THE ANTICOMMUNIST CRUSADE ★^933Investigation (FBI) used anticommunism to expand their power. Under direc-
tor J. Edgar Hoover, the FBI developed files on thousands of American citizens,
including political dissenters, homosexuals, and others, most of whom had no
connection to communism.
Anticommunism also served as a weapon wielded by individuals and
groups in battles unrelated to defending the United States against subversion.
McCarthy and his Republican followers often seemed to target not so much Sta-
lin as the legacy of Roosevelt and the New Deal. For many Democrats, aggres-
sive anticommunism became a form of self- defense against Republican charges
of disloyalty and a weapon in a struggle for the party’s future. The campaign
against subversion redrew the boundaries of acceptable Democratic liberal-
ism to exclude both communists and those willing to cooperate with them
as in the days of the Popular Front. Indeed, “sympathetic association” with
communists— past or present— became grounds for dismissal from one’s job
under the government’s loyalty program.
As the historian Henry Steele Commager argued in a 1947 magazine article,
the anticommunist crusade promoted a new definition of loyalty— conformity.
Anything other than “uncritical and unquestioning acceptance of America as it
is,” wrote Commager, could now be labeled unpatriotic. For business, anticom-
munism became part of a campaign to identify government intervention in
the economy with socialism. White supremacists employed anticommunism
against black civil rights, business used it against unions, and upholders of sex-
ual morality and traditional gender roles raised the cry of subversion against
feminism and homosexuality, both supposedly responsible for eroding the
country’s fighting spirit.
Anticommunist Politics
At its height, from the late 1940s to around 1960, the anticommunist cru-
sade powerfully structured American politics and culture. Especially after
their unexpected defeat in 1948, Republicans in Congress used a drumbeat of
charges of subversion to block Truman’s political program. The most import-
ant actions of Congress were ones the president opposed. After launching
the government’s loyalty program in 1947, Truman had become increas-
ingly alarmed at the excesses of the anticommunist crusade. He vetoed the
McCarran Internal Security Bill of 1950, which required “subversive” groups
to register with the government, allowed the denial of passports to their mem-
bers, and authorized their deportation or detention on presidential order. But
Congress quickly gave the measure the two- thirds majority necessary for it to
become law.
The McCarran- Walter Act of 1952, the first major piece of immigration leg-
islation since 1924, also passed over the president’s veto. Truman had appointed
What effects did the anticommunism of the Cold War have on American politics and culture?