Difference between revisions of "Anti-communism" - New World Encyclopedia

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'''Anti-communism''' refers to opposition to [[communism]], especially [[Marxism-Lenism]]. The country best known for being an opponent of communism is the [[United States]], together with its long-time allies like the [[United Kingdom]], [[Canada]], [[France]], and [[Australia]]. Some wars and clashes betweens supporters and opponents of communism include the [[Chinese Civil War]], the [[Korean War]], the [[Vietnam War]], the the so-called [[Cold War]], which refers to the overall struggle between the communist world and the Free World. The 1991 [[Collapse of the Soviet Union]] was a major victory for the anti-communist cause, which generally view the U.S.S.R. as the heart of the communist threat.  
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[[Image:Pope-poland.jpg|thumb|350px|Pope John Paul II speaks to crowds in Poland in 1979]]
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'''Anti-communism''' refers to opposition to [[communism]], especially [[Marxism-Leninism]]. Organized anti-communism developed in reaction to the growing power of the communist movement after the [[Soviet Union]] was established in 1917.
  
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Marxism, and the form of communism associated with it, rose to prominence in the twentieth century. Organized anti-communism developed in reaction to the growing popularity of the communist movement after the Soviet Union was established in 1917. [[monarchism|Monarchists]], Christians, social-democrats, and pro-free market forces in [[Europe]] fought against the first wave of [[communist revolution]]s from 1917 to 1922. [[Fascism]] and [[Nazism]] were based in part on a violent brand of anti-communism, and they incited fear of a communist revolution in order to gain political power. [[Nationalism|Nationalists]] fought against communism in numerous civil wars across the globe. Classical [[Liberalism]] shaped much of the anti-communist foreign policy of the Western powers, and dominated anti-communist intellectual thought in the second half of the twentieth century. The human rights movement of the late twentieth century added a strong moral component to the anti-communist cause, exposing gross abuses of human rights in the communist world.
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[[monarchism|Monarchists]], Christians, [[Liberalism|classical Liberals]], [[Social Democracy|social-democrats]], and pro-[[free market]] forces in [[Europe]] opposed the first wave of [[communist revolution]]s from 1917 to 1922. [[Fascism]] and [[Nazism]] were based in part on a violent form of anti-communism. After [[World War II]], the liberal democracies took the lead in opposing Soviet communism during the [[Cold War]]. The [[human rights]] movement of the late twentieth century added a strong moral component to the anti-communist cause, exposing gross abuses of human rights in the communist world. At the same time, military dictatorships sometimes used anti-communism as a justification for harsh repression of political opposition.
  
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Following the [[October Revolution]] in [[Russia]], Marxist communism became largely associated with the [[Soviet Union]] in the public imagination (though there were many Marxists and communists who did not support the Soviet Union and its policies).{{Fact|date=April 2008}} As a result, anti-communism and opposition to the Soviet Union became almost indistinguishable, especially in terms of foreign policy. Anti-communism was an important element in the foreign policy of the [[Axis powers]]{{Fact|date=April 2008}} during the 1930s and the [[United States]] during the [[Cold War]].
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The country best known for being an opponent of communism is the [[United States]], together with its long-time allies like the [[United Kingdom]], [[Canada]], [[France]], and [[Australia]]. In addition to government policies to resist the spread of Soviet communism, anti-communist [[NGO's|non-governmental organizations]] in these countries did much to heighten the world's awareness of communism.
  
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==Conservative and traditionalist anti-communism==
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The 1991 [[collapse of the Soviet Union]] was a major victory for the anti-communist cause, which generally viewed the [[Soviet Union|USSR]] as the heart of the communist threat. Anti-communism today often focuses on exposing human rights abuses in the remaining [[Marxism-Leninism|Marxist-Leninist]] regimes and preventing extreme left-wing movements from taking over democratic nations.
  
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There has been great deal of conflict between communists on the one hand, and conservatives and traditionalists on the other. The majority of communist revolutions have occurred in relatively conservative countries, and most of the governments overthrown by communists had been conservative governments.
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==The career of anti-communism==
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Since communists advocate social equality, they are theoretically opposed to [[monarchy]], [[aristocracy]], and other forms of hereditary privilege. In the late 19th and early 20th century, the young communist movement was at odds with the traditional monarchies that ruled over much of the [[Europe]]an continent. At the time, monarchists were the most prominent anti-communists, and many European monarchies outlawed the public expression of communist views. Advocacy of communism was illegal in the [[Russian Empire]], the [[German Empire]] and [[Austria-Hungary]], the three most powerful monarchies in continental Europe prior to [[World War I]]. Monarchists viewed inequality in wealth and political power as resulting from the divine natural order, and they believed that kings and emperors had the right to take any steps necessary to prevent the spread of ideas that threatened this natural order.
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In the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, the [[communism|communist]] movement was at odds with the traditional monarchies that ruled over much of the [[Europe]]an continent. At the time, monarchists and religious leaders who supported traditional [[monarchy|monarchies]] were the most prominent anti-communists, and many European monarchies outlawed the public expression of communist views.
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However, [[World War I]] shattered the balance of power in Europe, and delivered a fatal blow to traditional monarchy. Kings and emperors drew their legitimacy from their image as wise protectors of the people and stewards of the country. It was assumed that the king always knew best, and that the king's judgment was, if not infallible, at least better than the judgment of the common people. But the world war, which had been started by the kings of Europe, brought death and misery on a scale never seen before. The image of the king as a wise ruler was replaced by the image of the king as a detached fool who knew nothing of the suffering of his people. The old European monarchies were overthrown in a series of revolutions and military engagements. The most conservative European monarchy, the Russian Empire, was replaced by the communist-run Soviet Union. The Russian Revolution inspired a series of other communist revolutions across Europe in the years 1917-1922. Many of these, such as the [[German Revolution]], were defeated by conservative monarchist military units.
 
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The 1920s and 30s saw the fading of traditional conservatism. The mantle of conservative anti-communism was taken up by the rising [[fascism|fascist]] movements on the one hand, and by [[United States|American]]-inspired [[liberal conservatism|liberal conservatives]] on the other. Communism remained largely a European phenomenon, so anti-communism was also concentrated in Europe. American anti-communist sentiments, accordingly, followed their European counterparts. At that time, an American anti-communist such as [[Henry Ford]], would also be an admirer of the works of Adolf Hitler. When communist groups and political parties began appearing elsewhere in the world, such as in the [[Republic of China]] in the late 1920s, their opponents were usually [[colonialism|colonial authorities]] and/or local nationalist movements.
 
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Some of the [[reactionary]] anti-communist [[dictatorship]]s that were established in Europe in the late 1930s, such as the government of [[Francisco Franco]] in [[Spain]], are considered to fall somewhere on the border between traditional conservatism and fascism.
 
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[[Image:ARP-1946.jpg|thumb|150px|1946 election poster of the [[Netherlands|Dutch]] [[Anti-Revolutionary Party]] (Religious Conservatives) depicting a dike standing against a Communist storm. It reads "Strengthen the Dike"]]
 
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After [[World War II]], communism became a global phenomenon, and anti-communism became an integral part of the domestic and foreign policies of the [[United States]] and its [[NATO]] allies. Conservatism in the post-war era abandoned its monarchist and aristocratic roots, focusing instead on the preservation of the [[free market]] (sometimes [[capitalism]] itself), [[private property]], the interests of large [[corporation]]s, organic inter-cooperation by different classes, and the defense of traditional customs, values, social norms and ways of life. These conservatives saw communism as dangerous due to its intention to abolish private property and its desire to do away with cultural norms, such as traditional [[gender role]]s and - sometimes - sexual norms.
 
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The United States never experienced [[paleoconservatism|traditional conservatism]] in the 20th century. As a result, the ideology known as [[American conservatism]] does not share the monarchist history of its European counterpart. Instead, it is based on [[individualism]] and a [[capitalist]] view of economic competition as beneficial for society, which is, quite unusually, coupled with strong religious sentiment and defense of the [[traditional family]]. American conservatism was always opposed to communism, but this opposition only became a cornerstone of American conservative thought in the 1940s and 50s. The United States made anti-communism the top priority of its foreign policy, and many American conservatives sought to combat what they saw as communist influence at home. This led to the adoption of a number of domestic policies that are collectively known under the term "[[McCarthyism]]."
 
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Throughout the [[Cold War]], conservative governments in [[Asia]], [[Africa]] and [[Latin America]] turned to the United States for political and economic support. Some of these were [[authoritarian]] regimes, which - according to their critics - used the fear of communism as a means of legitimizing repression, the suspension of [[civil rights]], and the abolition of [[democracy]].{{Fact|date=May 2007}} Examples include [[South Korea]] under [[Syngman Rhee]] ''(see [[Jeju massacre]])'', the [[Republic of China]] under [[Chiang Kai-shek]] ''(see [[228 Incident]])'', [[South Vietnam]] under [[Ngo Dinh Diem]], [[Indonesia]] under General [[Suharto]], [[Zaire]] under [[Mobutu Sese Seko]], [[Paraguay]] under [[Alfredo Stroessner]] and [[Chile]] under [[Augusto Pinochet]].{{Fact|date=May 2007}}
 
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During the 1980s, the conservative governments of [[Ronald Reagan]] in the United States and [[Margaret Thatcher]] in Britain followed a clearly anti-Soviet foreign policy that is credited by their supporters as a major factor in the fall of the Soviet Union and the democratization of [[Eastern Europe]] and other countries.
 
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In the aftermath of the Cold War, communism is no longer seen as a major force in world politics, and therefore most conservatives are far less concerned with anti-communism. Nevertheless, conservative anti-communism resurfaces anywhere that communist political groups make significant advances, such as in [[Nepal]] in recent years.
 
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==Fascist anti-communism==
 
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{{seealso|Anti-Comintern Pact}}
 
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[[Fascism]] and "Soviet" Communism are political systems that arose to prominence after [[World War I]]. Historians of the period between World War I and [[World War II]] such as [[E.H. Carr]] and [[Eric Hobsbawm]] point out that [[liberal democracy]] was under serious stress in this period and seemed to be a doomed philosophy. The socialist movement worldwide split as the leaders of the [[social democratic]] parties supported the war, while supporters of the [[Russian Revolution of 1917]] formed [[Communist Parties]] in most industrialized (and many non-industrialized) nations.
 
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At the end of World War I and the Russian revolution, there were attempted socialist uprisings or threats of socialist uprisings throughout Europe. Most notably in Germany where the [[Spartacist uprising]] in January 1919 failed. In Bavaria, Communists successfully overthrew the government and established the [[Bavarian Soviet Republic]], that lasted for a few weeks in 1919. Similar short lived Soviet Republics emerged in other German states and a short lived Soviet government was also established in [[Hungary]] under [[Béla Kun]] in 1919.
 
