Conde McGinley, editor and publisher of “Common Sense,” a publication which the House Committee on Un-American Activities called a “clearing house for hate propaganda,” told the Jewish News of Newark that the paper was “not opposed to anybody because of their race or creed.”
He declared, however, that Judaism is not a religion but a “cult based on hatred of Christianity” and asserted that Jesus and the early Christians “were not Jews any more than they were Chinamen. You people were all Pharisees.”
McGinley told the Jewish News that his activities were motivated by the opinion that the “Talmud is the most vile paper printed” and that “Communism and all the other revolutionary movements spring from the Talmud.”
McGinley, whose paper described the Arabs as “victims of Zionism” and “world Jewry,” denied in the interview that he received money from Arab League sources. He praised Benjamin L. Freedman, a financial supporter of anti-Israel propaganda as “one of the greatest Americans who ever drew breath.”
Although Freedman testified in 1950 before the Senate Armed Services Committee that he had spent nearly $20,000 up to that time to support McGinley, the Jewish News reported, McGinley told the paper that Freedman’s contributions, as he recalled them, were about $100 or $150.
The paper quoted McGinley as saying that his entire dispute with the Jews and Judaism “could be settled and our paper closed up and I could go back to making a living if you people would just sit down and show us we’re wrong. We’ll be happy to sit down with your leaders.”
The House Committee’s report described “Common Sense” as “almost exclusively a vehicle for the exploitation of ignorance, prejudice and fear.” It recommended further investigation with a view to prosecution.
The Archive of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency includes articles published from 1923 to 2008. Archive stories reflect the journalistic standards and practices of the time they were published.
