Robbie Lieberman
- Published in print:
- 2013
- Published Online:
- January 2014
- ISBN:
- 9780197265390
- eISBN:
- 9780191760440
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- British Academy
- DOI:
- 10.5871/bacad/9780197265390.003.0010
- Subject:
- Music, History, Western
At the height of the McCarthy era, a period that marked the low point of both communism and peace activism in the United States, the communist left continued to promote its ideas about peace through ...
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At the height of the McCarthy era, a period that marked the low point of both communism and peace activism in the United States, the communist left continued to promote its ideas about peace through song. Beginning with the Progressive party campaign of 1948, communists and their supporters sang their opposition to U.S. Cold War policies and promoted brotherhood among men, usually in those (male) terms. Intense anticommunism limited the impact of songs written and disseminated by ‘people's artists’ in the early Cold War years. Nonetheless, their work had an impact in the long run despite the repressive era in which they sang. Through hootenannies and records, and in the pages of publications such as Sing Out!they kept alive a movement culture that influenced the next generation of musicians, whose peace songs reached a popular audience in the 1960s.Less
At the height of the McCarthy era, a period that marked the low point of both communism and peace activism in the United States, the communist left continued to promote its ideas about peace through song. Beginning with the Progressive party campaign of 1948, communists and their supporters sang their opposition to U.S. Cold War policies and promoted brotherhood among men, usually in those (male) terms. Intense anticommunism limited the impact of songs written and disseminated by ‘people's artists’ in the early Cold War years. Nonetheless, their work had an impact in the long run despite the repressive era in which they sang. Through hootenannies and records, and in the pages of publications such as Sing Out!they kept alive a movement culture that influenced the next generation of musicians, whose peace songs reached a popular audience in the 1960s.
Angela M. Lahr
- Published in print:
- 2007
- Published Online:
- January 2008
- ISBN:
- 9780195314489
- eISBN:
- 9780199872077
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195314489.003.0002
- Subject:
- Religion, Religion and Society
The dawning of the nuclear age brought premillennial speculation about the imminent end of the world that altered the evangelical assessment of the relationship between religion and science. ...
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The dawning of the nuclear age brought premillennial speculation about the imminent end of the world that altered the evangelical assessment of the relationship between religion and science. Eschatological beliefs about the potential impact of nuclear weapons blended with secular apocalypticism that even influenced American Cold War foreign policy. Simultaneously, evangelicalism's embrace of anticommunism in the early Cold War helped lead to the subculture's integration into the mainstream culture.Less
The dawning of the nuclear age brought premillennial speculation about the imminent end of the world that altered the evangelical assessment of the relationship between religion and science. Eschatological beliefs about the potential impact of nuclear weapons blended with secular apocalypticism that even influenced American Cold War foreign policy. Simultaneously, evangelicalism's embrace of anticommunism in the early Cold War helped lead to the subculture's integration into the mainstream culture.
Andrew N. Rubin
- Published in print:
- 2012
- Published Online:
- October 2017
- ISBN:
- 9780691154152
- eISBN:
- 9781400842179
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Princeton University Press
- DOI:
- 10.23943/princeton/9780691154152.003.0001
- Subject:
- Literature, Criticism/Theory
This introductory chapter discusses several iterations of militarized Orientalism and the function that it has continued to serve in military zones of rapid cultural translation. Such instances not ...
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This introductory chapter discusses several iterations of militarized Orientalism and the function that it has continued to serve in military zones of rapid cultural translation. Such instances not only show how brazen the connection between power and knowledge has become in our culture, but also evince how profoundly the modalities for understanding have become instruments of power. The chapter briefly traces the genealogy of this view in the early years of the Cold War and describes the formidable structures and conjunctures of cultural domination, as well as the cultural mechanisms by which the United States rearticulated the discourse of British colonialism through the institutions and discourses of anticommunism.Less
This introductory chapter discusses several iterations of militarized Orientalism and the function that it has continued to serve in military zones of rapid cultural translation. Such instances not only show how brazen the connection between power and knowledge has become in our culture, but also evince how profoundly the modalities for understanding have become instruments of power. The chapter briefly traces the genealogy of this view in the early years of the Cold War and describes the formidable structures and conjunctures of cultural domination, as well as the cultural mechanisms by which the United States rearticulated the discourse of British colonialism through the institutions and discourses of anticommunism.
Gonda Van Steen
- Published in print:
- 2010
- Published Online:
- January 2011
- ISBN:
- 9780199572885
- eISBN:
- 9780191722905
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199572885.003.0001
- Subject:
- Classical Studies, Literary Studies: Classical, Early, and Medieval
The introduction to this book explains the historical and political context in which the productions of ancient drama originated on the prison islands of the Greek Civil War in the late 1940s and ...
