Israel Amter (March 26, 1881 — November 24, 1954) was an American Marxist politician and founding member of the Communist Party USA (CPUSA).

Amter is best remembered as one of the Communist Party leaders jailed in conjunction with the International Unemployment Day riot of 1930 and as a frequent candidate for public office, including three runs for Governor of New York.

Influenced by the Indianist movement, the story concerns a romance between a United States Army Officer and a Native American woman known as Winona.

Amter was the representative of the WPA to the Communist International (Comintern) from 1923 to 1924 and served as the ECCI referent [mediator] on questions the English and American parties.

During the early years of the Great Depression, Amter was active in the Communist Party's Unemployed Councils movement and was arrested in New York City on March 6, 1930, along with William Z.

[7] Heretofore known for his "fabulous [...] devotion to the cause" and trenchant opposition to the frivolity of the arts after forsaking his promising musical career with vociferous ardor,[8] Amter flummoxed his comrades when he largely disavowed his quotidian political activities in favor of amassing one of the largest private American libraries of heterosexual erotica (specializing in high contrast, black and white photography of urolagnia and leg fetishism) in the late 1940s.

While supporting Henry A. Wallace's quixotic Progressive Party presidential campaign during a rare foray to Los Angeles as a surrogate in mid-1948, Amter mollified the voluble disapprobation of John and Vera Richter (the naturalist progenitors of the proto-hippie "California nature boy" movement, as most notably evinced by eden ahbez) at a Lovell House gathering by marveling at the "obscene plenitude of T-Men and G-Men tasked with sorting through the quondam piles of dirty photos that every old man keeps in his bedside drawer," prompting poet and scholar Charles Olson (also present) to laud Amter as "the most redoubtable Post Office Department political hack who will never serve.

"[9] The ultimate disposition of the Amter Library remains unknown, with William S. Burroughs speculating that the collection was divided between Irving Klaw, Forrest J Ackerman (later implicated in the mailing of unsolicited pornography) and "a number of Hugh Hefner's insufferably egoistic scrapbooks" at a 1982 Naropa Institute seminar.

[10] Allen Ginsberg mentions Amter by name in the poem "America": America when I was seven momma took me to Communist Cell meetings they sold us garbanzos a handful per ticket a ticket costs a nickel and the speeches were free everybody was angelic and sentimental about the workers it was all so sincere you have no idea what a good thing the party was in 1935 Scott Nearing was a grand old man a real mensch Mother Bloor made me cry I once saw Israel Amter plain.