Anticommunism has been the dominant ideological weapon of the power elites in the United States and the major determinant of foreign and domestic policy since World War II. The communist specter emerged after the Paris Commune of 1871, when class conflict gripped the newly industrialized United States and the "red menace" proved an effective tool against labor and agrarian radicals. During and after World War I and the Bolshevik revolution, the red scare, with its accompanying xenophobia, grew tremendously and targeted among others the women's suffrage campaign and first-wave feminists.
Anticommunism took center stage after World War II, driven by the need to win popular support for a new cold war foreign policy and the desire of the right to destroy the New Deal coalition. A purge of government employees, congressional investigating committees, FBI harassment, new repressive legislation, federal and state prosecutions, and deportations victimized men and women on the Left, as well as gays and lesbians and their associates. A climate of intense fear, censorship, and conformity paralyzed social activism and labor militancy, undermined the First Amendment, and contributed to the power of family-centered ideology and the rigidly defined gender roles that were so oppressive to women in the 1950s.
Senator Joseph McCarthy was but an opportunistic latecomer to the scene, though he bequeathed it his name. "McCarthyism" was a misleading name, however, because by 1950 anticommunism already had become the ruling national ideology, and the nation's top leaders and law enforcement authorities, not McCarthy, were responsible. Anticommunism defined U.S. foreign policy, fueling an unprecedented military buildup directed at the USSR and at insurgent movements worldwide.
By 1960 the civil rights movement began to weaken the orthodoxy of the 1950s, belatedly aided by the Supreme Court and popular resistance, markedly that of Women Strike for Peace members who effectively used ridicule to undermine McCarthyism's power. The national security state and the age of surveillance remain a part of our society, threatening the civil liberties of leftists, militant environmentalists, and groups working for social change abroad.
Marge Frantz
See also
Conservatism and the Right Wing.
