Troubling Women's History: Women in Right-Wing and Colonial Politics

June Melby Benowitz. Days of Discontent: American Women and Right-Wing Politics, 1933-1945. Dekalb, Ill.: Northern Illinois University Press, 2002. ix + 230 pp. ISBN 0-87580-294 (cl).

Kim E. Nielsen. Un-American Womanhood: Antiradicalism, Antifeminism, and the First Red Scare. Columbus: The Ohio State University Press, 2001. x + 219 pp. ISBN 0-8142-0882-7 (cl); 0-8142-5080-7 (pb).

Lora Wildenthal. German Women for Empire, 1884-1945. Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press, 2001. xi + 336 pp. ISBN 0-8223-2807-0 (cl); 0-8223-2819 (pb).

It was once assumed that women's history would unearth stories of te nacious, admirable women who challenged the limits of their assigned social positions. Now, we are more cautious. Since Claudia Koonz's groundbreaking study of women in German Nazism, we know that historical scholarship does not necessarily produce inspiring stories of women's heroic efforts to safeguard peace and justice. ¹ Studies of women in Italian fascism, the U.S. Ku Klux Klan, Latin American dictatorships, Hindu nationalism in India, and other right-wing politics across the globe have documented women's participation in history's most vicious racist, colonialist, and right-wing movements and demonstrated that women have shaped the nature and possibilities of rightist politics in many places and times. ² Rather than seeking women to celebrate, many feminist scholars now are excavating the racial subtexts, the conservative sexual and gender politics, and the nationalistic and xenophobic impulses behind various women's political projects, even those with positive aspects. The books reviewed here take another step into this troubling aspect of women's history, revealing how right-wing and colonial politics have provided both a context and a forum for new forms of women's political citizenship.

Days of Discontent chronicles women in U.S. right-wing extremism during and immediately after the presidency of Franklin Delano Roosevelt, when the far right targeted Jews, Roosevelt's New Deal policies, and communism at home and abroad. An important part of this book is its examination of Elizabeth Dilling, the author of The Red Network, a widely distributed compilation of individuals and prominent people deemed subversive. Despite her prominence in World War II-era right-wing extremism, Dilling has had little scholarly attention, reflecting the gender double-standard by which rightist leaders are regarded in historical scholarship.

Dilling's transformation from an upper-middle-class housewife and mother to extremist leader came about, or so she claimed, after a 1931 family trip to the Soviet Union, where she was shocked by restrictions on personal liberty and scarcity of goods. When she published The Red Network, subtitled "A 'Who's Who' and Handbook of Radicalism for Patriots," Dilling came into contact with prominent, male, far-right leaders, including those from the German-American Bund, and was launched on a career as an extremist leader and spokeswoman. Dilling's net of enemies was cast widely, but her extremism was often not far from the political mainstream of the time. When she targeted Jane Addams, founder of Hull House, for example, Addams was simultaneously being investigated by the War Department for her involvement with Women's International League for Peace and Freedom (WILPF). The boundary between the tactics of the far right and policies of government surveillance in this era were fragile indeed.

Dilling's life also illustrates the entanglement of political belief and personal scandal and the ironic twists that are familiar features of the biography of right-wing leaders throughout the twentieth century. Dilling's increasing visibility as an anti-Semite is a case in point. Perhaps Dilling became more anti-Semitic over time as a result of contacts with the far right. Or perhaps it was because she discovered that her husband had a Jewish girlfriend. Or perhaps she always hated Jews, but this simply became more public during her divorce trial. In any case...