ARCHIVES: Anatomy of Anti-Communism

BOOK REVIEW

An examination of a peculiarly American disease 

By Michael Reale

The American Friends Service Committee (AFSC) is a Quaker Organization and as such prepared a report for its Peace Education Division back in 1969. Although the book was written and published over 30 years ago it does a remarkable job in explaining why Communism is still mistrusted in the United States today.

In the Prologue it states: ‘We believe that other men’s motives are no worse than our own. We assume that all men everywhere would like to be just and deal justly – and that they are deflected from this high impulse by the consideration that it would be unprofitable for them to do so.’ In the Introduction there is a quote from a French journalist who returned home from a lecture tour in the US was asked what most profoundly impressed him there. His reply was ‘The fact that in America a man can get away with saying absolutely anything, no matter how trivial, preposterous, obscene, or even treasonable, providing he begins and ends by saying ‘I hate Communism.’ ‘

The book discusses the ‘age of revolutions.’ Why Britain and the Unites States wanted to promote some revolutions while in other instances wanted to crush others based solely on the flow of goods into our two countries. The Committee explains, that most American’s are either immigrants or from immigrant stock and as such, are heterogeneous. Which explains the need to prove to others that we are ‘good Americans.’ Professor Mogens Fog, a Communist who served as a government minister as a member of the Danish Communist Party was asked the question by an American journalist ‘Which are you first, a Communist or a Dane?’ His reply was: ‘Only an American could ask such a question, every Dane is as much a Dane as any other.’

Through this book, we are taken through the McCarthy era and the McCann Internal Security Act and the irrational persecution of the Communist Party USA and what affect that had on American society, as a whole, on CPUSA as well as what drive our foreign policy. We gain insights into the Hatch and Smith Act and the House Committee on Un-American Activities. The desire of the HCUA was to ‘discover Communist infiltration of the New Deal and the role that Communists played in the formulation, development, and execution of New Deal policies.’ The real target, then as now, was to strike down the reforms of the New Deal.

We see how the Anti-Communist views him/herself and how he/she views Communists. We also see how oversimplifications such as ‘good’ versus ‘evil’ are not only inaccurate but dangerous. ‘’To say Communism is . . . ‘ is to oversimplify to the point of falsehood, for Communism is a dynamic mixture of ideology (both pro-something and anti-something).’ This book dissects the anatomy of anti-Communism into understandable and digestible portions so that, through understanding, we can, hopefully, build better relations. The only way to combat fear and mistrust is by first understanding from whence this fear and mistrust emanates. 

–Michael Reale is a network administrator for the Communist Party USA. He can be reached at mreale@cpusa.org. 

 

 

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