Diana West

Last updated
Diana West
Born (1961-11-08) November 8, 1961 (age 62)
Hollywood, California, U.S.
Education Yale University (BA)
Occupations
  • Author
  • columnist

Diana West (born November 8, 1961) is an American conservative author and former columnist. She wrote a weekly column from 1998 until 2014 that was syndicated nationally. Her books include The Death of the Grownup (2007) and American Betrayal (2013).

Contents

Early and personal life

West was born and raised in Hollywood, Los Angeles to Elliot West, a conservative novelist and television and screenplay writer, and Barbara Belden, a one-time actress. [1] She moved to the East Coast and graduated from Yale University with a Bachelor of Arts in 1983. [1] [2] She is married and has twin daughters, and has later lived in Washington, D.C. [1] [2]

Career

West was an editor of Yale Political Monthly while an undergraduate student at Yale, [3] and later went to New York City to work as a junior editor of The Public Interest , which was edited by Irving Kristol. [1] [3] She thereafter began working as a reporter for The Washington Times , [1] [3] and won the first prize in 1990 for best feature writing by the National Newspaper Association. [2] She began writing her weekly column in 1998. [1] The column was later syndicated in about 120 newspapers and news sites, [4] until it was ended in 2014. [5] It often dealt with controversial subjects such as the war on terror with a critical focus on Islam. [1] [5]

As a former CNN contributor, she frequently appeared on Lou Dobbs' shows Lou Dobbs Tonight and Lou Dobbs This Week. [4]

West has also been co-vice president of the International Free Press Society, [4] [6] and been described as part of the counter-jihad movement, [7] [8] a movement which she has praised in her column, including the blog Gates of Vienna . [9] In 2010 she was a co-author of the Center for Security Policy's Team B II report Shariah: The Threat To America . [4] She has also been a contributor to Breitbart News . [4]

The Death of the Grownup

West published her first book, The Death of the Grownup: How America's Arrested Development Is Bringing Down Western Civilization in 2007. [10] The book argues that "Americans have become overly complacent with the world around us, particularly the ideological conflicts between Islam and the West, as a result of our desire to perpetuate our youth." [2]

Reviews

A Kirkus review said the book "offers a bright, readable, often overwrought indictment of a popular culture that keeps Americans in a state of perpetual adolescence". [11] Christopher Orlet, writing in the American Spectator , argued that "West does not advocate a return to some golden pre-war era, but she does prescribe a booster shot of old-fashioned adult values. Sounding refreshingly like our parents and grandparents before them, West warns that we need to grow up and get serious about life." [2]

Writing in The New York Times Book Review , William Grimes observed that "West makes a principled, conservative cultural argument unflinchingly" throughout the text. Grimes concluded that "West, in her style of argument, shows herself to be more a child of the 1960s than she might care to admit. In the end the facts matter less than the emotions." He also thought West's discussion about a failure to confront Islam was awkwardly fit for the book's topic. [2] [12]

In the Michigan Review , Rebecca Christy "agreed with the common topics of American pop culture West covers", but found that "the flow of this book … is stopped abruptly, though, when West begins a discussion of Islamic terrorism." [2] Stefan Beck, for The New Criterion argued that "West may get hysterical at times, but the most significant aspects of her argument are all but undeniable. Values have indeed replaced virtues." [13] A writer for Publishers Weekly noted that West presents "nothing less than the decline of Western civilization on the American counterculture." [2]

American Betrayal

West's second book, American Betrayal: The Secret Assault on Our Nation's Character, was published in 2013. West argues that after the fall of the Soviet Union, historians failed to sufficiently "adjust the historical record" to account for newly available Soviet files and archives. West writes on the extent of Soviet influence during the Roosevelt and Truman administrations. [14] She argues that infiltration of the American government by Stalinist agents and fellow-travelers had significantly altered Allied policies in favor of the Soviet Union during World War II.

