DISCREDITING THE RED SCARE by Professor Robert Justin Goldstein ( 9780700622245 )

Item Details

Title:

DISCREDITING THE RED SCARE
THE COLD WAR TRIALS OF JAMES KUTCHER, "THE LEGLESS VETERAN"

By:

Format:

Hardback

List price:	£41.50
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ISBN 10:

0700622241

ISBN 13:

9780700622245

Publisher:

UNIVERSITY PRESS OF KANSAS

Pub. date:

30 September, 2002

Series:

Landmark Law Cases and American Society

Pages:

224

Description:

The story of an American World War II veteran who lost both legs in combat, and whose long-running battle against a variety of types of persecution directed against him during the post-War Red Scare helped to seriously discredit it.

Synopsis:

During the Allies' invasion of Italy inthe thick of World War II, Americansoldier James Kutcher was hit by a German mortar shell and lost both of his legs. Back home, rehabilitated and given a job at the Veterans' Administration, he was soon to learn that his battles were far from over. In 1948, in the throes of the post-warRed Scare, the hysteria over perceived Communist threats that marked the Cold War, the government moved to fire Kutcher because of his membership in a small, left-wing group that had once espousedrevolutionary sentiments. Kutcher's eightyear legal odyssey to clear his name and assert his First Amendment rights, described in full for the first time in this book, is at once a cautionary tale in a new period of patriotic one-upmanship, and a story of tenacious patriotism in its own right. The son of Russian immigrants, James Kutcher came of age during the Great Depression. Robbed of his hope of attending college or finding work of any kind, he joined the Socialist Workers Party, left-wing and strongly anti-Soviet, in his hometown of Newark.When his membership in the SWP came back to haunt him at the height of the Red Scare, Kutcher took up the fight against efforts to punish people for their thoughts, ideas, speech, and associations. As a man who had fought for his country and paid a great price, had never done nything that could be construed as treasonous, held a low-level clerical position utterly unconnected with national security, and was the sole support of his elderly parents; Kutcher cut an especially sympathetic figure in the drama of Cold War witch-hunts. In a series of confrontations, in what were highly publicized as the "case of the legless veteran," the federal government tried to oust Kutcher from his menial Veterans' dministration job, take away his World War II disability benefits, and to evict him and his family from their federally subsidized housing.Discrediting the Red Scare tells the story of his long legal struggle in the face of government persecution-that redoubled after every setback until the bitter end

Publication:

Imprint:

University Press of Kansas

Returns:

Returnable

Some other items by this author:

BURNING THE FLAG

DISCREDITING THE RED SCARE

DISCREDITING THE RED SCARE (PB)

LITTLE 'RED SCARES'