anticommunism

The Hollywood Blacklist, Screenwriters and Free Expression Under Attack

by Larry Ceplair

The current screenwriters' strike is occasion to look back at the targeting of writers by HUAC in the 1950s, the politics of moral panic, and the impact of political fear on the content of popular culture.

Whittaker Chambers's Odyssey from Communist Spy to Conservative Hero

by Matthew Sitman and Sam Adler-Bell

Praised by the right and loathed by the left, Whittaker Chambers entered the public eye when he accused State Department worker Alger Hiss of being a Communist. But his story before and after reveals much more about the political history of midcentury America. 

There's a Long History of Indoctrination in Florida Schools—on the Right

by Tera W. Hunter

The author's experiences with a state mandated course contrasting "Americanism" with "Communism" echo in today's attacks on curriculum, and the exclusion of ideas challenging a social order of economic and racial inequality. 

When McCarthyism Hit Small-Town Vermont

by Rick Winston

The events that roiled one small town in 1950 showed the courage and integrity of newspaper editors who resisted a "red scare" but also the harm inflicted on a community by weaponized suspicion. 

Economism as a Red Scare Legacy

by Landon Storrs

An economic historian traces the rise of neoliberal political economy to the post-WWII Red Scare, when Keynesians were driven out of government service under suspicion of disloyalty. 

Blacklisted Actress Marsha Hunt Dies at 104

Hunt's participation in the Committee for the First Amendment, which questioned the activities of the House Unamerican Activities Committee in 1947, led to her blacklisting. 

Remember, too, the Victims Nazis Singled Out for their Politics

by Adam J. Sacks

A German organization dedicated to the remembrance of left-wing victims of the Nazis has had its charitable status revoked. While the history of Nazism's persecution and murder of Jews and other groups is rightly commemorated, Nazism's violence against the political left has been obscured. 

Law Enforcement Has Long Practiced Double Standards for Activists

by Denise Lynn

Nobody should be shocked that the FBI has aggressively surveilled Black Lives Matter organizers while deciding that the online organizing of the January 6 attack on the Capitol was protected speech; this double standard has characterized law enforcement's approach to racial justice protest. 

Like JFK, Biden Has Good Reason to Be Wary of the Military

Joe Biden faces challenges like those that confronted JFK: both presidents faced a substantial presence of right-wing extremists within the active and retired ranks of military leadership. Biden must stand firm in the face of manufactured controversies including over diversity training. 

What the FBI Had on Grandpa

by Molly Jong-Fast

"I never considered my grandfather to be a danger to the republic, but J. Edgar Hoover disagreed." The FBI surveilled writer Howard Fast extensively, though, as he wrote in his autobiography, "the eleven hundred pages detailed every—or almost every—decent act I had performed in my life."

The Other ‘Mank’: Joe Mankiewicz and the Wildest Night in Hollywood History

by Greg Mitchell

The Netflix film "Mank" provides an opportunity to remember the civil liberties stand taken by Frank Mankiewicz's brother Joe, who opposed the imposition of loyalty oaths on the Directors' Guild at the height of the postwar red scare. 

Joe Biden’s Harshest Critics are Likely to be Some of His Fellow Catholics

by Theresa Keeley

Abortion is the most divisive issue for liberal and conservative Catholics in America today, but reflects a decades-long division in beliefs about how the Church should engage with the world. It may be tricky for Joe Biden to navigate as a faithful Catholic.

Did the US Try to Assassinate Lenin in 1918?

A new book demonstrates that the United States and western allies attempted to thwart the Bolshevik revolution and actually started the Cold War with an ill-fated 1918 invasion of Russia, but is on more speculative ground tracing an assassination attempt against Lenin to the US.  

The Red Scare and Women in Government

McCarthyite attacks on the political left also pushed women out of policymaking positions in the federal government, the historian Landon Storrs argues. 

Where Conspiracy Reigns

Historians Rodrigo Patto Sá Motta and Federico Finchelstein offer insight into how the political right has used rumors of communist plots to maintain power in Brazil, and why the country's political culture today is vulnerable to fake news and conspiracy theories. 

"GUILTY": Justice for the Jesuits in El Salvador

Applying the doctrine of Universal Jurisdiction for human rights abuses, a Spanish Court found former El Salvador Colonel Inocente Orlando Montano guilty in the assassination of six Jesuit priests and two Salvadoran women in 1989. The National Security Archive supplied hundreds of declassified documents as evidence. 

Surveillance, State Power, and the Activism of Shirley Graham Du Bois

by Denise Lynn

The Black organizer Shirley Graham DuBois, along with her husband W.E.B. DuBois, faced intrusive and punitive action by the U.S. government for her antiracist activism. The government used anticommunism to justify its surveillance. 

Who’s Our Roy Cohn?

by Andrew Feffer

Two documentaries on the notorious lawyer and fixer portray Roy Cohn as a figure of evil, but don't examine the social and political context of power in New York City. 

Joseph McCarthy and the Force of Political Falsehoods

McCarthy never sent a single “subversive” to jail, but, decades later, the spirit of his conspiracy-mongering endures.

Using the Military to Quash Protests Can Erode Democracy – As Latin America Well Knows

by Kristina Mani

Even strong democracies have unraveled when the military was brought in to quell protest. Uruguay in the 1960s, Venezuela in the 1980s and Chile just last year provide insights.