Know Your Enemy
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Whittaker Chambers and the Freight Train of History
🕑 Added 2023-03-12 19:57:07 +0000 UTCIn this episode, Matt and Sam go deep into the life and times of Whittaker Chambers, most famous for his role in the "trial of the century"—the trial of Alger Hiss for perjury after Chambers accused of Hiss of being a Communist spy during his years working in the federal government, especially the State Department. The two figures, once friends, came to symbolize a clash that was bigger than themselves, and prefigured the turn American politics would take at the onset of the Cold War. Chambers would become a hero of the nascent postwar conservative movement, with his status as an ex-Communist—one of many who would congregate around National Review in the mid-to-late 1950s—bringing his moral credibility to the right as one who had seen the other side and lived to tell his tale. Before all that, though, Chambers's life was like something out of a novel: a difficult family life, early brilliance at Columbia University, literary achievement in leftwing publications, and years "underground" engaging in espionage for the Soviet Union against the United States. "Out of my weakness and folly (but also out of my strength), I committed the characteristic crimes of my century," writes Chambers in his 1952 memoir/jeremiad Witness. Your hosts break it all down, assess his crimes and contributions, and explore one of the most consequential American lives of the twentieth century.
Sources:
Sam Tanenhaus, Whittaker Chambers: A Biography (1997)
Whittaker Chambers, Witness (1952)
Whittaker Chambers, Cold Friday (1964)
Whittaker Chambers, "Big Sister is Watching You," National Review, December 28, 1957
The Whittaker Chambers Reader: His Complete National ReviewWritings, 1957-1959 (2014)
William F. Buckley, Jr., editor, Odyssey of a Friend: Whittaker Chambers Letters to William F. Buckley, Jr. (1969)
L. Brent Bozell, Jr. and William F. Buckley, Jr., McCarthy and His Enemies: The Record and Its Meaning (1954)
Murray Kempton, Part of Our Time: Some Ruins and Monuments of the Thirties (1956)
Landon R.Y. Storrs, The Second Red Scare and the Unmaking of the New Deal Left (2013)
Richard H. Crossman, editor, The God that Failed: A Confession (1949)
Lionel Trilling, The Middle of the Journey (1947)
Matthew Richer, "The Cry Against Ninevah: A Centennial Tribute to Whittaker Chambers," Modern Age, Summer 2001
Christopher Hitchens, "A Regular Bull," London Review of Books, July 1997
Christopher Hitchens and Martin Amis, "No Laughing Matter" (YouTube, 2007)
Jess Bravin, "Whittaker Chambers Award Draws Criticism—From His Family," Wall Street Journal, March 28, 2019
Isaac Deutscher, "The Ex-Communist's Conscience," The Reporter, 1950.
John Patrick Diggins, Up From Communism: Conservative odysseys in American intellectual history, (1975)
Daniel Aaron, Writers on the Left, (1961)
Larry Ceplair, Anti-Communism in Twentieth-Century America: A Critical History, (2011)
Comments
Michael Dimitras
Asked my 76 year old Trump loving dad what he thought about Alger Hiss. His response, one word, "Guilty."
Matt Robold
My wife is not a subscriber (she doesn't really do podcasts) but after catching part of this episode when I was driving us somewhere she made an effort to keep being in the car for the rest of the episode as much as possible - and we even ended up having it on the smart speakers at home during lunch to finish it. Wonderful episode. Along with the episode on Lasch, one of my all-time favorites. I really appreciate the dialectic approach to your episodes, the fact that they take beliefs seriously while still critiquing them, and that the show very rarely feels cynical.
Avery Griffin
Please please please more like this one. I love your guests but there's nothing quite like a Matt and Sam deep dive ep.
Elias Crim
I'm a longtime listener and I'd suggest this episode and the blockbuster "Triumph of the Therapeutic" are in your top five. You've got a graduate-level seminar going here but one that manages to avoid the merely academic by remaining engaging and even fun. I think a collection of episode transcriptions would make a boffo fundraiser premium!
Henry Cooke
Just a fantastic ep guys, put it on to make dinner and was frustrated when I finished dinner but still had so much podcast I wanted to listen to.
Eric Ackermann
Excellent treatment of the subject, and tying it into the rise/development of the modern Right. Especially how it gave renewed life to the anti-communist position and the Red Scare of the period. Any chance the third hour that was cut will be spiffed up and released as a seperate episode?
Mark K
Now with this new insight I’m going to go rewatch the part of the doc “Arguing the World” that deals with Chambers and McCarthy.
Mark K
I’d like to add to the praise for this excellent episode. I had always heard of but never understood the mythical names of Chambers and Hiss (that serpentine name). I see now how this primeval story set the tone for movement conservatism and the Cold War in general. And hey, Chambers was a great writer! The passages you shared were brilliant. I can see why Buckley wanted him for NR. We “the listeners” appreciate all the work you guys do for these episodes! It really shows.
Garett Smith
Thought this was an all-timer of an episode. When you where discussing Chambers' attraction to leftism by being horrifyed at the world and needing to change it, I saw a lot of myself in the discussion. For me, a lot of leftism is too heady and gets bogged down in jargon and terminology. My attraction to socialist thought is more of a despair about the state of the world and a desire to make it better for people.
