Anticommunism

Anticommunism. Anticommunism was one of the most significant forces in twentieth‐century American politics. While its enemies saw anticommunism as dictating U.S. foreign and domestic policy, anticommunists viewed themselves as a derided minority ignored by decision‐makers dedicated to policies of coexistence and détente that legitimized communist totalitarianism.

American anticommunism emerged from the Palmer raids: the roundup of alien communists organized in December 1919 and January 1920 by J. Edgar Hoover, then a twenty‐five‐year‐old Justice Department attorney, with the backing of Attorney General A. Mitchell Palmer. From these raids arose a tradition of countersubversive anticommunism rooted in the conviction that a Red network linked the American reform movement to the Communist International in Moscow. Also thanks to the Palmer raids, all American anticommunists, in a guilt‐by‐association process, were identified with conspiracy‐hunting countersubversives eager to smear groups and ideas they hated.

In reality, anticommunism reflected the diversity of American society; its activists brought to the movement the distinct and often antagonistic interests of the communities that produced them. Countersubversive anticommunists like Hoover, Hamilton Fish, Martin Dies, Richard M. Nixon, Joseph McCarthy, and Robert Welch of the John Birch Society, who regarded Soviet espionage and government subversion as the essence of the communist threat, were the most vocal. Far more numerous, however, were responsible anticommunists possessing accurate knowledge about domestic and foreign communism and sincerely concerned about the threat it posed to their own communities, the nation, and the world. This group included Catholics like Father Edmund Walsh of Georgetown University, Patrick Scanlon, editor of the Brooklyn Tablet, Francis Cardinal Spellman, and William F. Buckley Jr.; New Deal Era liberals like the theologian Reinhold Niebuhr and Arthur Schlesinger Jr.; Jewish anticommunists of such varied political convictions as Louis Marshall of the American Jewish Committee, George Sokolsky of the Hearst newspaper chain, and Norman Podhoretz of Commentary; socialists like Abraham Cahan of the Forward; labor‐union officials like Samuel Gompers, David Dubinsky, Sidney Hillman, George Meany, and Albert Shanker; and black anticommunists such as the columnist George Schuyler. The press tycoon Henry R. Luce, publisher of Time, Life, and Fortune magazines, represented another powerful anticommunist voice. Excommunists and ex–fellow travelers like Whittaker Chambers, Sidney Hook, Eugene Lyons, and Jay Lovestone were especially important for the insights and experience they brought to the movement. United only in their hatred of communism, these individuals often warred as fiercely among themselves as against the common enemy.

American anticommunism exerted its greatest influence during the late 1940s and early 1950s, when it provided the moral and intellectual basis for the containment policies that underlay the Western alliance against the Soviet Union and other communist regimes. During those Cold War years, anticommunists created a widespread grassroots movement that mobilized millions of Americans in opposition to Soviet policies. The mass base of American anticommunism was weakened, however, by the collapse of McCarthy's irresponsible career in 1954. After that, outspoken anticommunism was often equated with the right‐wing extremism of demonized groups like the John Birch Society, and blamed for the disastrous policies of the John F. Kennedy, Lyndon B. Johnson, and Richard Nixon administrations in Southeast Asia.

Moribund by the late 1970s, anticommunism enjoyed a remarkable revival during the Ronald Reagan administration, led by a President whose anticommunist career began as a labor‐union leader in Hollywood. Under Reagan, anticommunists from Walt Rostow and Paul Nitze's Committee on the Present Danger directed an anticommunist foreign policy aimed at dismantling what Reagan termed the Soviet Union's “Evil Empire.” The collapse of that empire brought to an end the momentous history of American anticommunism. The debate over its role in American history, however, showed no sign of abating.
See also Communist Party—USA; Hiss, Alger; House Committee on Un‐American Activities; Rosenberg Case.

Bibliography

Newsletter of the Historians of American Communism, 1982–present.
Kenneth O'Reilly , Hoover and the Un‐Americans, 1983.
John Earl Haynes , Communism and Anti‐Communism in the United States: An Annotated Guide to Historical Writings, 1987.
M.J. Heale , American Anticommunism: Combating the Enemy Within, 1830–1970, 1990.
John E. Haynes , Red Scare or Red Menace, 1996.
Richard Gid Powers , Not without Honor: The History of American Anticommunism, 1997.

Richard Gid Powers