Weaponized Words: The Language of Anti-Communism

Joshua Morris discusses the development and deployment of anti-communist rhetoric in the United States from the beginnings of the 20th Century to the early Cold War. 

Language is one of the most powerful tools human beings possess. Language has not only the power to convey ideas but also to influence new ones, curb older ones, and contain the specifics of one idea versus another. Those who study the history of anti-communism and the McCarthy period in the United States are all-too-familiar with the tragic breaches of personal and constitutional rights conducted by federal agencies for the purpose of national security and cultural conformity in an era of uncertain international dilemmas. Stories like that of John Gates, who was forced to “strip naked while a guard searched every part of [his] body” each morning prior to his trial for conspiring to overthrow the government, form a central theme for analyzing the pervasive and intrusive nature of anti-communism in the postwar years.¹ A lesser-known story is the means by which the colloquial language of the nation could not only conform to such acts that only in hindsight are understood to be unconstitutional, but also sustain the idea that certain individuals could be denied constitutional rights. Much of the scholarship on anti-communism in the United States has addressed the issue of passivity toward congressional breaches only tangentially. Jennifer Luff notes that as a force in American history, anti-communism was pushed by a coordinated network of individuals and agencies dating back to the 1920s and the post-WWI strike wave that included both public and private efforts to curb the influence of labor activism in the communities. Ellen Shrecker argues that anti-communism was the continuation of a “counter subversive tradition” dating back to the nativism of the 18th century which sought to publicly ostracize and demonize individuals viewed as “peculiarly barbaric and dangerous.”² James Zeigler, in his 2015 publication on black radicalism during the Cold War, argues that anti-communist strategies which decried acts of civil justice performed by non-whites as un-American was an “all-too-familiar charge” that pushed a narrative of suspicion and fear regarding civil rights activism.³ 

During the interwar and postwar period, people with positions of power in both business and politics wielded the rhetoric of anti-communism as a social and political weapon intended to normalize discrimination, in both the physical and legal sense, of civil rights activists, labor activists, people of color, and other marginalized groups in the United States. Those who used anti-communist rhetoric during the interwar and postwar years sought to abridge large contingents of the civil rights and union movements, including communists but also labor activists and civil rights activists, as counter subversives engaged in a conspiracy of sedition and treason. The language targeted what Robert Korstad called “civil rights unionism,” or the alliance forged between labor and civil rights organizations between 1934 and 1944, a period of activism communists refer to as the Popular Front.⁴ Those who used such weaponized words were also not limited geographically to one part of the nation; they could be found in the business interests of Detroit automakers, the efforts by police to limit labor organizing in California, and in the legal language used to deny free speech rights to people of color in the Jim Crow South. Although anti-communist rhetoric in American history is not always examined as a form of weaponized language, it is a prime example of when the use of such acutely-targeted rhetoric has been demonstratively successful at achieving its ultimate aim of normalizing the effort to persecute and discriminate against certain groups for their ideas, lifestyles, and identities.

By 1947 the label of “communist” was one of the most effective forms of weaponized rhetoric to associate “otherness” upon citizens. It embodied the totality of anti-Americanism dominant in mainstream colloquial language and, much like other kinds of weaponized rhetoric, was not viewed as inherently inflammatory but rather as an assertion of a fact which alone implied guilt. What made anti-communist rhetoric weaponized was its conversion of older traditions of ‘nativism’ into traditions of American patriotism relatable to 20th century Americans and its perpetuation by individuals in positions of power. By targeting individuals that lacked the legal and physical means of defending their rights, individuals both public and private in positions of political, legal, and cultural power normalized the use of derogatory and, in many cases racist, rhetoric by equating domestic concerns over social inequity with foreign nationalism and sedition. Whereas the nativism of the 18th and 19th centuries were built on broad concepts of localism and religious traditions, the anti-communism of the post-1920 period aimed to reinforce highly specific political, social, and economic views while deeming pro-Socialist and pro-syndicalist views as fundamentally un-American.

As a topic, anti-communism dominates most of the written scholarship on the Communist Party of the United States of America (CPUSA), its leadership, and the overall American communist movement between 1945 and 1957. James Barrett depicted post-war anti-communism as the root cause of the movement’s decline “largely by government repression and the conservative political climate of the McCarthy period.’⁵ Edward Pintzuk, similarly, focused his study of anti-communism on its political nature undertaken as “covert actions” by the state.⁶ More recent studies of anti-communism have finally corrected the long-standing thesis that political oppression against communists in the United States was relegated to a relatively short period of time in the postwar years colloquially known as “McCarthyism.” Jennifer Luff and Ellen Schrecker both demonstrated that anti-communism was not an isolated phenomenon nor was it relegated solely to political repression in the post-WWII years. In her book, Luff examines the extent to which anti-communism blended with nativism and joint efforts by business leaders and reactionary union leaders, such as Samuel Gompers, to repress the influence of socialists and communists in cities such as Detroit, Chicago, and New York. Schrecker also examined the ways in which anti-communism encompassed more than simply political repression; targeting not just political advocates of the Communist Party of the United States (CPUSA) but also “fellow travelers,” known associates of CPUSA organizers, and people of interest whose views could be perceived as aligned with the ideology of the CPUSA. Another important aspect of American anti-communism was its presence in African American communities; a topic that requires further examination and research. By focusing exclusively on political aspects of the repression, Eric Arnesen notes, historians have misinterpreted the “fully-throated embrace of anti-communism” by the African American community in the postwar years. The same could likely be said about the interwar years based on the testimony of Hosea Hudson.⁷ This essay examines the impact of weaponized rhetoric used by individuals in positions of power on others by focusing on the experiences of those who were on the receiving end of such rhetoric. Rather than examine an exclusively political dynamic of anti-communism, examining the impact of language on individuals unveils a more personalized experience with societal repression and the alienation sought and created by the users of such language.⁸

For the purposes of this study, I am not simply referring to ‘red-baiting,’ which has a specific goal of denying someone access to a job, or a position, or participation in a discussion. The weaponized rhetoric of anti-communism went beyond the scope of political ideology and individualism to charge an entire movement with sedition and countersubversion. This movement was not strictly pushing a communist political agenda, nor was it strictly trying to advance civil rights, nor was it strictly trying to sustain the momentum of organized labor; it was doing all three at once to create an all-encompassing image of “otherness” among the American citizenry. As such, communists were associated with civil rights and with labor, and civil rights/labor activists were associated with communism. By the onset of the Cold War in 1946/47, this language had become normalized to the extent that to be a labor activist or a promoter of the rights of non-whites implied associations with communists and suspicion of one’s ideals, lifestyle, and identity. 

Some of the first radicals to face public ridicule and the use of such targeted rhetoric leading into the 20th century were prominent anarchists and socialists, such as Emma Goldman and Eugene Debs. Goldman was called the mastermind behind the assassination of industrialist Henry Frick, a proponent of “unlawful assembly” and an advocate of sedition.⁹ Like other anarchists of her time, Goldman was attacked because of her desire to stand firm in her convictions regarding marriage, the state, and labor against a tide of reactionary and powerful nationalist forces. These forces were themselves the product of tremendous shifts in the social and political attitudes of working Americans at the turn of the century that united trade unionists with anarchist and socialist organizations in an effort to radicalize the progressive movement. Subsequently, a string of nativist rhetoric—which historically targeted “otherness” in American society such as Catholics in the 17th century, in addition to Irish and German immigrants in the 1840s—evolved into a political weapon wielded against Debs during his 1908, 1912, and 1920 presidential campaigns, where Debs received over 420,852, 901,551, and 919,799 votes (respectively). This occurred particularly after Debs carried a sizable minority in the 1912 election throughout key states such as California (11.68%), Washington (12.43%), Oklahoma (16.42%), and Nevada (16.47%).