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The introduction to this book explains the historical and political context in which the productions of ancient drama originated on the prison islands of the Greek Civil War in the late 1940s and through the 1950s (and thus against the backdrop of the international Cold War). It discusses the unusual cultural phenomenon of theater on these prison islands, introduces the various source materials and methodological issues (including the problem of the scarcity of source materials and the questions posed by oral testimonies), and provides a preview of the subsequent chapters.Less
The introduction to this book explains the historical and political context in which the productions of ancient drama originated on the prison islands of the Greek Civil War in the late 1940s and through the 1950s (and thus against the backdrop of the international Cold War). It discusses the unusual cultural phenomenon of theater on these prison islands, introduces the various source materials and methodological issues (including the problem of the scarcity of source materials and the questions posed by oral testimonies), and provides a preview of the subsequent chapters.
Gonda Van Steen
- Published in print:
- 2010
- Published Online:
- January 2011
- ISBN:
- 9780199572885
- eISBN:
- 9780191722905
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199572885.003.0003
- Subject:
- Classical Studies, Literary Studies: Classical, Early, and Medieval
Chapter 2 discusses the productions of ancient drama that were staged on Makronisos: it presents a diptych of two productions that reveal different levels of involvement on the part of actors, ...
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Chapter 2 discusses the productions of ancient drama that were staged on Makronisos: it presents a diptych of two productions that reveal different levels of involvement on the part of actors, artists, inmate observers—and the camp keepers. Our analysis of the Antigone production that the authorities both encouraged and advertised is followed by a discussion of a more “genuine” Philoctetes (both staged in 1948). The chapter also concentrates on the regime's attempted monopoly on language and culture and on its fascist‐style use of the classics for propaganda purposes. The chapter unmasks the dynamics with which the Right manipulated the terms of political and moral “salvation” and religious and civic restoration. Theater became another means to the prison administration's end of “forging” a public consensus about the “rehabilitation” work that it was directing on Makronisos.Less
Chapter 2 discusses the productions of ancient drama that were staged on Makronisos: it presents a diptych of two productions that reveal different levels of involvement on the part of actors, artists, inmate observers—and the camp keepers. Our analysis of the Antigone production that the authorities both encouraged and advertised is followed by a discussion of a more “genuine” Philoctetes (both staged in 1948). The chapter also concentrates on the regime's attempted monopoly on language and culture and on its fascist‐style use of the classics for propaganda purposes. The chapter unmasks the dynamics with which the Right manipulated the terms of political and moral “salvation” and religious and civic restoration. Theater became another means to the prison administration's end of “forging” a public consensus about the “rehabilitation” work that it was directing on Makronisos.
Julian E. Zelizer
- Published in print:
- 2012
- Published Online:
- October 2017
- ISBN:
- 9780691150734
- eISBN:
- 9781400841899
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Princeton University Press
- DOI:
- 10.23943/princeton/9780691150734.003.0005
- Subject:
- History, American History: early to 18th Century
This chapter challenges the prevailing framework that has shaped most of the literature on American conservatism and explores issues that need to be addressed in order to fundamentally rethink the ...
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This chapter challenges the prevailing framework that has shaped most of the literature on American conservatism and explores issues that need to be addressed in order to fundamentally rethink the history of American conservatism. Historians differ in their interpretations of the history and evolution of conservatism in contemporary politics. Some emphasized the importance of race in defining conservative objectives and in explaining their electoral appeal, while others objected to claims about Southern Exceptionalism while agreeing on the centrality of a racial backlash. A different cohort of scholars stressed the importance of anticommunism. After analyzing the fragmented nature of the scholarship of conservatism and the challenges encountered by conservatives when dealing with policy change, the chapter examines how conservatism unfolded in a dialectical fashion with liberalism rather than as a replacement of liberalism.Less
This chapter challenges the prevailing framework that has shaped most of the literature on American conservatism and explores issues that need to be addressed in order to fundamentally rethink the history of American conservatism. Historians differ in their interpretations of the history and evolution of conservatism in contemporary politics. Some emphasized the importance of race in defining conservative objectives and in explaining their electoral appeal, while others objected to claims about Southern Exceptionalism while agreeing on the centrality of a racial backlash. A different cohort of scholars stressed the importance of anticommunism. After analyzing the fragmented nature of the scholarship of conservatism and the challenges encountered by conservatives when dealing with policy change, the chapter examines how conservatism unfolded in a dialectical fashion with liberalism rather than as a replacement of liberalism.
Erin M. Kempker
- Published in print:
- 2018
- Published Online:
- May 2019
- ISBN:
- 9780252041976
- eISBN:
- 9780252050701
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- University of Illinois Press
- DOI:
- 10.5622/illinois/9780252041976.001.0001
- Subject:
- History, Cultural History
This book maps the interplay of conservative and feminist women in Indiana during the second half of the twentieth century and proposes an alternative framework for understanding the second wave ...