Reviews and responses

Frank J. Gaffney Jr. finds that West "painstakingly documents how America's government, media, academia, political and policy elites actively helped obscure the true nature of the Soviet Union." [15] West contends that there is a parallel with the failure to face the dangers of communism in the 1930s and the failure to face the threat of Islamic extremism today. [15] [16]

Frank T. Csongos argues that West is right "up to a point." He notes that West rejects the standard narrative that Franklin Roosevelt, like George W. Bush, took drastic steps to "save capitalism." Unlike West, he believes that Roosevelt was merely naive when trusting Joseph Stalin. [17]

A Kirkus review finds that she has a number of valid points but her additional doubtful speculations go too far. It notes that, "Not until the 1990s, with access to the Venona files and Soviet archives, have historians wholly appreciated the scope of Russian spying in this country from the time FDR formally recognized the Soviet Union in 1933. West matches these new revelations to previously known facts and wonders why we’ve neglected to fully adjust the historical record." It ends with the warning: "A frustrating mixture of incontrovertible facts and dubious speculation. Proceed with caution." [14]

Former Canadian newspaper publisher and Franklin D. Roosevelt biographer Conrad Black published a critique of American Betrayal in the conservative journal National Review in late 2013, to which West responded and Black then rejoined. Like Radosh, Black believes West grossly exaggerates Soviet influence in the Roosevelt Administration, whose policies were driven by the extreme social and economic crisis America was going through during the Depression. Black believes the alliance with the Soviet Union in World War II, while driven by realpolitik, was a dire necessity to prevent the victory of Nazi Germany which had already conquered France and was threatening Britain, and finds West's dismissal of the D-Day invasion of Normandy as somehow the result of Soviet subterfuge to shift the strategic thrust from the campaign in Italy to be an absurd and amateurish contention that ignores the realities of logistics and terrain. All these authors also point out that for the first two years of World War 2 during the period of the Stalin-Hitler Pact, widely considered odious among liberals, the policy of the FDR administration was at loggerheads with that of the Soviets in aiding Britain through Lend-Lease and point out the irony that at that time communists allied with isolationists and the America First movement, whose legacy West extols. [18]

Jonathan Chait, a liberal pundit and writer for New York magazine , says that West's "thesis that American foreign policy under presidents Roosevelt, Truman, and Eisenhower was secretly controlled by the Soviet Union" has found supporters at The Heritage Foundation and The American Spectator . [19]

Andrew C. McCarthy also came to West's defense in a review-essay in The New Criterion , where he writes West relies on M. Stanton Evans' book that comes to the defense of Senator Joseph McCarthy and cites the "groundbreaking scholarship of John Earl Haynes and Harvey Klehr" to back up Evans' claims. [16]

Harvey Klehr and John Earl Haynes claim West made serious historical errors, the most egregious being that Harry Hopkins was the Soviet spy "source 19" named in the Venona transcripts, who they believe the evidence shows was actually Laurence Duggan, a U.S. Department of State official. [20]

Bibliography

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Victor Davis Hanson</span> American classicist and military historian (born 1953)

Victor Davis Hanson is an American classicist, military historian, and conservative political commentator. He has been a commentator on modern and ancient warfare and contemporary politics for The New York Times, Wall Street Journal, National Review, The Washington Times, and other media outlets.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Alger Hiss</span> Alleged Soviet agent and American diplomat (1904–1996)

Alger Hiss was an American government official accused in 1948 of having spied for the Soviet Union in the 1930s. The statute of limitations had expired for espionage, but he was convicted of perjury in connection with this charge in 1950. Before the trial, Hiss was involved in the establishment of the United Nations, both as a US State Department official and as a UN official. In later life, he worked as a lecturer and author.

The Venona project was a United States counterintelligence program initiated during World War II by the United States Army's Signal Intelligence Service and later absorbed by the National Security Agency (NSA), that ran from February 1, 1943, until October 1, 1980. It was intended to decrypt messages transmitted by the intelligence agencies of the Soviet Union. Initiated when the Soviet Union was an ally of the US, the program continued during the Cold War, when the Soviet Union was considered an enemy.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Ann Coulter</span> American conservative political commentator (born 1961)

Ann Hart Coulter is an American conservative media pundit, author, syndicated columnist, and lawyer. She became known as a media pundit in the late 1990s, appearing in print and on cable news as an outspoken critic of the Clinton administration. Her first book concerned the impeachment of Bill Clinton and sprang from her experience writing legal briefs for Paula Jones's attorneys, as well as columns she wrote about the cases. Coulter's syndicated column for Universal Press Syndicate appears in newspapers and is featured on conservative websites. Coulter has also written 13 books.

