The perils of a public intellectual - George W. Hartmann - Experts in the Service of Social Reform: SPSSI, Psychology, and Society, 1936-1996

Journal of Social Issues, Spring, 1998 by Benjamin Harris

Within the non-Communist left, Hartmann's relations with the Socialist Party, Fellowship of Reconciliation, and War Resisters League became increasingly strained. In January 1944, the Socialist Party formally declared itself opposed to a negotiated peace, and the WRL drafted a statement condemning the PNM's ties to the ultra-right (Fleischman, 1944). The next month, the Newark and Boston locals of the Socialist Party charged Hartmann with breaking Party discipline, a complaint accepted by most members and a majority of the Socialist leadership (Meyer, 1944; National Action Committee, 1944). Although the Socialist Party and WRL did not publicly denounce him, even his friends became weary of the problems created by his poor judgment in administrative and political matters.(7)

Closer to the political mainstream, early 1944 saw Hartmann and the PNM attacked by newspapers, magazines, and radio commentators across the country. In mid-January, Life featured two pages of dramatic photos from the PNM's Carnegie Hall rally, selected to make the participants look like misguided cranks. Hartmann's image was given pride of place [ILLUSTRATION FOR FIGURE 1 OMITTED], and next to his head appeared a subheading, "U.S. Indicts Fascists" - referring to an adjacent article.

A few days after the Life spread appeared, the New York office of Peace Now was burglarized, apparently by the New York Post in collaboration with the local FBI office (Conroy, 1944c). Soon the Post launched a week of articles directly stating what Life's errant subhead implied: that the PNM was a front for German Bundists, Japanese spies, and the ultra-right ("Firsters Enlist Congressmen," 1944; "'Peace Now' Seeks Help," 1944; "'Peace Now' Tried to Enlist a Nazi," 1944; "'Peace Now' Wants to Be Political Party," 1944; "Washington Office Workers," 1944). Peace Now files were also given to Colliers, PM, the New York Worm Telegram, Walter Winchell, and other syndicated columnists. In a coordinated campaign that was cleared in advance with the FBI (Conroy, 1944b; Ladd, 1944), anti-PNM diatribes appeared simultaneously in all these venues (e.g., Johnson, 1944a, 1944b, 1944c, 1944d; Lawrence, 1944; Marberry, 1944; Winchell, 1944).

What the Peace Now files showed were the names of Bundists, America Firsters, and Coughlinites on Peace Now mailing lists. More damning, Simon had regular contacts with such types, listening to their advice and accepting their support. Hartmann, in turn, was overly generous to suspected reactionaries - while he was blindly condemning of anyone sympathetic to the Communist Party. To him, reactionaries were unconnected individuals, harmless flora of the political verge.

In Hartmann's response to criticisms within the Socialist Party, he showed an ivory-tower indifference to dangerous forces on the political right. First, he was dismissive toward the political and psychological extremists that the PNM attracted: "some of our mail comes from simon-pure crackpots of the kind I first encountered in my Socialist campaigning . . . money cranks, anti-Masons, etc. . . . We can't help it if astrologers and numerologists give us some unsolicited advice" (Hartmann, 1944j, p. 2).