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The Russian Revolution also inspired attempted revolutionary movements in [[Italy]] with a wave of factory occupations, a strike wave in Britain, the [[Winnipeg General Strike]], the [[Seattle General Strike of 1919|Seattle General Strike]] and other radical events.
 
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Many historians view fascism as a reaction against to these developments—a movement that both tried to appeal to the [[working class]] and divert them from [[Marxism]] and also appealed to [[capitalists]] as a bulwark against [[Bolshevism]].{{Fact|date=February 2007}} Italian fascism founded and led by [[Benito Mussolini]] took power with the blessing of Italy's king after years of leftist unrest led many conservatives to fear that a communist revolution was inevitable. Throughout Europe, numerous [[aristocracy|aristocrats]] and [[Conservatism|conservative]] intellectuals as well as capitalists and industrialists lent their support to fascist movements in their countries that arose in emulation of Italian fascism. Meanwhile in Germany, numerous right wing nationalist groups arose, particularly out of the post-war [[Freikorps]], which were used to crush both the Spartacist uprising and the Munich Soviet.
 
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However, certain anti-communist authors have disputed the view of fascism as a reaction against socialist revolutionary movements and instead stressed what they believed to be essential similarities between state communism and fascism in both theory and practice. This is posited under the theory of [[totalitarianism]]. The noted [[Austrian School]] [[economist]] [[Friedrich Hayek]], author of ''[[The Road to Serfdom]]'', argued that various modern [[totalitarian]] movements, including fascism and Communism, have common philosophical roots both springing from the opposition to the [[liberalism]] of the 19th century. Those arguing from these positions see it as far more than a coincidence that [[Benito Mussolini]] himself claimed to be a [[Marxist]] and member of the Italian Socialist Party before World War I, while many philosophical founders of fascism, such as [[Sergio Panunzio]] and [[Giovanni Gentile]], came from a Marxist or [[syndicalist]] background that they later repudiated in their writings. However, these authors concede that the ideologies are divided on the issue of what the foundation for the ideal society should be (communists focus on class struggle for a classless society free of all forms of exploitation and oppression, while fascists focus on nationalist class solidarity through an often corporate state{{Fact|date=December 2007}}.) Additionally, as late as 1938 Hitler said that marxism and National Socialism were practically the same thing.<ref>F.A.Hayek, The Road to Serfdom</ref>
 
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With the worldwide [[Great Depression]] of the 1930s, it seemed that liberalism and the liberal form of capitalism was doomed; communist and fascist movements swelled. These movements were bitterly opposed to each other and fought each other frequently. The most notable example of this conflict was the [[Spanish Civil War]], which became in part a [[proxy war]] between the fascist countries and their international supporters who backed [[Francisco Franco]] and the worldwide Communist movement (allied uneasily with [[Anarchism|anarchists]] and [[Trotskyists]]) which backed the [[Second Spanish Republic|Republican]] government and were aided chiefly by the [[Soviet Union]].
 
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Initially, the [[Soviet Union]] supported the idea of a coalition with the western powers against [[Nazi Germany]] as well as [[popular front]]s in various countries against domestic fascism. This policy was largely unsuccessful due to the distrust shown by the western powers (especially Britain) towards the Soviet Union. The [[Munich Agreement]] between Germany, France and Britain heightened Soviet fears that the western powers were endeavoring to force them to bear the brunt of a war against Nazism. The Soviets changed their policy and negotiated a non-aggression pact with Germany, known as the [[Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact]] in 1939. The Soviets later argued that this was necessary to buy them time to prepare for an expected war with Germany. However, some critics question this claim, pointing out that along with a non-aggression clause, the pact also laid out extensive economic cooperation between the Soviets and Germans, in the form of the [[German-Soviet Commercial Agreement]], providing Nazi Germany some of the materials it needed to build its war machine. This detail is used by the aforementioned critics to argue that Stalin expected the war to be waged solely between Germany and the Western Allies, with the Soviet Union keeping its neutrality while its two greatest enemies fought each other.
 
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Whatever the case, it is clear that Stalin did not expect the Germans to attack until 1942, so he was taken by surprise when Nazi Germany invaded the Soviet Union in June 1941, with [[Operation Barbarossa]]. Fascism and Communism reverted to their relationship as lethal enemies - with the war, in the eyes of both sides, becoming one between their respective ideologies.
 
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==Roman Catholic Church anti-communism==
 
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Catholic church has a history of anti-communism. In fact [[Pope John Paul II]] was harsh critic of communism[http://www.cnn.com/WORLD/9801/21/papal.politics/index.html], other popes shared this view as well, for example [[Pope Pius IX]] issued [[pope|Papal]] [[encyclical]] called [[Quanta Cura]] in which he called "Communism and Socialism" the most fatal error<ref>[[Pius IX]]. ''Quanta Cura (Condemning Current Errors)''. 8 Dec. 1864. Retrieved on 11-12-2007 from [http://www.ewtn.com/library/ENCYC/P9QUANTA.htm http://www.ewtn.com/library/ENCYC/P9QUANTA.htm].</ref> During the [[Spanish Civil War]], the Catholic church opposed the left-leaning Republican forces due to their ties to communism and atrocities against Catholicism in Spain, and in many churches and schools prayers were made for the victory of [[Franco]] and the Nationalists.
 
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==Nationalist anti-communism==
 
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{{sect-stub}}
 
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Nationalist anti-communism has usually arisen for two reasons: defense of traditional values or social structures as a part of the nationalists' program of enhancing national power and prestige, in competition with communist groups fighting in a war of national liberation (i.e. the [[Angolan Civil War]], the [[Vietnam War]], etc.) or in a war of aggression, as seen by [[Nazi Germany]] and [[Fascist Italy]] .{{Fact|date=December 2007}}
 
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==Objectivist anti-communism==
 
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{{sect-stub}}
 
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One example of anti-communist philosophy is the [[Objectivism (Ayn Rand)|Objectivist]] philosophy presented in the works of [[Ayn Rand]]. Objectivism asserts that [[laissez-faire]] [[capitalism]] flows directly from human nature and [[rational egoism|rational self-interest]]. In Rand's book ''[[Atlas Shrugged]]'', several protagonists are wealthy American industrialists while the antagonists, desiring to destroy individual achievement, are gradually building a culture and political system the novel presents as highly [[collectivist]], approaching [[Communism]]. The presumption of this ulterior Communist motive is reinforced by the frequent mention of other countries having become "People's States" after enacting similar measures, with disastrous economic results implied.
 
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==Anarchist anti-communism==
 
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{{Totally-disputed-section|date=March 2008}}
 
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:''This section deals with anarchist criticisms of various forms of communism. Many anarchists (including [[anarchist communism|anarchist communists]]) describe themselves as communists - spelled with a lower case c - referring to their belief in a society without exploitation or property.''
 
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Some anarchists criticize state Communism. These anarchists traditionally agree with Communists that capitalism is a tool for oppression, that it is unjust and that it should be destroyed, one way or another. These anarchists, however, go on to say that ''all'' centralized or coercive power (as opposed to just wealth) is ultimately injurious to the individual. Therefore, the concepts of [[dictatorship of the proletariat]], state ownership of the means of production, and other similar tendencies within Marxist thought are [[wikt:anathema|anathema]] to an anarchist, regardless of whether the state in question is democratic. However other anarchists such as  have a more fundamental critique of communism, often from an [[individualist]] or even [[anarcho-capitalist]] point of view. There are, also, strong anti-anarchist tendencies among Marxists, who have been denounced variously as unscientific, romantic, or bourgeois. e.g. according to the [[International Communist League]] (Fourth Internationalist) in a pamphlet entitled ''Marxism versus Anarchism''.[http://www.icl-fi.org/otherlit/pamphlets/index.html]
 
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The debates in the [[First International]] between [[Mikhail Bakunin]] and Karl Marx are well-known.<ref>[http://dwardmac.pitzer.edu:16080/Anarchist_Archives/bakunin/Bakuninarchive.html Texts by Bakunin at Anarchy Archives]; [http://dwardmac.pitzer.edu:16080/Anarchist_Archives/bakunin/Bakuninarchive.html Texts by Marx on Bakunin at Marxist Internet Archive]</ref> While Bakunin's own philosophy owed much to Marx's critique of capitalism, their views diverged sharply over questions of how a post-capitalistic society should be organized. Bakunin saw the Marxist State as simply another form of oppression:
 
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<blockquote>The question arises, if the proletariat is ruling, over whom will it rule? This means there will remain another proletariat which will be subordinated to this new domination, this new state.</blockquote>
 
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He loathed the idea of a [[vanguard party]] ruling the masses from above, quipping that "when the people are being beaten with a stick, they are not much happier if it is called 'the People's Stick.'"
 
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[[Image:RCP-burn.jpg|right|thumb|An anarchist-made image depicting a flaming flag representing the [[Revolutionary Communist Party, USA]].]]
 
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Anarchists initially rejoiced over the 1917 revolution as an example of workers taking power for themselves, and indeed played a part in the revolution (see [[Russian anarchism]]). It quickly became evident, however, that the [[Bolsheviks]] and the anarchists had very different ideas regarding the kind of society they wanted to build there. Anarchist [[Emma Goldman]], for example, deported from the USA to Russia in 1919, was initially enthusiastic about the revolution, but left sorely disappointed, and began to write her book ''[[My Disillusionment in Russia]]''. Perhaps the most prominent and respected Russian anarchist of the era, Peter Kropotkin, proffered trenchant criticism of the emergent Bolshevik bureaucracy in letters to Lenin (who on rare occasions visited his home). He noted in 1920: "[a party dictatorship] is positively harmful for the building of a new socialist system. What is needed is local construction by local forces" and "Russia has already become a Soviet Republic only in name" (referring to the dominance of Bolshevik party committees over the peasants' and workers' soviets).
 
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Anarchists often cite the crushing of the [[Kronstadt Rebellion]], in which the [[Red Army]] defeated an embryonic anarchist commune, as a specific example of the tyranny they perceived in the Bolshevik government. The [[typhus]] epidemic, and subsequent crushing of [[Nestor Makhno]]'s weakened anarcho-communist "Black Army" in the [[Ukraine]] was also a specifically controversial action of the early Bolsheviks.
 