Ronald Radosh is an American social conservative writer, professor, historian, and former Marxist.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">I. F. Stone</span> American investigative journalist, writer, and author (1907–1989)

Isidor Feinstein Stone was an American investigative journalist, writer, and author.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Communist Party USA</span> American political party

The Communist Party USA, officially the Communist Party of the United States of America (CPUSA), is a communist party in the United States which was established in 1919 after a split in the Socialist Party of America following the Russian Revolution.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Harry Hopkins</span> American New Deal administrator and WWII diplomat (1890–1946)

Harold Lloyd "Harry" Hopkins was an American statesman, public administrator, and presidential advisor. A trusted deputy to President Franklin Delano Roosevelt, Hopkins directed New Deal relief programs before serving as the eighth United States secretary of commerce from 1938 to 1940 and as Roosevelt's chief foreign policy advisor and liaison to Allied leaders during World War II. During his career, Hopkins supervised the New York Temporary Emergency Relief Administration, the Federal Emergency Relief Administration, the Civil Works Administration, and the Works Progress Administration, which he built into the largest employer in the United States. He later oversaw the $50 billion Lend-Lease program of military aid to the Allies and, as Roosevelt's personal envoy, played a pivotal role in shaping the alliance between the United States and the United Kingdom.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Harry Dexter White</span> American economist and spy (1892–1948)

Harry Dexter White was a senior U.S. Treasury department official. Working closely with the Secretary of the Treasury Henry Morgenthau Jr., he helped set American financial policy toward the Allies of World War II. He was later accused of espionage by passing information to the Soviet Union.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Earl Browder</span> American Communist politician (1891–1973)

Earl Russell Browder was an American politician, spy for the Soviet Union, communist activist and leader of the Communist Party USA (CPUSA). Browder was the General Secretary of the CPUSA during the 1930s and first half of the 1940s. During World War I, Browder served time in federal prison as a conscientious objector to conscription and the war. Upon his release, Browder became an active member of the American Communist movement, soon working as an organizer on behalf of the Communist International and its Red International of Labor Unions in China and the Pacific region.

Soviet and communist studies, or simply Soviet studies, is the field of regional and historical studies on the Soviet Union and other communist states, as well as the history of communism and of the communist parties that existed or still exist in some form in many countries, both inside and outside the former Eastern Bloc, such as the Communist Party USA. Aspects of its historiography have attracted debates between historians on several topics, including totalitarianism and Cold War espionage.

In political ideology, a deviationist is a person who expresses a deviation: an abnormality or departure. In Stalinist ideology and practice, deviationism is an expressed belief which does not accord with official party doctrine for the time and area. Accusations of deviationism often led to purges. Forms of deviationism included revisionism, dogmatism, and bourgeois nationalism.

Harvey Elliott Klehr is a professor of politics and history at Emory University. Klehr is known for his books on the subject of the American Communist movement, and on Soviet espionage in America.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Robert S. Allen</span> American journalist

Robert Sharon Allen was an American journalist, Washington bureau chief for The Christian Science Monitor, and military officer.

<i>America Alone</i> 2006 English-language book by Mark Steyn

America Alone: The End of the World as We Know It is a 2006 non-fiction book by the Canadian newspaper columnist and writer Mark Steyn. It forecasts the downfall of Western civilization due to internal weaknesses and Muslim population growth in Western countries and the world generally. Based on his own observations, Steyn says that the fall of the Western world is caused by three factors: demographic decline, unsustainability of the advanced Western social democratic state, and exhaustion of civilization. By 2007, Steyn's America Alone, had already convinced many American conservatives that there was an imminent and inevitable Muslim invasion. The Canadian Islamic Congress (CIC) filed Human rights complaints against Maclean's magazine—in which they accused the magazine of Islamophobia—with the Canadian Human Rights Commission, the British Columbia Human Rights Tribunal and the Ontario Human Rights Commission, based partly on Maclean's publication of a chapter from Steyn's book, "The Future Belongs to Islam".

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Michael Dobbs (journalist)</span> Anglo-American non-fiction author and journalist

Michael Dobbs is a British-American non-fiction author and journalist.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Robert Hutchinson (author)</span> American writer and essayist (born 1957)

Robert J. Hutchinson is an American writer essayist and author. He has been a contributor to Catholic and evangelical publications, including the National Catholic Register, Christianity Today, and Aleteia. Hutchinson is the author of numerous books of popular history, most notably Searching for Jesus: New Discoveriesin the Quest for Jesus of Nazareth (2015) and The Dawn of Christianity (2018). His book When in Rome is one of the books on Italy recommended by the Lonely Planet travel guide. Additionally, in 2020 Hutchinson debuted the What Really Happened series, the first about the assassination of Abraham Lincoln and the second about the death of Adolf Hitler . He writes a regular column on philosophical and religious topics, Disputed Questions, on Substack and Patheos.com.

