Illustration: Mark Harris for Bloomberg, Alamy (1)
What MAGA Resistance Looked Like in 1963
A call to action in a Pennsylvania newspaper shows the enduring tension in America over ultraconservative rhetoric.
On a recent Sunday afternoon, the following letter to the editor of Pennsylvania’s Scranton Tribune arrived in my email inbox. Dated Jan. 10, 1963, it began like this:
The writer of this letter — which was published under the heading “He’s Appalled” — was my late grandfather, Phil Spiegel. The doctrine referenced was the ultraconservative, anti-Communist movement at that time. The sender of the email was my mother, who has become something of a family historian in her 70s. “What would he say today!” she quipped.