The Secret War Against Hate: American Resistance to Anti-Semitism and White Supremacy After 1945

About The Event:

On January 6, 2021, Americans were shocked as thousands of self-proclaimed patriots stormed the Capitol, many carrying Confederate flags and wearing anti-Semitic sweatshirts. What the nation witnessed that cold winter afternoon was the continuation of a battle that goes back to 1945 when Americans began fighting a second Civil War over two distinct visions of the future—and have continued fighting ever since with one key difference.

The Secret War Against Hate: American Resistance to Anti-Semitism and White Supremacy After 1945 tells the chilling story of the decades-long battle between four postwar hate group leaders and the three New York-based anti-fascist groups that fought to stop them. On one side stood Emory Burke, Jesse B. Stoner, James Madole, and George Lincoln Rockwell who saw themselves as dedicated patriots protecting the white Christian world they knew before the War against all who would now degrade and destroy it. As millions of veterans returned home in 1945-1946, these charismatic White Supremacist leaders built violent networks of terror and planned deadly attacks on Jews and Blacks throughout the nation.

Opposing these four leaders and their deadly organizations were three New York-based groups that waged a secret undercover war to defeat organized White Supremacists: the Anti-Defamation League (ADL), the American Jewish Committee (AJC), and the Non-Sectarian Anti-Nazi League (ANL).

About The Speaker:

Steven J. Ross is a Distinguished Professor of History, Dean’s Professor of History, and Director of the University of Southern California’s Casden Institute for the Study of the Jewish Role in American Life.  His most recent book, Hitler in Los Angeles: How Jews Foiled Nazi Plots Against Hollywood and America was named a Finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in History for 2018 and has been on the Los Angeles Times Bestseller List for 23 weeks.

His previous book Hollywood Left and Right: How Movie Stars Shaped American Politics, received the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences’ Film Scholars Award and a Pulitzer Prize nomination. Working-Class Hollywood: Silent Film and the Shaping of Class in America, won the Theater Library Association Book Award for 1999, as well as a nomination for the Pulitzer Prize and National Book Award. Ross’s current book, The Secret War Against Hate: American Resistance to White Supremacy After 1945, will be published by Bloomsbury Press.