Author: Larry Ceplair Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing USA ISBN: 1440800480 Category : History Languages : en Pages : 385
Book Description
This compelling, critical analysis of anti-communism illustrates the variety of anti-Communist styles and agendas, thereby making a persuasive case that the "threat" of domestic communism in Cold War America was vastly overblown. In the United States today, communism is an ideology or political movement that barely registers in the consciousness of our nation. Yet merely half a century ago, "communist" was a buzzword that every citizen in our nation was aware of—a term that connoted "traitor" and almost certainly a characterization that most Americans were afraid of. Anti-Communism in Twentieth-Century America: A Critical History provides a panoramic perspective of the types of anti-communists in the United States between 1919 and the collapse of the Soviet Union. It explains the causes and exceptional nature of anti-communism in the United States, and divides it into eight discrete categories. This title then thoroughly examines the words and deeds of the various anti-Communists in each of these categories during the three "Red Scares" in the past century. The work concludes with an unapologetic assessment of domestic anti-communism. This book allows readers to more fully comprehend what the anti-communists meant with their rhetoric, and grasp their impact on the United States during the 20th century and beyond—for example, how anti-communism has reappeared as anti-terrorism.
Author: Larry Ceplair Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing USA ISBN: Category : History Languages : en Pages : 519
Book Description
This compelling, critical analysis of anti-communism illustrates the variety of anti-Communist styles and agendas, thereby making a persuasive case that the "threat" of domestic communism in Cold War America was vastly overblown. In the United States today, communism is an ideology or political movement that barely registers in the consciousness of our nation. Yet merely half a century ago, "communist" was a buzzword that every citizen in our nation was aware of—a term that connoted "traitor" and almost certainly a characterization that most Americans were afraid of. Anti-Communism in Twentieth-Century America: A Critical History provides a panoramic perspective of the types of anti-communists in the United States between 1919 and the collapse of the Soviet Union. It explains the causes and exceptional nature of anti-communism in the United States, and divides it into eight discrete categories. This title then thoroughly examines the words and deeds of the various anti-Communists in each of these categories during the three "Red Scares" in the past century. The work concludes with an unapologetic assessment of domestic anti-communism. This book allows readers to more fully comprehend what the anti-communists meant with their rhetoric, and grasp their impact on the United States during the 20th century and beyond—for example, how anti-communism has reappeared as anti-terrorism.
Author: Ted Morgan Publisher: Random House ISBN: 0307766012 Category : History Languages : en Pages : 704
Book Description
In this landmark work, Pulitzer Prize–winning author Ted Morgan examines the McCarthyite strain in American politics, from its origins in the period that followed the Bolshevik Revolution to the present. Morgan argues that Senator Joseph McCarthy did not emerge in a vacuum—he was, rather, the most prominent in a long line of men who exploited the issue of Communism for political advantage. In 1918, America invaded Russia in an attempt at regime change. Meanwhile, on the home front, the first of many congressional investigations of Communism was conducted. Anarchist bombs exploded from coast to coast, leading to the political repression of the Red Scare. Soviet subversion and espionage in the United States began in 1920, under the cover of a trade mission. Franklin Delano Roosevelt granted the Soviets diplomatic recognition in 1933, which gave them an opportunity to expand their spy networks by using their embassy and consulates as espionage hubs. Simultaneously, the American Communist Party provided a recruitment pool for homegrown spies. Martin Dies, Jr., the first congressman to make his name as a Red hunter, developed solid information on Communist subversion through his Un-American Activities Committee. However, its hearings were marred by partisan attacks on the New Deal, presaging McCarthy. The most pervasive period of Soviet espionage came during World War II, when Russia, as an ally of the United States, received military equipment financed under the policy of lend-lease. It was then that highly placed spies operated inside the U.S. government and in America’s nuclear facilities. Thanks to the Venona transcripts of KGB cable traffic, we now have a detailed account of wartime Soviet espionage, down to the marital problems of Soviet spies and the KGB’s abject efforts to capture deserting Soviet seamen on American soil. During the Truman years, Soviet espionage was in disarray following the defections of Elizabeth Bentley and Igor Gouzenko. The American Communist Party was much diminished by a number of measures, including its expulsion from the labor unions, the prosecution of its leaders under the Smith Act, and the weeding out, under Truman’s loyalty program, of subversives in government. As Morgan persuasively establishes, by the time McCarthy exploited the Red issue in 1950, the battle against Communists had been all but won by the Truman administration. In this bold narrative history, Ted Morgan analyzes the paradoxical culture of fear that seized a nation at the height of its power. Using Joseph McCarthy’s previously unavailable private papers and recently released transcripts of closed hearings of McCarthy’s investigations subcommittee, Morgan provides many new insights into the notorious Red hunter’s methods and motives. Full of drama and intrigue, finely etched portraits, and political revelations, Reds brings to life a critical period in American history that has profound relevance to our own time.
Author: Cyndy Hendershot Publisher: McFarland ISBN: 0786483695 Category : Social Science Languages : en Pages : 184
Book Description
Not long after the Allied victories in Europe and Japan, America's attention turned from world war to cold war. The perceived threat of communism had a definite and significant impact on all levels of American popular culture, from government propaganda films like Red Nightmare in Time magazine to Adventures of Rocky and Bullwinkle. This work examines representations of anti-communist sentiment in American popular culture from the early fifties through the mid-sixties. The discussion covers television programs, films, novels, journalism, maps, memoirs, and other works that presented anti-communist ideology to millions of Americans and influenced their thinking about these controversial issues. It also points out the different strands of anti-communist rhetoric, such as liberal and countersubversive ones, that dominated popular culture in different media, and tells a much more complicated story about producers' and consumers' ideas about communism through close study of the cultural artifacts of the Cold War. Instructors considering this book for use in a course may request an examination copy here.
