The Language of A Cold Warrior

Americans struggled with paranoia in the early 1950s. Many believed the most extravagant charges about the presence of Communists in the United States. Others had no firm convictions about the threat of Communism but tolerated an unrestricted search for disloyal citizens. To a later generation, there seems to have been little connection between the degree of danger and the public’s alarm. A recent attempt to explain this national paranoia holds the Truman administration responsible for creating an unreasoning anti-Communist mentality. According to Athan Theoharis and Richard Freeland, members of the Truman administration exaggerated the dangers of international and domestic Communism. The public heard that the United States was “imminently threatened by a massive ideologically based assault upon everything Americans valued.” The administration’s excessively moralistic rhetoric portrayed the Soviet Union as the “Anti-Christ.” This strident anti-Communism created a public mood that Joseph McCarthy and others exploited for their political advantage. Thus, one of McCarthy’s major victims—the Truman administration—created the preconditions for McCarthyism

Administration (probate law · Allegiance · Communism · Ideology · Paranoia · Political science · Politics · Rhetoric · Sociology · Soviet union · Theology · Law · Philosophy · Psychology · Rhetoric and Communication Studies

• The Six Great Societies

  Open Access•Ursula Hackett•Presidential Studies Quarterly•2016

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• Politics and Policies of the Truman Administration

  William C Berman, Barton J Bernstein•The Journal of Southern History•1971

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• The Specter

  Susan M Hartmann, Robert Griffith et al.•Journal of American History•1975

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• Politics and Policies of the Truman Administration

  Donald R Mccoy, Barton J Bernstein•Journal of American History•1970

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