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This book maps the interplay of conservative and feminist women in Indiana during the second half of the twentieth century and proposes an alternative framework for understanding the second wave feminist movement. The central theme is that rightwing women’s understanding of one-worldism--a conspiracy theory refined by grassroots anticommunists during the height of the Cold War--shaped conservative women’s response to the second wave feminist movement and circumscribed feminist activism. Over the course of the postwar era, anticommunist organizations like the Minute Women of the U.S.A., Pro America, and the John Birch Society provided a forum for rightwing women to develop their understanding of related forces pushing for a “one-world,” totalitarian supra-government, forces they described as treasonous. While communists often were lumped under the “one-worlder” category, the two were not synonymous. In literature rightwing women described a spectrum of subversion that included a fifth column but also those advocating domestic cooperation through federal regionalism, gender equality as opposed to gender difference, and internationalists advocating stronger authority for the United Nations. The book documents the work of Hoosier feminists to accomplish their goals, especially the Equal Rights Amendment, in a hostile political environment and the work of rightwing women to counter the threat of internationalism or one-worldism, culminating in a showdown at the 1977 International Women’s Year celebration.Less
This book maps the interplay of conservative and feminist women in Indiana during the second half of the twentieth century and proposes an alternative framework for understanding the second wave feminist movement. The central theme is that rightwing women’s understanding of one-worldism--a conspiracy theory refined by grassroots anticommunists during the height of the Cold War--shaped conservative women’s response to the second wave feminist movement and circumscribed feminist activism. Over the course of the postwar era, anticommunist organizations like the Minute Women of the U.S.A., Pro America, and the John Birch Society provided a forum for rightwing women to develop their understanding of related forces pushing for a “one-world,” totalitarian supra-government, forces they described as treasonous. While communists often were lumped under the “one-worlder” category, the two were not synonymous. In literature rightwing women described a spectrum of subversion that included a fifth column but also those advocating domestic cooperation through federal regionalism, gender equality as opposed to gender difference, and internationalists advocating stronger authority for the United Nations. The book documents the work of Hoosier feminists to accomplish their goals, especially the Equal Rights Amendment, in a hostile political environment and the work of rightwing women to counter the threat of internationalism or one-worldism, culminating in a showdown at the 1977 International Women’s Year celebration.
Landon R. Y. Storrs
- Published in print:
- 2012
- Published Online:
- October 2017
- ISBN:
- 9780691153964
- eISBN:
- 9781400845255
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Princeton University Press
- DOI:
- 10.23943/princeton/9780691153964.003.0003
- Subject:
- History, American History: 20th Century
This chapter looks at key figures in the emerging anticommunist network and analyzes two early episodes: the Smith Committee attack on the National Labor Relations Board and its allies, and the Dies ...
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This chapter looks at key figures in the emerging anticommunist network and analyzes two early episodes: the Smith Committee attack on the National Labor Relations Board and its allies, and the Dies Committee attack on the consumer movement, especially the League of Women Shoppers and the Office of Price Administration. The power of the labor movement in stimulating the reaction against the New Deal is well known, but the consumer movement should be recognized as another major trigger. Women were important in the ascendance of both industrial unionism and organized consumerism, and conservatives highlighted women's role in an effort to undermine public confidence in those movements and their allied government agencies.Less
This chapter looks at key figures in the emerging anticommunist network and analyzes two early episodes: the Smith Committee attack on the National Labor Relations Board and its allies, and the Dies Committee attack on the consumer movement, especially the League of Women Shoppers and the Office of Price Administration. The power of the labor movement in stimulating the reaction against the New Deal is well known, but the consumer movement should be recognized as another major trigger. Women were important in the ascendance of both industrial unionism and organized consumerism, and conservatives highlighted women's role in an effort to undermine public confidence in those movements and their allied government agencies.
Landon R. Y. Storrs
- Published in print:
- 2012
- Published Online:
- October 2017
- ISBN:
- 9780691153964
- eISBN:
- 9781400845255
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Princeton University Press
- DOI:
- 10.23943/princeton/9780691153964.003.0004
- Subject:
- History, American History: 20th Century
This chapter examines the antifeminism of key instigators of the Second Red Scare: staff members of congressional investigative committees and the conservative journalists with whom they cooperated. ...
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This chapter examines the antifeminism of key instigators of the Second Red Scare: staff members of congressional investigative committees and the conservative journalists with whom they cooperated. Their public statements and private correspondence indicate that they associated communism with men's loss of control over women's labor and sexual conduct. For them, the need to stabilize white male supremacy was one reason to oppose communism. Antifeminism, an objective in and of itself, was also a means to other objectives. Leading anticommunists deployed antifeminism, just as they did homophobia, to generate popular enthusiasm for their attacks on the Roosevelt and Truman administrations.Less
This chapter examines the antifeminism of key instigators of the Second Red Scare: staff members of congressional investigative committees and the conservative journalists with whom they cooperated. Their public statements and private correspondence indicate that they associated communism with men's loss of control over women's labor and sexual conduct. For them, the need to stabilize white male supremacy was one reason to oppose communism. Antifeminism, an objective in and of itself, was also a means to other objectives. Leading anticommunists deployed antifeminism, just as they did homophobia, to generate popular enthusiasm for their attacks on the Roosevelt and Truman administrations.