Author: Jennifer Luff Publisher: Univ of North Carolina Press ISBN: 0807869899 Category : History Languages : en Pages : 303
Book Description
Between the Great War and Pearl Harbor, conservative labor leaders declared themselves America's "first line of defense" against Communism. In this surprising account, Jennifer Luff shows how the American Federation of Labor fanned popular anticommunism but defended Communists' civil liberties in the aftermath of the 1919 Red Scare. The AFL's "commonsense anticommunism," she argues, steered a middle course between the American Legion and the ACLU, helping to check campaigns for federal sedition laws. But in the 1930s, frustration with the New Deal order led labor conservatives to redbait the Roosevelt administration and liberal unionists and abandon their reluctant civil libertarianism for red scare politics. That frustration contributed to the legal architecture of federal anticommunism that culminated with the McCarthyist fervor of the 1950s. Relying on untapped archival sources, Luff reveals how labor conservatives and the emerging civil liberties movement debated the proper role of the state in policing radicals and grappled with the challenges to the existing political order posed by Communist organizers. Surprising conclusions about familiar figures, like J. Edgar Hoover, and unfamiliar episodes, like a German plot to disrupt American munitions manufacture, make Luff's story a fresh retelling of the interwar years.
Author: Matthew A. McNiece Publisher: ISBN: Category : Anti-communist movements Languages : en Pages :
Book Description
Manichaeism imbues both the history and the historiography of domestic American anticommunism. Within the latter, two major schools dominate. One identifies anticommunism as little more than an anti-intellectual anti-liberalism directed by conservatives against various social and political dissenters. The other rejects this view as dangerous revisionism that obscures the very real threat posed to the United States by the agents of (especially Soviet) communism. This study proposes a new understanding of domestic American anticommunism as a rhetorical battle to define the parameters of legitimacy and authenticity within the twentieth-century United States. In this view, neither of the main branches of the historiography fully guides the historian. Instead, tools from the field of rhetoric studies aid more traditional historical inquiry in illuminating the multivariate ways in which social and political forces deployed the construct of anticommunism as a tool for legitimation or delegitimation. Various chapters explore the interactions of political liberalism and conservativism with mainstream definitions of anticommunism, as well as the social construction of a national identity or a hero mythology within a peculiarly American anticommunist environment. Ultimately, domestic American anticommunism may be seen as a fundamentally conservative force for defining authenticity, and in a Manichean way, illegitimacy. For the better part of a century, anticommunism helped delineate "us" from "them" in U.S. social and partisan politics.
Author: Richard Gid Powers Publisher: Yale University Press ISBN: 9780300074703 Category : History Languages : en Pages : 598
Book Description
The American anticommunist movement has been viewed as a product of right-wing hysteria that deeply scarred our society and institutions. This book restores the struggle against communism to its historic place in American life. Richard Gid Powers shows that McCarthyism, red-baiting, and black-listing were only one aspect of this struggle and that the movement was in fact composed of a wide range of Americans--Jews, Protestants, blacks, Catholics, Socialists, union leaders, businessmen, and conservatives--whose ideas and political initiatives were rooted not in ignorance and fear but in real knowledge and experience of the Communist system. "Not Without Power is superbly written and richly detailed. Perceptive and thoughtful, it is an impressively thorough and valuable book."--David J. Garrow "One of the contributions of [Powers's] provocative narrative history is to bring to life certain segments of anti-Communist opinion that have largely been forgotten."--Sean Wilentz, New York Times Book Review "[Powers] makes extensive use of primary sources and uncovers much that is new. He vividly recreates the complex relationships within and between several ethnic and radical communities within the United States, including their firsthand and often disillusioning experience with communism. . . . The depth and range of his work add a great deal to knowledge."--Journal of American History "A valuable, well-executed study and summation of a vast topic, one whose various threads the author has woven into a rich tapestry."--Richard M. Fried, Reviews in American History
Author: Christian Gerlach Publisher: Springer Nature ISBN: 3030549631 Category : History Languages : en Pages : 588
Book Description
This handbook explores anti-communism as an overarching phenomenon of twentieth-century global history, showing how anti-communist policies and practices transformed societies around the world. It advances research on anti-communism by looking beyond ideologies and propaganda to uncover how these ideas were put into practice. Case studies examine the role of states and non-state actors in anti-communist persecutions, and cover a range of topics, including social crises, capitalist accumulation and dispossession, political clientelism and warfare. Through its comparative perspective, the handbook reveals striking similarities between different cases from various world regions and highlights the numerous long-term consequences of anti-communism that exceeded by far the struggle against communism in a narrow sense. Contributing to the growing body of work on the social history of mass violence, this volume is an essential resource for students and scholars interested to understand how twentieth-century anti-communist persecutions have shaped societies around the world today. Chapter 7 is available open access under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License via link.springer.com.
Author: Larry Ceplair
Author: Larry Ceplair
Author: Ted Morgan
Author: Cyndy Hendershot
Author: Jennifer Luff
Author: Ross Smith
Author: Matthew A. McNiece
Author: Richard Gid Powers
Author: Christian Gerlach
Author: Jordan A. Schwarz