Rethinking liberal anti-Communism

Just ran across this article

Rethinking Post-World War II Anticommunism

However fiercely historians disagree about the merits of American communism, they almost universally agree that the post-World War II red scare signified a rightward turn in American politics. The consensus is that an exaggerated, irrational fear of communism, bolstered by a few spectacular spy cases, created an atmosphere of persecution and hysteria that was exploited and fanned by conservative opportunists such as Richard Nixon and Joseph McCarthy. This hysteria suppressed rival ideologies and curtailed the New Deal, leading to a resurgence of conservative ideas and corporate influence in government. We may add detail and nuance to this story, but this, basically, is what we tell our students and ourselves about post-World War II anticommunism, also known as McCarthyism.2 It is fundamentally the same story that liberals have told since Whittaker Chambers accused Alger Hiss of being a Communist spy in 1948.


And yet the most famous and effective anticommunist measures were carried out not by conservatives, but by liberals seeking to uphold the New Deal. It was the liberal Truman administration that chased Communists out of government agencies and prosecuted Communist Party leaders under the Smith Act. It was liberal Hollywood executives who adopted the blacklist, effectively forcing Communists out of the movie business. The labor leaders who purged Communists from their unions were, similarly, liberals. Most anticommunism—the anticommunism that mattered—was not hysterical and conservative, but, rather, a methodical and, in the end, successful attempt on the part of New Deal liberals to remove Communists from specific areas of American life, namely, the government, unions, universities and schools, and civil rights organizations. It is true that the FBI and the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC) helped carry out these measures, but it is a mistake to assume that J. Edgar Hoover or HUAC could have had much power without the cooperation of liberals who wanted Communists identified and driven out of their organizations.

Delton does a great job explaining why liberals were anti-Communist in the post-war era. Their opposition to Stalin's American minions was not a matter of cowardice or hysteria. Rather, it was a moral response to a serious national security threat and a pragmatic response to political realities.

I especially liked her expert skewering of the anti-anti-Communists like Victor Navasky (formerly of The Nation and now at the Columbia School of Journalism):

Navasky’s characterization of historians like Haynes, Klehr, and Weinstein as “crazed lepidopterists,” who “wildly try to capture every fugitive document that flutters into view” is a bit unfair considering that critics like Navasky himself keep dismissing the evidence these authors have found and then asking them for more evidence.

She is also critical of historians who have not dealt honestly with recent revelations such as the VENONA files:

Most historians now acknowledge the existence of Soviet agents in the government, and even the role of the Communist Party in recruiting such agents, but they have not accordingly revised their understanding of the Truman administration’s response to the situation. They still overemphasize the betrayal of democratic principles rather than helping students understand the need for and rationality of the government’s repression of the Communist Party. In the revised edition of The Age of McCarthyism, for instance, Ellen Schrecker manages to acknowledge that “documents released from the Russian and American archives reveal that as many as two to three hundred men and women in or near the Communist Party did transmit information to Moscow” without actually changing her narrative. She continues to refer to “the alleged threat of internal communism” as an impetus for the Loyalty-Security Program, as if the existence of 200 to 300 Soviet agents in the government were not a serious threat.51 Acknowledging the evidence against Hiss, she still insists that the significant point to be taken from the case is that it—the trial, the guilty verdict, Nixon, the trip to the pumpkin patch—“gave credibility to the issue of Communists-in-government.” What gave credibility to the idea that there were Communist spies in the government was the fact that there were Communist spies in the government.