Culture and the Cold War

1
Culture and the Cold War

• Culture, race, sexuality and McCarthyism

2
The Red Scare

• 2 separate time periods 1917-1920 and late 1940
  late 1950s
• Why then?
• Alger Hiss case (1948 1950) accused of
  passing notes to the Soviets
• Ethel and Julius Rosenberg executed for espionage
  1953
• Communist Party of the United States feared
• House Un-American Activities Committee
  involvement (originally to negate Nazi
  propaganda, Ku Klux Klan)
• FBI heavily involved J. Edgar Hoover

3
Hollywood

• 1947 Hollywood investigated
• Hollywood blacklist, alleged association with
  Communist Party
• 10 witnesses refused to give testimony - the
  Hollywood Ten
• "Are you now or have you ever been a member of
  the Communist Party?"
• Banned from working, some emigrated, some worked
  under pseudonyms

4
Senator Joseph McCarthy

• Many Americans accused being Communists or
  Communist sympathisers
• Investigations before govt., committees and
  agencies
• Primary suspects govt. employees, entertainers,
  educators
• Inconclusive and questionable evidence used in
  these investigations
• Most famous speech February 1950, claiming to
  have a list of people in the State Department who
  were members of the Communist Party

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McCarthy Speech on Communists

• The reason why we find ourselves in a position
  of impotency is not because our only powerful,
  potential enemy has sent men to invade our
  shores, but rather because of the traitorous
  actions of those who have been treated so well by
  this nation. It has not been the less fortunate
  or members of minority groups who have been
  selling this nation out, but rather those who
  have had all the benefits that the wealthiest
  nation on earth has had to offer -- the finest
  homes, the finest college education, and the
  finest jobs in government we can give.
• This is glaringly true in the State Department.
  There the bright young men who are born with
  silver spoons in their mouths are the ones who
  have been worst.
• February 1950, Joseph McCarthy

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The decline of McCarthy

• Most politicians unwilling to criticise McCarthy
  in the Senate
• "Attacking him in this state is regarded as a
  certain method of committing suicide.
• Boston Post
• 1954 started to lose power and public favour
• A special Senate committee set up to investigate
  his methods and actions following the
  recommendations he was censured (67-22)

7
RaceFrom Mary Dudziak, Cold War Civil Rights
Race and the image of American democracy
(Princeton Princeton University Press, 2000),
pp.47-78

• The Negro in American Life
• United States Information Agency pamphlet 1950 or
  1951
• Hide Americas blemishes, while portraying
  American democracy as model for the world
• Revealed nations failings in the past, showing
  US history as story of redemption

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Contents The Negro in American Life

• History of slavery
• enlightened men vigorously opposed the slave
  trade
• Some had moral qualms about the use of cheap or
  slave labour, but educated to believe that
  Negroes strange men from Africa were
  something less than human. And so there began in
  the United States a theory of racial inferiority
  which became a key tenet in support of slavery
  and, later, of economic and social
  discrimination.

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Contents The Negro in American Life

• Hypocrisy of slavery shown in contrast to freedom
  and individual liberty
• Discussion of past in such open way showed
  current openness and free exchange info and ideas
• Showed progress
• Govt. did not force change of opinion, but
  efforts by African American and white citizens
  and govt. meant change in attitude occurring

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Contents The Negro in American Life

• Positive picture of conditions of life for the
  African American in American life
• Some Negroes are large landholders some are
  wealthy businessmen Negroes work in banks,
  public utilities, insurance companies, and retail
  stores. They are physicists, chemists,
  psychologists, doctors
• Legal rights uses illustration of Supreme Court
  case that outlaws segregation in transportation
  and public education, however this case only
  applicable to two universities

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Contents The Negro in American Life

• Aimed to show progress
• A nation so open it could acknowledge its
  faults, a nation that had sinned but was on the
  road to redemption, a nation where politics
  reflected the will of the people, and where the
  people were sufficiently good that, at least in
  time, they willed for the right things. (p.54)

12
Government policies

• Recognition that African Americans most effective
  in countering negative international opinion
• State Dept. sponsored trips by African Americans
  to speak on the Negro Problem in the US
• E.g. Max Yergen, founder of Council on African
  Affairs, travelled to Africa 1952
• Not only did Yergen speak about the
  ever-expanding privileges which his grandfather,
  a Negro slave, could only dream about, but also
  spoke against communism

13
Race and Communism

• a testimony to the progressive direction of
  American race relations was that Negroes in the
  United States have as a group rejected communism
  as a sinister force interested in exploiting
  their position in America for the designs of a
  foreign power. Every communist is a potential
  traitor to his country and my people have chosen
  to cast their lot with democracy, because they
  believe it offers them the opportunity to achieve
  full equality.

14
Negative press

• Africa for the African, no less than for the
  Negro in the United States of America, two world
  wars have brought not dramatic change in status
  Daily we grapple with the forces of imperialism,
  projected by the democracies who condemn
  Communism ever so much. West African Pilot
• India American policy is opposed to the
  liberation and rise of the coloured peoples of
  the world, and the treatment of Negroes in
  America is a home demonstration of this. The
  colour question is linked with imperialism.

