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This page is
about Americas past problems with the Cold War, Space Race and the effect it
had on people’s lives in the 50s and how this has turned into a War on Terror.
One focus of this page is on the use of Anti Communism and the way it caused
such widespread paranoia in Americans who were trying to prove that they are
patriots that work hard for a free country. Another topic is American work
ethic, the dream of freedom, and finally the progress for society in post Cold
War years. The Cold war was a battle over which powers control the Earth. It
has been used as a propaganda machine that has manipulated people’s beliefs,
while causing mass panic through the use of scare tactics and sensationalized
news which is designed to bring in a New World Order. The New World Order is
the end result of the Cold War years that arrives with a promised goal of
nations cooperating in an age of peace and prosperity. The Cold War inflicted a
lot of needless suffering with Red Scare warnings to the people of America by
instructing them to be on guard while acting in hostile paranoid suspicion and
this has caused damage by creating great social conflicts.
The Cold War
began when America in the 1950’s was recovering from the WWII expenditure and
was faced off with Russia in stalemate over Berlin. This standoff around a
walled city caused major fears of WWIII and or planetary annihilation in an
atomic or nuclear war. Winning WWII was a major scale victory for America and
has been a driving source to inspire patriots to believe in freedom. Russia had
been Americas ally in WWII against the Nazis and as soon as the Cold War began,
became the ultimate enemy. According to Ellen Schrecker, Truman began to fear
Soviet takeover and plans for world domination:
At first Truman and his advisers vacillated
hoping to conciliate the Soviets and trying to strong-arm them, but by the
beginning of 1946 most of the nations policymakers had come to see the Soviet
Union as a hostile power committed to a program of worldwide expansion that
only the United States was strong enough to resist. (Schrecker 17)
Schrecker’s
book argues that the American government was not really sure that the Iron
Curtain of USSR was seeking to expand to the entire world, but took action to
prevent it anyways. “American policymakers never tried to find out, assuming on
the basis of the Nazi experience that totalitarian states by definition
threatened the stability of the international system” (Schrecker 17). Smaller
ideological wars were fought all over the planet in 3rd world
countries when each government pressured small countries into picking a side
and fighting. Ellen Schrecker’s books say that people in 3rd world
countries associate Americans with guns and not freedom. The Cold War was
imposed on citizens who had difficulty ignoring the constant pressuring
questions that check allegiance, system beliefs, and ideals while being
required to prove loyalty in the name of national security.
The fear of
the atomic and nuclear age had Americans building bomb shelters in their
backyards. The Russians on parade with huge nuclear rockets broadcast on the
news caused people to spend a lot of time worrying about possible nuclear
fallout. “On September 23, 1949, President Truman tersely announced that the
Soviet Union has detonated an atomic device the previous month” (Schrecker 32).
The American way of life and democracy was seen in serious danger. J. Edgar
Hoover publicized advice to Americans to be on watch:
The best antidote to communism is vigorous,
intelligent, old-fashioned Americanism with eternal vigilance. As Americans our
most effective defense is a workable democracy that guarantees and preserves
our cherished freedoms. (Schrecker 119)
The US
government started worrying the Soviets had more bombs than the US, so started
a space race to advance military capabilities of rocket research, spy
satellites, stealth jets and other technologies to spy on the Soviet Union.
They developed the high altitude U-2 spy plane and the Corona spy satellite to
take tactical surveillance.
Eisenhower also hoped that despite the
initial Corona launch failure, space-based reconnaissance might soon provide
ample intelligence about Russian missiles. (Taubman 283)
With both the U-2 and Corona at critical
junctures that required his undivided attention in mid April, Bissel was also
quarterbacking an assortment of clandestine operations designed to destabilize
or topple unfriendly foreign governments. (Taubman 302)
With all the
talk of secret warfare of Cold War spies, satellites and stealth craft in the
news, people feared being watched and getting accused of being communist
sympathizers. Some people were convinced they had to pose right wing views in
public in case they were being observed or be rejected from various social
circles. People are trained to be competitive and to raise their performance in
relation to symbols of American technology like jet fighters and the space
program while thinking about national pride to increase worker efficiency.
