Anti-Communism

ANTI-COMMUNISM. Marx and Engels announced in The Communist Manifesto that communism was a “specter” haunting Europe. If so, anti-communism has been the turning of that specter into a master ideology of the present epoch.

Anti-communism needs to be distinguished from radical criticism of existing “communist” societies and from the posing of Utopian alternatives to the present order everywhere. The distinction is crucial because anti-communism has frequently disguised itself in such modes. Properly speaking, anti-communism knows “communism” only to destroy it. Everything takes a bipolar coding: down with communism = up with capitalism (or rather, “Freedom” and “Democracy,” purportedly realized only under capitalism). No essential complexity, no important evolution of “communist” societies themselves can be accommodated in this system, and above all, no consideration of capitalism as a doomed social order. The traits adduced to demonstrate the evil of communism make up something frozen out of time. Rather than being seen concretely in its real relations, it is seen as a manifestation of deep and fixed essence.

Anti-communism concerns, then, not communism at all but rather its own internal needs. Anti-communism is not a matter of fact, but of how facts are constructed and the framework in which they are placed. Full-blown anticommunist discourse is notable for the presence of what can be called the “black hole” effect—the sense that communism represents some absolute, infinitely dense standard of evil into the evaluation of which all critical distinctions disappear.

This may also be called the ABC effect: Anything But Communism. Or, in its most pathological form, Better Dead than Red. Its threat outweighs all other considerations, and justifies all acts to combat it, from support of tyrants and the launching of support of actions that cause massive civilian casualties and the devastation of human environments to preemptive nuclear war.

One aspect of anti-communism, its dominant part, is made up of the instrumental activities of ruling elites. Another part, quite separate in origin and functions, is made up of subjective popular dispositions to embrace what may be called anticommunist theology.

Instrumental anti-communism obeys the logic of political calculation. By projecting all sin to the other side, agents of ruling elites can create a climate in which political opposition is effectively silenced and the severe contradictions between democratic ideology and actual behavior apparently nullified. The use of atomic weapons against Japan, nominally to end World War II but actually to announce postwar US hegemony over Asia, offers a striking case in point. Only by portrayal of Stalin’s crimes as somehow worse could the contradiction between American ideals and American practices be reconciled.

An understanding of subjective anti-communism, on the other hand, requires a cultural and psychological critique. Cultural, first of all, because anti-communism is contiguous with certain “paranoid” features of American society going back to the colonial era, or earlier, to the roots of Western civilization. The continual repression of religious heretics, the frenzy of the Crusades, the repeated witch trials, among other events, have been persecutory premonitions of anti-communism. In American history, the process has often overlapped with waves of nativism, fears of loss of community and family, reactions against bureaucratization, and unfulfilled religious impulses. Despite the calculations of a less fanatical anti-communism, the demonology frequently breaks loose, blinding policy elites and undercutting their objectives.

The precursors of what crystallized into anti-communism with the emergence of the Bolshevik state can be seen in many forms earlier in US history: in the defense of slavery against allegedly “fanatical” abolitionists; in anti-Catholic agitation; in the racist and xenophobic outbreaks following the Civil War and episodically thereafter (leading to the formation of the Ku Klux Klan and similar movements); and, throughout, in the defense of capital against a rising and militant working class. The police raids on radical organizations following the Haymarket rebellion of 1886, and the resulting execution of innocent anarchists, established the basic plan to be followed.

At least three major Red Scares have exhibited the major symptoms. In 1919–1920, with the Bolshevik Revolution providing the symbolism, the US government, the press, and big business joined forces against a labor movement that had grown strong enough to launch a general strike in the city of Seattle. The resulting hysteria and gross violation of civil liberties set a specifically anticommunist pattern. In the wake of World War II, a second Red Scare crushed the progressive wing of the New Deal, integrated the labor movement once and for all into corporate strategy, and legitimized the policy of Soviet containment by any means necessary. This spate combined the zeal of influential Cold War liberals and the testimony of former Communists with the other elements, culminating in massive searches by the Federal Bureau of Investigation, employment blacklisting, union expulsions, the persecution of figures such as Alger Hiss, and the execution of the Rosenbergs.