What drove the transition of 19th-century nativist rhetoric into 20th century politically weaponized rhetoric was the fact that many of those who rallied behind individuals like Goldman and Debs, as well as organizations such as the Socialist Party of America (SPA) and Industrial Workers of the World (IWW), were either first or second-generation immigrants. The rhetoric which sought to delegitimize their political ideals thus targeted their perceived associations with enemies of the state and was advanced primarily by individuals in positions of power and only in such instances where the execution of said power did not elicit public backlash. During World War I, for example, newspapers and court prosecutors targeted Debs and his supporters by utilizing language that blended nationalist patriotism with anti-immigrant nativism and fostered the general idea that anything “revolutionary” must be understood as fundamentally anti-American. When the SPA and the IWW attempted to defend their views on the grounds of free speech they simultaneously “stirred debate across the country about the limits and responsibilities of free speech”, making it clear that the process of overcoming nativism would be an uphill battle.¹⁰ Throughout the post-WWI red scare against radical labor organizers, anti-immigrant rhetoric—mainly in newspapers and over the radio—sought to associate the idea of foreignness, a more political/nationalist version of “otherness,” with the political traditions of socialist groups. Upon these conditions, the foundation for an entirely new form of weaponized rhetoric and social oppression was built; the language of anti-communism.¹¹ 

Dating back to the late 19th century, labor leaders and craft unionists, such as Samuel Gompers, held numerous reasons to resist associations with the SPA, the IWW, and other populist socialist organizations since these organizations emerged as rivals to the American Federation of Labor (AFL). Some of the rhetoric which became colloquial anti-communism by the 1920s had its roots in reactionary tendencies by labor unionists like Gompers, dated back to the formation of the AFL and its formative years from 1886 – 1915. According to Jennifer Luff, Gompers was “indifferent to violations of the civil liberties of others and hostile to the free-speech campaign waged by radicals in the [IWW].” The leadership of the AFL, following Gompers’ lead, worked to “suppress the opinions of which they disapprove,” particularly fights for free speech in the labor movement since it inevitably involved the courts. This reactionary tradition lingered throughout the AFL’s formative years and served as a wedge between the union and other progressive trade unionists who sought an expansion of union inclusion. When Eugene Debs began organizing mass contingents of the Socialist Party to resist “the crime of craft unionism,” he pointed to the AFL and their stances on free speech.¹² To activist Daniel DeLeon, who at the time worked with Debs and the SPA, the AFL sought to “organize themselves in such a way as to leave their fellow wage-slaves out in the cold.” When the SPA showed signs of prominence in the years leading up to and during the 1906 Presidential election, Gompers denounced what he believed would subvert professional labor to “party slavery” and instead insisted that organized labor remain independent of the political system. Gompers’ efforts, which amounted to “proselytizing against party entanglements,” however, were more effective in distancing the AFL from working Americans than they were at uniting the two groups; as made evident by the outcome of the 1906 election and the sway of northeastern urban labor districts to Republican William Taft.¹³

Gompers’ tradition abandoned efforts to mobilize voters around labor and instead began to focus on solutions through government policy. The AFL “honed their skills as Washington lobbyists” by following precedent labor legislation, speaking to Congress on the passage of such legislation, and advocating a policy of temperance with regard to the passage of labor laws. After the 1906 election, the AFL “succeeded in terrorizing members of Congress” and quickly turned their attention to local organizing drives, encouraging members to run for Congress and tightening the AFL’s associations within the Democratic Party. By the 1912 election, Gompers and his fellow cadres in the AFL had solidified a dependency between the district organizers of the union and Democratic lawmakers in Congress. Gompers then further bolstered his ties with the Democrats by advocating “a politics of labor laissez-faire,” which had the dual effect of depicting the AFL as a progressive, but moderate and upstanding organization, while depicting alternatives as idealistic and radical. Eventually, as Luff put it, “this strategy hardened into an ideology” and an entire network of spycraft and surveillance over labor organizers was put into place at the state and federal level through offices of the Bureau of Investigation (BI).¹⁴

The way nativist rhetoric was used against radicals and who used them changed significantly after two events near the end of World War I; one of which transformed the nature of American radicalism itself. The first and arguably most significant was the Bolshevik Revolution of 1917, which caused a schism within the SPA whereby numerous members of the ‘left-wing’ caucus began to label themselves ‘communist’ and began to support the idea of socialism following the immediate path of the Bolshevik Party. A little over a year after the Russian Revolution, in January of 1919, the left-wing insisted on unequivocal support of the newly formed First Communist International (Comintern) after Vladimir Lenin personally invited the SPA’s left-wing to join the first worldwide convention of socialist organizations (First Communist International, or Comintern). When the leaders of the SPA refused to accept the demands of the left-wing caucus, despite a Party-wide referendum that passed with 90% support, the leadership expelled 12 of the left’s leadership out of power in Party elections, followed by the expulsion of numerous state organizations. Most of these expelled units went on to join various language federations organized by C.E. Ruthenberg and Louis C. Fraina formed the basis of the underground Workers’ Party of America (WPA), which served as a front for the Communist Party of America (CPA) by 1920. Although the CPA did not immediately suffer attacks from the Federal government, the rise of even more radical alternatives to the SPA triggered a reaction by the Justice Department over concerns of collusion with the German government—who was believed to be involved in the success of the Bolsheviks in Russia. 

In September of 1917, the Justice Department, using its paramilitary predecessor to the FBI, the Bureau of Investigation (BI), targeted the IWW by raiding their national offices. Gompers followed up by meeting with Attorney General Thomas Gregory to assure him that the AFL was neither affiliated nor supportive of the IWW. Gompers was told that the state would take “great care” to differentiate between the AFL and the “treasonable, treacherous” organizers of the IWW. Gompers had already done this in part by declaring the AFL’s full support of President Wilson and the war effort. When the show trial of 1918 in Chicago proved to be ineffective at providing an immediate link between the IWW and Germany, however, the BI turned their attention to Debs and the SPA.¹⁵ Unlike the IWW, the SPA did have a more immediate link with Germany, and both Gompers, as well as the Justice Department, focused on the fact that the European nation was the birthplace of Karl Marx and revolutionary socialism extending back to the failed revolution of 1848. The language of nativism surfaced as Gompers labeled the SPA “the most important disrupting agency” of foreign nationalism and stated that the SPA preached “the doctrine of sabotage” by aiding domestic efforts to slow the trafficking of munitions to Europe. On the topic of socialism itself, Gompers labeled it a conspiracy put forth by German Chancellor Otto von Bismark in an attempt to disrupt the culture of other nations while building nationalism within his own country.¹⁶ This rhetoric by Gompers might not have gone anywhere if Debs had decided against making his risky speech in Canton, Ohio, on June 16th, 1918. There, amidst a crowd of over 1,200, Debs told his fellow citizens that if they wanted war to “let it be declared by the people.” Shortly into his speech, BI agents made their way through the crowd, demanding to see draft cards and arresting Debs for violation of the 1917 Espionage Act. Within a day The Washington Post declared that Debs invited his own arrest and set a trend for the depiction of those who came under the suspicions of the federal government.¹⁷

Debs’ arrest, as well as the upholding of convictions against individuals charged with violating the Espionage Act, signaled the start of government involvement in the repression of organizations and individuals previously only sought by business interests and craft union leaders like Gompers. It also signaled how the weaponized language was normalized through its use by people in positions of power. It proved effective at separating Gompers’ craft unions from the more grassroots unions that sought mass appeal and more political involvement. The Federal Government, particularly the Supreme Court, charged that Debs was guilty of attempting to arouse mutiny and promote treason among drafted soldiers of the US Army by giving a speech about how it was difficult to use the freedom of speech during wartime. When the Supreme Court denied Debs’ first appeal, their decision was charged with powerful words—particularly by Judge Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr.—that pejoratively linked “socialism” with “a glorification of minorities” but also downplayed the significance of Debs’ grievances as nothing more than “the usual contrasts between capitalists and laboring men.” To cite precedent, Justice Holmes referred to his own decision in a case just a few months prior, Frohwerk v. US (1919), where he had deemed criticism of US involvement in warfare unprotected by the First Amendment. The language thus delivered to the public in the decision was clear: Debs was guilty, and his promotion of socialism and civil rights was sufficient in disregarding his free speech.¹⁸

Once the war ended, the Justice Department ceased further investigations into the SPA and even ignored, for the most part, the splinter factions that would go on to form the Communist Party of the United States of America (CPUSA). What remained, however, was the new federal policing apparatus and the means to convict those deemed dangerous, forcing the WPA, CPA, and their supporters underground thereby making them for the most part ineffective as organizations. The first and most immediate of targets for this new federal apparatus was the massive movement for civil liberties resulting from citizens’ resistance to government repression and the jailing of Debs as well as numerous other activists during the war. Even though AFL leaders “were more often collaborators than victims of federal crackdowns,” they reversed their stances on free speech amidst the massive strike wave of 1919-1920. The strikes began in January, in Seattle, and within months swept across the nation’s industrial centers. On June 2nd, bombs exploded simultaneously in eight different cities, apparently targeting judges, business owners, and politicians believed to be involved in the crackdowns. The Justice Department responded with full force and taking advantage of its newly acquired powers in prosecuting those charged by banning red flags, raiding clubhouses of ethnic groups for communist propaganda, allowing the arrest of individuals for endorsing the strikes—in most cases not seeking warrants in advance. 