The Cold War
years of the 1940s to the 1990s forced a lot of Americans to believe the world
was in dark times of a hostile takeover from unseen forces as if communists
would come leaping out of shadows and influence peoples sense of morals and use
it to spread the Iron Rule of Communism. People were told if communists took
over America, Russian Gulag concentration camps would be used to ensure forced
labor and to silence free speech. The Communist Party of USA has been seriously
criticized for ignoring Stalin’s purges:
Worst of all, the party’s devotion to Moscow
led it to condone Stalin’s crimes and to ignore or apologize for Stalin’s
extermination of millions of peasants in the late 1920s and early 1930s, the
slave labor camps, and the paranoiac orgy of purges that cost the lives of
hundreds of thousands of Russian revolutionaries and others during the late
1930s and 1940s. Even when Stalin liquidated most of his former colleagues
after forcing them to confess publicly to crimes they did not commit, the
American Communist party did not protest. (Schrecker 7)
Russians
were demonized when they were portrayed as heartless aliens that were cold
efficient machines from the dark side of the evil empire set out to conquer
rebellious Americans. They were made out to be mindless robots that were only
concerned with the progress of the communist party and would obediently carry
out its orders. “Communist party members were believed to be part of a secret
conspiracy, fanatics who would automatically do whatever Stalin told them to do”
(Schrecker 17). For Americans who would never see warfare in a 3rd
world country, there was a battle of willpower to preserve their fundamental
beliefs before sinister forces corrupted their minds and replaced them with
“Red” beliefs. This fear of the “Red Menace” was a driving force to preserve
democracy which was seen as under attack from strange Un-American foreign
powers. J. Edgar Hoover who was a director of FBI had sensational paranoid
views that contributed to national panics about communist takeover with
descriptions of evil characters as if out of a comic book. “I have always felt
that the greatest contribution this committee could make is the public
disclosure of the forces that menace America – Communist and Fascist. . . .
This Committee renders a distinct service when it publicly reveals the
diabolical machinations of sinister figures engaged in un-American activities.
. . .” (Schrecker 114). There are many Cold War propaganda posters of Russians
idealists offering masterminded plans that were associated with offers from the
devil.
Russians
were depicted as red faced devil’s advocates offering allegiance to Americans
who were susceptible to the wish of improving position. American patriots were
all warned they could be susceptible to the friendly come-ons of Russians as if
they would approach smilingly saying “Comrade would you like to join the
party?” Supposedly, many hard working Americans were at risk for the lure of
the Communist Labor Party when it would offer to guarantee new union rights and
grant freedoms.
By virtue of their experience and dedication,
Communists were in great demand as organizers, especially in the campaign
mounted by the newly formed Congress of Industrial Organizations (CIO) to unionize the nation’s unskilled
workers. (Schrecker 6)
Fears of foreign agents taking over the work
force caused major suspicions among workers and made it seem a dangerous place
exposed to corruption. “I do fear so long as American labor groups are
infiltrated, dominated, or saturated with the virus of communism” (Schrecker
119). Communism was made out to be an insanely intelligent ideal that was
dangerous to even consider as if it was an atheist machine running rampantly
out of control. This propaganda says that communists are hiding in corners like
shadows whispering evil ideas that slowly sift into people’s minds that play on
the freedom of America in order to control it.
There were
posters of Russians painted red with Hammer and Sickles being portrayed as
having bodies of iron while offering great intellect that bring ideals that
Americans had never considered. This propaganda offered to the underclass that
wanted to see strong leadership bring those dreams from foreign and exotic
lands of ancient legend. J. Edgar Hoover’s book explains the idealistic lure of
communism:
In short, communism claims to offer all the
things to all men by promising to cure all the world’s ills and establishing a
paradise on earth. (Hoover 61) The communists are masters of mirage, painters
of brilliant Utopias. Their false gods, clad in the shining armor of
"truth," "justice" and "mercy," are today
masquerading, with a surprising degree of success, as the legitimate ideals of
democracy. (Hoover 64)
The
underclass felt disinherited and directionless. The image of foreigners
offering solutions to mediocrity in generic industrial cities seemed a dream of
some sort of native paradise.
