Monat, and their work as public intellectuals in the Congress for Cultural Freedom – the similarities and differences of their anti-totalitarianism are here made visible.
Note:
With an English abstract.
DOI:
10.13109/9783666370809.117
URL:
Locate this publication in Israeli libraries
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