<i>Wealth, Poverty and Politics</i> 2015 book by Thomas Sowell

Wealth, Poverty and Politics: An International Perspective is a book by American economist and social theorist Thomas Sowell. It was originally published by Basic Books in 2015, with an updated version published in 2016. In the work, Sowell argues against the notion that economic equality is solely natural, and examines geographic, cultural, social, and political factors that have contributed to the wealth of groups and nations.

Oscar Seborer, codenamed Godsend, was an atomic spy for the Soviet Union who worked at the Clinton Engineer Works in Oak Ridge, Tennessee, and the Los Alamos Laboratory in New Mexico.

<i>Shariah: The Threat To America</i> 2010 book published by the Center for Security Policy

Shariah: The Threat To America: An Exercise In Competitive Analysis is a 2010 book published by the Center for Security Policy. The report, written by "Team B II", is co-authored by William G. Boykin, Harry Edward Soyster, Henry Cooper, Stephen C. Coughlin, Michael Del Rosso, Frank J. Gaffney Jr., John Guandolo, Clare M. Lopez, Andrew C. McCarthy, Patrick Poole, Joseph E. Schmitz, Tom Trento, J. Michael Waller, R. James Woolsey, Brian Kennedy, James "Ace" Lyons, Christine Brim, David Yerushalmi and Diana West.

References

  1. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 Lamb, Brian (December 29, 2011). "Q&A with Diana West". C-SPAN.
  2. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 "West, Diana 1961-". encyclopedia.com. Retrieved December 1, 2023.
  3. 1 2 3 Hays, Charlotte (April 3, 2012). "Champion Women: Diana West". Independent Women's Forum.
  4. 1 2 3 4 5 "Diana West". MacMillan. Retrieved June 21, 2023.
  5. 1 2 West, Diana (December 12, 2014). "My Column Ends, But the Questions Don't". Townhall.
  6. ↑ "International counter-jihad organisations". Hope not hate. January 11, 2018.
  7. ↑ Pertwee, Ed (October 2017). 'Green Crescent, Crimson Cross': The Transatlantic 'Counterjihad' and the New Political Theology (PDF). London School of Economics. p. 267.
  8. ↑ "Stakelbeck on Terror: The West and Free Speech". CBN News. October 2, 2012.
  9. ↑ West, Diana (November 21, 2014). "Giving Thanks For The Counter-Jihad Network". Townhall.
  10. ↑ Rymes, Betsy (2014). Communicating Beyond Language: Everyday Encounters with Diversity. Routledge. p. 106. ISBN   9781136473326.
  11. ↑ "The Death of the Grownup: How America's Arrested Development Is Bringing Down Western Civilization". Kirkus Reviews. August 21, 2007.
  12. ↑ Grimes, William (August 29, 2007). "Dress Like Your Child, and the Terrorists Win". The New York Times.
  13. ↑ Beck, Stefan (December 2007). "Mushmouth nation". The New Criterion.
  14. 1 2 "American Betrayal: The Secret Assault on Our Nation's Character". Kirkus Reviews. April 28, 2013.
  15. 1 2 Gaffney Jr., Frank J. (August 6, 2013). "Willful blindness, mortal peril: Fantasizing that enemies are friends is a dangerous pastime". The Washington Times.
  16. 1 2 McCarthy, Andrew C. (December 2013). "Red herrings". The New Criterion. 32 (4).
  17. ↑ Csongos, Frank T. (June 19, 2013). "Book Review: 'American Betrayal'". The Washington Times.
  18. ↑ Black, Conrad (October 30, 2013). "Diana West, Still Wrong". National Review.
  19. ↑ Chait, Jonathan (August 8, 2013). "Conservative Historian Has Interesting Ideas". New York Magazine.
  20. ↑ Klehr, Harvey; Haynes, John Earl (January 2014). "American Betrayal, an exchange: Harvey Klehr & John Earl Haynes". The New Criterion.
This page is based on this Wikipedia article
Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply.
Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.