These now infamous “Palmer Raids” created the uniform colloquial identity of leftist labor organizers and supporters of civil rights in the minds of the public: foreign, anti-American, criminal. Since communism as an ideological force could be so easily associated with notions of foreignness and the political ideals of Russia—who in the public eye was still guilty of backstabbing the United States during the war by its conditional surrender—communism and communists came to embody the peak of what ‘nativist’ sentiment sought to resist in the early 1920s. Within just a matter of a few years, those targeted by this newest manifestation of nativist rhetoric increased in number significantly and served to reinforce traditional customs and norms while limiting the practice of ethnic or cultural alternatives. During the early years of the Depression, potential targets included civil rights organizations active in combating racial discrimination in housing and education, civic projects within communities to combat homelessness and evictions, labor efforts to organize grassroots union drives in major urban areas such as Detroit, Atlanta, New York City, and Los Angeles. To create a narrative which depicted the political ideals of Marxism as un-American, individuals, and groups, both public and private, worked extensively to draw associations between socialists, anarchists, and eventually communists, with long-standing fears held by the predominantly white, Christian, male-dominated culture of the 1920s. Eventually, associations between communists and political radicals of all types, including those who advocated against long-standing traditions such as Jim Crow, were all too common. In making such associations, politicians were able to “suggest that black American protest is actually un-American sedition and, conversely, that support for the traditions of the segregated South is an expression of American patriotism.”¹⁹ This also had the effect of normalizing the idea that all three categories of radicals (anarchists, socialists, communists) were one-and-the-same; more common in their radicalism than different in their ideas and identities.

Even after the Palmer Raids, conservative union leaders like John L. Lewis and William Green remained the most publicly outspoken proponents of accusatory and at times violent rhetoric aimed at communists. Lewis first dealt with communist organizers in the United Mine Workers of America (UMWA) in 1924 during his bid for re-election as President of the union. Running in opposition was George Voyzey, a relatively unknown figure in the union but a prominent organizer for William Foster in the Trade Union Educational League (TUEL). Voyzey brought two other key communist organizers into the UMWA, Patrick Toohey and Alex Reed, who helped build a grassroots electoral campaign against Lewis’ leadership. While Lewis pulled strings at the national union level, such as personally overseeing the counting of ballots, to ensure his electoral victory, Voyzey held the praise and admiration of the UMWA’s rank-and-file. This was made clear less than a year later when Voyzey teamed up with WPA member and UMWA district organizer John Brophy to create the International Miners’ Progressive Committee (IMPC) in the spring of 1925; which helped spearhead an amalgamation campaign to link up railroad unions with local districts of the UMWA to facilitate a massive strike in 1927. In 1926, Brophy ran another campaign against Lewis and netted a little over 25% of the total votes in one of the union’s most highly contested elections. Lewis’s refusal to accept the demands by the IMPC, such as nationalization of the mines and a five-day workweek, only increased further support for Brophy and Voyzey throughout 1926. Before the strike in ‘27 broke out, however, Lewis turned to William Green, who became President of the AFL two years earlier following Gompers’ death. To assure businessmen of the conservative nature of the UMWA leadership with regard to strikes, he insisted that communist propaganda from Russia did not emanate from within their union, but rather was the result of outside agitators acting on behalf of Moscow. Green depicted working with Lewis and the UMWA leadership as the more fitting choice than appeasing the radicals of the IMPC. Support for the IMPC by the union’s rank-and-file, then, was omitted from Green’s public statements on the issue. Public appeals such as Green’s and the divisive policies of union leaders like Lewis further contributed to the depiction of Left-leaning unionists as spies and loyalists to Moscow long after the government gave up on public ridicule of anarchists and socialists while also perpetuating a sense of ‘otherness’ in the public’s consciousness regarding anyone who dared to organize on behalf of workers’ rights.²⁰

Although the raids ended in more public scrutiny than they succeeded at destroying elements of radicalism in the American labor movement, the BI conducted routine checks on known WPA/CPA associates as well as known communists in major unions across the country. In part, the policies of conservative unionists like Green and Lewis welcomed government involvement in overseeing union roster rolls so as to facilitate a more cooperative relationship with the Coolidge, and eventually Hoover, Administration. One way the BI succeeded with such operations against perceived radicals was to rely on local, private companies, such as the Corporation Auxiliary Company (CAC), to hire private investigators to infiltrate suspected unions and workplaces. These investigators were taught about their jobs in a manner riddled with the kind of rhetoric intended to delegitimize the constitutional rights of their targets, similar to the logic of nativism targeted toward the arrival of Catholic immigrants in the 1840s and 1850s. One such investigator, William Gernaey of Detroit, stated how most people in his unit, as well as the general attitude of his middle-management associates to whom he reported, believed that “communists were all foreigners or Russians with beards and bombs.” In his autobiography, Gernaey explained how his understanding of radical union organizers came less from his actual experiences with such individuals and more from the caricatures of them by local newspapers and their depictions from upper management.²¹ Gernaey’s story paints a picture of how Americans isolated from the socialist Left viewed such political traditions through hyperbolic overgeneralizations about foreignness and acts of terror. It also suggests that even prior to the breakout of the Cold War, government agencies were actively seeking ways to depict socialist and communist movements in labor organizing as akin to terrorist cells promoting sedition among the citizenry.

According to communist organizer Dorothy Ray Healey from California, in terms of identifying company spies and police informants, in most cases “the company police and the state police were indistinguishable.” This was likely due to communists’ awareness that company informants such as Gernaey were not only numerous but also supported both company and local police in tracking down labor organizers and radical political advocates. Prior to the rise of the CPUSA in certain cities such as Detroit and New York after 1932, communists were routinely beaten in public, forcing activists like Healey to take on a methodology of working with other organizations to downplay associations. In doing so, however, Healey and other communists like her likely exacerbated concerns by local police instead of quelling them. Such was certainly the case when Healey organized for the Youth Communist League (YCL) in Pittsburg, California between 1930 and 1931. There she noted that in order to try and confuse local authorities, communists tended to organize around the headquarters of the Progressive Labor League located at 1020 Broadway, where each day of the week a different organization would hold meetings; ranging from the local CP-backed Unemployment Council on Tuesdays to the CPUSA’s legal arm in the International Labor Defense (ILD) on Wednesdays to the YCL on Thursdays. The League was an offshoot of the Conference for Progressive Labor Action and while they shared the CPUSA’s passion for progressive change they were not openly a Marxist or revolutionary organization. Rather than convince local authorities that communists were doing legitimate work, however, police and company informants became convinced that all organizations which could be associated with the CPUSA were run by communists and that their goals—whichever they may be—were aligned with an international communist conspiracy and demanded immediate government attention.²²