Colin Wick
Absolutely unbelievable episode, in the story of Chambers. I sort of hear echoes of the story of George Orwell though his swing was less dramatic The dramatic early lefty career with a pivot against a Stalinist implementation of those beliefs later on.
erik w bjorke
So Chambers can be credited with the idea that New Deal social democracy inevitably leads to Stalinism.
erik w bjorke
The left and right both hate liberalism. Before the rise of movement conservatism everyone was a liberal. The Republicans who opposed the New Deal were liberals. In this way the fight between liberals and conservatives is a fight between two different kinds of liberalism.
Joshua Smith
Another stellar episode; you guys are on a multi-game hitting streak right now. Thanks for the great and fascinating listen!
Know Your Enemy
Such a good point. And precisely what I (Sam) argued a few months ago re le Carre's childhood: https://thebaffler.com/salvos/the-father-of-all-secrets-adler-bell
mjs
Thanks Dan, appreciate it! And don’t let the despair get ya (easier said than done)
mjs
I did very mildly dissent… 😂 (Matt)
Ned Resnikoff
One of the all-time best KYE eps. It's funny that Sam and Matt described Hiss and Chambers as unlikely spies; to me they seemed almost like archetypal le Carré characters. The tortured upbringings, shabby gentility and desperation to fit in all felt very A Perfect Spy in particular.
Richie Laufman
Insane episode. An instant classic for me!
Dan Anderson
This episode is so lovely. For someone like me who's not very well read, but feels a similar kind of despair as Chambers (albeit probably not as intensely), this was like therapy. Thanks fellas
Jim Borzilleri
Great Ep! I read Witness in 1975, when the case was still a polarized issue. Now it seems like a human tragedy out of Le Carre. It probably never occurred to Chambers that Hiss would go so far as to deny even knowing him, and it probably never occurred to Hiss that Chambers broke protocol and kept documents that proved he committed perjury.
Jeff
Characteristically excellent. I am wondering about something: you quote Whitaker Chambers on liberalism and communism as man daring to replace God with Reason, Satan's temptation to let us live as Gods and all that. What of the conservative view of the market? It seems to me that there's a similar strain wherein the market is elevated to this supernatural position, that supreme being against whose judgments Man should not dare trespass.
William Miner
Excellent deep dive! Finally, a 2 hour podcast episode that feels like 30 minutes because it is so engaging
giulietta karras
My introduction to Whittaker Chamber was through the 1984 American Playhouse TV production, Concealed Enemies. Hiss to me seemed more of a sympathetic character and with this episode about Chambers you show him as a complicated and sincere person. Thank you for this corrective
Hampus Bystrom
Beautiful ep boys. Love the Deutscher article, man he's such a good writer. Knowledgeable about marxism and left history and philosophy without writing abstract and dull, as many are wont to do.
Know Your Enemy
I think it's easy to forget how big the Spanish Civil War was for that generation, especially before American entry into WWII. (Matt)
Know Your Enemy
Thank you for the rec!
natesicles
Check out Robert Warshow’s essay “The Legacy of the 30s.” It’s beautifully written, and it culminates in a reading of the Trilling novel Matt mentions at around about the hour mark in the episode.
Klaus Yoder
The fact that the book is titled Witness is striking—martyr is just a Greek word for witness and that seems to get at something going on with WC.
Scott K
https://podcasts.apple.com/ca/podcast/a-pumpkin-patch-a-typewriter-and-richard/id1574179666
Klaus Yoder
This episode rules, the real KYE red meat. Fascinating to me that the war crimes in Spain were a big factor for his disenchantment. I read a lot of Father Coughlin’s Social Justice magazine for research and the violence against Catholics in Spain is this major rallying cry for the Catholic right.
Know Your Enemy
if there's a glimmer of redemption to be found, you can count on us to find it - Sam
Know Your Enemy
one man's opinion/assessment.... regardless! thanks for listening, Rick!!! (- Sam)
Rick Perlstein
Great episode. Love how you found something redemptive in how he closed out his life, just as you did with Brent Bozell. Reagan, by the way, supposedly kept a copy of Witness by his bed for along time. He most definitely would recite the passage where Chambers says he realized he couldn't be a an atheist while watching his child sleep.
Rick Perlstein
Cool.
Know Your Enemy
I'm familiar with Lowenthal's take, and I don't find it particularly compelling — especially to the extent it relies on the (supposedly) exonerating ambiguity about the pronoun "he" in VENONA 1822; it doesn't seem to stand up to linguistic scrutiny. As for KYE, we don't say ALES was definitely Hiss — it doesn't particularly matter for what we set out to do in this episode anyway — but for my own part, the alternative explanations for ALES's identity don't pass the Occam's razor smell test. (-Sam)
Rick Perlstein
If you want to head down the rabbit hole... https://web.archive.org/web/20120813193135/https://files.nyu.edu/th15/public/lowsoviet.html
Rick Perlstein
Guys! Hiss was likely a (harmless, if you look at what was in the pumpkin papers) spy, but the Veniba papers ended up NOT proving that! The "Ales" claimed to have been Hiss was in a different place at the same time as Hiss was documented to be.
Henry Martyn
👀