Christopher P. Loss
- Published in print:
- 2011
- Published Online:
- October 2017
- ISBN:
- 9780691148274
- eISBN:
- 9781400840052
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Princeton University Press
- DOI:
- 10.23943/princeton/9780691148274.003.0005
- Subject:
- History, American History: 20th Century
This chapter depicts the challenges posed to higher education during the Cold War. Despite suffering a torrent of anticommunist attacks—and more than a few casualties—higher education also played a ...
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This chapter depicts the challenges posed to higher education during the Cold War. Despite suffering a torrent of anticommunist attacks—and more than a few casualties—higher education also played a leading role in the government's battle for hearts and minds in the 1950s. At home and abroad the American state deployed education in order to produce democratic citizens and then used public opinion polls to evaluate the integrity of the production process. Obsessively tracked during the Cold War, “public opinion” offered policymakers and educational elites access to the American people's collective psychological adjustment and mental health, to their intellectual fitness and their knowledge of the bipolar Cold War world in which they lived.Less
This chapter depicts the challenges posed to higher education during the Cold War. Despite suffering a torrent of anticommunist attacks—and more than a few casualties—higher education also played a leading role in the government's battle for hearts and minds in the 1950s. At home and abroad the American state deployed education in order to produce democratic citizens and then used public opinion polls to evaluate the integrity of the production process. Obsessively tracked during the Cold War, “public opinion” offered policymakers and educational elites access to the American people's collective psychological adjustment and mental health, to their intellectual fitness and their knowledge of the bipolar Cold War world in which they lived.
Michelle M. Nickerson
- Published in print:
- 2012
- Published Online:
- October 2017
- ISBN:
- 9780691121840
- eISBN:
- 9781400842209
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Princeton University Press
- DOI:
- 10.23943/princeton/9780691121840.003.0001
- Subject:
- History, American History: 20th Century
This chapter examines how women developed forms of antistatist protest in the first half of the twentieth century that posed an oppositional relationship between the family and government. By the ...
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This chapter examines how women developed forms of antistatist protest in the first half of the twentieth century that posed an oppositional relationship between the family and government. By the 1950s, anticommunism and antistatism became widespread mechanisms of political protest for women on the right much as peace activism and welfare work came to seem natural for women on the left. But unlike the later generation of Cold Warrior women who exerted themselves most forcefully through local politics, conservative women of the early twentieth century made their strongest impact by attacking that national progressive state. They also demonized “internationalism” as the handmaiden to communism, discovering another foe that women's position in the family obliged them to oppose. Consequently, the earliest generation of conservative organizations adopted the habit of calling themselves “patriotic” groups to contrast their own nationalist sentiment with the internationalism of progressives, which they equated with communism. This pattern continued into the post-World War II era.Less
This chapter examines how women developed forms of antistatist protest in the first half of the twentieth century that posed an oppositional relationship between the family and government. By the 1950s, anticommunism and antistatism became widespread mechanisms of political protest for women on the right much as peace activism and welfare work came to seem natural for women on the left. But unlike the later generation of Cold Warrior women who exerted themselves most forcefully through local politics, conservative women of the early twentieth century made their strongest impact by attacking that national progressive state. They also demonized “internationalism” as the handmaiden to communism, discovering another foe that women's position in the family obliged them to oppose. Consequently, the earliest generation of conservative organizations adopted the habit of calling themselves “patriotic” groups to contrast their own nationalist sentiment with the internationalism of progressives, which they equated with communism. This pattern continued into the post-World War II era.
Michelle M. Nickerson
- Published in print:
- 2012
- Published Online:
- October 2017
- ISBN:
- 9780691121840
- eISBN:
- 9781400842209
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Princeton University Press
- DOI:
- 10.23943/princeton/9780691121840.003.0004
- Subject:
- History, American History: 20th Century
This chapter documents how activism in education politics turned the attention of conservative women to professional psychology as a logical next target. Fears of “brainwashing” segued into fears of ...
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This chapter documents how activism in education politics turned the attention of conservative women to professional psychology as a logical next target. Fears of “brainwashing” segued into fears of mental health professionals and the policy making they promoted in Washington, D.C., resulting in conservative protest of an amorphous “mental health establishment.” Anticommunist activists characterized psychology as a dangerous medicine that could be used to manipulate thought and, by extension, political will. Although conservative intellectuals scoffed at the conspiracy theories circulated by the “hysterical” housewives, the women's arguments nevertheless found their way into criticism articulated by scholars and politicians by the mid-1960s.Less
This chapter documents how activism in education politics turned the attention of conservative women to professional psychology as a logical next target. Fears of “brainwashing” segued into fears of mental health professionals and the policy making they promoted in Washington, D.C., resulting in conservative protest of an amorphous “mental health establishment.” Anticommunist activists characterized psychology as a dangerous medicine that could be used to manipulate thought and, by extension, political will. Although conservative intellectuals scoffed at the conspiracy theories circulated by the “hysterical” housewives, the women's arguments nevertheless found their way into criticism articulated by scholars and politicians by the mid-1960s.
