Between 1947 and 1954, the Texas State Legislature enacted a series of eight highly restrictive anti-communist laws. Designed to protect political, military, and economic structures in the state from communist infiltration, the laws banned communists from participating the political process, required registration of all communists who entered the state and eventually outlawed the Communist Party. Drawn from perceptions about Cold War events, such as the Truman Doctrine and the Korean War, and an expanding economy inside of Texas, members of the state legislature perceived that communism represented a threat to their state. However, when presented with the opportunity to put the laws into action during the 1953 Port Arthur Labor Strike, the state government failed to bring any charges against those who they labeled as communists. Instead of actually curtailing the limited communist presence inside of the state, members of the state government instead used the laws to leverage political control throughout the state by attacking labor, liberals in education and government, and racial minorities with accusations of communism.

No description available.

Dwight D. Eisenhower has been criticized as an anti-intellectual by scholars such as Richard Hofstadter. Eisenhower’s tenure as president of Columbia University was one segment of his career he was particularly criticized for because of his non-traditional approach to education there. This paper examines Eisenhower’s time at Columbia to explain how anti-intellectualism played into his university administration. It explains how his personality and general outlook came to clash with the intellectual environment of Columbia especially in the wake of the faculty revolt against former Columbia President Nicholas Murray Butler. It argues that Eisenhower utilized the Columbia institution to promote a Cold War educational agenda, which often belittled Columbia intellectuals and their scholarly pursuits. However, this paper also counter-argues that Eisenhower, despite accusations of anti-intellectualism, was an academically interested man who never engaged in true suppression of free thought despite pressure from McCarthyite influences in American government, media and business.

A presente dissertação analisa dois filmes norte-americanos produzidos e distribuídos pelo estúdio Warner Bros., ambos baseados em histórias reais, que de distintas formas representaram, seja de forma idealista ou condenatória, a União Soviética, o Comunismo e os membros do Partido Comunista dos Estados Unidos (CPUSA). O primeiro, Missão em Moscou, dirigido pelo já renomado Michael Curtiz e lançado no contexto da Segunda Guerra Mundial, apresenta evidências de ter sido feito sob a tutela tanto da agência governamental Birô do Cinema- Secretaria de Informação da Guerra quanto do presidente dos Estados Unidos à época, Franklin Delano Roosevelt. Pela forma como interpretou fatos da história da Rússia e por sua campanha do país como membro dos países Aliados, o filme recebeu a denominação de pró-soviético pela literatura que o estudou. Já o segundo, Eu Fui um Comunista para o FBI, lançado apenas oito anos após Missão em Moscou, mas já no contexto da Guerra Fria, evidenciou, por outro lado, a tentativa da companhia cinematográfica em se alinhar à atmosfera de repúdio ao Comunismo reinante em boa parte da opinião pública norte-americana no período, bem como de tentar afastar as acusações do Comitê de Atividade Antiamericanas (HUAC) da presença dentro de Hollywood de elementos subversivos e de sua propaganda. Por sua representação, filmes como Eu Fui um Comunista para o FBI, recorrentes na década de 1950, foram denominados anticomunistas. O estudo aqui empreendido inicia-se com a caracterização da indústria cinematográfica em Hollywood na época de sua chamada Era Clássica (1930- 1948), primeiro capítulo; passando pelas análises fílmicas e de contexto de ambas as obras, resultando no capítulo dois e três; para encerrar-se, no último capítulo, com as considerações sobre a recepção das duas obras, levando para isso em conta as produções de significado de três agentes: os críticos cinematográficos; o seu público espectador, e os seus números de bilheteria. Por fim, nas considerações finais, colocamos em comparação a obra pró-soviética e anticomunista no tocante às suas diferenças, bem como similitudes, nas estratégias para a representação das personagens envolvidas em suas tramas. / This thesis analyses two American movies produced and distributed by Warner Bros. Studios. Both are based on true stories, that used different depictions, one in an idealized way and the other condemnatory, of the Soviet Union, of the Communism and of the members of the Communist Party of the United States. The first film, Mission to Moscow, directed by Michael Curtiz and released in the context of World War II, presents evidence that it was fostered by the governmental war agency, the Bureau of Motion Pictures Office of War Information and by the president of the United States himself at that time, Franklin Delano Roosevelt. Due to its interpretation of recent facts in Russian history and because of its propagandistic campaign to generate a better understanding of this country among Americans, historians and film theorists have classified the picture as pro-Soviet. The second movie, I Was a Communist for the FBI, whose premiere occurred only eight years after Mission to Moscow, showed, on the other hand, Warner Bros. attempt to realign itself to the atmosphere of anticommunism perpetrated by the majority of American public opinion and also to deny any accusation that the motion picture industry was full of subversive elements and their propaganda. When considered for its representation and depiction of Communism, movies like I Was a Communist for the FBI, very common in the 1950s, was denominated anticommunist. We divided this work into four parts. We start in the first chapter by exploring the motion picture industry in Hollywood during what was called the Golden Age (1930 1948). Then, we move to the film analyses of both pictures, the content of chapters two and three; in chapter four we study the reception of the two feature films, using as elements of measure the productions of meaning of three different agents: the critics, the spectator and the box-office numbers. Finally, in Conclusions, we compare Mission to Moscow and I Was a Communist for the FBI, aiming to observe them in the light of their differences but also of their similarities in the strategies used for the representation of the characters in the stories.