Such associative tactics proved coercive and useful to local authorities, particularly when such information was leaked to the press. This was evident to Healey with the use of police brutality against communists during a strike at the California Packing Corporation (CPC) outside San Jose in 1931. Healey was tasked by the YCL and the Communist Party’s Trade Union Unity League (TUUL) with abandoning her educational goals to instead organize the workers of the CPC and create a base for infiltrating the canneries of California. The principal moment came when workers of the CPC walked out in response to the firing of a worker. At just sixteen, Healey found herself designated the “Youth Activities Director” and was officially organizing her first strike, given authorities to set up shop committees, Party nuclei, and facilitate the educating of workers on the benefits of the union. Local San Jose authorities began their resistance efforts by refusing to permit licenses to picket throughout the city, forcing Healey and other activists to promote the union in public illegally. When police discovered Healey’s organizational meeting location, St. James Park in downtown San Jose, they assaulted the organizers and used the lack of permission to justify a series of bloody attacks. As far as the general public was concerned, Healey noted that “there was no consciousness on the part of anybody else that there was anything wrong in what [the police] were doing;” indicating that such behavior was at the least understood as justified. The peak of this expression of power came when the police shot tear gas bombs into the crowd of organizers, permanently wounding one activist, Minnie Carson, and incapacitating others. Although this fueled momentum for a short-lived campaign to protest police brutality in addition to the strike, the strike ultimately was busted and Healey left San Jose having failed to gain any ground.²³

In a large majority of the cases, it made little difference if communists were organizing in a public hall or a private home or how “quiet and disciplined” the meetings were. It also mattered very little if the space used, such as St. James Park, was deemed protected for the use of free speech and assembly. Such treatment was instead viewed as “dominant in the culture of the period” and served to remind the public that to be an open communist or to associate with them was to invite discrimination and suspicion from authorities. Police continued to use their informants to find the locations of meetings, raid them, assault activists, net catchy headlines, and haul leaders off to the local jail. In 1931, Los Angeles police broke up a legal demonstration held by Healey and other communists at the “free speech zone” near Pershing Square between 5th and 6th Street in downtown Los Angeles. A year later, when CPUSA leader William Z. Foster spoke at Pershing Square while campaigning for president in 1932, he was arrested and deported from the city by local authorities. By targeting demonstrations that were both questionably legal and defended by geographic space for free speech, police and local authorities made it clear to the public that city laws and civil protections did not apply to advocates of unemployment relief, civil rights, and labor legislation.²⁴

Associating civil rights goals of combating discrimination and social inequality with the ideals of communism continued throughout the interwar and postwar years and allowed police as well as legal prosecutors to avoid focusing on the validity of their charges against individuals and instead focus on the “otherness” of the social movements as a whole. Such was the case with Benjamin Davis and his defense of Angelo Herndon in the mid-1930s. Davis witnessed the evolution of white supremacist rhetoric into anti-communist rhetoric in legal cases as he advanced in his career during the late 1920s and early 1930s. Davis recalled his first experience of weaponized rhetoric in a legal setting while attending his own trial for sitting in the “white section” of an Atlanta trolley car, long before he became involved in the American Communist movement. He recalled how police officers and the court magistrate used racially-charged language as a “form of entertainment” or “sport” used at the expense of “the hapless, humble Negro workers caught in the complicated toils of the Jim Crow laws” which segregated treatment within the courts. In one example, Davis watched as “one Negro woman was virtually stripped bare by the lewd language and gestures of the magistrate.” During his own turn, the judge used harsh, racially-charged rhetoric to inform Davis’ father that he was a terrible parent for sending Davis up North for an education that taught equality among whites and non-whites, a philosophy deemed akin to communism.²⁵

After graduating from law school, Davis met with associates of the International Labor Defense, who at the time were defending the Scottsboro Boys, and began a law career with a focus on civil rights. When he took on the defense on Angelo Herndon, Davis believed, as did others in the legal community, that the trial was less about prosecuting a specific individual that it was aimed “to intimidate the people in the growing unemployment movement” throughout Atlanta and the nation during the early 1930s, of which the CPUSA was highly integrated via a network of unemployment councils. Herndon was charged with insurrection after participating in a demonstration outside the Fulton County Courthouse on June 30th, 1932, with about 1,000 black and white unemployed workers, most of whom were seeking relief payments. The local news depicted Herndon as an organizer of white and non-white workers “of the lowest economic level together in comradeship” in direct defiance of local customs on “segregation and white supremacy.” 12 days after the demonstration, Herndon was arrested while checking his mail by Atlanta Police detectives. The officers searched his local hotel room, found his CPUSA paperwork and books, then cited a 66-year old Reconstruction Era law against organizing non-Whites. At the time, insurrection in Georgia carried the death penalty, making the case of national significance to civil rights organizations. Although numerous other activists were involved in the demonstration, including white unemployed citizens of Fulton County, Herndon proved “the most convenient scapegoat” for the prosecution’s goals, with his library of communist and socialist literature, to delegitimize the efforts of the demonstration and turn national public sentiment against the accused.²⁶ 

During the case, Judge Lee B. Wyatt directed charged rhetoric at not only Herndon, but also Davis in an attempt to label him as both ignorant and radical. When Davis asked to be heard on a motion to deny indictment due to a lack of African American representation on the jury, Wyatt stated that “nothing [he’d] say wouldn’t make no difference, nohow [sic].” When the prosecution attempted to cross-examine Davis’ white witnesses to the validity of his claims about disproportionate juror representation in the county’s history, and thus the discriminatory nature of the trial, the prosecuting attorneys asked each witness if they would want their daughters marrying “a negra [sic].” Each attempt to object to the line of questioning as unfounded and “lynch-inciting,” by Davis was overruled by Judge Wyatt. That night, after just one day of trial, Davis joined the CPUSA Atlanta District branch at the age of 29. During the next court meeting, the prosecution opened their case against Herndon by ushering in that all-too-familiar association; labeling the case a crusade against “the godless assaults of communism and Negro domination.” This association demonstrates the precise point in the use of language when racism and anti-free speech is deemed justified. Although Davis and the International Labor Defense would ultimately end up with a victory for Herndon, it came after a long battle of appeals which replicated the experiences of the Fulton County court at higher levels of governance until the Supreme Court ruled the insurrection law unconstitutional in 1937.²⁷

Like Davis, Danny Rubin from Philadelphia described his turn to communism as a result of his experiencing such kinds of weaponized language and estrangement in the public sphere. Rubin grew up in the Northeast side of Philadelphia along the Delaware River, where his father worked in a local lumber yard while attending night courses to practice law and his mother organized with the local Socialist Party. Rubin remembered growing up around “routine discrimination” as a working-class Jew in a neighborhood controlled by the dominant local property owners, the Disston family. At the time, the Disstons owned one of the largest manufacturing plants of saws and wood equipment and from 1871 to 1945 transformed the small area of Tacony into an industrial town.²⁸ With their influence, the Disstons promoted a restrictive city covenant of “no negros, no Jews, no dogs, no bars” that emphasized the community’s predominantly white, Catholic identity. When swastikas and graffiti began regularly appearing at Rubin’s synagogue during the mid-1930s, his parents tried to explain that as members of the Jewish community they were not welcomed by their neighbors. In school, Rubin found acceptance among other marginalized students such as African Americans and Italian Americans. Continued experiences of anti-Semitism led Rubin to the American Youth for Democracy and eventually the CPUSA, who promoted policies against “white chauvinism” and promoted cooperation among different ethnic, religious, and cultural groups.²⁹

Stories such as Healey’s, Rubin’s, and Davis’ are much more common in the interwar period than one unversed in the history of the Communist Party might think. One historian described African Americans by 1935 as “predisposed to be receptive to the Communist Party” because of their “emphasis on white chauvinism more favorable than others who saw it as exaggerated or as an error.” When they joined the CPUSA, neither Davis nor Rubin had read a single text by Marx or Lenin, but were instead converted to the Party’s ideals due to a combination of their experiences of racial/ethnic discrimination and the promotion of the ending such hostility in society and in language. To make their stances clear to their members and the public, the CPUSA took steps against communists whose actions were deemed racist and divisive. In January of 1931, the CPUSA directed its national membership to focus on the internal-Party trial of Finnish communist August Yokinen for his refusal to allow three African American workers entry to a Finnish Workers’ Club dance in Harlem. To show their dedication to combating white chauvinism and contrast their practices with that of the Scottsboro and Herndon cases, the CPUSA organized a Party jury of seven white and seven black Party members who quickly charged Yokinen guilty and expelled him from not only the Party’s circle of associates but the entire network of organizations that worked with the Party; including Workers’ Clubs and Unemployment Councils.³⁰ Acts like these attracted individuals displaced by racist and discriminatory rhetoric, such as Davis and Rubin, but it also likely contributed to the ongoing association of civil rights equality and communist philosophy so dominant among anti-communist and reactionary groups.