Michelle M. Nickerson
- Published in print:
- 2012
- Published Online:
- October 2017
- ISBN:
- 9780691121840
- eISBN:
- 9781400842209
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Princeton University Press
- DOI:
- 10.23943/princeton/9780691121840.003.0005
- Subject:
- History, American History: 20th Century
This chapter studies women's influence on conservatism as it entered the movement phase in the early 1960s. Even as they denounced the mass politics they feared, conservatives came to recognize the ...
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This chapter studies women's influence on conservatism as it entered the movement phase in the early 1960s. Even as they denounced the mass politics they feared, conservatives came to recognize the necessity of stimulating a popular consciousness on the right to thwart momentum growing on the left, especially among youths. The anticommunist crusade that had been building among activists over the 1950s became a natural source from which to draw the necessary vigor to generate a movement, which leaders explicitly recognized. Women activists, already a central part of this crusade, became an essential part of the coalescing conservative movement. They formed chapters of the John Birch Society, a national organization that self-consciously sought to replicate leftist tactics to thwart “communism,” which it conflated with all liberal movements. Women opened “patriotic” bookstores in their neighborhoods that featured their favorite conservative authors. The chapter ends with the presidential election of 1964, when the campaign of Barry Goldwater, which incorporated conservative women in new ways, came to be known as a movement.Less
This chapter studies women's influence on conservatism as it entered the movement phase in the early 1960s. Even as they denounced the mass politics they feared, conservatives came to recognize the necessity of stimulating a popular consciousness on the right to thwart momentum growing on the left, especially among youths. The anticommunist crusade that had been building among activists over the 1950s became a natural source from which to draw the necessary vigor to generate a movement, which leaders explicitly recognized. Women activists, already a central part of this crusade, became an essential part of the coalescing conservative movement. They formed chapters of the John Birch Society, a national organization that self-consciously sought to replicate leftist tactics to thwart “communism,” which it conflated with all liberal movements. Women opened “patriotic” bookstores in their neighborhoods that featured their favorite conservative authors. The chapter ends with the presidential election of 1964, when the campaign of Barry Goldwater, which incorporated conservative women in new ways, came to be known as a movement.
Benjamin A. Cowan
- Published in print:
- 2016
- Published Online:
- September 2016
- ISBN:
- 9781469627502
- eISBN:
- 9781469627526
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- University of North Carolina Press
- DOI:
- 10.5149/northcarolina/9781469627502.001.0001
- Subject:
- History, Latin American History
This book argues that Cold War struggles against “subversion” must be understood in cultural terms, as a reaction to the consequences—both real and perceived—of modernization. Inscribing Brazil’s ...
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This book argues that Cold War struggles against “subversion” must be understood in cultural terms, as a reaction to the consequences—both real and perceived—of modernization. Inscribing Brazil’s Cold War military rulers and their supporters into a decades-long trajectory of right-wing activism and ideology, and locating them in a transnational network of right-wing cultural warriors, the book demonstrates that anti-modern moral panic animated powerful, hard-line elements of Brazil’s countersubversive dictatorship (1964-1985). This moral panic conflated communist subversion with the accoutrement of modernity, and coalesced around the crucial nodes of gender and sexuality, particularly in relation to “modern” youth, women, and mass media. Transformations in these realms were anathema to the Right, who echoed the anxieties of generations past, pathologizing and sexualizing these phenomena, and identifying in them a “crisis of modernity” and of communist subversion. Hence the Cold War became more than a military struggle against rural guerrillas and urban terrorists; from the perspective of key activists and technocrats, the battle must be waged across sexual and bodily practice, clothing, music, art, mass media, and gender. Addressing historiographical neglect of the Right in Brazil and beyond, the book culturally historicizes the Western Cold War in a transnational sense by uncovering Atlantic networks of right-wing activism that validated anti-modern and anticommunist anxieties. These networks included Brazilian, European, and North Atlantic anticommunists, from the famous to those whose stars waned after the Cold War.Less
This book argues that Cold War struggles against “subversion” must be understood in cultural terms, as a reaction to the consequences—both real and perceived—of modernization. Inscribing Brazil’s Cold War military rulers and their supporters into a decades-long trajectory of right-wing activism and ideology, and locating them in a transnational network of right-wing cultural warriors, the book demonstrates that anti-modern moral panic animated powerful, hard-line elements of Brazil’s countersubversive dictatorship (1964-1985). This moral panic conflated communist subversion with the accoutrement of modernity, and coalesced around the crucial nodes of gender and sexuality, particularly in relation to “modern” youth, women, and mass media. Transformations in these realms were anathema to the Right, who echoed the anxieties of generations past, pathologizing and sexualizing these phenomena, and identifying in them a “crisis of modernity” and of communist subversion. Hence the Cold War became more than a military struggle against rural guerrillas and urban terrorists; from the perspective of key activists and technocrats, the battle must be waged across sexual and bodily practice, clothing, music, art, mass media, and gender. Addressing historiographical neglect of the Right in Brazil and beyond, the book culturally historicizes the Western Cold War in a transnational sense by uncovering Atlantic networks of right-wing activism that validated anti-modern and anticommunist anxieties. These networks included Brazilian, European, and North Atlantic anticommunists, from the famous to those whose stars waned after the Cold War.