J. Edgar
Hoover warned Americans about being tricked into accepting communist utopist
ideals. Communism had an appeal to discontented Americans who thought that this
country should go through great social change in order reach a new level of
freedom. Socialists believed that by spreading their ideas to many people and
asking many personal questions about grievances and giving promised answers of
social equality, that it would cause a chain reaction of progress towards a new
democracy. They reached out to many people hoping to spread the dream of
revolution and to liberate the oppressed. According to J. Edgar Hoovers book on
Communism
The historic mission: The preamble of the
latest constitution of the Communist Party of the United States, filled with
Marxian ”double talk,” proclaims that the party “educates the working class, in
the course of its day-to-day struggles, for its historic mission, the establishment
of socialism.” (Schrecker 114).
Communist propaganda is always slanted in the
hope that the Communist may be alined [sic] with liberal progressive causes.
(Schrecker 116)
Communism
caters to liberals that see the folk people of Russia as heroic in surviving
the oppression of Stalin’s Great Purges. Contradictory to that Iron Rule, they
would like to believe in socialism as a comprehensive program that could give
rights to the working class about the unfair advantage of the wealthy American
capitalists. They would like a new social justice in America to balance the
economic inequality and labor disputes of class struggles.
Socialists believed that America’s capitalist
system was inherently unjust to the great majority of citizens. They preferred
a collectivist society in which the government, not private enterprise, managed
the production and distribution of goods and services for people’s welfare.
(Sirgiovanni 175)
J. Edgar
Hoover believed that communist propaganda is a hypocritical Godless machine
that is bent on world domination and that the ideas themselves are well crafted
ideals that cannot be allowed to be considered before a large scale outbreak
occurs. “Communism, in way of life, It reveals a condition akin to disease that
spreads like an epidemic and like an epidemic a quarantine is necessary to keep
it from infecting the Nation.” (Schrecker 120).That statement makes Americans
out to be incapable of maintaining the sanity of their own minds while being at
risk of a thought or communist ideal that is out of control with the power to
sway opinions into negative beliefs.
The Anti
Communist Red Scare has damaged this country that was founded by immigrants and
descendants of foreigner’s by causing hostility of its people on itself over
what this nation’s true identity supposedly is while questioning what and who
are the real Americans. It causes a fear that America has already fallen to a
faceless corporation ran by nameless aliens and that no one can be trusted.
People fear being nothing or mediocre, and the solution in America is to pursue
some passion such as sports or cars, to fulfill the emptiness. Many people that
were actively campaigning for worker rights through unions were set up and identified
as communists and arrested. Foreigners were automatically suspected by INS and
subject to possibly being sent out of the USA:
Presidential orders, congressional hearing,
criminal prosecutions all told stories that, at least during the early cold war,
helped construct the ideological scaffolding for McCarthyism. When in the late
1940s, for example, the Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS) began to
round up foreign-born Communists and labor leaders for deportation and then
detain them without bail, it was sending a very strong signal about the alien
nature of communism and its dangers. (Schrecker 20)
This causes
a general identity crisis that people do not know who they are while living in
industrial modern times. The Cold War propaganda suggestions end up making
people torment themselves in self analysis as if being punished for the simple
desire to live a good life. Americans have a national heritage of being
outcasts from foreign countries that fought for independence and freedom and
the constant oppressive questioning of beliefs leaves many people feeling
betrayed.
There is a
challenge to this day of what a true patriot is while there is a War on Terror.
Many anti-communists were hostile to anyone encountered and challenged to fight
or provoke an argument to prove loyalty as God fearing patriotic Americans.
Anti communists can argue turning on their own circle of friends in paranoid
hostility at the possibility of infiltration. Some of the big names in the Anti
Communist movement were Senator McCarthy, President Truman and FBI Director J.
