A case for Judge Judy

This is the second volume of "The Gelfand Case", a bizarre collection of documents detailing a frivolous lawsuit of one Alan Gelfand against the U.S. Socialist Workers Party (SWP). The books on Gelfand's legal wrangling are published and distributed by the Workers League or "Socialist Equality Party", which supported Gelfand. Don't expect any sober criticisms of the case in these volumes!

Gelfand had sued the SWP in court, claiming that the party was controlled by secret FBI agents! The real "agent" was Gelfand himself. He had been expelled from the SWP in 1979 after supporting a slander campaign against Jack Barnes, Joe Hansen and other SWP leaders. The campaign was orchestrated by political opponents of the SWP, Gerry Healy's Workers Revolutionary Party and David North's Workers League (surprise!). When questioned by SWP's lawyers, Gelfand admitted that he had collaborated with the Workers League already six months before his expulsion from the SWP. During the trial itself, North acted as Gelfand's assistant. The SWP, quite rightly in my opinion, drew the conclusion that the lawsuit was bogus and mostly a way for the Workers League to harass and wreck the SWP. For more on this sorry tale, see my reviews of "The Gelfand Case, Vol. 1" and "Healy's Big Lie".

This volume of "The Gelfand Case" contains two items of general interest, both about Sylvia Franklin, a former secretary of SWP leader Cannon suspected of being a Soviet agent. At Gelfand's request, the U.S. government released two previously classified transcripts of grand jury interrogations with Franklin, from 1954 and 1958 respectively. In the second, Franklin admits being a former Soviet agent. The other documents in this volume are repetitive trial briefs and motions authored by Gelfand, testimonies by SWP leaders Jack Barnes and Larry Seigle, and an irrelevant "testimony" by one Jean Brust, a member of the Workers League.

This case for Judge Judy is of interest only to lovers of leftist (or "leftist") weirdlore.