Description
Book Synopsis Historians of immigration and ethnicity in the United States have typically devoted little attention to Greek Americans, while popular narratives depict them as indifferent or hostile to political and social radicalism. From acclaimed historian Kostis Karpozilos, Red America provides an alternative narrative of the Greek American experience. Focusing on the history of the Greek American Left from the beginning of the twentieth century to the Cold War, this volume uncovers the threads that bound notions of radical social change to everyday immigrant life, tracing ethnic radicalism from the boundaries of a specific community to the epicenter of American social and political history.
Table of Contents Acknowledgments
Introduction
Chapter 1. Radicals of Two Worlds
Workers of the World
Workers of the World, Unite!
Tsars, Slaves, and American Flags
Radical Diaspora
Organōsis: Socialism as Education
Ē Phonē tou Ergatou: Waiting for the Revolution
Great Expectations, Lost Illusions
Chapter 2. Americanizing Communism
“Be American!”
Diasporic Communism
Party Life
“Taxisyneidēsia”: Greek-American Class Consciousness
Organizing the Unorganizable
Fur Workers or Greek Fur Workers?
Non-Revolutionary Times
Chapter 3. Crisis and Revolution
The Arthritis Doctrine
Community Troubles
Drachmas, Dollars, and Bank Panics
Hungry Revolutionaries: The Unemployed Councils
Workers’ Mutual Aid
Soviet America
The New Deal
The Great Turmoil
Chapter 4. Turmoil and Compromise
Red, American and Greek Flags
The Greek-American Popular Front
Working-Class Stories
Furs: A Greek-American story
A Bitter End
Chapter 5. Planning the Future
America Needs Me, I Need America
Visions of a New World
Remnants of the “Old World”
Double Ambassadors
The Unpredictability of History
Chapter 6. Cold War Nation
The Great Transition
Liberals in Crisis
Under Surveillance
Anticommunist International
Greek-American Anticommunism
The Last Page
Conclusion
Bibliography
Index
