Harry Targ
President Trump warned
Friday that communism
poses a “mortal threat” to the country during
a speech at Mount Rushmore on the eve of
America’s 250th birthday….
“A generation after we fought and won the Cold War
against the menace of communism, there is now a resurgence of the communist
menace in our land, including from newcomers to our country who embrace ideas
totally opposed to our way of life and our great success (Victor Nava,and Nicholas McEntyre, New York Post, July 3,
2026).
To foster support for the dramatic new U.S. foreign
policies, the executive branch launched a campaign against
"communism" from the beginning of the Cold War. President Truman
issued Executive Order 9835 in March 1947 that instituted a federal loyalty
program that required sworn statements by all federal employees that they had
not been a member of the Communist Party of the United States or groups
affiliated with it. This inspired similar loyalty oath requirements at all
levels of government. The Truman Administration created the Attorney General's
list, which was a list of suspect organizations believed to be affiliated with
the Communist Party. Federal employees who had belonged to any of these groups
would be subject to dismissal. Two thousand employees were fired from their
jobs and over 200 resigned in anticipation of dismissal.
One of the most aggressive executive agencies in the
struggle against communism was the Federal Bureau of Investigation, headed by
J. Edgar Hoover. The FBI infiltrated groups, wrote books denouncing people with
suspicious ideas (like giving support for racial justice), hounded suspected
radicals in their homes and on their jobs and through the statements by Hoover
linked every public criticism with foreign and subversive causes.
Congress launched its own attacks on communism, in Hollywood, in the schools, in the public sector, in unions, through the technique of the Congressional hearing. From 1946 to 1954 there were 135 Congressional investigations of "communism" in Hollywood, the main activity organized by the House Committee on Un-American Activities (HUAC). Individual Senators and Congresspersons began to build careers fighting Communism at home. Congressman Richard Nixon gained fame attacking former New Deal administrator, Alger Hiss. Senator Joseph McCarthy, for whom the whole anti-communist phenomenon was mistakenly credited, announced that there were hundreds of Communists in the State Department. Of greatest importance to workers was the passage in 1947 of the Taft-Hartley Act which was designed to limit workers trade union rights. Union leaders had to sign anti- Communist loyalty oaths or their unions would get decertified.
Not only would anti-Communism frame the understanding
Americans had about the Soviet Union and China, but such a frame would pervade
virtually all political consciousness: about class, race, and gender. Labor
militants were labeled “Communists” to reduce their effectiveness in
organizing. Further, people who defended government and community
responsibility, or who criticized commercialism were attacked as being,
subversive, and Communist. The bottom line for all this was that the
anti-Communist impulse in American life served the interests and needs of
capitalism by smearing social reform in postwar America. Particularly, anti-Communism
was used to gain support for the emerging US foreign policy of economic and
military dominance in the world and to build domestic opposition to labor
demands at home. The political conditions were being created to support the
globalization of U.S. power and influence.
