George Sokolsky

[2][4][6] While at Columbia University, Sokolsky became a leader among student radicals and headed the welcoming committee for Leon Trotsky who arrived in New York in early January 1917.

[6] With the help of Trotsky, he was able to flee to China, landing with one Yankee dollar in his pocket to work for the Committee on Public Information in Shanghai.

[6] He continued as special correspondent for English-language newspapers such as St. Louis Post-Dispatch and London Daily Express[4] as well as contributor to the Philadelphia Public Ledger and The New York Times.

He also befriended colorful characters that ranged from "Two-Gun" Cohen to Soong Mei-ling, and identified Chiang Kai-shek as "the only revolutionist in China who could make the revolution stick.

His experience of Chinese culture was tinged with ambivalence: "Perhaps in no other city does so much human energy go into the search for amusement as among the foreign population of Shanghai.

Sokolsky encouraged the NAM to reach out and awaken the passions of the American middle class in opposition to the "collectivistic" current of the New Dealers.

[4] In 1940, he became a nationally syndicated newspaper columnist with "These Days" column, typically covering current politics, communism (anti-communism), or foreign affairs.

[3][4] In the NBC Radio Network program America's Town Meeting of the Air, he argued against Secretary of Labor Frances Perkins' defense of the Social Security Act, calling the 10% of the taxes that the federal government kept, while remitting 90% back to the states that were compelled to conform to a standard of minimum requirements for administering Social Security set by the federal government, "a service charge for coercion."

The Senate's La Follette Committee on Civil Liberties reported in 1938 that for his speaking engagements and other work he was paid nearly $40,000, through publicity firm Hill & Knowlton, by the NAM and the Iron and Steel Institute.

As its "clearance man", Sokolsky worked pro bono on rendering a final decision on clearing the letter writer from the blacklist, either on his own or in consultation with Hollywood union leader Roy Brewer and/or actor Ward Bond, respectively the first and the second presidents of the Motion Picture Alliance for the Preservation of American Ideals.

"[13] Of course, distinctions between those who "deserved" removal from the blacklist and those who were "blameworthy" were determined, often arbitrarily, by the subjective judgment of powerful gatekeepers like Sokolsky.

Later that year, Time magazine characterized Sokolsky in the words of one of his friends, as one who "can be called the high priest of militant U.S.

"[14] In 1922, Sokolsky broke a social taboo by marrying Rosalind Phang, a woman of mixed Caribbean-Chinese descent.

Sokolsky advocated a vigorous American response by asking: "Do we have to stand still until Soviet Russia has established a missile and submarine base in Cuba?"