When communists began setting their sights on bigger and larger organizational targets, the rhetoric used against them intensified. Between 1932 and 1941, the CPUSA’s presence in Detroit swelled after a presidential campaign speech by William Z. Foster and efforts to support striking workers at the Ford Rouge plant ended with four workers shot dead by Dearborn police and hired Ford Security officers. The Detroit Unemployment Council (DUC), which was staffed and funded predominantly by the Michigan District CPUSA branch, created a base of operations in Southeast Michigan to link together various community and labor organizations in response to the massacre at the Ford Rouge. Throughout the 1930s, both the DUC and the CPUSA facilitated drives to provide food to striking workers and served as principal organizers for the Flint Sit-Down Strike of 1936-37. Due to the testimony of William Gernaey, we also know that the CPUSA had integrated shop-floor organizers into various Ford plants by 1936 and actively worked with the UAW.³¹ 

During this period in which the CPUSA expanded its reach across Detroit, the Ford Security “Service Department” acted under the command of Henry Ford’s top security advisor, Harry Bennett. Bennett was described as the ringleader of a “gang of thugs” by labor organizers for his firing upon unarmed striking workers after Foster’s speech, his involvement in the public assault of union organizer Richard Frankensteen on May 26th, 1937, and his ordering of the kidnapping of UAW organizer Walter Reuther.³² In the latter instance, Reuther, who had recently succeeded in organizing a strike against Federal Screw—a parts supplier for Ford—was threatened at gunpoint by two of Bennett’s men the evening of the bargaining settlement. Bennett’s men burst into Reuther’s apartment filled with relatives celebrating a birthday and yelled “ok, Red, you’re coming with us.” Although the kidnapping was a failure, as Reuther’s family and friends informed the men that they would never leave the apartment alive, the event struck fear into union ranks. Many began to arm themselves for fear that Bennett had the power to mark people for death.³³ 

In 1941, holding out as the last auto manufacturer to cave to the union, Ford and Bennett decided to make their move against the UAW by discharging eight union organizers from the Rouge plant. The response by 50,000 workers was to walk out in a wildcat strike that sparked national headlines. As Bennett set up machine gun nests to attempt to prevent strikers from barricading the plant, the workers maneuvered around to barricade the incoming boulevard exits at Michigan Avenue. Bennett’s next solution was to promote interracial violence among the workers. As Stephen Norwood explained in his book on strikebreaking strategies, interracial violence among white and black workers at Ford was a genuinely real threat since African American employees tended to look favorably upon Henry Ford’s philanthropy in the local black community and the company’s providing of some of the best job opportunities found for non-white workers in the area. Bennett capitalized on this by issuing propaganda that stated the UAW wanted nothing to do with the African American community and that the union was “dominated by nefarious Jews;” once again proving that anti-Semitism formed a core association with radicalism for strikebreaking purposes among union busters.³⁴ Much of the situation changed less than a year later as the United States became fully involved in World War II, and both the unions and the CPUSA agreed to no-strike pledges to maintain the war effort.

World War II served as a temporary relief valve for the intensification of attempts to demonize and delegitimize communist individuals. When the 1940 Smith Act was passed, it was tacitly supported by the CPUSA since it was believed the policy would help root out not only fascist and reactionary groups such as the German-American Bund but also destroy alternative communist factions such as the Socialist Workers’ Party. Throughout the years of the Smith Act’s dominance, between roughly 1940 and 1957, anti-communism transformed from a legal/political tool to limit domestic activity into a predominant societal norm capable of sustaining itself through foreign affairs and diplomatic relations with the Soviet Union. What did not change was that the circumstances of guilt were not as important as the desired result; as was the case with Davis’ legal battle. Communists were not charged as un-American counter subversives because they were guilty of a specific constitutional violation or of a societal expectation; we know this because their charges were all expunged by the Yates v. US (1957) decision. Communists were instead deemed guilty until proven innocent and put the burden of such proof on the Communist Party. In 1957, however, the Yates decision exposed the truth that communists, in acting as they did and promoting what they did, were in fact upholding the highest levels of respect for the Constitution by using their protected rights of assembly, free speech, and the right to a fair trial. The only explanation left for this persecution, then, is that communists were charged in public and in private for the primary purpose of delineating “otherness” among citizens deemed radical.

A key instance of this happened in organizing the Amalgamated Clothing Workers of America (ACWA) Local 328 in New York, shortly after the passage of the Smith Act in 1940. Although the act was exclusively political, in that it sought to charge people through the courts with treason, its passage had an immediate effect on how private organizations at the state level viewed communists among their ranks. Beatrice Lumpkin, a communist and organizer for Local 328, remembered how the national organization appointed delegates to the New York State CIO convention without consulting the Local’s membership. Although not a communist-organized union, Local 328 voted a communist leadership board in 1939, which included Lumpkin. After hearing about the national union’s attempt to overstep the Local’s authority, Lumpkin called for an emergency meeting where she and four other union organizers were elected as official convention representatives. They left the meeting immediately to make the 300-mile drive to Rochester, where the convention was held. Lumpkin and her cohort entered the convention and objected to the presence of the appointed delegates, stating that they were not chosen by the workers of 328.³⁵ 

Following the convention, the ACWA’s leaders targeted Lumpkin and her lot of “troublemakers” and helped state prosecutors open up charges against Local 328’s bargaining agents, Michael Coleman and George McGriff. The ACWA then called for a local meeting and bused in numerous workers from other locals with the tactic of “shouting down any supporters of the business agents.” Lumpkin managed to quiet down the inflammatory rhetoric by stating that the elected delegates of 328 were only there “because [their] wages are too low and [they] cannot pay their bills.” The next day, the ACWA’s national leadership opened union charges against Lumpkin and the elected delegates for practicing and preaching communism. Seeing the prominent union leaders, such as Frank Rosenblum and Jacob Potofsky, sitting on the condemnation side of the trial convinced Lumpkin that “the trial was a formality” and that their guilt “was already written.” According to the rules of the trial, the accused had to pick a ‘lawyer’ from their union local, and without any actual legal defender Lumpkin took on the role. The charge Lumpkin had to defend against was not a violation of any crime or act of disunity, it was simply membership in the CPUSA. In a routine that would be repeated at the federal level once Smith Act trials began targeting CPUSA leaders, the ACWA brought forth a series of “witnesses” to attest to the support of the Communist Party by the elected delegates. The witnesses were former members of the CPUSA, typically in dire straits such as suffering from a gambling addiction and in need of the union’s financial support.³⁶ 

Once the trial concluded, the ACWA expelled the accused and informed the national union via their newspaper Advance that Local 328 was under the complete domination of the Communist Party. The workers did not even realize the full impact of the ACWA’s trial until it was too late. Following expulsion, Lumpkin and some of her fellow workers at Local 328 wanted to form an independent union, but this went against the Communist Party’s philosophy of resisting “dual unionism.” Other union members rejected this proposal because it would have voided the contractual gains made by the local in the previous years as employers would have deemed the ACWA contracts null. Lumpkin and her fellow organizers thus found themselves trapped in a situation of either renouncing their organizational strategies and possibly losing previous gains or giving up. In either case, the union leadership proved that staunch rhetoric purported under the veil of patriotism was a sure-fire means to both control the union and lessen the role of local activists.³⁷

Part of what contributed to the colloquial nature of this kind of targeted rhetoric was its acceptance and use by some of the highest levels of government, including Congress and the Presidency. The public became exposed to political usage of such rhetoric through newsreels and public speeches; most of which mimicked the previous decade’s attempts to label communists as “others” and depict their reach and influence within American society far beyond what it was ever capable of. Much of this was contextual, as differences in approach and policy with regard to postwar Germany between the United States and the Soviet Union culminated into what we now call the Cold War. By then, President Truman exhausted much of the support he had among labor and civil rights groups by turning his attention to foreign policy. In mid-1946, as Greece broke out into a civil war between communist and republican groups, Joseph Stalin declared the incompatibility of capitalism and communism in the postwar era.³⁸ This served reactionary politicians in the United States better than the Soviet dictator likely expected, as anti-communism became a prominent foundation upon which to exploit for political gain. The Truman Doctrine and the subsequent foreign policy of Truman’s administration until the election of Eisenhower in 1952 exemplified the way in which the Cold War transformed anti-communism into a highly-specific political tool; involving loyalty oaths and an increased budget for the House Un-American Activities Committee.³⁹ 