A third wave of anti-communism coincided broadly with the Reagan administration, and had a basically different character. Though in part a reaction to the new social movements of the 1960s, the fundamental thrust was external rather than toward eliminating the internal Red threat. In part this reflected the legacy of previous repression in a weakened Left and labor movement. However, the basic instrumental purpose was twofold: to overcome the “Vietnam syndrome” of reluctance to engage in anticommunist and imperial wars; and to legitimize the monstrous military expenditures that had been undertaken as a Keynesian stimulus to a stagnant economy. As in previous crusades, former liberals and radicals played a role. However, the cultural impetus of this phase was largely provided by a renascent religious Right and its attack on the modernizing sexual forces that had erupted in the 1960s.

With the collapse of the Soviet system and the continuing enfeeblement of the domestic Left, anti-communism seemingly ran out of enemies. Bill Clinton became the first president since 1948 to come to power without the aid of this ideology, and the years of his administration were marked by an inchoate rather than a focused demonology, as criminals, “narcoterrorists,” welfare recipients, teenage mothers, Latino immigrants, sexual minorities, people of color, alleged child molesters, and satanic cults have variously been inserted into the circuits of social paranoia.

Rather than disappearing, the specter continued to drift into a diffuse complex of potential enemies. Following the September 11, 2001 attacks, US intelligence agencies pushed Arabs into the limelight, meriting secret torture abroad as well as investigation and interrogation of suspected “sleeper cells” in the United States, disconnected from “communism” but still “foreign” and “dangerous.” The election and re-election of Cesar Chavez in Venezuela, meanwhile, returned the specter to the Western Hemisphere, offering an ally to Fidel Castro and new potential to mislead Americans.

Democratic Socialist Bernie Sanders’s run for the Democratic nomination in 2015-2016 returned Communism, now conflated with Socialism, to the list of domestic threats. Republicans raised this specter as an argument to convince voters to shun the Democratic Party at large. Occupy Wall Street and Black Lives Matter further underscored this growing danger, both accused by Republicans of preaching “Marxism” to well-meaning but naïve supporters. By the time Sanders ran again in 2019-2020, the Democratic Socialists of American had grown to more than 50,000 members, a minor influence on the Democratic Party that was eagerly exaggerated by anticommunists into a serious threat embodied by the youthful, charismatic, and extraordinarily popular member of the US Congress, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez.

Donald J. Trump made anti-communism a major facet of his campaigns, a presidential posture not seen since the era of Ronald Reagan. Newspaper editorialists likened Trump to Joe McCarthy, suggesting that Trump’s rise to power could be found in McCarthy’s playbook: they even shared the same lawyer, Roy Cohen, who had trained Trump during the 1980s. Phrases like “far-left fascism” harkened back to Cold War rhetoric, Ayn Rand and Hannah Arendt alike. Demonstrations against police killings during the summer of 2020 provoked dire warnings of “anarchists” and “communists” burning down American cities and destroying the suburbs, arguments taken to great heights by President Trump, the Fox News Network, and the spider web of right-wing blogs and organizations. Amplifying this argument for his re-election, Trump repeatedly accused the Democratic Party of serving as a “Trojan horse” for Communism. “The Fighters Against Socialism Bus Tour,” led by Donald Trump Jr and campaign buttons emblazoned with a fist smashing through a hammer and sickle with the letters MAGA on the fingers spread this message. Meanwhile, Trump vacillated wildly on his opinion of China, but during the 2020 coronavirus pandemic fused accusations of “Communism,” “Marxism,” and “Yellow Peril” to attack the major economic competitor of the United States.

Anti-communism not only persisted but revived vigorously thirty years past the collapse of the Soviet Union. In the minds of conservatives and right-wing militia groups alike, Communism remained alive as, when needed, served their warnings of dangers always on the horizon, a shape-shifting “red menace.”

Caute, David. The Great Fear. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1978.

CePlair, Larry. Anti-Communism in Twentieth Century America. Los Angeles: Clio Books, 2011.

Fisher, Nick. The Birth of Anti-Communism. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2016.

Kovel, Joel. Red Hunting in the Promised Land. New York: Basic Books, 1994.

Navasky, Victor. Naming Names. New York: Viking, 1980.

Schrecker, Ellen W. No Ivory Tower: McCarthyism and the Universities. New York: Oxford University Press, 1986.