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During the [[Spanish Civil War]], a [[Stalinist]] [[Communist Party of Spain]] gained considerable influence due to the political manipulation of aid from the Soviet Union. Communists and liberals on the Republican side fought mainly against the [[Falange]] fascists, but also put some effort against the [[anarchist]] [[Spanish Revolution]], ostensibly to bolster the anti-Fascist front (the anarchist response was, "The revolution and the war are inseparable"). The most dramatic action against the anarchists was in May 1937, when Communist-led police forces attempted to take over a telephone building run by the [[Confederación Nacional del Trabajo]] in [[Barcelona]]. The telephone workers fought back, setting up barricades and surrounding the Communist "[[Lenin Barracks]]." Five days of street fighting in the [[Barcelona May Days]] ensued. The enmity between anarchists at communists reached a new high, and remained there.
 
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Bitter feelings between some anarchists and some communists are apparent even today in revolutionary circles. Much conflict and arguing occurs as it did in the 19th century between Marx and Bakunin. However, in recent times, anarchists and Marxist Communists often join in protest (at least for pragmatic purposes) on certain issues, such as the recent [[2003 invasion of Iraq]] and the anti globalisation movement.
 
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==[[New Left]] and [[Eurocommunism]]==
 
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{{seealso|Anti-Stalinist left}}
 
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Many left-wing [[socialist]] parties tend to distance themselves from the more radical Stalinism and Maoism. Despite his Radical Socialist views{{Fact|date=December 2007}}, [[George Orwell]] was also highly critical of what he perceived as the [[authoritarianism]] of Soviet regime.
 
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There are also various revolutionary socialists, including some who still self-identify as communists (ex. Trotskyism, Titoism), who are highly critical of what is conventionally known as communism in the west (more precisely Marxism-Leninism, Maoism, Stalinism).
 
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{{sect-stub}}
 
  
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==Anti-communism in the United States and Cold War==
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However, after [[World War I]], several European monarchies were overthrown in a series of revolutions and military engagements. The most conservative European monarchy, the Russian empire, was replaced by the communist-run [[Soviet Union]]. The [[Russian Revolution]] also inspired and actively supported a series of other communist revolutions across Europe in the years of 1917-1922. The Soviet policy of ruthlessly repressing the new regime's opponents and treating religious leaders as enemies of the state, meanwhile, shocked much of the world.
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<!-- Deleted image removed: [[Image:Soviets painting world red with blood.jpg|thumb|A Cold War film depicts the Soviets painting the globe with blood.]] —>
 
  
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The first major manifestation of anti-communism in the United States occurred 1919–1920 in the First Red Scare led by Attorney General Alexander Mitchell Palmer.  
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[[Image:Franco eisenhower 1959 madrid.jpg|thumb|300px|left|Francisco Franco and President [[Dwight D. Eisenhower]] in Madrid in 1959.]]
  
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Following World War II and the rise of the Soviet Union, many of the objections to Communism took on an added urgency because of the stated Communist view that their ideology was universal. The fear of many anti-Communists within the United States was that Communism would triumph throughout the entire world and eventually be a direct threat to the government of the United States. This view led to the domino theory in which a communist takeover in any nation could not be tolerated because it would lead to a chain reaction which would result in a triumph of world communism. There were fears that powerful nations like the Soviet Union and the People's Republic of China were using their power to forcibly assimilate other countries into communist rule. The Soviet Union's expansion into Central Europe after World War II was seen as evidence of this. These actions prompted many politicians to adopt a kind of pragmatic anti-Communism, opposing the ideology as a way of limiting the expansion of the Soviet Empire. The US policy of halting further communist expansion came to be known as containment.
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The 1920s and 1930s saw the fading of traditionalist [[conservatism]]. The mantle of anti-communism was thus taken up by [[United States|American]]-inspired [[Liberalism]] on the one hand and the rising [[fascism|fascist]] movements on the other. These became the "two faces" of anti-communism over the next several decades.
  
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The United States government usually argued its anti-communism by citing the human rights record of Communist states, most notably the Soviet Union during the Stalin era, [[Maoism|Maoist]] China, the short-lived [[Khmer Rouge]] government in [[Cambodia]] led by [[Pol Pot]], and [[North Korea]], because those states ended up killing of millions of their own people and continued to suppress civil liberties of the surviving population.
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Since communism remained largely a European phenomenon, American anti-communist sentiments tended to follow their European counterparts. When communist groups and political parties began appearing elsewhere in the world, such as [[China]] in the late 1920s, their first opponents were usually either [[colonialism|colonial authorities]] or local nationalist movements, often inspired by American [[democracy]], but sometimes by fascism. Anti-communist [[dictatorship]]s that were established in Europe in the late 1930s, such as the government of [[Francisco Franco]] in [[Spain]], are considered to fall somewhere on the border between traditional [[conservatism]] and [[fascism]].
  
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Anti-communism became significantly muted after the fall of the Soviet Union and [[Eastern bloc]] communist regimes in Eastern and Central Europe between 1989 and 1991, and the fear of a worldwide Communist takeover is no longer a serious concern. Remnants of anti-communism remain, however, in United States foreign policy toward [[Cuba]], [[People's Republic of China|mainland China]], and [[North Korea]]. In the case of Cuba, the United States continues to maintain [[United States embargo against Cuba|economic sanctions]] against the island in a policy which is sharply criticized outside of the United States, but which has substantial support in the US, particularly from the [[Cuban-American]] constituency, including many of the Cuban exiles living in [[Florida]] who oppose any such normalization with the Cuban government. Much of the [[Conservatism|conservative]] wing of American politics also opposes trade normalization with Cuba while the [[Communist Party of Cuba]] retains its influence.
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During [[World War II]], the liberal democracies set aside anti-communism in order to ally themselves with [[Stalin]]'s Russia against [[Hitler]]and Nazi Germany, and non-governmental organizations opposed to communism suffered a setback. After World War II, the [[Soviet Union]] became a superpower, and communism became a truly global phenomenon back by substantial military might, with a commitment to fomenting revolution throughout the capitalist world. This threat made anti-communism an integral part of the domestic and foreign policies of the [[United States]] and its [[NATO]] allies.
  
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Due to expanding American trade interests with the [[People's Republic of China]], much of the United States foreign policy establishment does not regard "Communist China" as communist in any meaningful sense. Nevertheless, there is some hostility toward the People's Republic of China, particularly among conservative Congressional Republicans which can be regarded as remnants of anti-communism. For example, national security issues were raised during Chinese state-owned CNOOC Ltd.'s takeover bid for [[Unocal]], an American energy firm. North Korea remains staunchly [[Stalinism|Stalinist]] and economically [[Isolationism|isolationist]], and tensions between the country and the US have heightened as the result of reports that it is stockpiling [[nuclear weapons]] and the assertion that it is generally willing to sell its nuclear weapons and [[ballistic missile]] technology to any group willing to pay a high enough price.
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[[Winston Churchill]] warned the world that a communist "Iron Curtain" had fallen in Eastern Europe, while the United States considered anti-communism the top priority of its foreign policy. As the reality of Stalin's tyranny became more apparent, liberal anti-communism gained increasing moral authority. Meanwhile, conservatism in the post-war era abandoned its monarchist and aristocratic associations, focusing instead on the preservation of the [[free market]], [[private property]], [[human rights]], the legitimate interests of large [[corporation]]s, and the defense of traditional moral and religious values. This attitude became a cornerstone of American conservative thought in the 1940s and 1950s. The rise of [[Communist China]] raised the specter of communism taking over Asia, and the effort of the Soviet Union and China to foster revolution throughout the developing world made the communist threat a very real one in many people's minds.
  
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==Repression and anti-communism==
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The United States and its allies in the [[United Nations]] joined to oppose communist aggression during the [[Korean War]], when the Stalinist North Korean regime of [[Kim Il-sung]] invaded the South in an attempt to unify the country under communist rule. During this time, American conservatives sought to combat what they saw as a growing communist influence at home. This led to the adoption of a number of repressive domestic policies that are collectively known under the term "[[McCarthyism]]."
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After the [[October Revolution]] in Russia, [[Allied Intervention in the Russian Civil War|allied intervention]] troops tried to crush the revolution. In the summer of 1919, some 13,000 American soldiers, 44,000 British, 13,000 French, 3,000 Italians and 80,000 Japanese were fighting against the [[Red Army]]. In addition, these countries provided significant financial and material help to the [[White Movement]] (e.g., United States provided US$500,000, 400,000 [[rifle]]s, etc.).
 
  
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Communist political parties and organizations were actively opposed by conservative governments in [[Eastern Europe]] after the failed communist revolutions around 1920, in [[Nazi Germany]] and German-occupied Europe, in [[Japan]] during [[World War II]], in the [[Republic of China]] by the [[Kuomintang]] in the 1920s and 1930s, in post-war [[Taiwan]] and [[South Korea]], in [[Latin America]] by various right-wing military regimes ([[Augusto Pinochet]] in [[Chile]], [[Dirty War]] in [[Argentina]], [[El Salvador Civil War|civil war in El Salvador]], etc.), and in many other places and instances.
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In the 1960s, the United States attempted once again to stop the communist advance, this time in [[Vietnam]]. Unlike in [[Korea]], where the north was the clear aggressor and the United States effort was highly popular among South Koreans, American forces in Vietnam found themselves mired in a less clear-cut situation. The United States ultimately withdrew from the conflict and allowed the communists to take over not only Vietnam, but [[Cambodia]] and [[Laos]] as well, resulting in terrible human losses, especially in Cambodia's "[[killing fields]]."
  
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There was also some [[political repression]] in the name of anti-communism in the [[United States]], most notably in the Red Scare of the 1920s and the [[McCarthyism|McCarthyist]] era after World War II. Communists and communist sympathizers often emphasize the persecution of their political movement by "reactionary" forces, which has been downplayed by capitalist governments. Anti-communists respond to this by pointing out that communist governments have often used similar methods to deal with their political enemies, including fellow communists. Regarding this issue, the opinions of communists are divided: some of them support the actions of those communist governments on the grounds that they were necessary in order to deal with dangerous terrorists and criminals, while other communists agree that such actions cannot be justified and put in question the self-proclaimed communist nature of the governments willing to carry them out.
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Throughout the [[Cold War]], governments in [[Asia]], [[Africa]], and [[Latin America]] turned to the United States for political and economic support. Some of these were liberal democracies, but others were [[authoritarian]] regimes, which—according to their critics—used the fear of communism as a means of legitimizing repression.
  