In terms of how weaponized anti-communism impacted the development of domestic policy, President Truman found support among anti-communists within Congress and the AFL who never dropped their suspicions and doubt about the possibility of Soviet involvement in American affairs. This made the subsequent resistance by the CIO, who tended to refuse participation in federally-mandated loyalty oaths, appear suspicious and further fueled public debate about where the moral hearts of labor activists lay. In a newsreel published by Universal Pictures in March, 1947, J. Edgar Hoover stated that the CPUSA was “far better organized than the Nazis” and was committed “to weaken America, just as they did in the era of obstruction when they were aligned with the Nazis;” referring to the CPUSA’s temporary non-interventionist stance that resulted from the Nazi-Soviet Pact in 1939. Hoover went on to describe communism in a more general sense as “an evil and malignant way of life,” using language that equated its supporters as viruses who were in need of “quarantine” to prevent them “from infecting [the] nation.”⁴⁰ 

Language such as this defined the postwar political rhetoric used with regard to the Second Red Scare, and made it much more difficult for organizations with a strong communist organizing presence. The dividing moment within the labor movement came when communists within the CIO fully rejected support for the Marshall Plan and backed Henry Wallace for President in 1948. The CIO national leadership found itself in a quagmire; unable to trust that Wallace could defeat the Republicans and incapable of persuading their communist organizers otherwise. When the Washington Post decried that Wallace was nothing more than a “sickle cleaving” puppet of the Soviets, the CIO “began systematically sidelining communist members” to distance themselves from absorbing such criticism.⁴¹ After Truman won the election, the CIO made their full move and expelled 11 of the largest communist-led unions. Those that remained, such as UAW Local 600 in Detroit, survived solely because the union could not maintain control over the Locals without the help of local communists.⁴²

We even see this kind of rhetoric used as a political weapon against President Truman when he vetoed the Taft-Hartley Act in 1947. Truman deemed the act “bad for labor, bad for management, and bad for the country.”⁴³ Less than a year later in June of 1948, Truman argued that an increase in social programs for housing, education, and wage controls would be an effective counter to the program of the Communist Party. In his message to the GOP in Chicago, Truman reiterated his stance on avoiding pursuing tactics that relied on breaches of Constitutional rights by stating he would veto any bill that attempted to “set controls over the Communist Party.”⁴⁴ Republicans subsequently attacked the President for being “soft” on communism and threatening postwar diplomacy, an effort pushed largely by Robert Taft. Taft argued that both Roosevelt and Truman during and after the war advanced an agenda known as “the wise democratic doctrine,” which included open diplomacy with the Eastern bloc and constituted “a general practice of secrecy in all the initial steps of foreign policy.” Although he likely did not realize it until after the fact, Taft’s criticism of the President in the early stages of the Cold War allowed him to become “the most prominent and influential Republican politician in Congress and the conservative wing of the Republican Party;” proving that focusing on the supposed leniency with communism was just as effective of rhetoric as openly accusing the President of collusion.⁴⁵ Truman continued to combat these accusations through the 1948 election, stating in his 1949 inaugural address that communism was a “false” philosophy that “purports to offer freedom, security, and greater opportunity to mankind.” To fully push back against Taft and the Republican caucus, however, the President needed a conflict that could justify both a domestic and an international crusade against communists.⁴⁶

The first instance of relief for the President came when the Foley Square Trial of 1949, which put anti-communist rhetoric on the headlines of nearly every major newspaper in the nation. The trial itself ironically mirrored the Soviet and Nazi show trials of the 1930s; where the CPUSA leaders accused—William Foster, Eugene Dennis, Carl Winter, Benjamin Davis, John Gates, Gus Hall, John Williamson, Gil Green, Henry Winston, Jack Stachel, and Robert Thompson—were presumed guilty and in need of proving their innocence. The situation turned even dimmer for activists and their families in the public eye, with newsreels accepting the prosecution’s narrative that defendants were terrorists conspiring to overthrow the government. Newsreels even went so far as to assure the public that despite questions about the defendants’ constitutional rights, the trial was in the safe hands of “the stern but impartial eye of Judge [Harold] Medina.”⁴⁷ Known for his short temper, Medina faced communist defense lawyers that “tried to make him lose judicial composure with ‘guerrilla tactics,’” such as continuous motions to delay court proceedings and accusations of a prejudiced court—a tactic likely encouraged by Benjamin Davis. To push their case of conspiracy to commit treason, the prosecution argued that the dictums of Marxism required communists to seek the means of overthrowing the government. When some defendants, such as John Gates, refused to answer questions by using the Fifth Amendment, their appeals were hastily denied by Medina and were charged with contempt of court. The court returned a verdict of guilty for all eleven members accused. The defense’s case failed in part because J. Edgar Hoover and the FBI had already made it clear that the court’s entire goal was to set the precedent forth that “the Communist Party as an organization [was] illegal.”⁴⁸

Although the court did not enforce prison sentences until two years after the trial, the subsequent “repressive atmosphere went beyond the legal issues and quickly affected tens of thousands of rank and filers.” Individual communists and activists across the nation faced criticism and ridicule in the public.⁴⁹ Communist organizer Sherman Labovitz from Philadelphia was reading about the trial’s turnout in June of 1950 when a stranger wearing a “dapper suit,” who he suspected was either a public or a private investigator, followed him down a street and began asking if he knew any of the men on trial. Of course, Labovitz, a veteran organizer of the Philadelphia CPUSA branch, knew of the men but he did not expect to be publicly called out for his associations. While trying to flee the scene, the unnamed stranger continued to harass Labovitz, hurling insults and chasing him to his car. Labovitz explained in his autobiography that this moment left him feeling “absolutely violated.” Less than three years later, Labovitz was indicted on similar charges of conspiracy via the Smith Act.⁵⁰ In her oral history on the experiences of her father in the Smith Act Michigan Six trial of 1953, Vicki Wellman expressed that alienation and a general sense of indifference with people her same age and background was a common experience throughout her social and public life as a young adult. These experiences demonstrate that life as a radical youth in the early postwar period was permeated with a combination of rhetoric and action that sought to teach kids that their parents were not only wrong, but evil.⁵¹ 

Truman’s decisive moment to further exacerbate the language of anti-communism came in June of 1950. First, on the 16th, communist labor organizer Harry Bridges had his citizenship revoked after a federal judge deemed his application for citizenship fraudulent on the basis that he denied membership in the Communist Party, second on the 17th when Julius Rosenberg was arrested by the FBI on the charge of espionage, and finally third on the 25th, when North Korean troops crossed South across the 38th parallel to begin the Korean War. Combined, these events provided Truman with the ideal conflict to satisfy Congress’ thirst for anti-communism. Federal judge George B. Harris set a trend for future treatment of suspected communists when he sentenced Bridges to five years for perjury, upholding the idea that inquiry about membership in a legal organization was a valid and non-intrusive method of determining one’s constitutional rights.⁵² Truman publicly condemned the Rosenbergs for putting the nation at risk by “empowering the Soviets, and by extension the North Koreans.”⁵³ When the international community showed signs of suspicion on Truman’s actions as overtly pandering to domestic Congressional affairs, the President altered the narrative to be acutely focused on charging the Rosenbergs with treason and sedition as opposed to interfering with national security and the Korean War.⁵⁴ 

Both the criticisms directed at Truman and the President’s response did less to refocus national attention acutely onto specific individuals and specific acts of treason than it did to normalize the language which incorporated all proponents of social change under the monolithic image of countersubversion. In a speech at the Jefferson-Jackson Day Dinner, Truman elaborated on how the Democratic Party had not only resisted the identity of being soft on communism but also had accomplished more in the battle against domestic communism than Republicans through the use of “money and courage—not just a lot of talk.” To be a true anti-communist, Truman charged, one must mix one’s rhetoric with action to produce results.⁵⁵ In this case, the results were the success of the 1949 Foley Square Trial of CPUSA leaders, the execution of the Rosenbergs in 1953, and the wave of Smith Act trials targeting mid-level communist organizers, such as Dorothy Healey and Sherman Labovitz. The President proved that by 1948, to justify one’s use of divisive and inflammatory rhetoric against specific individuals, one merely had to point to the Rosenbergs and the precedents of guilty verdicts delivered by courts across the nation.

