Prisoner of Context
The Truman Doctrine Speech and J. Edgar Hoover’s Rhetorical Realism
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 12465313 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Stephen M Underhill (corresponding author) |
| Year | 2017 |
| Volume | 20 |
| Issue | 3 |
| Pages | 453-488 |
| Publication date | 2017-09-01 |
| Open Access | No |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | Rhetoric and Public Affairs (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 1094-8392 • E-ISSN: 1534-5238 |
| Publisher | Michigan State University Press (PUBLISHER • US) |
| DOI | 10.14321/rhetpublaffa.20.3.0453 |
| OpenAlex | W2767685468 |
| Language | EN |
| References cited | 12 |
In this project, I argue that J. Edgar Hoover’s style of political realism should be studied by critics because it long preceded that of President Harry S. Truman. The style belonged to a stockpile of anti-Communist imagery that helped to shape how the Truman Doctrine speech was drafted and how audiences interpreted its meanings in more local domestic politics. When Truman finally announced that the Soviet Union had challenged international protocol, I argue that he confirmed the vision that his Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) director and other detractors had developed throughout the New Deal to discredit reformers who challenged issues of race, labor, and police technique. In this way, anti-Communist containment rhetoric limited the president’s ability to control the domestic security and economic agendas. The stockpile of anti-Communist discourse belonged to, I also argue, a relative of political realism—literary realism and its spinoff, literary naturalism. My final argument is that the FBI director refurbished key tropes in the stockpile, which helped Truman’s congressional opponents invoke Hoover’s authority within the executive branch and thereby displace the president’s credibility as commander in chief. Combined, Hoover and his allies in Congress and elsewhere used rhetorical realism to communicate a deterministic philosophy about human nature through a diffuse mythic narrative, coordinated between Congress, Hollywood, the press, and official FBI discourse
Argument (complex analysis · Art · Communism · Doctrine · Literature · Political science · Politics · Realism · Rhetoric · Rhetorical question · Sociology · Theology · Academic Freedom and Politics · American Political and Social Dynamics · Intelligence, Security, War Strategy · Law · Philosophy
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The Roosevelt Administration and Black America
The Social Construction of American Realism
Report on the Child Offender in the Federal System of Justice
Report on Police
Fire, Flood, and Red Fever
Pink herring & the fourth persona
Truman's rhetorical reticence, 1945–1947
The Roosevelt Administration and Legislative-Executive Conflict
The Naacp and a Federal Antilynching Bill, 1934-1940
| Highly cited | No |
|---|