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==Criticisms of anti-communism==
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During the 1970s, communist-led revolutions in South America, Africa, and Asia advanced in the wake of the United States failure in Vietnam. The United States often found itself supporting or tolerating repressive, sometimes [[racism|racist]], regimes who resisted Soviet—and Chinese—led insurgencies. The moral ambiguity of this situation often placed democratic anti-communists on the ethical defensive. On the other hand, dissidents in the Soviet Union added their voices to the anti-communist cause by exposing abuses of human rights such as the [[Gulag Archipelago]]. In the 1980s, the conservative governments of [[Ronald Reagan]] in the United States and [[Margaret Thatcher]] in [[Great Britain]] followed a strongly anti-Soviet foreign policy that is credited as a major factor in the fall of the Soviet Union and the democratization of [[Eastern Europe]] and other countries.
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{{POV-section|date=February 2008}}
 
  
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Opponents of anti-communism challenge the veracity of anti-communist ideology. A common rebuttal of anti-communism is that the Soviet Union degenerated into a bureaucratic [[wikt:thermidorian|thermidorian]] state, under the control of an elite caste in no way connected to the needs or aspirations of the working class. This is a view first put forward by [[left communism|left communists]] in the twenties and [[Trotskyists]] since the 1930s.
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In the aftermath of the [[Cold War]], communism is no longer seen as a major force in world politics. However, both liberals and conservatives express concerns over human rights abuses in [[China]], [[Cuba]], and [[North Korea]]; and anti-communist groups continue to struggle against resurgent far-[[leftism]] in such nations as [[Nicaragua]] and [[Venezuela]].
  
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Anti-communists respond to these claims by saying that they believe communist states are totalitarian by nature, and that in Marxist theory too much power is given to the state, although Marxist theory wants the state to cease existing. They claim that several "communist" governments have existed, yet none have been considered democracies; elections held by communist governments have typically been limited to a single party. Anti-communists also question if a classless communist society can truly be achieved.  
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==Special types of anti-communism==
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===Religious anti-communism===
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[[File:Dalai Lama 1430 Luca Galuzzi 2007crop.jpg|thumb|left|180px|The Fourteenth Dalai Lama, who was ousted from Tibet by Communist Chinese forces.]]
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Soviet communism followed [[Karl Marx]] in teaching that religion was the "opiate of the masses" and thus actively sought to destroy religious institutions. The main target of communist "militant [[atheism]]" in the Soviet Union was usually the [[Russian Orthodox Church]], but [[Catholic]]s, [[Jew]]s, [[Muslim]]s, and [[Buddhism|Buddhists]] were also were persecuted. Thousands of priests and believers died when they resisted communist attempts to turn churches into "museums of atheism." The communists also murdered priests deemed ideologically hostile to [[socialism]], especially those known to have been loyal to the [[tsar]]. A similar pattern emerged in [[China]], [[Tibet]], [[North Korea]], [[North Vietnam]], [[Mongolia]] and other communist strongholds, with Buddhists, Christians of various denominations, and others feeling the brunt of communist repression.
  
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Some anti-communists, particularly those with [[Libertarian]] leanings, extend their criticisms well beyond Soviet-style communism, associating it with any state-run activity beyond the most minimal. People who support a [[mixed economy]] where some services are supplied by government-run institutions, such as what takes place in [[Social democracy|social-democrat]] countries, resent the association between socialism and communism.
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The Orthodox churches sometimes resisted the communists, but Orthodox leaders also were willing to compromise with the Soviet state, even to the degree of being suspected of working with the secret police to root out believers who were disloyal to Soviet policy. The relatively cooperative attitude of the [[Russian Orthodox Church]] resulted both from a desire to retain at least a few of its believers and protect its most sacred sites, and also from a long-standing attitude in the Orthodox tradition which held that the church and state should work in [[harmonia|harmony]] with one another wherever possible. Nevertheless, Orthodox believers often spoke out against communism, and in the west many Orthodox Christians were active in anti-communist movements.  
  
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Certain writers and historians object to anti-communists' comparisons of communism to fascism (under the blanket term "[[totalitarianism]]," which they believe to be incorrect). They cite historical evidence, such as the fact that the [[Soviet Union]] fought against [[Adolf Hitler]] during World War II and say that fascism was the enemy of communism (a view that was shared by Hitler himself, who was one of the most virulent anti-communists of the time), while many anti-communists in occupied Europe took the side of the National Socialists in [[Nazi Germany]]. Others, however, placed anti-fascism or national independence above their dislike of communism.  
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[[Image:JohannesPaulII.jpg|thumb|125px|Pope John Paul II]]
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The Catholic Church, on the other hand, has a strong and official history of anti-communism dating back to well before the days of the Russian Revolution. In 1864, [[Pope Pius IX]] issued a [[pope|Papal]] [[encyclical]] called ''[[Quanta Cura]]'' in which he called communism and socialism a "most fatal error." [http://www.papalencyclicals.net/Pius09/p9quanta.htm] ''PapalEncyclicals''. Retrieved September 6, 2008. One factor in the later difference between the Catholic and Orthodox attitudes is that Catholicism's headquarters lay outside the Soviet Empire, in Rome. Additionally, from ancient times, the papacy had consistently confronted secular rulers it considered incompatible with the Catholic faith. In [[Hungary]], Cardinal [[Josef Mindszenty]] became an international symbol of opposition to communist religious oppression, and Catholic leaders in other communist nations often rankled communist authorities. The best known of these today was the Polish cardinal Karol Wojtyła, who later became [[Pope John Paul II]].  
  
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Yet another objection to anti-communism, which became more widely advanced in the 1970s, was that in pursuit of anti-communism, the [[United States]] was conducting a [[foreign policy]] in which it supported people and governments that sometimes egregiously violated [[human rights]], which it saw as lesser evils than communism. In order to justify these actions, U.S. Ambassador to the [[United Nations]] [[Jeane Kirkpatrick]] stated the [[Kirkpatrick doctrine]], which argued there was a difference between [[totalitarian]] regimes and [[authoritarian]] regimes.
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Protestants were often even more vocal in their opposition to communism. Without strong international backing, as compared to the Catholics, however, they lacked political leverage and were repressed by the communists in the most brutal manner. In the United States, groups such as the [[Christian Anti-Communism Crusade]] and the [[Voice of the Martyrs]] rose to alert Christians to the suffering of their fellow believers in the communist world.
  
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Many staunchly anti-communist regimes have been dictatorial and guilty of egregious human rights abuses, oppression, and sometimes [[genocide]]. These may include [[Nazi Germany]], secular Middle Eastern dictatorships in [[Syria]], [[Iraq]], [[Egypt]], and the [[Sudan]], right-wing military juntas in [[Latin America]] such as those in [[Chile]], [[Panama]] and [[History of Brazil (1964–1985)|Brazil]], the [[apartheid]] regime in [[South Africa]], the anti-communist regime in [[Zaire]] under [[Mobutu Sese Seko]], and anti-communist regimes in the Far East as [[Suharto]]'s [[Indonesia]] and [[Chiang Kai-Shek]]'s [[Republic of China]]. Citing governments like these as evidence, communists claim that much western Cold War policy was driven by simple anti-communism and a disregard for problems in nations ruled by anti-communist but undemocratic governments.
 
  
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Various Western countries are also often accused of racism, oppression and violence, denial of political or labor rights, support for governments which presided over mass killings, torture and detention of political opponents, or engagement with regimes (usually on the basis of their shared anti-communism) which practised genocide or racial segregation, making them no better than the communist governments they were standing in opposition to. In [[Italy]], the use of the [[strategy of tension]] in the 1970s has been widely criticized.
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In [[Tibet]], the [[Dalai Lama]] became a symbol of communist repression of religion in Asia when the Chinese communist invaded Tibet and forced him into exile. Other Buddhists, Christians, Muslims, and indigenous religious groups, though less known, face similar oppression.  
  
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Nevertheless, anti-communists generally believe such claims to be of an "[[Slogan:And you are lynching negroes|and you are lynching negroes]]" variety. They believe that while capitalist governments may have some faults, Communist ones are worse. Many also state that they disapprove of some actions undertaken by anti-Communist leaders, though the defeat of communism and Soviet influence during the Cold War was a top priority. Some also believe that it is easier for countries previously ruled by an authoritarian, anti-Communist government to transition into a democracy, while it is more difficult for a totalitarian Communist nation to do so.
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Jews, too, faced repression in the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe. Orthodox Jews faced serious persecution not unlike that of the Christians, while secular Jews faced job discrimination, and all Jews found it virtually impossible to leave the country. Jewish anti-communism in the West usually found expression in broader political movements such as social democracy and labor unions, but in the 1970s a large-scale campaign on behalf of Soviet Jewry found expression in Jewish [[synagogues]]. Jews were also in the forefront of the [[neo-conservatism|neo-conservative]] movement that became a prominent factor developing the Reagan administration's anti-communist foreign policy.
  
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The communists take the other side in claiming which government is more flawed, stating that while communist governments may have had some faults, capitalist ones are worse. Communists cite democratic and popular support for a variety of Marxist-oriented governments (or at least "anti-anti-Communist" governments) that existed during the Cold War era, such as [[Allende]]'s [[Chile]]. Communists condemn support for oppressive regimes for the sole purpose of eliminating communist influence, and claim that this sort of action is worse than any differences that communist nations may have had with capitalist countries. In addition, communists assert that a transition from an authoritarian, anti-communist state to a democratic one could only occur with military intervention, civil war, or the death of a leader, as evidenced by the nations in the [[Axis Powers|Axis]] during World War II, or the death of [[Francisco Franco]] in [[Spain]].  
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===Fascist anti-communism===
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[[Fascism]] and Soviet Communism both arose to prominence after [[World War I]]. At the end of the war, socialist uprisings, or the threat of them, arose throughout Europe. In Germany, the [[Spartacist uprising]] of January 1919 failed, but in Bavaria, communists successfully overthrew the government and established the [[Bavarian Soviet Republic]], which lasted for a few weeks in 1919. Similar short-lived Soviet republics emerged in other German states and a Soviet government was also briefly established in [[Hungary]] under [[Béla Kun]] in 1919. The Russian Revolution also inspired revolutionary movements in [[Italy]], a wave of labor strikes in Britain, the [[Winnipeg General Strike]] in Canada, the [[Seattle General Strike of 1919|Seattle General Strike]] in the United States, and other radical events.
  
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Communists also point out that in all former socialist countries, conditions were better before its collapse. An example used in this argument is Russia, which has faced a brutal transition to capitalism, maintaining a massive state-run infrastructure and has a 25% poverty rate, and [[Belarus]], under the central, socialist-style planning of [[Lukashenko]], suffered less economic damage. However, formerly Soviet states of the Baltic region, having deregulated their industries and adopted free-market principles, have enjoyed powerful and successful economies.
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[[File:Bundesarchiv Bild 183-B23938, Adolf Hitler, Benito Mussolini.jpg|thumb|250px|Mussolini and Hitler]]
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Fascism was in part a reaction against these developments. Italian fascism, led by [[Benito Mussolini]], took power in 1922 with the blessing of Italy's king after years of leftist unrest led many conservatives to fear that a communist revolution was a very real threat. Throughout Europe, numerous [[aristocracy|aristocrats]] and [[Conservatism|conservative]] intellectuals, as well as [[capitalism|capitalists]] and [[industrialism|industrialists]], lent their support to fascist movements that arose in emulation of Italian fascism. Meanwhile, in [[Germany]], numerous extreme right-wing nationalist groups arose, based in part on the threat of communism.
  
