The National Guardian was a left-wing independent weekly newspaper established in 1948 in New York City. The paper was founded by James Aronson, Cedric Belfrage and John T. McManus in connection with the 1948 Presidential campaign of Henry A. Wallace under the Progressive Party banner. Although independent and often critical of all political parties, the National Guardian is thought to have been initially close to the ideological orbit of the pro-Moscow Communist Party USA, but this suspected association quickly broke down in the course of several years.

In February 1968, the newspaper's editorial staff was reorganized. The paper gradually turned towards a pro-Chinese and Maoist orientation and support of the New Communist Movement in the United States. During the early 1980s, the publication's ideological line shifted once again, this time towards an independent non-communist radicalism.

History

Background

From the decade of the 1930s, the Communist Party USA (CPUSA) cast a long shadow as the largest Marxist political organization in the United States of America. In addition to a vast array of monthly, weekly, and daily publications in languages other than English, the Communist Party published an English-language daily newspaper in New York City, the Daily Worker. As an official organ of the CPUSA, this publication was constrained by tight central direction and rather mechanical adherence to the party's political line — factors which somewhat limited the paper's appeal to radical American intellectuals.

In 1945 an American plane carried a number of newspaper men to Germany, whose Nazi regime had recently been defeated in World War II. These were part of a "Psychological Warfare Division" consisting of American, British, and Canadian newspaper editors and writers given the task of purging those deemed as Nazi collaborators from the German newspaper industry and replacing them with a new crop of publishers, editors, and journalists with verifiable anti-fascist bona fides. Among these journalists tapped to help "denazify" the country through establishment of a democratic press were James Aronson, a resident of New York City, and Englishman Cedric Belfrage, a former theatre critic for the London Daily Express who had since the 1930s lived in Hollywood, California where he worked as a screenwriter.

United by radical political beliefs, the two journalists vaguely discussed establishing a new radical newspaper in the United States following their demobilization. This took the form of a new political organization, the Progressive Party, which launched a national campaign with a ticket headed by former Vice President Henry A. Wallace. A broad political movement, backed by the CPUSA, emerged in support of Wallace's insurgent candidacy.

Establishment

The first issue of the National Guardian saw print on October 18, 1948 — just three weeks before the November presidential election. This subject-sectional approach favored by the glossy news weeklies was rapidly abandoned, with only a "Better Living" section surviving into the 1950s. The paper initially maintained no editorial page but editorialized freely with the published content, selecting and rewriting news stories from wire services and mainstream daily newspapers with a new radical focus. With over 1 million voters casting ballots for Henry Wallace in November 1948, such a goal seemed within realization, and the editors tied their hopes to the continued growth and success of the Progressive Party movement. Circulation peaked at 75,000 by 1950. The paper skipped issues and slashed pay of its office staff, barely surviving the financial crisis. The paper's cover price was hiked to 10 cents in an effort to balance costs and revenues.

In addition to falling returns, the National Guardian found its growth hampered by its connection to what was seen by many to be a faltering political movement. Seemingly damaged by its close linkage to the personality of defeated Presidential aspirant Henry Wallace and subjected to severe criticism for its suspected connections to the Communist Party, the Progressive Party dissolved in the 1950s. The paper was so closely tied to the Rosenberg defense that after the pair were executed on the electric chair for espionage, National Guardian editor James Aronson was named a trustee of the fund established on behalf of the couple's orphaned children. Continuity with the earlier incarnation of the paper was limited, with radical foreign correspondents Anna Louise Strong in China and Wilfred Burchett in Southeast Asia continuing in their previous roles. "We are movement people acting as journalists," the Guardian′s staff now proudly declared.

A factional split developed among the editorial staff in 1970, leading to the creation of a short-lived rival publication, the Liberated Guardian.

These party-building efforts ultimately failed, owing in some measure to the exhaustion of the Cultural Revolution in China as well as the lack of popular support for extreme political solutions and revolutionary phrasemaking in the United States. By the decade of the 1980s the paper had begun to moderate its tone, lending critical support to revolutionary movements of whatever stripe, without regard to the Sino-Soviet split, and opening its pages to a range of diverse views by a broad spectrum of political activists.

See also

  • Alternative media (U.S. political left)
  • Progressive Party
  • National Committee to Secure Justice in the Rosenberg Case
  • New Communist Movement

Footnotes

Further reading

  • James Aronson, The Press and the Cold War. Indianapolis, IN: Bobbs-Merrill, 1970.
  • Cedric Belfrage and James Aronson, Something to Guard: The Stormy Life of the National Guardian, 1948-1967. New York: Columbia University Press, 1978.
  • Harry Braverman, "Which Way to a New American Radicalism?", American Socialist, April 1956.
  • Jack Colhoun, "The Guardian Newsweekly Ceases Publication," Radical Historians Newsletter, no. 67 (Nov. 1992).
  • Max Elbaum, Revolution in the Air: 1960s Radicals turn to Lenin, Mao and Che. London and New York: Verso, 2002.
  • The Guardian — Thirty-Fifth Anniversary Supplement, December 14, 1983.
  • Dan Georgakas, "National Guardian and Guardian," in Mari Jo Buhle, Paul Buhle, and Dan Georgakas (eds), Encyclopedia of the American Left. New York: Garland Publishing, 1990; pp. 502–504.
  • League for Proletarian Revolution, Which Side Are You On? Reply to the Opportunists of the Revolutionary Union, October League, and the Guardian Newspaper. San Francisco: Red Star Publications, 1974.
  • Michael Munk, "The Guardian from Old to New Left", Radical America, vol. 2, no. 2 (March–April 1968), pp. 19–28.
  • Jack A. Smith, "The Guardian Goes to War," in Ken Wachsberger (ed.), Voices from the Underground: Volume I: Insider Histories of the Vietnam Era Underground Press. Tempe, AZ: Mica's, 1993.
  • Online archive of the National Guardian, 1948-1961, at the Internet Archive
  • Guide to the Cedric Belfrage Papers, Tamiment Library and Robert F. Wagner Labor Archives, Elmer Holmes Bobst Library, New York University.
  • Guide to the Sally Belfrage Papers, Tamiment Library and Robert F. Wagner Labor Archives, Elmer Holmes Bobst Library, New York University.
  • Jack A. Smith, "My Life and Times with The Guardian", The Rag Blog, August 2, 2012.
  • Jack A. Smith with Thorne Dreyer, "Interview with Leftist Journalist Jack A. Smith, Former Editor, The Guardian, Rag Radio, August 4, 2012. <small>—Audio.</small>