Colleen Doody
- Published in print:
- 2012
- Published Online:
- April 2017
- ISBN:
- 9780252037276
- eISBN:
- 9780252094446
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- University of Illinois Press
- DOI:
- 10.5406/illinois/9780252037276.001.0001
- Subject:
- History, Political History
This book locates the roots of American conservatism in a city that was a nexus of labor and industry in postwar America. Drawing on archival research focusing on Detroit, the book shows how conflict ...
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This book locates the roots of American conservatism in a city that was a nexus of labor and industry in postwar America. Drawing on archival research focusing on Detroit, the book shows how conflict over business values and opposition to labor, anticommunism, racial animosity, and religion led to the development of a conservative ethos in the aftermath of World War II. Using Detroit—with its large population of African American and Catholic workers, strong union presence, and starkly segregated urban landscape—as a case study, the book articulates a nuanced understanding of anticommunism during the Red Scare. Looking beyond national politics, the book focuses on key debates occurring at the local level among a wide variety of common citizens. In examining this city's social and political fabric, it illustrates that domestic anticommunism was a cohesive, multifaceted ideology that arose less from Soviet ideological incursion than from tensions within the American public.Less
This book locates the roots of American conservatism in a city that was a nexus of labor and industry in postwar America. Drawing on archival research focusing on Detroit, the book shows how conflict over business values and opposition to labor, anticommunism, racial animosity, and religion led to the development of a conservative ethos in the aftermath of World War II. Using Detroit—with its large population of African American and Catholic workers, strong union presence, and starkly segregated urban landscape—as a case study, the book articulates a nuanced understanding of anticommunism during the Red Scare. Looking beyond national politics, the book focuses on key debates occurring at the local level among a wide variety of common citizens. In examining this city's social and political fabric, it illustrates that domestic anticommunism was a cohesive, multifaceted ideology that arose less from Soviet ideological incursion than from tensions within the American public.
Robert Miklitsch
- Published in print:
- 2016
- Published Online:
- September 2017
- ISBN:
- 9780252040689
- eISBN:
- 9780252099120
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- University of Illinois Press
- DOI:
- 10.5406/illinois/9780252040689.001.0001
- Subject:
- Film, Television and Radio, Film
Given that 1955, the dead center of “the Fifties,” was the year in which RKO, the “house of noir,” was sold to Desilu Studios, the home of I Love Lucy, it would appear on the face of things that ...
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Given that 1955, the dead center of “the Fifties,” was the year in which RKO, the “house of noir,” was sold to Desilu Studios, the home of I Love Lucy, it would appear on the face of things that classic American film noir was good and dead by midcentury. But despite the received critical wisdom about the genre, The Red and the Black proposes that the grand, rise-and-fall narrative about classic noir misprizes the way in which, via various subgenres (melodrama, semi-documentary, etc.), it dramatizes complex notions about gender and sexuality, race and family, nation and homosexuality. The clichés about 1950s noir also misrecognize the way in which, via new media and technologies (color, television, 3-D, widescreen), it effects a dynamic segue between 1940s expressionist noir and early, “modernist” neo-noir. Since the negative, stereotypical determination of Cold War noir tends to be a function of generalities about the genre and the period, The Red and the Black focuses less on “the Fifties” than on the performative contradictions of particular films and the representative cultural-political formations—anticommunism, the atomic bomb, and new media/technologies--of which they are singular “examples.” In fine, in “the Fifties,” in the age of TV and three-dimension, the femme fatale and the nuclear family, Cinemascope and Technicolor, the A-bomb and McCarthyism, the blacklist and “reds under the beds,” ‘50s noir not only existed but flourished.Less
Given that 1955, the dead center of “the Fifties,” was the year in which RKO, the “house of noir,” was sold to Desilu Studios, the home of I Love Lucy, it would appear on the face of things that classic American film noir was good and dead by midcentury. But despite the received critical wisdom about the genre, The Red and the Black proposes that the grand, rise-and-fall narrative about classic noir misprizes the way in which, via various subgenres (melodrama, semi-documentary, etc.), it dramatizes complex notions about gender and sexuality, race and family, nation and homosexuality. The clichés about 1950s noir also misrecognize the way in which, via new media and technologies (color, television, 3-D, widescreen), it effects a dynamic segue between 1940s expressionist noir and early, “modernist” neo-noir. Since the negative, stereotypical determination of Cold War noir tends to be a function of generalities about the genre and the period, The Red and the Black focuses less on “the Fifties” than on the performative contradictions of particular films and the representative cultural-political formations—anticommunism, the atomic bomb, and new media/technologies--of which they are singular “examples.” In fine, in “the Fifties,” in the age of TV and three-dimension, the femme fatale and the nuclear family, Cinemascope and Technicolor, the A-bomb and McCarthyism, the blacklist and “reds under the beds,” ‘50s noir not only existed but flourished.
