Red diaper baby

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A red diaper baby is a child of parents who were members of the Communist Party USA (CPUSA) or the Communist Party of Canada, or were close to the party or sympathetic to its aims. [1] [2] [3]

Contents

History

In the 1976 film Marathon Man , the lead character, Thomas Levy, played by Dustin Hoffman, is a "red diaper baby." [4]

Notable red diaper babies include journalist Carl Bernstein and rock singer Country Joe McDonald. [5]

The term Red Diaper Baby was used by Josh Kornbluth as the title of his 1996 autobiography and related one man show, [6] and a 2004 performance documentary film of his show by Doug Pray.

In their 1998 book Red Diapers: Growing Up in the Communist Left , Judy Kaplan and Linn Shapiro define red diaper babies as "children of CPUSA members, children of former CPUSA members, and children whose parents never became members of the CPUSA but were involved in political, cultural, or educational activities led or supported by the Party". [7] More generally, the phrase is sometimes used to refer to a child of any radical parent, regardless of that parent's past partisan affiliation or the affiliation of the child.

Canadian political scientist James Laxer titled his 2005 memoir Red Diaper Baby: A Boyhood in the Age of McCarthyism.

Related Research Articles

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McCarthyism, also known as the Second Red Scare, was the political repression and persecution of left-wing individuals and a campaign spreading fear of communist and Soviet influence on American institutions and of Soviet espionage in the United States during the late 1940s through the 1950s. After the mid-1950s, U.S. Senator Joseph McCarthy, who had spearheaded the campaign, gradually lost his public popularity and credibility after several of his accusations were found to be false. The U.S. Supreme Court under Chief Justice Earl Warren made a series of rulings on civil and political rights that overturned several key laws and legislative directives, and helped bring an end to the Second Red Scare. Historians have suggested since the 1980s that as McCarthy's involvement was less central than that of others, a different and more accurate term should be used instead that more accurately conveys the breadth of the phenomenon, and that the term McCarthyism is, in the modern day, outdated. Ellen Schrecker has suggested that Hooverism, after FBI Head J. Edgar Hoover, is more appropriate.

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References

  1. "Mill Valley "red diaper daughter" documents her radical roots". Marin Independent Journal. 2017-06-18. Retrieved 2023-05-11.
  2. Hall, Tom (March 14, 2020). "Today's Red-Diaper Baby Dilemma". LA Progressive.
  3. Gates, Anita (2014-01-22). "Traveling Back in Time From the Left, With Context". The New York Times. ISSN   0362-4331 . Retrieved 2023-05-11.
  4. Radosh, Ronald; Radosh, Aliss. "Red Star Over Hollywood. The Film Colony's Long Romance with the Left" . Retrieved May 17, 2023.
  5. "Red Diaper Babies". AP News. Archived from the original on 2023-07-12. Retrieved 2023-07-12.
  6. Kornbluth, Josh (1996). Red Diaper Baby: Three Comic Monologues (With Mathematics of Change and Haiku Tunnel). Mercury House. ISBN   1-56279-087-0.
  7. Kaplan, Judy & Shapiro, Linn (1998). Red Diapers: Growing Up in the Communist Left. University of Illinois Press. ISBN   0-252-06725-8. In this anthology, we define red diaper babies as children of CP members, children of former CP members, and children whose parents never became members of ...

Further reading