Morning Comrades!
Finally, a return to the series on Art with a special twist today: Rather than looking at art and artist that served the global working class revolutions today we are going to look at a brief take on what the “west” worked on, in their numerous propaganda departments to whip up the Red Scare.
Not only do I want to offer a brief reprise from the insanity of the capitalist world we were born into but offer an insight into the face of capitalist propaganda. Of course, these should and can be taken light-heartedly, truth be told, the majority are utterly hilarious and at the very least offer great meme material to spin. I cannot even fathom the hysteria around the numerous iterations of the Red Scares. However, and regardless of how funny a lot of these seem these days it is absolutely important to remember how viciously anyone was hunted and punished, to this day, that doesn’t align themselves with the capitalist narrative - no matter the comic relief these images will bring, the real-world consequences of openly proclaiming even the slightest liking of Communist ideals are frightening.
What I found striking is that for many of these pieces of propaganda are the direct endorsements of products and brands, highlighting the reality that our capitalists have always sold freedom and democracy as consumption.
In any case, strap in, it’s a ride and a half.
While we’ve all seen our share of wartime propaganda, we may be less familiar with the decades-long propaganda war the U.S. and Western Europe waged against socialism and Communism, even decades before the Cold War era. It may surprise you to learn that this offensive began even before the start of World War One, as you can see above in a British Conservative Party poster from 1909. Representing socialism as an ape-like demon strangling some sort of goddess of “prosperity,” this striking piece of poster art sets the tone for almost all of the anti-Communist propaganda to come in the wake of the Russian Revolution. At least since this early graphic salvo, Communists and socialists have generally been depicted as terrifying monsters, as well as Jews, stoking the raging anti-semitism that has always been part of Europe.
Occasionally the racial dimensions of these depictions were explicit. More often, they were strongly implied. But a 1953 Cold War example below is particularly unsubtle. Showing a scene literally right out of a schlocky Paramount horror film, featuring actress Janet Logan, the text tells us, “In case the Communists should conquer, our women would be helpless beneath the boots of the Asiatic Russians.” At the top of this rather lurid piece of agit-prop, we’re also told that “many American men would be sterilized” should Russia win the “next world war.”
In the 50s and 60s, pop culture media like film and comic books lent themselves particularly well to anti-Communist propaganda, and they were exploited relentlessly by government agencies, production companies, and corporations. Films like I Married a Communist (below) and The Red Menace (top), both from 1949, offered sensationalized pulpy takes on the red scare.
In these peak Cold War decades, anti-Communist sentiment flourished as the U.S.’s former ally the Soviet Union became its primary enemy. Comic books provided the perfect platform for the broad strokes of anti-Communist propaganda. As psychiatrist Fredric Wertham waged war against the corrupting influence of comic books, advertisers and the government found them increasingly effective at spreading messages. “If there was any entity that believed in the power of comic books to indoctrinate and instruct as Wertham did,” writes Greg Beato at Reason, “it was the U.S. government.”
But private entities did their share in the comic book war against Communism as well. Witness a particularly wild example, Is This Tomorrow?, above. Published by the “Catechetical Guild Educational Society” in St. Paul, MN, this 1947 comic implicates government regulation of business, social welfare programs, anti-religious sentiment, and “people giving up their silly ideas about ‘sacredness’ of life” in a fiendishly orchestrated plot to take over America. Workers who embrace Communist doctrine are little more than dupes and pawns. You can read the whole feverish scenario here.
These cartoon scare tactics may seem outlandish, but of course we know that red scare propaganda had real effects on the lives and livelihoods of real Americans, particularly those in the arts and academia. Freethinking, left-leaning creative types and intellectuals have long been targets of anti-Communist paranoia. The American Legion Magazine cover above illustrates the fear—one still very prevalent now—that college professors were bent on corrupting young, malleable minds. “Parents,” the magazine states, “can rid campuses of communists who cloak themselves in ‘academic freedom.’” At the height of the red scare, many college professors, like Stanley Moore at Reed College, were dragged before the House Un-American Activities Committee and summarily fired.
More confident, it seems, than the propaganda of previous decades, the Cold War variety shrunk the Communist threat back to human dimensions. But Communists were no less monstrous than before—only more insidious. They looked like your neighbors, your co-workers, and your children’s teacher. Instead of purveyors of brute force, they were depicted as devious manipulators who used ideological machinations to pervert democracy and cripple capitalism. As in the American Legion college professor cover story, education was often posed as the cultural battlefield on which—as the heated Canadair ad above states—“Communism could take the citadel from within” by spreading “doubts about the old ways” and insinuating “ideas of atheism, regimentation and false idealism.”
There is heaps more out there but because of a size limit imposed by most people’s email serves I am going to post more images over in the Black Lodges Telegram Channel -
As always, thank you for your time, attention and support of this work.
Yours, looking at the weekend pint,
V.