Jonathan M. Schoenwald
- Published in print:
- 2002
- Published Online:
- October 2011
- ISBN:
- 9780195157260
- eISBN:
- 9780199849390
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195157260.003.0001
- Subject:
- History, American History: 20th Century
In late 1961, Major General Edwin A. Walker represented not just the apparent capitulation of American liberalism to the enemy but also the birth of a new kind of far-right conservatism, which was ...
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In late 1961, Major General Edwin A. Walker represented not just the apparent capitulation of American liberalism to the enemy but also the birth of a new kind of far-right conservatism, which was called “extremism”. Shortly after the end of World War II, American conservatives launched a crusade to reverse the liberal political and social order prevalent since Franklin D. Roosevelt's inauguration in 1933. Libertarianism and anticommunism are the two broad branches of organized conservatism that were considered in the decade after World War II. Democratically based movements, or movement cultures, often pass through four stages. The conservative movement attained each stage of the sequence, and its participants gained confidence in their ability to alter the American landscape. This book argues that in the 1950s conservatives initially created two distinct but overlapping movement cultures. The history of the transformation of American conservatism is shown.Less
In late 1961, Major General Edwin A. Walker represented not just the apparent capitulation of American liberalism to the enemy but also the birth of a new kind of far-right conservatism, which was called “extremism”. Shortly after the end of World War II, American conservatives launched a crusade to reverse the liberal political and social order prevalent since Franklin D. Roosevelt's inauguration in 1933. Libertarianism and anticommunism are the two broad branches of organized conservatism that were considered in the decade after World War II. Democratically based movements, or movement cultures, often pass through four stages. The conservative movement attained each stage of the sequence, and its participants gained confidence in their ability to alter the American landscape. This book argues that in the 1950s conservatives initially created two distinct but overlapping movement cultures. The history of the transformation of American conservatism is shown.
Jonathan M. Schoenwald
- Published in print:
- 2002
- Published Online:
- October 2011
- ISBN:
- 9780195157260
- eISBN:
- 9780199849390
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195157260.003.0003
- Subject:
- History, American History: 20th Century
The nature of anticommunism and the state of conservatism were called into question at the end of the 1950s. Developments between 1957 and 1961 convinced some Americans that not only were communists ...
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The nature of anticommunism and the state of conservatism were called into question at the end of the 1950s. Developments between 1957 and 1961 convinced some Americans that not only were communists and liberals making gains but that American institutions often aided and abetted the enemy's cause. It was in such an explosive atmosphere that the Supreme Court and Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev acted as flint and tinder, igniting a political brush fire that resisted repeated dousings, which grew until the entire nation took note. “Red Monday” is the day that referred to the three decisions handed down by the Court. By the end of the 1950s, the Cold War confrontation between American and Soviet diplomacy had reached new heights, with the rivalry extending to cultural, scientific, and economic arenas. The Masters of Deceit by J. Edgar Hoover is discussed. After more than four years of assaults on conservative ideology in America, optimistic individuals became keystones and leaders in a burgeoning movement.Less
The nature of anticommunism and the state of conservatism were called into question at the end of the 1950s. Developments between 1957 and 1961 convinced some Americans that not only were communists and liberals making gains but that American institutions often aided and abetted the enemy's cause. It was in such an explosive atmosphere that the Supreme Court and Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev acted as flint and tinder, igniting a political brush fire that resisted repeated dousings, which grew until the entire nation took note. “Red Monday” is the day that referred to the three decisions handed down by the Court. By the end of the 1950s, the Cold War confrontation between American and Soviet diplomacy had reached new heights, with the rivalry extending to cultural, scientific, and economic arenas. The Masters of Deceit by J. Edgar Hoover is discussed. After more than four years of assaults on conservative ideology in America, optimistic individuals became keystones and leaders in a burgeoning movement.
James Zeigler
- Published in print:
- 2015
- Published Online:
- January 2017
- ISBN:
- 9781496802385
- eISBN:
- 9781496802439
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- University Press of Mississippi
- DOI:
- 10.14325/mississippi/9781496802385.001.0001
- Subject:
- History, American History: 20th Century
A cultural rhetoric study of how the discourse of anticommunism has influenced the politics of race in the United States, this book observes that the Cold War Red Scare contributed to the end of ...
