Thread by @studentactivism

Okay. I've found it. The absolute culmination of the "we have to build bridges with the far right" argument.

Henry Cadbury was a Quaker, and I'm sure he was a lovely man. But wow, was he wrong in a very familiar way.

Among the anti-fascist tactics Cadbury condemned? Boycotts. He called them "war without bloodshed."

Astonishingly, Cadbury gave this speech to a conference of rabbis. It was not well-received.

Rabbi Stephen Wise (who would, ironically, himself be later criticized for equivocation on anti-Nazi topics) repudiated Cadbury's speech.

Another rabbi basically said any talk of "loving" Hitler was pointless sophistry.

That same rabbi on the moral and practical necessity for a diversity of tactics:

(Same day, same page: American Baptist pastor says the appeal of Nazi antisemitism is grounded not in bigotry, but—I kid you not—economic anxiety.)

The conference released a statement repudiating Cadbury's both-sidesism and insisting on the moral necessity of resistance to the Nazis.

(Just a note: "Israel" in the above clip doesn't refer to the nation of Israel, which didn't exist in 1934, but to the Jewish community.)

Here's the original article on Cadbury's speech.

timesmachine.nytimes.com/timesmachine/1…

And here's the follow-up article from the next day from which the rest of the above clippings were taken. timesmachine.nytimes.com/timesmachine/1…

A nice summary of the blowup from a broader article on the conference that appeared a day later:

Here's to "a spirit of sterner resistance to Hitler"!

Just going to leave this here in case any of you can think of good uses for it.

Gonna have some more thoughts on these articles tomorrow. Stay tuned.

Here's my thread of musings on the above articles, as promised.

Since this is blowing up again: I included links in the above thread, but if those don't work for you, the articles discussed are from the New York Times, June 15 through 17, 1934.