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Ironically, many anti-communists were more focused on the perceived challenges of communism than on the internal problems in certain communist states, and few anti-communists were able to predict the fall of the Soviet Union even as late as the mid-1980s.
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During the worldwide [[Great Depression]] of the 1930s, communist and fascist movements were bitterly and often violently opposed to each other. The most notable example of this conflict was the [[Spanish Civil War]], which became in part a [[proxy war]] between the fascists and conservatives who backed [[Francisco Franco]] and the pro-Soviet communist movements (allied uneasily with [[Anarchism|anarchists]] and [[Trotskyism|Trotskyists]]) which backed the [[Second Spanish Republic|Republican]] government and were aided materially by the [[Soviet Union]].
  
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==Contemporary anti-communism==
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[[Adolf Hitler]], too, rose to power partly on the basis of his anti-communism, as well as his [[ideology]] of [[Aryanism|Aryan]] superiority and [[anti-Semitism]]. Indeed, much of Hitler's anti-Semitism focused on the alleged [[Jew]]ish responsibility for the rise of communism.
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{{POV-section|date=December 2007}}
 
  
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===Objections to communist theory===
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Initially, the [[Soviet Union]] supported a coalition with the Western powers against [[Nazi Germany]], as well as [[popular front]]s in various countries against domestic fascism. The [[Munich Agreement]] between Germany, France, and Britain heightened Soviet fears that the Western powers were endeavoring to force them to bear the brunt of a war against Nazism. The Soviets thus negotiated a non-aggression pact with Germany—the [[Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact]] in 1939, more commonly known as the [[Hitler-Stalin Pact]].
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The central part of [[Karl Marx]]'s communist theory is [[historical materialism]], a methodology for studying history using dialectical reasoning which concludes that human society has grown or evolved through several historical stages due to the contradictions inherent in each stage, with each transition to the next stage involving the overthrow of the existing socioeconomic order. This idea was first theorized by [[Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel]], but Marx used it to formulate his beliefs. Using this method, Marxists conclude that capitalism will be followed by socialism, just as [[feudalism]] was followed by capitalism. Marxists then conclude that socialism would be followed by communism, which Marx claimed would not be able to be improved upon as it has no contradictions of its own.
 
  
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Most anti-communists reject the entire concept of [[historical materialism]], or at least do not believe that socialism and communism must follow after capitalism. Some anti-communists question the validity of Marx's claim that the state will just wither away into a true communist society.
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Stalin was taken by surprise when [[Nazi Germany]] broke the pact and invaded the Soviet Union in June 1941 in [[Operation Barbarossa]]. Fascism and communism reverted to their relationship as lethal enemies, with the war—in the eyes of both sides—becoming one between their respective ideologies.
  
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Many critics also see a key error in communist economic theory, which predicts that in capitalist societies, the bourgeoisie will accumulate ever-increasing capital and wealth, while the lower classes become more dependent on the ruling class for survival, selling their [[labor power]] for the most minimal of salaries. Anti-communists, claiming that this argument is equivalent to the statement that "the rich will get richer and the poor will get poorer," point to the overall rise in the average standard of living in the industrialized West as proof that contrary to Marx's prediction as, they assert, both the rich and poor have steadily gotten richer. There is still, however, communist attack of this objection. This is rooted in Lenin's "Imperialism - the Highest Stage of Capitalism," argued to be the conclusive chapter of the founding series of communist works set out by Marx.{{Fact|date=December 2007}} His predictions correlated with Marx's in that the poorer would get poorer and the richer would get richer as capitalism would live on, however he predicted, in accordance with the early 20th century rise of imperialism, that the class struggle would move to an international basis. Many members of the modern Left assert that trends like this have indeed been seen in recent years, for example as Western economies develop and those of third world countries continue to decline as their citizens are continually exploited.
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With the defeat of the [[Axis Powers]], fascist anti-communism was dealt a death blow. However, fascist elements persisted in the world anti-communist movement, often to the dismay of its other components.
  
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Another reply to this criticism is that the nations who most endorse capitalism today, such as the [[United States]], the [[United Kingdom]] and [[Germany]], had a long history of bountiful natural resources, strategic geography, military victory, and technology long before many capitalist intricacies, giving them these benefits today. Similarly, they claim nations such as [[Russia]], [[Vietnam]], and [[Cuba]] had long histories of military defeats, brutal environments, strict dictatorships, and underdeveloped economies throughout their histories, making living conditions harsher even after socialist revolutions. Anti-capitalists, on the other hand, often argue that capitalism is now a global economical system, therefore affecting the whole world. Thus, it is necessary to see economic trends without national boundaries. They state for example that much of the commodities sold in the United States are produced or enhanced in one way or another, in a poorer country. And on an international scale, the division between the rich and poor has generally increased.
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==United States Anti-communism and the Cold War==
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Following [[World War II]] and the rise of the [[Soviet Union]] as a major world power, the objections to communism took on an added urgency. Many worried about the human rights of the millions of people who had recently come under communist rule in the wake of [[Stalin]]'s policies. The fear of many anti-communists in the United States was that communism would eventually become a direct threat to the government of the United States. This view led to the so-called "domino theory," in which a communist takeover in certain nations could not be tolerated, because it could lead to a chain reaction which would result in a triumph of world communism. There were also fears, not unfounded, that powerful nations like the Soviet Union and the [[People's Republic of China]] were using their power to create and support anti-democratic revolutions, as well as to forcibly assimilate formerly free nations into communist rule. The United States policy of halting further communist expansion, first enunciated by President [[Harry S. Truman]], came to be known as "[[containment]]."
  
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Communists also argue that the industrialized West profits immensely from the [[exploitation]] of the [[Third World]] through [[globalization]], that the gap between rich and poor capitalist countries (sometimes called the ''North-South Gap'') has widened greatly over the past hundred years, and that poor capitalist countries vastly outnumber the rich ones. The standard anti-communist reply to the latter argument is to point out the examples of former Third World countries that have successfully escaped out of poverty in the recent decades under the capitalist system, most notably the [[Asian Tigers]], [[India]] and even nominally Communist [[People's Republic of China|China]] itself. Anti-communists also cite numerous examples of Third World Communist regimes that failed to achieve development and economic growth and in many cases led their peoples into an even worse misery, for example the [[Mengistu]] regime in [[Ethiopia]] or the [[North Korean]] [[totalitarian]] government. Supporters of Mengistu or Kim typically attribute the shortcomings in their societies to "imperialist" Western meddling. Other communists, such as the [[Trotskyism|Trotskyists]], while agreeing that imperialism harmed these countries, also say that Ethiopia and North Korea were never communist—they were [[Stalinist]], meaning that they were ruled by a clique of bureaucrats who claimed to be acting in the popular interest but actually betrayed it, being more oppressive to its working class.
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[[Image:Crane removed part of Wall Brandenburg Gate.jpg|thumb|250px|A crane demolishes part of the [[Berlin Wall]] in 1989.]]
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The United States government thus based its anti-communism both on national defense priorities and the human rights record of Communist states. These states killed millions of their own people in the course of ending [[capitalism]] and continued to suppress civil liberties of the surviving population.
  
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Many refer to both communism and [[fascism]] as totalitarianism, seeing similarity between the actions of communist and fascist governments. It should also be noted that many modern left-attributed communists, particularly [[anarcho-communism|anarcho-communists]], use these similarities, and actual sayings from Marx himself, to argue that those self-proclaimed communist regimes were not actually following any sort of communism at all. One such quote by Marx to support this simply says, "Democracy is the road to socialism."  
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The policy succeeded in stemming the communist advance in [[Korea]] in the early 1950s, but Cuba was lost to communism in 1959. Then, after the United States debacle in Vietnam, anti-communists despaired that their cause could prevail. However, during the presidency of [[Ronald Reagan]], himself an ardent anti-communist of long standing, a surprising change took place. Calling the Soviet Union an "evil empire" and pursuing a policy of funding United States military superiority, Reagan pressured the Soviets to compete, to the point that their bankrupt economy began to collapse. Soon, the [[Berlin Wall]] had been torn down, the "Iron Curtain" began to rise, and the Soviet Union itself was no more.
  
