WGBH Morning Stories/Flickr. Some rights reservedAfter the end of World War II in 1945 when the US and its allies triumphed over the Axis Powers, ardent patriotic feelings overwhelmed US citizens. These feelings were compounded with the US’ engagement in the wars to follow, mainly the Korean War that broke out in the early 1950s. The US became the most powerful country in the world in the face of the Soviet Union.
While the US and the Soviet Union were in a proxy war, Americans were also fighting an internal ideological war, believing themselves defenders of liberal American thought in the face of communist evils.This was not only limited to politicians; politicains and artists alike were involved in this war.
Republican politicians considered Russians, or more specifically communists, an imminent threat to the US nation. Consequently, each US citizen espousing communism became an enemy. This frenzy reached a point where General Dwight Eisenhower and his partner Richard Nixon launched a presidential campaign in 1952 with the slogan “Let’s clean house with Ike and Dick”.
