Anticommunism

The primary force behind the COLD WAR, anticommunism constituted both popular attitude and government policy after World War II.

Foreign policy was one obvious area that anticommunism affected greatly. Despite a wartime hiatus, anticommunism dominated the tone of America’s relations with the Soviets. Although divisive geopolitical issues existed between the United States and the Soviet Union, American anticommunist attitudes made these disagreements seem much more dangerous.

The cold war’s anticommunist atmosphere led the United States to view radical political movements across the globe as threats. These movements ranged from the far left political parties of America’s European allies to antiimperialist national liberation movements and, of course, to any group that openly espoused coMMuNiSM. Americans saw the world as divided into two hostile camps. They gauged a nation’s friendliness to the United States by the degree of its opposition to communism.

This attitude had negative consequences for America’s relationship to many other nations. It drove some nationalist leaders, including Egypt’s president Gamal Abdel Nasser and Cuban dictator Fidel Castro, into greater cooperation with the Soviet Union than they might otherwise have contemplated. Also, the United States felt compelled to send troops to several places around the world to oppose perceived communist expansion directly. The KOREAN War and the Vietnam War were the most significant examples of this intervention. In the eyes of much of the non-Western world, America’s insistence that other nations adopt its commitment to anticommunism resembled the domineering demands of the European colonial powers in the past. This undermined American efforts to establish constructive relations with the nations that were freeing themselves from European colonial rule.

Anticommunism also affected American society and domestic politics, mainly by making people feel insecure and paranoid about a communist takeover. The Red Scare of the late 1940s and early 1950s was perhaps the most dramatic manifestation. The federal government helped start this hysteria with the Federal Employee Loyalty Program, which sought to remove communists from government employ. Such actions caused many Americans to believe that there was a serious problem with communist traitors in the United States. Congress also contributed to this climate when it passed the McCarran Act (1950). This highly publicized law openly stated that a commu-

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Nist conspiracy existed that was bent on overthrowing the constitutionally established government of the United States. The House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC) treated witnesses aggressively in its effort to determine whether they were now or had ever been members of the Communist Party. Several highly publicized and sensational spy trials, including those of Alger Hiss and Julius and Ethel Rosenberg, confirmed this in the eyes of much of the American public.

The culmination of this anticommunist paranoia came in the early 1950s. Although only a minuscule number of actual subversives and spies were uncovered by Wisconsin senator Joseph R. McCarthy, his scare tactics created such hysteria and outrage in the American public that hundreds of those accused of being communists lost careers in government, education, and entertainment. In terms of policymaking, this climate compelled politicians and government officials to take hard-line positions to avoid later accusations of being soft on communism. This often made American diplomacy inflexible and uncreative.

Fear of communist takeover made many Americans uneasy. One effect of this was to intensify an existing postwar trend of seeking comfort and stability in the traditional American family and Judeo-Christian values. This led to a zealous emphasis on conformity reflected in clothing, housing, and living styles, as well as thought. Those who challenged established traditions were often labeled as communist subversives. People became extremely willing to support almost any plan that was aimed at protecting the United States from communism. One popular way to get support for an idea was to link it to fighting communism. Conversely, people began to label policies they opposed as communist inspired, regardless of their actual ideological origins.

Further reading: David Caute, The Great Fear: The AntiCommunist Purge under Truman and Eisenhower (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1979); Thomas Patterson, Meeting the Communist Threat: Truman to Reagan (New York: Oxford University Press, 1988).

—Dave Price