One last important component to the colloquial nature of anti-communist rhetoric by the 1950s was its use by prominent individuals in popular culture. The words of Arthur Koestler, for example, attempted to equate social justice movements with the movement of international communism as a means to delegitimizing the political rights of those who promoted equality. Koestler charged that wars could be waged even under the slogan of peace, and that “intellectual sanity” can only be restored by abandoning such movements for dramatic change.⁵⁶ Perhaps no individual, however, held as much gravitas with the sentiments of average American families—particularly those who had children—than California-based cartoonist and film producer, Walt Disney. By the late 1940s, Disney had become a household name with five full-length animated feature films, most of which have become classics of the fantasy/childhood genre. When asked by the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAAC) of his opinion of the Communist Party and the suspicion of communists working in his production studio, Disney explained that it was his understanding that communism was an “un-American thing” that trapped “good, 100 percent Americans” into a world of ideology that tainted not only their own sense of patriotism but the entirety of “American liberalism.” Communists, in turn, were understood as victims of a kind of foreign nationalism—but victims that could not be saved.⁵⁷ Newsreels reciprocated Disney’s sentiments in a common twist of irony endemic of the early Cold War. Showcased before most films, the newsreels informed citizens about HUAAC’s mission to unveil the “communist penetration of the Hollywood film industry” with the goal of pushing “subversive propaganda.”⁵⁸ On the surface, this language appears exactly as it was intended: as passive, non-hostile, and concerned. The effect of the use of this language by cultural icons with a significant amount of cultural power, however, was the continued normalization of physical and legal estrangement in an era of political repression. To question if someone was a communist was to not only question their citizenship, but also to question if they were akin to a terrorist, or a mafia-like henchman which lacked a sense of what was “American.”

What are we to learn from understanding anti-communist rhetoric in both the public and private sense as a form of “weaponized” rhetoric differentiated from the highly-charged racist and sexist language used today against certain groups? We can get a glimpse into the process of how such language becomes normalized and colloquial; particularly by its use and perpetuation by individuals in positions of political, legal, or cultural power. By depicting communism as a monolith that contained the various organizations pushing for progressive change in the United States, anti-communists in business and the government were able to advance the narrative of ‘nativism’ under a broad new political headline. This had the effect of normalizing both legal and physical acts of discrimination against civil rights and labor organizations and pacifying public concern; a tradition that unfortunately still lingers in our society to this day. Experiences like that of Healey, Davis, and Lumpkin confirm that anti-communist rhetoric had the power to condemn individuals for their actions—even if such actions are not immediately linked to communism as a political philosophy or ideology. Furthermore, the fusing of such rhetoric with physical repression demonstrated the extent to which the general public was made passive about such acts of injustice. 

Throughout the 1940s and 50s, this language was sustained by 20th-century notions of nativism, political attempts to redirect the focus of international conflicts, and the words of prominent cultural icons. The secret to normalizing weaponized rhetoric that seeks nothing short of delegitimizing proponents of a particular idea, lifestyle, or identity, exists in the history of anti-communism, as it is the most successful conscious application of such language. By successful, I do not just mean how the use of such language produced the desired results from its application, but also in how the mainstream culture was wired to passively accept, endorse, and participate in the perpetuation of such language and social condemnation. Anti-communist rhetoric in newspapers, court cases, business efforts to bust unions, union efforts to expel radicals, and political doctrines performed by the Executive Branch all passively endorsed and encouraged subsequent acts, both legal and physical, of discrimination against American citizens and denials of free speech for supporting civil rights, trade unionism, and alternative political ideologies. Its success lay in the fact that it could be wielded for two different but interlinked purposes: First, it could be used to target communists and socialists as a means to discrediting and delegitimizing their voice in the public or private sphere. Secondly, it could be used as the means to discredit those groups which by association were also deemed radical. One could attack William Foster’s 1932 presidential campaign for promoting communism, or one could attack Angelo Herndon and use his association with communists as evidence for guilt—even if there was no crime committed in either case. By the start of the Foley Square Trial of Communist Party leaders in 1949, charging individuals as a communist was a means to spearhead one’s career into American politics via HUAAC.

While the acts taken against communists by businesses and the government took center stage in the public consciousness of the United States throughout the interwar and postwar years, by 1957 the language not only sustained irrational fears about the supposed goals of communist activists but perpetuated a public hysteria to the point where the language ceased to contain the effectiveness it had just one decade prior. The Yates v. United States (1957) trial which commuted previous verdicts against communists proved the limit of such language; once the language could be proven ineffective at arguing against the Bill of Rights, the weaponized use of anti-communism lost its impact. It is only in hindsight that the Smith Act trials and acts of red-baiting are perceived as unjust and unconstitutional and it is insufficient to conclude that it was merely the context of the Cold War which allowed such language. The Yates decision ended the effectiveness of such rhetoric in legal settings, but it did not end the use of such weaponized words nor did it prevent the process of normalizing such rhetoric in future instances. Similar patterns of the use of such language in both legal and private settings surfaced during the Civil Rights Movement, during Second Wave Feminism, and still to this day with instances such as “All Lives Matter” as a response to “Black Lives Matter” and the emphasis on “normality” versus “alternative” in the LGBTQ community. The usefulness of the rhetoric is how easy it is to adapt to different settings, which makes it attractive to individuals in power who seek to curb the interests of the public away from an idea, concept, or group of people they might otherwise know very little about.

The weaponized use of words was forged in an effort by public and private groups to quell free speech and assembly that had been deemed ‘radical.’ Some groups, such as the AFL, contributed to this process without realizing the consequences. Others, such as the Bureau of Investigation, the Corporation Auxiliary Company, and the Ford Motor Company did so with highly specific intent of curbing public interest. Finally, others—mainly politicians after the passage of the Smith Act—used this rhetoric to advance a political agenda that advanced their careers and justified acts of injustice after the fact. Healey organized minority workers who lacked the means to combat company unions. Davis defended the constitutional rights of an African American caught up in the throes of the Jim Crow era. Lumpkin tried to promote fair representation of the workers at her union local. It is only through the normalization of weaponized anti-communist rhetoric, to the extent that charges of treason could be made, that these actions were deemed dangerous. Furthermore, it is only by dehumanizing and delegitimizing the rights and identities of individuals that the rhetoric is sustained in colloquial language.

Liked it? Take a second to support Cosmonaut on Patreon! At Cosmonaut Magazine we strive to create a culture of open debate and discussion. Please write to us at CosmonautMagazine@gmail.com if you have any criticism or commentary you would like to have published in our letters section.

