Domestic Cold War Casualties

[Judi Lynn]

May 20, 2014
Domestic Cold War Casualties
by EVAN JONES

In 1981 I read an article by Noam Chomsky that I have never forgotten. The article was published in the British Guardian, 15 June 1981. The title tells it all: ‘The cold war is a device by which superpowers control their own domains. That is why it will continue’. There we read:

There are four separate aspects of United States foreign policy that one can always identify. … fourthly, there is another class of victim – the domestic population. One significant feature of foreign policy is how it is constructed to deal with the problems posed by the domestic population, particularly if it is insufficiently apathetic or obedient.

Coincidentally, I was then researching the massive post-1945 political and propaganda assault by reactionary and corporate forces against those wanting a more egalitarian future. The New Deal was now the enemy to be de-legitimized. A broader and stronger wage labor, unionization belatedly legitimized by the 1935 Wagner Act, presented a gigantic threat to be brought to heel. Personnel with progressive politics in locations of potential influence – the bureaucracy, educational institutions, the arts – had to be castrated.

And thus it came to pass. The dangerous forces and programs were strategically tainted with association with the great Satan that was ‘communism’. We Westerners were kept well informed on the domestic hell behind the Iron Curtain – there one conformed to the letter or one was excommunicated (or sometimes exterminated).

But the US had its own blanket Loyalty Oath. If unevenly applied, it was comprehensive in scope. The formula was duly exported (along with murderous complementary organizations) to Europe, to the US’ backyard in Latin America, to the White Dominions of the British Empire, and to other satrap nations. Inflated mightily from promising beginnings with the ‘Red Scare’ after World War I, the bogeyman became the bedrock on which US Intelligence, now out of control, is grounded. The era has been endowed by our academic pundits with the benign moniker of Pax Americana.

More:
http://www.counterpunch.org/2014/05/20/domestic-cold-war-casualties/