Was Jimmy Hoffa a Socialist?

Jimmy Hoffa’s politics are difficult to pin down. On one hand, Hoffa led the biggest trade union in the United States and on the other, he contributed to Richard Nixon’s 1960 presidential campaign.

Hoffa’s Teamsters Union Has been Described as ‘Not Idealistic or Socialist’

GettyWearing matching smiles and appearing singularly unworried, Dave Beck (r), President of the Brotherhood of Teamsters, and James R. Hoffa, then Vice-President of the Teamsters Union, pose for photographers on their arrival at AFL-CIO headquarters 05 June 1957 in Washington DC for a hearing before the AFL-CIO ethnical practices committee on charges that the Teamsters union was dominated by corrupt influences.

In an article separating the fact from fiction in Martin Scorsese’s “The Irishman,” the New York Times wrote that Hoffa’s time as leader of the biggest trade union in the United States was not “the idealistic, socialist unions of Woody Guthrie songs.” The Times article noted the Teamster’s activities as were more in the realm of criminality than in the realm of fighting for workers’ rights.

The movie shows Hoffa as contributing to Republican presidential candidate Richard Nixon’s 1960 presidential campaign. Later, Nixon is shown to have given Hoffa a presidential pardon.

Hoffa Got Rid of the Socialist Element Within the Teamsters When He Ascended to Power in the 1940s

During Hoffa’s reign over the Teamsters, a union sprang up from within, the Teamsters for a Democratic Union. According to a Columbia University essay, the TDU was set up to “rid the union of Hoffa’s bureaucrats and criminals.” That same essay says that when Hoffa ascended to power in the 1940s, he got rid of socialist activists in the union “while making alliances with organized crime.”

Hoffa Has Been Described as a ‘Conservative Republican’

Hoffa (1913 – 1975), President of the Teamster’s Union, testifying at a hearing into labor rackets. Rumoured to have mafia connections, Hoffa disappeared in 1975 and no body has ever been found.

Mark Leier wrote in “Which Side Are They on? Thinking about The Labour Bureaucracy,” “Hoffa’s politics were voluntarist at best, conservative Republican at worst, and his vision for the trade union movement was even simpler than Samuel Gompers’ call for “more.”” Leier went on to compare Hoffa’s managerial style to Chicago mob boss Sam Giancana and President Richard Nixon.

Robert Kennedy Referred to Jimmy Hoffa as ‘Absolute Evilness’

During a hearing before Attorney General Robert Kennedy in 1957, Kennedy told Hoffa, “If communist unions ever gain a position to exercise influence in the transport lanes of the world, the free world will have suffered a staggering blow.” Kennedy was quoting the former leader of the Teamsters at the time, Dave Beck. Hoffa said that he did not agree with the statement saying, “No, I don’t agree with it because the American worker will never put anybody ahead of union. That will disrupt the American system.” Kennedy would go on to describe Hoffa as “absolute evilness.”

According to a PBS retrospective on the Hoffa hearings, they were a direct result of the House of UnAmerican Activities/Senator Joe McCarthy hearings in the early 1950s, a bid to snuff out Communist sympathizers in Hollywood and Washington D.C.

READ NEXT: Teenage Porn Star Controversy Rocks California High School