Edgar Hoover. The Republican Party coming out of WWII was looking for a
scapegoat (communism) to use in pushing democrats out of office. “The Communist
issue would be a fair game in the near future. It was a mean time. The nation
was ready for witch-hunts.” (Halberstam 9). A 1946 Chairman of the Republican
National Committee said “the coming election would be a choice between
‘Communism and Republicanism’” (Halberstam 10). The Republicans began a
campaign to regain power from Roosevelt and Truman and then attacked the New
Deal with charges that it was a socialist plot to bring in communism. The New
Deal was a plan where the government supported unions, had work and emergency
programs, farm support, and financial reform to recover from the depression. There
was an agency created called the House of Un-American Activities devised to
track alleged communists that was started in the late 1930’s. “From the start,
HUAC was to focus on the alleged Communist influence in the labor movement and
New Deal agencies. It eagerly pursued evidence that Communists had infiltrated
the government” (Schrecker 12). Proven patriots were asked to witness and speak
their own case to discover communist infiltrators. Community organizers had
regular group meetings to gather information about people in each neighborhood
in order to speculate at the possibility of infiltration. It was suggested by
agencies such as HUAC that every loyal American actively search for
infiltrators and subject them to scathing questions to flush them out. It was
designed to make a citizen organized secret police force of patriots that
patrolled the community on a regular basis to preserve democracy in America.
People have been worked into epic fits of paranoid fever that infiltrators are
lurking around every corner.
The Cold War
was almost an unseen battle that lived in peoples darkest suspicions that enemy
agents were deep within and must be faced and spotted out before the country
was to collapse from the infiltration and be taken over. The government
considered spies to be a real threat and there was a Cold War security battle
in the technology race for superiority:
Communist spies were, however, a genuine
threat. Though never powerful enough to influence government policy, individual
Communists could easily have stolen secrets – and some of them did. The
notorious spy cases of the early cold war bolstered by the contention that, as
J. Edgar Hoover maintained, “every Communist was, and is, potentially an
espionage agent of the Soviet Union. (Schrecker 18)
This kind of
statement from the government encourages people to be actively hostile to
outsiders and to ask suspicious questions and double check everyone they meet.
It is warning the people of this country that foreign agents are scheming to
outsmart them with stealthy plans to take-over. A counter intelligence program
was created to spy on the communist party:
Beginning in 1956, when the Supreme Court
started to make anti-Communist prosecutions more difficult, the bureau embarked
on COINTELPRO, a secret program of political sabotage, unauthorized
surveillance, and disinformation designed to cripple the Communist party and,
later, other radical groups as well. President Truman was one of the few people
in power at the time to question the bureau’s activities: as one of his aides
noted, he wanted “to hold [the] F.B.I. down, afraid,” that it would turn into a
“Gestapo.” (Schrecker 24)
Some
Americans fear the government is going to harass them saying they may be
communists for not sharing right wing suggested beliefs. People want this to be
a free country and democracy and then are having trouble leading care free
rewarding lives when worried about having restricted rights. The National
Security Agency was created to protect America:
And, in the early days of the cold war,
communism was seen as so uniquely threatening to America’s survival that
measures that might have been considered serious violations of individual
rights were justified on the grounds of national security. (Schrecker 2)
National
Security can be used to revoke constitutional rights and this is all in the
name of saving democracy in the event of communist invasion or that nuclear war
devastates the planet. Communism was supposedly a Manchurian plot to enslave
America.
People were
driven by such fears of fascism and Soviet takeover, to work so hard to ensure
democracy would endure, that they might as well have been in work camps being
pushed to the limits. An ideal work system should allow people the hours they
want, independence, flexibility and have some sort of creative direction that
each person may take without having to be pushed to the breaking point of
health failure. The economy could be improved by making people happier working
less hours, and increase efficiency of the system by basing it on people that
believe in their jobs. The way totalitarian propaganda scares people into
worker excesses and having to define themselves by their capability to produce
at work is probably bad for the economy. The reward for the hard work is going
into debt with a credit card to buy the products of capitalism which comes with
a short expensive vacation, in order to feel like this is a free country. All
talk in the Cold War times about improving worker conditions was placed on the
red list of communist sympathizers and dismissed as Un-American.
People would
like jobs they believe in, are comfortable with and be able to have some
freedom. Because of lack of workers’ rights, people end up desperate to prove
they are hard workers and patriots that can pull their own weight in society to
prevent getting labeled as communists. This feeling of the work never being
over and the need to complete it is a futile wish in an endless cycle of
burning out at maximum levels of effort. One image of this is of sled dogs all
strapped together, which are required to pull as a team, and if one is lagging
behind, the others have to pull harder to make up for it. Anyone that doesn’t
work hard enough is subject to open hatred and the fear of being put on the red
list. People probably have never been sure if there really is a list of “Reds”
and the process of analyzing themselves in fear of that causes paranoid
delusions, personality conflicts and mental problems
The fear of
the Cold War causes a treadmill cycle of people being afraid of falling behind,
which causes stress and anxiety which can lead to serious illness. The fear of
falling behind mixed with the desire to prove self worth by being productive at
work, has made society into a hostile over competitive and paranoid rat race.