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Anti-communists also object to the actual practices of communist governments in contrast to the stated promises of communism, questioning whether or not they are truly able to be called "communist." For example, the view of "human nature" usually expounded by anti-communist [[Objectivism (Ayn Rand)|Objectivists]] is that while an egalitarian society could be looked at as ideal, it is virtually impossible to achieve. They state that it is human nature to be motivated by personal incentive, and point out that while several communist leaders have claimed to be working for the common good, many or all of them have been corrupt and totalitarian. Communists retaliate that "human nature" essentially doesn't exist, since human beings are extremely adaptable with inbred logic and have shown themselves to be able to live in a wide variety of social organizations, some similar to communism, throughout history.
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===Anti-communism and NGOs===
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A number of U.S. groups and publications worked to oppose communism during the [[Cold War]]. These include, in alphabetical order:
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*'''[[Accuracy In Media]]''': One of America's first media watchdog groups, A.I.M. focused especially on the mainstream media's lack of balance in reporting on anti-communist issues.
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*'''[[AFL-CIO]]''': America's largest labor federation was a bastion of anti-communism during the [[Vietnam]] era under its hard-nosed leader [[George Meany]], whose invitation to [[Alexandre Solzhenitsyn]] to speak at AFL-CIO meetings brought awareness of Soviet human rights abuses to U.S. audiences.
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[[Image:1981 US Cabinet.jpg|thumb|300px|The Committee on the Present Danger provided several members of the Reagan Cabinet, including Jeane Kirkpatrick (center) and William Casey (far right).]]
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*'''[[American Security Council]]''': An anti-communist group in Washington that concentrated on the military dimension of the [[Cold War]].
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*'''[[Captive Nations Committee]]''': A coalition of anti-communists which sponsored the annual Captive Nations Week, led for many years by Dr. [[Lev Dobriansky]].
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*'''[[Cardinal Mindszenty Foundation]]''': A [[Catholic]]-based educational organization named after the famous Hungarian prelate who was persecuted in his home country and found sanctuary for several years in the United States Embassy.
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*'''[[CAUSA International]]''': The [[Unificationist]] successor to the Freedom Leadership Foundation, which created sophisticated anti-communist seminars during the 1980s, both in the United States and Latin America.
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*'''[[Christian Anti-Communism Crusade]]''': A U.S. educational organization led by Dr. [[Fred Schwarz]], which engaged in large scale seminars focusing on communism's incompatibility with Christianity.
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*'''''[[Commentary]]'' Magazine''': Founded by the [[American Jewish Committee]] in 1945, ''Commentary'' was a leading voice for liberal anti-communism and later became the principal organ of [[neo-conservatism]].
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*'''[[Committee on the Present Danger]]''': Originally formed in the 1950s, the CPD was revived in 1972, involving a number of hard-line democrats as well as Republicans. It became a major influence on several U.S. administrations especially that of [[Ronald Reagan]].
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*'''[[Council Against Communist Aggression]]''': A Washington D.C.-based group created to foster communication and networking among anti-communist groups and individuals in the nation's capital.
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*'''Cuban Anti-Communist Groups''': Various [[Cuba]]n anti-communist movements ranged from groups such as Alpha 66 (a militant group accused of acts of violence and arson) to the more moderate [[Cuban American National Foundation]].
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*'''[[Freedom House]]''': The oldest human rights group in the United States provided factual evidence and a ratings system that exposed communist countries as the greatest violators of freedom.
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*'''[[Freedom Leadership Foundation]]''': A Unificationist educational organization that promoted the cause of Soviet dissidents, confronted leftist groups on campus, and educated young people against [[Marxism|Marxist]] ideology.
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*'''[[Heritage Foundation]]''': The leading conservative "think tank" in Washington, D.C.
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*'''[[Human Events]]''': A Washington-based conservative weekly tabloid newspaper and later a magazine.
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*'''[[Hungarian Freedom Fighters]] Federation''': An association of pro-democracy [[Hungary|Hungarians]] who had supported their nation's unsuccessful resistance to communist aggression in 1956.
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*'''[[National Alliance of Russian Solidarists]]''': A Russian organization known by the acronym "NTS" and founded in 1930 by a group of young Russian anticommunists, led in the US by [[Constantin W. Boldyreff]].
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*'''[[National Committee for a Free Europe]]''': Founded in 1949 in New York and dedicated to opposing [[Stalin]]'s Soviet occupation of Eastern Europe, this group's main contribution was the founding of the government-supported broadcaster [[Radio Free Europe]].
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*'''''[[National Review]]''': A leading conservative magazine founded in New York by [[William F. Buckley, Jr.]] in 1955.
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*'''''[[The New Republic]]''''': A venerable liberal magazine which, though opposed to the Vietnam War, was strongly critical of both the [[Soviet Union]] and the [[New Left]].
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*'''[[Voice of the Martyrs]]''': Founded by the persecuted Romanian pastor [[Richard Wurmbrandt]] and dedicated to publicizing the plight of Protestants and other Christians in Eastern Europe.
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*'''[[U.S. Council for World Freedom]]''': Created in the early 1970s to act as the United States coordinating committee to send delegations to the [[World Anti-Communist League]] meetings.
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*'''''[[The Washington Times]]''''' A daily newspaper in Washington D.C., and later with a national weekly, founded by the Reverend [[Sun Myung Moon]] to balance the liberal influence of the ''[[Washington Post]].''
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*'''[[Young Americans for Freedom]]''': A group of young conservatives inspired by the presidential candidacy of [[Barry Goldwater]] which also engaged in debates and demonstrations on college campuses against communism.
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*'''[[Young People's Social League]]''': The youth arm of the Social Democrats USA, which had split with the United States Socialist Party over Vietnam. YPSL battled other socialist groups on campuses and provided a number of intellectual leaders known later as "neocons."
  
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===Anticommunist historians===
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===After the Cold War===
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One of the most influential anti-communist historians was [[Robert Conquest]], a former [[Stalinist]] and British [[Spy|Intelligence officer]]. He argued in his works that Communism was responsible for tens of millions of deaths during the 20th century.  
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Anti-communism became significantly muted after the fall of the Soviet Union and the [[Eastern bloc]] communist regimes in Eastern and Central Europe between 1989 and 1991. The fear of a worldwide communist takeover is no longer a serious concern. Remnants of anti-communism remain, however, in United States foreign policy toward [[Cuba]], [[People's Republic of China|mainland China]], and [[North Korea]]. The growth of China as a major economic and military power is a major concern for some. The [[Conservatism|conservative]] wing of the Republican Party opposes trade normalization and military cooperation with China, while liberals in the Democratic Party sometimes favor imposing sanctions on China for its human rights violations and its treatment of Tibet.
  
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Communist parties (sometimes combined with left socialist parties as workers' parties) which have come to power have likewise tended to be rigidly intolerant of political opposition. Most Communist countries have shown no signs of advancing from Marx's "socialist" stage of economy to an ideal "communist" stage. Rather, Communist governments have been accused of creating a new ruling class (called by Russians the ''[[Nomenklatura]]''), with powers and privileges far greater than those previously enjoyed by the upper classes in the pre-revolutionary regimes.
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Several of the anti-communist groups of the 1970s and 1980s still function. [[Freedom House]] continues to rate countries by their commitment to freedom and human rights, reporting that in today's world the [[Islamic nations]] have replaced communist countries as the greatest violators of [[human rights]]. The Cardinal Mindszenty Foundation reports on human rights abuses by such nations as Vietnam, China, and North Korea. ''The Washington Times'' is still a much-quoted general-interest newspaper which reports frequently on resurgent communism in Russia and military developments in China. In addition, new anti-communist organizations have sprung up to publicize new waves of repression in the remaining communist countries. On April 23, 2001, the ''New Republic,'' a leading liberal magazine which sometimes took hard-line anti-communist stands during the Cold War, published an article by its editors entitled: "It's Not Over: Why anti-communism still matters."
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It should be noted, however, that many communists have been virulent critics of the policies carried out by Stalin's Soviet Union and other nations who followed the same model. They refer to these nations as [[Stalinism|Stalinist]] rather than communist, and sometimes call them [[deformed workers state]]s. The anti-communists reply that the repression in the early years of the [[Bolshevik]] regime, while not as extreme as that during Stalin's reign, was still severe by any reasonable standards, citing the examples such as [[Felix Dzerzhinsky]]'s secret police, which eliminated numerous political opponents by extrajudicial executions, and the brutal crushing of the [[Kronstadt rebellion]] and [[Tambov rebellion]]. According to them, [[Trotsky]] could hardly claim any moral high ground, having been one of the top-ranking Bolshevik leaders during these events. Trotsky was later to claim (unconvincingly) that the Kronstadt rebels were early harbingers of the bureaucratisation which he associated with Stalinism.
 
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Anti-communists will likewise argue that the contemporary communist/Marxist claim that any communist regime that perpetuated human rights abuses was not a "true" communist state is merely a convenient excuse that can be evoked to avoid taking responsibility.
 
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==Notes==
 
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{{reflist}}
 
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==References==
 
  
 
==See also==
 
==See also==
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{{Ideology-small}}
 
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*[[American Committee for the Liberation of the Peoples of Russia]]
 
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*[[Anti-fascism]]
 
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*[[Anti-Stalinist left]]
 
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*[[Capitalism]]
 
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*[[:Category:Anti-communists]]
 
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*[[:Category:Soviet dissidents]]
 
 
*[[Cold War]]
 
*[[Cold War]]
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*[[Committee for the Liberation of the Peoples of Russia]]
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*[[Marxism-Leninism]]
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*[[Criticisms of communism]]
 
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*[[Criticisms of Communist party rule]]
 
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*[[Evil empire]]
 
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*[[House Unamerican Activities Committee]]
 
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*[[Joseph McCarthy]] and [[McCarthyism]]
 
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*[[National Alliance of Russian Solidarists]]
 
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*[[National Committee for a Free Europe]]
 
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*[[Nationalist Movement]]
 
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*[[Operation Condor]]
 
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*[[Operation Gladio]]
 
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*[[Radio Free Europe]]
 
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*[[Second Red Scare]]
 
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*[[Reagan Doctrine]]
 
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*[[Stay-behind]]
 
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*[[Strategy of tension]]
 
 
*[[Truman Doctrine]]
 
*[[Truman Doctrine]]
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*[[Western propaganda]]
 
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*[[World Anti-Communist League]]
 
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*[[Iron Man#Origins]] (anti-Communist [[comic book]] [[superhero]])
 
  
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==External links==
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==References==
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* [http://www.niagara.com/~freedom/anticom/first.htm Anti-Communist Action]
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* [http://www.geocities.com/CapitolHill/Congress/1770/English.html The Chilean Anti-Communist League]
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* Brennan, Mary C. ''Wives, Mothers, and the Red Menace: Conservative Women and the Crusade against Communism.'' Boulder, CO: University Press of Colorado, 2008. ISBN 9780870818851
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*[http://www.iww.org/en/culture/articles/zinn14.shtml Industrial Workers of the World: The IWW Shattered] – an excerpt from [[Howard Zinn]]'s ''[[A People's History of the United States]]''
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* Cox, Terry. ''The Hungarian Uprising and Its Legacy in Eastern Europe.'' London: Routledge, 2008. ISBN 9780415449281
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*[http://www.zmag.org/content/showarticle.cfm?SectionID=17&ItemID=13261 Hirata Tetsuo and John W. Dower, "Japan's Red Purge: Lessons from a Saga of Suppression of Free Speech and Thought"]
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* Evans, M. Stanton. ''Blacklisted by History: The Untold Story of Senator Joe McCarthy and His Fight against America's Enemies.'' New York: Crown Forum, 2007. ISBN  9781400081059
 +
* Haynes, John Earl. ''Red Scare or Red Menace?: American Communism and Anticommunism in the Cold War Era.'' (The American ways series.) Chicago: Ivan R. Dee, 1996. ISBN 9781566630917
 +
* Heale, M. J. ''American Anticommunism: Combating the Enemy Within, 1830-1970. The American moment.'' Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1990. ISBN 9780801840517
 +
* Powers, Richard Gid. ''Not Without Honor: The History of American Anticommunism.'' New York: Free Press, 1995. ISBN 9780029253014
 +
* Ruotsila, Markku. ''British and American Anticommunism Before the Cold War.'' (Cass series—Cold War history, 3.) London: Frank Cass, Routledge Publ. 2001. ISBN 9780714681771
 +
* Schrecker, Ellen. ''The Age of McCarthyism: A Brief History with Documents.'' New York: Palgrave, 2002. ISBN 9780312393199
 +
* Schwarz, Fred. ''You Can Trust the Communists (to be Communists).'' [1960] Christian Anti-Communist Crusade, 1965.
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* Waddington, Lorna Louise. ''Hitler's Crusade: Bolshevism and the Myth of the International Jewish Conspiracy.'' London: Tauris Academic Studies, 2007. ISBN 9781845115562
  
 
[[Category:politics]]
 
[[Category:politics]]
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[[Category:philosopy]]
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[[Category:philosophy]]
 
{{Credit|203581258}}
 
{{Credit|203581258}}

Latest revision as of 09:13, 1 June 2019

Pope John Paul II speaks to crowds in Poland in 1979

Anti-communism refers to opposition to communism, especially Marxism-Leninism. Organized anti-communism developed in reaction to the growing power of the communist movement after the Soviet Union was established in 1917.