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A cultural rhetoric study of how the discourse of anticommunism has influenced the politics of race in the United States, this book observes that the Cold War Red Scare contributed to the end of state-sanctioned racial segregation in the American South but provided for the survival of systemic anti-black racism after the supposed death of Jim Crow. Describing the relationship between the Second Red Scare and the African American civil rights movement as a pernicious ambivalence that ultimately harmed the black freedom struggle, it demonstrates how the discourse of Cold War anticommunism worked to render U.S. public culture oblivious to the fundamental convergence of racial discrimination and class exploitation. The Cold War may have been an asset to demands for equal political recognition for all American citizens regardless of race, but the anticommunist public culture labeled any critique of capitalism as un-American. Consequently, the postwar Red Scare impeded black American claims for socioeconomic reparations that were necessary to realize the aspirations of the civil rights movement and to satisfy democratic principles of social justice. While presenting a reconstruction of the normative rhetorical power of Cold War anticommunism, the book also examines how intellectuals working in a tradition of black radicalism informed by Marxism engaged critically with the culture of Cold War America to show how anti-racist political initiatives would only succeed finally to nullify white privilege if they were informed by anti-capitalist convictions and activism.Less
A cultural rhetoric study of how the discourse of anticommunism has influenced the politics of race in the United States, this book observes that the Cold War Red Scare contributed to the end of state-sanctioned racial segregation in the American South but provided for the survival of systemic anti-black racism after the supposed death of Jim Crow. Describing the relationship between the Second Red Scare and the African American civil rights movement as a pernicious ambivalence that ultimately harmed the black freedom struggle, it demonstrates how the discourse of Cold War anticommunism worked to render U.S. public culture oblivious to the fundamental convergence of racial discrimination and class exploitation. The Cold War may have been an asset to demands for equal political recognition for all American citizens regardless of race, but the anticommunist public culture labeled any critique of capitalism as un-American. Consequently, the postwar Red Scare impeded black American claims for socioeconomic reparations that were necessary to realize the aspirations of the civil rights movement and to satisfy democratic principles of social justice. While presenting a reconstruction of the normative rhetorical power of Cold War anticommunism, the book also examines how intellectuals working in a tradition of black radicalism informed by Marxism engaged critically with the culture of Cold War America to show how anti-racist political initiatives would only succeed finally to nullify white privilege if they were informed by anti-capitalist convictions and activism.
Andrew Feffer
- Published in print:
- 2019
- Published Online:
- September 2019
- ISBN:
- 9780823281169
- eISBN:
- 9780823285969
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Fordham University Press
- DOI:
- 10.5422/fordham/9780823281169.001.0001
- Subject:
- History, Social History
In late summer 1940, as war spread across Europe and as the nation pulled itself out of the Great Depression, an anticommunist hysteria convulsed New York City. Targeting the city’s municipal ...
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In late summer 1940, as war spread across Europe and as the nation pulled itself out of the Great Depression, an anticommunist hysteria convulsed New York City. Targeting the city’s municipal colleges and public schools, the state legislature’s Rapp-Coudert investigation dragged hundreds of suspects before public and private tribunals to root out a perceived communist conspiracy to hijack the city’s teachers unions, subvert public education, and indoctrinate the nation’s youth. This book recounts the history of this witch-hunt, which lasted from August 1940 to March 1942. Anticipating McCarthyism and making it possible, the episode would have repercussions for decades to come. In recapturing this moment in the history of pre-war anticommunism, Bad Faith challenges assumptions about the origins of McCarthyism, the liberal political tradition, and the role of anticommunism in modern American life. With roots in the city’s political culture, Rapp-Coudert enjoyed the support of not only conservatives but also key liberal reformers and intellectuals who, well before the Cold War raised threats to national security, joined in accusing communists of “bad faith” and branded them enemies of American democracy. Exploring fundamental schisms between liberals and communists, Bad Faith uncovers a dark, “counter-subversive” side of liberalism, which involved charges of misrepresentation, lying, and deception, and led many liberals to argue that the communist left should be excluded from American educational institutions and political life.Less
In late summer 1940, as war spread across Europe and as the nation pulled itself out of the Great Depression, an anticommunist hysteria convulsed New York City. Targeting the city’s municipal colleges and public schools, the state legislature’s Rapp-Coudert investigation dragged hundreds of suspects before public and private tribunals to root out a perceived communist conspiracy to hijack the city’s teachers unions, subvert public education, and indoctrinate the nation’s youth. This book recounts the history of this witch-hunt, which lasted from August 1940 to March 1942. Anticipating McCarthyism and making it possible, the episode would have repercussions for decades to come. In recapturing this moment in the history of pre-war anticommunism, Bad Faith challenges assumptions about the origins of McCarthyism, the liberal political tradition, and the role of anticommunism in modern American life. With roots in the city’s political culture, Rapp-Coudert enjoyed the support of not only conservatives but also key liberal reformers and intellectuals who, well before the Cold War raised threats to national security, joined in accusing communists of “bad faith” and branded them enemies of American democracy. Exploring fundamental schisms between liberals and communists, Bad Faith uncovers a dark, “counter-subversive” side of liberalism, which involved charges of misrepresentation, lying, and deception, and led many liberals to argue that the communist left should be excluded from American educational institutions and political life.