The rat race is an endless cycle of an increasingly difficult overload of work
that is useless to try completing that has small reward and no end in sight.
The anxiety projected on the people, progresses from a fear of Hoover,
McCarthy, Russians, Aliens, nuclear war and then onto being labeled Un-American
until this is a nation of people terrified by the New World Order.
The fall of
the Berlin Wall in 1989 was a milestone achievement when the USA and Russia met
and declared the End of the Cold War. This event was seen as a new era of peace
which was broadcast worldwide on news networks as one of the greatest day in 50
years. America has since managed to destabilize the USSR and collapse it into
the smaller country of Russia. This has been seen as a great victory for
democracy which has pledged to ensure freedom for all people planet wide. It
seems from the history of the Cold War that it was a hard time for everyone
when even the average people in the workforce who wanted worker rights were put
under suspicion of being communist agents of the union. These days in the War
on Terror, it seems less likely that people will be investigated as if they
have been conspiring to make allegiance with foreign terrorists. Now there is a
more positive chance of progress towards wellness and health in society even
though there is a War on Terror and New World Order. People can have a new
quality of life in the workplace without getting made out to be communists and
are able to seek independence and flexibility in hours. The hatred that left no
stone unturned, causing suspicious questioning and paranoid doubletalk are
becoming a story from the past. People are no longer so driven to destroy each
other while competing in a rat race to improve their position in life and the
future dream of peace seems to become possible. I think Americans should spend
less time in the identity crisis of delving into the negative depths of
paranoid analytical doubletalk questioning of themselves or outsiders and their
motivational allegiances and spend more time pursuing health and peace of mind.
Annotated Book Bibliography:
Halberstam, David. The Fifties. Fawcett Columbine. Amateurs Unlimited 1993. This is a wild story about American 50s legends and shows a desperate time in the cold war identity crisis of Americans and the struggle for civil rights and societal progress. I chose the book because it is an excellent source on the cold war and anti communism.
Hoover, J Edgar. On Communism. Random House 1969. This is a book written from a Director of FBI that explains from an authoritative view the dangers of communism infiltrating America and corrupting its belief in freedom. It has many quotes from communist leaders to explain their ideals and what they believe. It explains the lives of Soviets and American communist party members. Hoover answers in his opinion how communism functions and how the party planned takeover in this country. I picked this book to understand why cold war anti communism happened and to see it from the point of view of an authority that had major influence in fighting communism.
Schrecker, Ellen. The Age of McCarthyism: A Brief History with Documents. The Bedford Series in History and Culture 1994. This is a book about McCarthyism that reports the facts without drawing into judgment. It gives a narrative to describe this period in the Cold War history. It is written to give greater understanding of the beliefs in anti communism, the role of government and the definition of the people. I chose this book because it seems a real find and has the feel of just presenting the reasons why it all happened and it comes with official documents. It is the most neutral account of the McCarthy era and seems to be a fascinating story. It presents the ideals of all sides of the issues and has testimonies while being short and right to the main issues.
Sirgiovanni, George. An Undercurrent of Suspicion: Anti-Communism in America during World War II. Transaction Publishers 1990. This is an account of a dark and paranoid mindset of fearing Stalin or Nazi types would take over America. It explains in depth into the plots of communist conspiracies while living in this troubled time period. It goes into explanations why various groups opposed communism in America and the hatred that went on because of the war. I picked this book because it makes a larger picture of the anti communism movement gives the justifications for casting so many people in America under suspicion.
Taubman, Philip. Secret Empire: Eisenhower, the CIA, and the Hidden Story of Americas Space Espionage. Simon and Schuster 2003. This is a book about the Cold War technology race to win military superiority over foreign powers. There was a race in the 1950s to produce spy planes and reach into space with spy satellites to warn the USA in case of Nuclear attack. I chose this book because it tells a sensational espionage story of a time when America feared attack and used the space race to promote patriotism.