Monarchists, Christians, classical Liberals, social-democrats, and pro-free market forces in Europe opposed the first wave of communist revolutions from 1917 to 1922. Fascism and Nazism were based in part on a violent form of anti-communism. After World War II, the liberal democracies took the lead in opposing Soviet communism during the Cold War. The human rights movement of the late twentieth century added a strong moral component to the anti-communist cause, exposing gross abuses of human rights in the communist world. At the same time, military dictatorships sometimes used anti-communism as a justification for harsh repression of political opposition.

The country best known for being an opponent of communism is the United States, together with its long-time allies like the United Kingdom, Canada, France, and Australia. In addition to government policies to resist the spread of Soviet communism, anti-communist non-governmental organizations in these countries did much to heighten the world's awareness of communism.

The 1991 collapse of the Soviet Union was a major victory for the anti-communist cause, which generally viewed the USSR as the heart of the communist threat. Anti-communism today often focuses on exposing human rights abuses in the remaining Marxist-Leninist regimes and preventing extreme left-wing movements from taking over democratic nations.

The career of anti-communism

Hammer and sickle.svg
Communism
Basic concepts
Marxist philosophy
Class struggle
Proletarian internationalism
Communist party
Ideologies
Marxism  Leninism  Maoism
Trotskyism  Juche
Left  Council
Religious  Anarchist
Communist internationals
Communist League
First International
Comintern
Fourth International
Prominent communists
Karl Marx
Friedrich Engels
Rosa Luxemburg
Vladimir Lenin
Joseph Stalin
Leon Trotsky
Máo Zédōng
Related subjects
Anarchism
Anti-capitalism
Anti-communism
Communist state
Criticisms of communism
Democratic centralism
Dictatorship of the proletariat
History of communism
Left-wing politics
Luxemburgism
New Class  New Left
Post-Communism
Eurocommunism
Titoism
Primitive communism
Socialism  Stalinism
Socialist economics

In the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, the communist movement was at odds with the traditional monarchies that ruled over much of the European continent. At the time, monarchists and religious leaders who supported traditional monarchies were the most prominent anti-communists, and many European monarchies outlawed the public expression of communist views.

However, after World War I, several European monarchies were overthrown in a series of revolutions and military engagements. The most conservative European monarchy, the Russian empire, was replaced by the communist-run Soviet Union. The Russian Revolution also inspired and actively supported a series of other communist revolutions across Europe in the years of 1917-1922. The Soviet policy of ruthlessly repressing the new regime's opponents and treating religious leaders as enemies of the state, meanwhile, shocked much of the world.

Francisco Franco and President Dwight D. Eisenhower in Madrid in 1959.

The 1920s and 1930s saw the fading of traditionalist conservatism. The mantle of anti-communism was thus taken up by American-inspired Liberalism on the one hand and the rising fascist movements on the other. These became the "two faces" of anti-communism over the next several decades.

Since communism remained largely a European phenomenon, American anti-communist sentiments tended to follow their European counterparts. When communist groups and political parties began appearing elsewhere in the world, such as China in the late 1920s, their first opponents were usually either colonial authorities or local nationalist movements, often inspired by American democracy, but sometimes by fascism. Anti-communist dictatorships that were established in Europe in the late 1930s, such as the government of Francisco Franco in Spain, are considered to fall somewhere on the border between traditional conservatism and fascism.

During World War II, the liberal democracies set aside anti-communism in order to ally themselves with Stalin's Russia against Hitlerand Nazi Germany, and non-governmental organizations opposed to communism suffered a setback. After World War II, the Soviet Union became a superpower, and communism became a truly global phenomenon back by substantial military might, with a commitment to fomenting revolution throughout the capitalist world. This threat made anti-communism an integral part of the domestic and foreign policies of the United States and its NATO allies.

Winston Churchill warned the world that a communist "Iron Curtain" had fallen in Eastern Europe, while the United States considered anti-communism the top priority of its foreign policy. As the reality of Stalin's tyranny became more apparent, liberal anti-communism gained increasing moral authority. Meanwhile, conservatism in the post-war era abandoned its monarchist and aristocratic associations, focusing instead on the preservation of the free market, private property, human rights, the legitimate interests of large corporations, and the defense of traditional moral and religious values. This attitude became a cornerstone of American conservative thought in the 1940s and 1950s. The rise of Communist China raised the specter of communism taking over Asia, and the effort of the Soviet Union and China to foster revolution throughout the developing world made the communist threat a very real one in many people's minds.

The United States and its allies in the United Nations joined to oppose communist aggression during the Korean War, when the Stalinist North Korean regime of Kim Il-sung invaded the South in an attempt to unify the country under communist rule. During this time, American conservatives sought to combat what they saw as a growing communist influence at home. This led to the adoption of a number of repressive domestic policies that are collectively known under the term "McCarthyism."

In the 1960s, the United States attempted once again to stop the communist advance, this time in Vietnam. Unlike in Korea, where the north was the clear aggressor and the United States effort was highly popular among South Koreans, American forces in Vietnam found themselves mired in a less clear-cut situation. The United States ultimately withdrew from the conflict and allowed the communists to take over not only Vietnam, but Cambodia and Laos as well, resulting in terrible human losses, especially in Cambodia's "killing fields."

Throughout the Cold War, governments in Asia, Africa, and Latin America turned to the United States for political and economic support. Some of these were liberal democracies, but others were authoritarian regimes, which—according to their critics—used the fear of communism as a means of legitimizing repression.

During the 1970s, communist-led revolutions in South America, Africa, and Asia advanced in the wake of the United States failure in Vietnam. The United States often found itself supporting or tolerating repressive, sometimes racist, regimes who resisted Soviet—and Chinese—led insurgencies. The moral ambiguity of this situation often placed democratic anti-communists on the ethical defensive. On the other hand, dissidents in the Soviet Union added their voices to the anti-communist cause by exposing abuses of human rights such as the Gulag Archipelago. In the 1980s, the conservative governments of Ronald Reagan in the United States and Margaret Thatcher in Great Britain followed a strongly anti-Soviet foreign policy that is credited as a major factor in the fall of the Soviet Union and the democratization of Eastern Europe and other countries.

In the aftermath of the Cold War, communism is no longer seen as a major force in world politics. However, both liberals and conservatives express concerns over human rights abuses in China, Cuba, and North Korea; and anti-communist groups continue to struggle against resurgent far-leftism in such nations as Nicaragua and Venezuela.

Special types of anti-communism

Religious anti-communism

The Fourteenth Dalai Lama, who was ousted from Tibet by Communist Chinese forces.

Soviet communism followed Karl Marx in teaching that religion was the "opiate of the masses" and thus actively sought to destroy religious institutions. The main target of communist "militant atheism" in the Soviet Union was usually the Russian Orthodox Church, but Catholics, Jews, Muslims, and Buddhists were also were persecuted. Thousands of priests and believers died when they resisted communist attempts to turn churches into "museums of atheism." The communists also murdered priests deemed ideologically hostile to socialism, especially those known to have been loyal to the tsar. A similar pattern emerged in China, Tibet, North Korea, North Vietnam, Mongolia and other communist strongholds, with Buddhists, Christians of various denominations, and others feeling the brunt of communist repression.

The Orthodox churches sometimes resisted the communists, but Orthodox leaders also were willing to compromise with the Soviet state, even to the degree of being suspected of working with the secret police to root out believers who were disloyal to Soviet policy. The relatively cooperative attitude of the Russian Orthodox Church resulted both from a desire to retain at least a few of its believers and protect its most sacred sites, and also from a long-standing attitude in the Orthodox tradition which held that the church and state should work in harmony with one another wherever possible. Nevertheless, Orthodox believers often spoke out against communism, and in the west many Orthodox Christians were active in anti-communist movements.

Pope John Paul II

The Catholic Church, on the other hand, has a strong and official history of anti-communism dating back to well before the days of the Russian Revolution. In 1864, Pope Pius IX issued a Papal encyclical called Quanta Cura in which he called communism and socialism a "most fatal error." [1] PapalEncyclicals. Retrieved September 6, 2008. One factor in the later difference between the Catholic and Orthodox attitudes is that Catholicism's headquarters lay outside the Soviet Empire, in Rome. Additionally, from ancient times, the papacy had consistently confronted secular rulers it considered incompatible with the Catholic faith. In Hungary, Cardinal Josef Mindszenty became an international symbol of opposition to communist religious oppression, and Catholic leaders in other communist nations often rankled communist authorities. The best known of these today was the Polish cardinal Karol Wojtyła, who later became Pope John Paul II.

Protestants were often even more vocal in their opposition to communism. Without strong international backing, as compared to the Catholics, however, they lacked political leverage and were repressed by the communists in the most brutal manner. In the United States, groups such as the Christian Anti-Communism Crusade and the Voice of the Martyrs rose to alert Christians to the suffering of their fellow believers in the communist world.


In Tibet, the Dalai Lama became a symbol of communist repression of religion in Asia when the Chinese communist invaded Tibet and forced him into exile. Other Buddhists, Christians, Muslims, and indigenous religious groups, though less known, face similar oppression.

Jews, too, faced repression in the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe. Orthodox Jews faced serious persecution not unlike that of the Christians, while secular Jews faced job discrimination, and all Jews found it virtually impossible to leave the country. Jewish anti-communism in the West usually found expression in broader political movements such as social democracy and labor unions, but in the 1970s a large-scale campaign on behalf of Soviet Jewry found expression in Jewish synagogues. Jews were also in the forefront of the neo-conservative movement that became a prominent factor developing the Reagan administration's anti-communist foreign policy.

Fascist anti-communism

Fascism and Soviet Communism both arose to prominence after World War I. At the end of the war, socialist uprisings, or the threat of them, arose throughout Europe. In Germany, the Spartacist uprising of January 1919 failed, but in Bavaria, communists successfully overthrew the government and established the Bavarian Soviet Republic, which lasted for a few weeks in 1919. Similar short-lived Soviet republics emerged in other German states and a Soviet government was also briefly established in Hungary under Béla Kun in 1919. The Russian Revolution also inspired revolutionary movements in Italy, a wave of labor strikes in Britain, the Winnipeg General Strike in Canada, the Seattle General Strike in the United States, and other radical events.