15
Questions

• Encountered by Redding in India
• Arent Negroes prohibited public education in
  America?
• Werent American citizens of Japanese descent
  interred in slave labour camps in America during
  the war?
• Why has no coloured person ever held high office
  in America?
• Are Negroes in America lynched for looking at
  white women?
• UN genocide petition prepared by Civil Rights
  Congress documenting hundreds of racially
  motivated violence in the US

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Travel Restrictions

• Paul Robeson most prominent target of Cold War
  travel restriction spoke out against US govt.
  policy
• Hoover asked to surrender passport, refusal met
  with invalidation of passport
• He just one of a number
• William Patterson (drafted petition to UN on
  genocide), passport removed in the best interest
  of the United States
• Josephine Baker (entertainer), French passport,
  but US used leverage to cancel shows and visas

17
African Americans as Propaganda

• Louis Armstrong (entertainer), used for travel
  abroad but cancelled tour
• the way they are treating my people in the
  South, the government can go to hell.
• In the Soviet Union the people over there ask
  me whats wrong with my country, what am I
  supposed to say?
• The Government could go to the devil with its
  plans for a propaganda tour of Soviet Russia.

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The importance of race

• Other nations seized on US race discrimination
  and questioned how US could argue that its form
  of govt. was a model for the world when American
  democracy accommodated racial oppression
• Efforts to tell a progressive story about race in
  America, but counternarrative continued to make
  headlines
• How much does all our talk of democracy mean, if
  we do not practice it at home? I can think of
  no single thing that would be more helpful to us
  in Asia than the achievement of racial harmony in
  America.
• Chester Bowles, US ambassador to India, 1952

19
SexualityFrom K.A.Cuordileone, Politics in an
Age of Anxiety Cold War Political Culture and
the Crisis in American Masculinity, 1949-1960,
The Journal of American History, 87 (2) 2000,
pp.515-545

• Attack on liberals soft, gave in to weaknesses
• Feminine in principle, emasculating in effect
• Reflects more than old-fashioned masculine
  posturing, Cold War political rhetoric overlays
  this
• American males had become the victims of a
  smothering, overpowering, suspiciously
  collectivist mass society a society that had
  smashed the once-autonomous male self, elevated
  women to a position of power in the home, and
  doomed men to a slavish conformity not wholly
  unlike that experienced by men living under
  Communist rule. (pp.522-3)

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Are women to blame?

• Some male writers focused on the matriarchy
  responsible for mens downfall
• But some argued that although women had made
  significant gains, to blame mens decline on
  female aggressiveness was tantamount to an
  admission that the female was bound to win
• The enemy was the group, which intends to
  crush the individual
• Men living pampered life of ease luxury
  emasculating
• Preoccupation with male regeneration physical
  prowess impt.

21
Homosexuality

• 1940s-50s repressive era for homosexuals, but
  more visible than previously Kinsey report
  proved this
• WWII same-sex units provided space for same-sex
  relationships
• Belief that male homosexuality was an
  adaptational response to the burdens of manhood
• Public rhetoric anti-liberals, homosexuals and
  communists, e.g. Rev. Billy Graham praised the
  patriots who were exposing the pinks, the
  lavenders and the reds who have sought refuge
  beneath the wings of the American Eagle common
  moral weaknesses, linked to eastern
  establishment, the Ivy League, the State
  Department

22
Alger Hiss case

• Alger Hiss case (accused of passing classified
  State Department documents to the SU in the
  1930s) coloured by homosexual innuendos
• McCarthy subtly introduced it in his manifesto
  McCarthyism The Fight for America by saying that
  in addition to the security questions
  individuals who are morally weak and perverted
  and who are representing the State Department
  certainly detract from the prestige of this
  nation.

23
Sexuality and domestic politics

• 1952 Presidential election hard/soft imagery
  very conspicuous
• Adlai (Adelaide) Stevenson trilled his speeches
  in a fruity voice. His proponents were
  Harvard lace-cuff liberals, lace-panty
  diplomats who wailed in perfumed anguish and
  sometimes giggled about anticommunism
• While Eisenhower maintained his dignity,
  McCarthy, Nixon and William Jenner handled the
  smears against Stevenson
• McCarthy polarised debate If you want to be
  against McCarthy, boys, youve got to be either a
  Communist or a cocksucker.

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The return of the Republicans

• Cannot attribute Eisenhowers win only to sexual
  innuendos!
• Liberalism on the decline after 20 years in
  office
• Stevenson recent divorce and facing rumors of
  being a womaniser
• Earned reputation of egghead lacking in
  military combat, sports but Ivy League
  credentials, east coast links

25
The importance of sexuality

• Began to lose his own smear battle
• Claims that he was homosexual
• Although such efforts to malign McCarthy may not
  have damaged him politically, they show a climate
  where charges of homosexuality were made with
  such ease that no politician was spared
• Taint of homosexuality hovered over McCarthy
  until his downfall in 1954
• Kennedy rose to power 1962, perfect combination
  of masculine virility and liberal leanings

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Question

• To what extent did US domestic politics play a
  role in the development of the Cold War?

27

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