Anti-communism in America reached its apex in the 1950s. One element of this crusade focused on preventing suspected communists from working in their chosen profession, a practice called blacklisting. In attempting to assert their legal rights, the blacklisted found an imperfect justice system, cloaked in equality, yet hampered by the existing cultural setting that treated as immoral anything communist. This dissertation deconstructs the interplay between culture and law, between the desire to root out communists and the attempt to maintain a fair legal system. With an emphasis on the entertainment industry, broadly defined, I will trace blacklisting from anti-labor tool to for-profit instrument focusing on how the blacklisted employed the lawsuit to fight for their jobs. I argue that from the late 1940s through the mid-1960s, blacklisted plaintiffs continuously found themselves handicapped by their association -- either current or past, real or perceived -- with the Communist Party, and not until a plaintiff with no demonstrable ties to communism came along did the legal system prove a comprehensively effective tool in ending the practice. I show that various members of the blacklisted community, with the aid of a small number of lawyers, tried an assortment of legal theories in their attempt to remedy their pariah status with the results often promising -- the first three jury trials ended in victories for the plaintiffs -- but ultimately hollow as a recalcitrant appellate judiciary dashed these early hopes. Moreover, I show how plaintiff's lawyers, sensitive to a legal system that demanded a successful plaintiff be free of communist ties, adjusted their strategy to accommodate the relationship between cultural setting and legal success. / text

This thesis evaluates the effects of compulsory military service in South Korea on the political behavior of men from a public policy standpoint. I take an institutional point of view on conscription, in that conscription forces the military to accept individuals with minimal screening. Given the distinct set of values embodied by the military, I hypothesize that the military would need a powerful, comprehensive, and fast program of indoctrination to re-socialize civilians into military uniform, trustable enough to be entrusted with a gun or a confidential document. Based on the existence of such a program and related academic literature, I go on to look at how a military attitude has political implications, especially for the security-environment of the Korean peninsula. Given the ideological nature of the inter-Korean conflict, the South Korean military was biased against the liberals, as liberals were most likely to generate policies supporting conciliatory and cooperative measures towards North Korea, like the removal of U.S. forces from South Korea and the repeal of the National Security Laws that outlaw discussion of communism. For an empirical evaluation, I pose the hypothesis that this political bias would manifest itself in the male public via the military’s indoctrinative program. With data from the Korean General Social Survey, the Public Opinion and Foreign Policy, and the South Korean General Election Panel Study, I have found that males respond acutely to specific security issues in favor or against according to the military’s point of view. However, the evidence for an overall bias on political parties generally was inconclusive. The uncertainty was mainly rooted in the fact that liberal parties have strategically avoided speaking out on specific policy issues during election.

This thesis aims to set a basic framework for "memories of communism" which come along with attempts on political construction of the past during post-1989 regime. Based on the example of public debate about "The Act on the Lawlessness of the Communist Regime and on Resistance Against It", we will attempt to reveal main resources of anti-communist rhetoric and symbols, and to clarify the role they played in forging political identities in the first half of the 1990s. While the introductory chapter explores concepts which allow us to conceptualize memory in the analysis of the political, other chapters are devoted to various interpretations of the past in the context of discussions of de- communization measures that belong to the category of "coming to terms with the past" (Lustration Act, The Act on the Lawlessness of the Communist Regime). Does Czech anti-communism result from those measures adopted between 1991 and 1993, or does their adoption seek to reduce the plurality of politics of memory? Are attempts to label the previous regime as criminal the exclusive form of anti-communism, or does anti-communism amount to a combination of moral, legal and political arguments that seek to criminalize the previous social and legal order? By analysing different types of utterances we will attempt to...

No description available.

No description available.

The Appalachian Preaching Missions (1955-1981) occurred annually in Northeast Tennessee, with their predecessor, the Bristol Preaching Mission, dating back to at least 1949. Local churches, primarily Protestant, organized and convened these annual ecumenical gatherings. Nationally known clergy and laypeople from various denominations spoke, with up to several thousand congregants attending each mission. These individuals provided sermons and speeches on spiritual, domestic, and international issues. Among the most consistently repeated sermon themes was Christianity’s spiritual conflict with atheistic communism. This work addresses the missions’ origins and how the speakers spoke on international Christian missions in decolonized or developing nations as threatened by communist regimes, anxieties of nuclear proliferation, and the need for ecumenical cooperation. This work demonstrates that the choice of subject matter and speakers at the missions reflected wider American anti-communism, an increased politicization of Christianity, and ecumenical coalition building.