Mussolini and Hitler

Fascism was in part a reaction against these developments. Italian fascism, led by Benito Mussolini, took power in 1922 with the blessing of Italy's king after years of leftist unrest led many conservatives to fear that a communist revolution was a very real threat. Throughout Europe, numerous aristocrats and conservative intellectuals, as well as capitalists and industrialists, lent their support to fascist movements that arose in emulation of Italian fascism. Meanwhile, in Germany, numerous extreme right-wing nationalist groups arose, based in part on the threat of communism.

During the worldwide Great Depression of the 1930s, communist and fascist movements were bitterly and often violently opposed to each other. The most notable example of this conflict was the Spanish Civil War, which became in part a proxy war between the fascists and conservatives who backed Francisco Franco and the pro-Soviet communist movements (allied uneasily with anarchists and Trotskyists) which backed the Republican government and were aided materially by the Soviet Union.

Adolf Hitler, too, rose to power partly on the basis of his anti-communism, as well as his ideology of Aryan superiority and anti-Semitism. Indeed, much of Hitler's anti-Semitism focused on the alleged Jewish responsibility for the rise of communism.

Initially, the Soviet Union supported a coalition with the Western powers against Nazi Germany, as well as popular fronts in various countries against domestic fascism. The Munich Agreement between Germany, France, and Britain heightened Soviet fears that the Western powers were endeavoring to force them to bear the brunt of a war against Nazism. The Soviets thus negotiated a non-aggression pact with Germany—the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact in 1939, more commonly known as the Hitler-Stalin Pact.

Stalin was taken by surprise when Nazi Germany broke the pact and invaded the Soviet Union in June 1941 in Operation Barbarossa. Fascism and communism reverted to their relationship as lethal enemies, with the war—in the eyes of both sides—becoming one between their respective ideologies.

With the defeat of the Axis Powers, fascist anti-communism was dealt a death blow. However, fascist elements persisted in the world anti-communist movement, often to the dismay of its other components.

United States Anti-communism and the Cold War

Following World War II and the rise of the Soviet Union as a major world power, the objections to communism took on an added urgency. Many worried about the human rights of the millions of people who had recently come under communist rule in the wake of Stalin's policies. The fear of many anti-communists in the United States was that communism would eventually become a direct threat to the government of the United States. This view led to the so-called "domino theory," in which a communist takeover in certain nations could not be tolerated, because it could lead to a chain reaction which would result in a triumph of world communism. There were also fears, not unfounded, that powerful nations like the Soviet Union and the People's Republic of China were using their power to create and support anti-democratic revolutions, as well as to forcibly assimilate formerly free nations into communist rule. The United States policy of halting further communist expansion, first enunciated by President Harry S. Truman, came to be known as "containment."

A crane demolishes part of the Berlin Wall in 1989.

The United States government thus based its anti-communism both on national defense priorities and the human rights record of Communist states. These states killed millions of their own people in the course of ending capitalism and continued to suppress civil liberties of the surviving population.

The policy succeeded in stemming the communist advance in Korea in the early 1950s, but Cuba was lost to communism in 1959. Then, after the United States debacle in Vietnam, anti-communists despaired that their cause could prevail. However, during the presidency of Ronald Reagan, himself an ardent anti-communist of long standing, a surprising change took place. Calling the Soviet Union an "evil empire" and pursuing a policy of funding United States military superiority, Reagan pressured the Soviets to compete, to the point that their bankrupt economy began to collapse. Soon, the Berlin Wall had been torn down, the "Iron Curtain" began to rise, and the Soviet Union itself was no more.

Anti-communism and NGOs

A number of U.S. groups and publications worked to oppose communism during the Cold War. These include, in alphabetical order:

  • Accuracy In Media: One of America's first media watchdog groups, A.I.M. focused especially on the mainstream media's lack of balance in reporting on anti-communist issues.
  • AFL-CIO: America's largest labor federation was a bastion of anti-communism during the Vietnam era under its hard-nosed leader George Meany, whose invitation to Alexandre Solzhenitsyn to speak at AFL-CIO meetings brought awareness of Soviet human rights abuses to U.S. audiences.
The Committee on the Present Danger provided several members of the Reagan Cabinet, including Jeane Kirkpatrick (center) and William Casey (far right).
  • American Security Council: An anti-communist group in Washington that concentrated on the military dimension of the Cold War.
  • Captive Nations Committee: A coalition of anti-communists which sponsored the annual Captive Nations Week, led for many years by Dr. Lev Dobriansky.
  • Cardinal Mindszenty Foundation: A Catholic-based educational organization named after the famous Hungarian prelate who was persecuted in his home country and found sanctuary for several years in the United States Embassy.
  • CAUSA International: The Unificationist successor to the Freedom Leadership Foundation, which created sophisticated anti-communist seminars during the 1980s, both in the United States and Latin America.
  • Christian Anti-Communism Crusade: A U.S. educational organization led by Dr. Fred Schwarz, which engaged in large scale seminars focusing on communism's incompatibility with Christianity.
  • Commentary Magazine: Founded by the American Jewish Committee in 1945, Commentary was a leading voice for liberal anti-communism and later became the principal organ of neo-conservatism.
  • Committee on the Present Danger: Originally formed in the 1950s, the CPD was revived in 1972, involving a number of hard-line democrats as well as Republicans. It became a major influence on several U.S. administrations especially that of Ronald Reagan.
  • Council Against Communist Aggression: A Washington D.C.-based group created to foster communication and networking among anti-communist groups and individuals in the nation's capital.
  • Cuban Anti-Communist Groups: Various Cuban anti-communist movements ranged from groups such as Alpha 66 (a militant group accused of acts of violence and arson) to the more moderate Cuban American National Foundation.
  • Freedom House: The oldest human rights group in the United States provided factual evidence and a ratings system that exposed communist countries as the greatest violators of freedom.
  • Freedom Leadership Foundation: A Unificationist educational organization that promoted the cause of Soviet dissidents, confronted leftist groups on campus, and educated young people against Marxist ideology.
  • Heritage Foundation: The leading conservative "think tank" in Washington, D.C.
  • Human Events: A Washington-based conservative weekly tabloid newspaper and later a magazine.
  • Hungarian Freedom Fighters Federation: An association of pro-democracy Hungarians who had supported their nation's unsuccessful resistance to communist aggression in 1956.
  • National Alliance of Russian Solidarists: A Russian organization known by the acronym "NTS" and founded in 1930 by a group of young Russian anticommunists, led in the US by Constantin W. Boldyreff.
  • National Committee for a Free Europe: Founded in 1949 in New York and dedicated to opposing Stalin's Soviet occupation of Eastern Europe, this group's main contribution was the founding of the government-supported broadcaster Radio Free Europe.
  • National Review: A leading conservative magazine founded in New York by William F. Buckley, Jr. in 1955.
  • The New Republic: A venerable liberal magazine which, though opposed to the Vietnam War, was strongly critical of both the Soviet Union and the New Left.
  • Voice of the Martyrs: Founded by the persecuted Romanian pastor Richard Wurmbrandt and dedicated to publicizing the plight of Protestants and other Christians in Eastern Europe.
  • U.S. Council for World Freedom: Created in the early 1970s to act as the United States coordinating committee to send delegations to the World Anti-Communist League meetings.
  • The Washington Times A daily newspaper in Washington D.C., and later with a national weekly, founded by the Reverend Sun Myung Moon to balance the liberal influence of the Washington Post.
  • Young Americans for Freedom: A group of young conservatives inspired by the presidential candidacy of Barry Goldwater which also engaged in debates and demonstrations on college campuses against communism.
  • Young People's Social League: The youth arm of the Social Democrats USA, which had split with the United States Socialist Party over Vietnam. YPSL battled other socialist groups on campuses and provided a number of intellectual leaders known later as "neocons."

After the Cold War

Anti-communism became significantly muted after the fall of the Soviet Union and the Eastern bloc communist regimes in Eastern and Central Europe between 1989 and 1991. The fear of a worldwide communist takeover is no longer a serious concern. Remnants of anti-communism remain, however, in United States foreign policy toward Cuba, mainland China, and North Korea. The growth of China as a major economic and military power is a major concern for some. The conservative wing of the Republican Party opposes trade normalization and military cooperation with China, while liberals in the Democratic Party sometimes favor imposing sanctions on China for its human rights violations and its treatment of Tibet.

Several of the anti-communist groups of the 1970s and 1980s still function. Freedom House continues to rate countries by their commitment to freedom and human rights, reporting that in today's world the Islamic nations have replaced communist countries as the greatest violators of human rights. The Cardinal Mindszenty Foundation reports on human rights abuses by such nations as Vietnam, China, and North Korea. The Washington Times is still a much-quoted general-interest newspaper which reports frequently on resurgent communism in Russia and military developments in China. In addition, new anti-communist organizations have sprung up to publicize new waves of repression in the remaining communist countries. On April 23, 2001, the New Republic, a leading liberal magazine which sometimes took hard-line anti-communist stands during the Cold War, published an article by its editors entitled: "It's Not Over: Why anti-communism still matters."

See also

References
ISBN links support NWE through referral fees

  • Brennan, Mary C. Wives, Mothers, and the Red Menace: Conservative Women and the Crusade against Communism. Boulder, CO: University Press of Colorado, 2008. ISBN 9780870818851
  • Cox, Terry. The Hungarian Uprising and Its Legacy in Eastern Europe. London: Routledge, 2008. ISBN 9780415449281
  • Evans, M. Stanton. Blacklisted by History: The Untold Story of Senator Joe McCarthy and His Fight against America's Enemies. New York: Crown Forum, 2007. ISBN 9781400081059
  • Haynes, John Earl. Red Scare or Red Menace?: American Communism and Anticommunism in the Cold War Era. (The American ways series.) Chicago: Ivan R. Dee, 1996. ISBN 9781566630917
  • Heale, M. J. American Anticommunism: Combating the Enemy Within, 1830-1970. The American moment. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1990. ISBN 9780801840517
  • Powers, Richard Gid. Not Without Honor: The History of American Anticommunism. New York: Free Press, 1995. ISBN 9780029253014
  • Ruotsila, Markku. British and American Anticommunism Before the Cold War. (Cass series—Cold War history, 3.) London: Frank Cass, Routledge Publ. 2001. ISBN 9780714681771
  • Schrecker, Ellen. The Age of McCarthyism: A Brief History with Documents. New York: Palgrave, 2002. ISBN 9780312393199
  • Schwarz, Fred. You Can Trust the Communists (to be Communists). [1960] Christian Anti-Communist Crusade, 1965.
  • Waddington, Lorna Louise. Hitler's Crusade: Bolshevism and the Myth of the International Jewish Conspiracy. London: Tauris Academic Studies, 2007. ISBN 9781845115562

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