1. John Gates, The Story of an American Communist (New York: Thomas Nelson & Sons, 1958), 120.
2. Ellen Schrecker, Many Are the Crimes: McCarthyism in America (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1998), 47.
3. James Zeigler, Red Scare Racism and Cold War Black Radicalism (University Press of Mississippi, 2015), 19.
4. For more information on communists and the Popular Front, see Robert Korstead, Civil Rights Unionism
5. James R. Barrett, William Z. Foster and the Tragedy of American Radicalism (Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 2002), 3.
6. Edward Pintzuk, Reds, Racial Justice, and Civil Liberties (Minneapolis: MEP Publications, 1997), 37.
7. Eric Arnesen, “The Traditions of African-American Anti-Communism.,” Twentieth Century Communism 6, no. 6 (March 2014): 126.
8. To unpack this history of anti-communist rhetoric, this essay utilizes a variety of source material. Some of the best examples of public usages of weaponized rhetoric against communists came from 1940s newsreels and political speeches, but it is important not to get caught in the trap of concluding that such language was limited to the Cold War. The roots of this weaponized language come from the attacks against socialists and anti-war demonstrators in the final years of World War I, while the depiction of communists in the public eye as foreign nationalists came from the secretive efforts of private business interests and pre-WWII government agencies such as the Bureau of Investigation (BI). To understand how such language impacted individual communists and sought to delegitimize their humanity, it is impossible to ignore personal testimony. To that end, this study focuses heavily on personal, autobiographical sources from both anti-communists and communists. Only by understanding the complexity of anti-communism—its fragmentation into many worlds of experience—can we understand the process of normalizing such rhetoric throughout all sectors of American life.
9. “Anarchy’s Den,” New York World, July 28, 1892, https://www.lib.berkeley.edu/goldman/pdfs/AnarchysDen-NewYorkWorld1892.pdf.
10. Jennifer Luff, Commonsense Anticommunism (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2012), 27.
11. To clarify terminology, weaponized rhetoric in this essay refers to words, phrases, and actions taken for the purpose of delegitimizing and dehumanizing individuals for their known or perceived political associations and persuading the general public that such depictions are justified and normal. This includes actions taken against individuals in the form of violence and legal repression since such efforts reaffirm the normalization of discrimination against minorities and subjugated groups in mainstream American culture, since actions fused by rhetoric have the power to persuade public opinion. The concept of “otherness” is important when discussing such uses of language because the end goal for using such rhetoric is to separate out and delineate differences which attempt to justify unequal treatment under the law and in the social sphere. Not all incidents of weaponized rhetoric result in violence, but each instance does attempt to encourage participation in such repression by broad contingents of the American public. To understand the context under which such kinds of political repression are possible, it is necessary to examine the social components which sustain not only passivity about such repression among average citizens but also encourage and normalize its use. When we refer to “weaponized rhetoric” in social history, we can view it in two forms. First, it can refer to the targeted uses of words and phrases against specific individuals, such as the use of inflammatory or derogatory rhetoric against someone because of their identity, beliefs, and/or ethnicity. Secondly, it can refer to the more broad application of colloquial, mainstream rhetoric that targets not individuals but large groups and entire movements. In the latter instance, the individual is much less important than the identity that the person embodies. As such, colloquial, weaponized rhetoric seeks to both destroy the individual’s sense of self and also normalize such language to target a larger whole.
12. Luff, Commonsense Anticommunism, 10–11.
13. Luff, 18.
14. Luff, 17–18; Current Literature, 1906.
15. Luff, Commonsense Anticommunism, 56.
16. Samuel Gompers, Seven Years of Life and Labor (New York: A.M. Kelley, 1967), 336.
17. Erick Trickey, “When America’s Most Prominent Socialist Was Jailed for Speaking Out Against World War I,” Smithsonian Magazine, June 15, 2018, https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/fiery-socialist-challenged-nations-role-wwi-180969386/
18. Debs v. United States, 249 U.S. 211 (Supreme Court of the United States 1919); Frohwerk v. United States, 249 U.S. 204 (Supreme Court of the United States 1919).
19. Zeigler, Red Scare Racism and Cold War Black Radicalism, 19.
20. “Statement by WIlliam Green,” Machinists’ Monthly Journal, November 1925.
21. Joshua Morris, “Double Agent in Detroit,” Cosmonaut, November 5, 2018, https://cosmonaut.blog/2018/11/05/double-agent-in-detroit-anti-communism-at-the-local-level/.
22. Dorothy Ray Healey, Dorothy Healey Remembers, Tape II, Side One, Tape Recording, October 10, 1972, UCLA Oral History Collection, http://oralhistory.library.ucla.edu/viewItem.do?ark=21198/zz0009rfgf&fileSeq=null&xsl=null.
23. Healey.
24. Dorothy Ray Healey, Dorothy Healey Remembers, Tape II, Side Two, Tape Recording, October 10, 1972, UCLA Oral History Collection, http://oralhistory.library.ucla.edu/viewItem.do?ark=21198/zz0009rfhz&fileSeq=null&xsl=null.
25. Benjamin J. Davis, Communist Councilman from Harlem. First (New York: International Publishers, 1969), 40–42.
26. Davis, 54; Tomiko Brown-Nagin, Courage to Dissent (New York: Oxford University Press, 2011), 285.
27. Davis, Communist Councilman from Harlem. First, 64–65.
28. “Tacony Neighborhood History” (Preservation Alliance for Greater Philadelphia., 2018), http://www.preservationalliance.com/explore-philadelphia/philadelphia-neighborhoods/tacony/.
29. Danny Rubin, Interview by Author, Digital Recording, February 24, 2012.
30. “The Yokinen Trial,” in Highlights of a Fighting History: 60 Years of Communist Party (USA: First, 1979), 80–81.
31. William Gernaey and Walter P. Reuther, “Autobiography of William P. Gernaey,” (Library of Labor and Urban Affairs, October 10, 1940).
32. “Energetic Union Drive Forces Ford Co. Into Defensive Position,” Labor Action, January 13, 1941.
33. Stephen H. Norwood, Strikebreaking and Intimidation: Mercenaries and Masculinity in Twentieth-Century America, New edition edition (Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press, 2002), 187.
34. Norwood, 189.
35. Beatrice Lumpkin, Joy in the Struggle (New York: International Publishers, 2015), 93–94.
36. Lumpkin, 95–96.
37. Lumpkin, 96–97.
38. Joseph V. Stalin, “February 09, 1946 Speech Delivered by Stalin at a Meeting of Voters of the Stalin Electoral District, Moscow,” Speech (Moscow: Electoral District, Moscow, February 9, 1946), Wilson Center, https://digitalarchive.wilsoncenter.org/document/116179.pdf?v=a831b5c6a9ff133d9da25b37c013d691.
39. Harry Truman, “The Truman Doctrine” (Joint Session of Congress, 80th Congress, 1st Session, US Congress, March 12, 1947), https://www.ourdocuments.gov/doc.php?flash=false&doc=81.
40. Universal Newsreels, Release 25 (Los Angeles: Universal Pictures Company, 1947).
41. “Wallace Sickle Cleaving CIO,” The Washington Post, February 8, 1948.
42. Luff, Commonsense Anticommunism, 217.
43. Harry Truman, “On the Veto of the Taft-Hartley Act” (Speech Delivered to Congress, US Congress, June 20, 1947), https://millercenter.org/the-presidency/presidential-speeches/june-20-1947-veto-taft-hartley-bill.
44. Anthony Leviero, “President Urges Wider Social Help as Offset to Reds: Better Housing, Education, and Pay Would Hurt Communism He Tells Chicago Meeting,” The New York Times, June 5, 1948.
45. Geoffrey Matthews, “Robert A. Taft, The Constitution and American Foreign Policy, 1939-1953,” The Journal of Contemporary History 17, no. 3 (July 1982): 513–14.
46. Harry Truman, “Inaugural Address” (US Congress, January 20, 1949), https://millercenter.org/the-presidency/presidential-speeches/january-20-1949-inaugural-address.
47. Universal Newsreels, Release 292 (Los Angeles: Universal Pictures Company, 1949).
48. Schrecker, Many Are the Crimes: McCarthyism in America, 120.
49. Jacob Starobin, American Communism in Crisis, 1943-1957 (Harvard University Press, 1972), 196.
50. Sherman Labovitz, Being Red in Philadelphia. First (Philadelphia: Camino Books, 1998), 9.
51. Ronald Aronson and Judith Montell, 1st Amendment On Trial: The Case of the Detroit Six. Documentary. The Historical Society for the United States District Court (Eastern District of Michigan, 2010).
52. “Bridges’ Citizenship Is Revoked by Judge on Perjury Conviction,” The New York Times, June 17, 1950.
53. Lori Clune, Executing the Rosenbergs: Death & Diplomacy in a Cold War World. First (New York: Oxford University Press, 2016), 11.
54. Clune, 11.
55. Harry Truman, “Jefferson-Jackson Day Dinner Speech,” https://millercenter.org/the-presidency/presidential-speeches/march-29-1952-jefferson-jackson-day-dinner.
56. Arthur Koestler, “Manifesto of the Congress for Cultural Freedom,” in The Cold War: A History in Documents and Eyewitness Accounts (New York: Oxford University Press, 2004), 416–18.
57. Jussi M. Hanhimäki and Arne Odd Westad, “Walt Disney on Un-American Activities.,” in The Cold War: A History in Documents and Eyewitness Accounts (New York: Oxford University Press, 2004), 423–25.
58. Universal Newsreels, Release 84 (Los Angeles: Universal Pictures Company, 1947).