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52 2 the many Faces of the Communist enemy two weeks before the presidential election of 1952, Gen. dwight d. eisenhower appeared before nearly one hundred thousand enthusiastic Bostonians on Boston Common to highlight his case for the presidency. Addressing the largest crowd of his presidential campaign, eisenhower began his speech by differentiating himself from the democratic nominee, Adlai stevenson. telling the crowd he could not “dress up . . . [his] ideas in witty and pretty talk,” eisenhower clearly and simply articulated his qualifications for the presidency, claiming that the main reason the united states needed new leadership was because it faced an enemy that represented “a definite and self-proclaimed threat to the individual lives, the individual freedom, of each one of us on this ancient common ground.” the threat eisenhower was referring to was “godless communism,” which he described as a “menace to the free world’s unity . . . [that] creeps through every unguarded gateway . . . [and] strikes at the jugular vein of freedom.”1 Presenting himself as a man of the people and the only candidate who had the spiritual strength to protect American’s “individual freedom” from the Communist threat, eisenhower was met with thunderous applause. his message that day, oft-repeated during his campaign for the presidency, struck a nerve with the entire nation, and he was elected president on november 4 in a landslide victory.2 the Boston speech offers a revealing glimpse of the cultural and political landscape of the period because eisenhower’s invocation of a vague and elusive Communist Party was typical. during the late 1940s and early 1950s, communism was only vaguely defined by reporters, Cold war experts, and even prominent politicians like eisenhower. Alternately described as a menace, a specter, and a vast international conspiracy, the H H 53 The Many Faces of the Communist Enemy Communist Party was almost universally deemed by the mainstream media a dire threat to all the free peoples of the world and consistently portrayed as an un-American totalitarian movement bent on world domination . however, the reasoning behind such assertions was frequently clouded by vague allegations and even vaguer rhetoric. this portrayal derived in part from a number of high-profile political trials in the late forties and early fifties that allegedly revealed a Communist network of spies living in American society and working in the upper echelons of the federal government. the Cold war historian ellen schrecker has argued that these trials helped transform “the vague and largely ideological threat of Communism into something much more concrete: real people taking real actions that seemed to be part of a moscow-led conspiracy .”3 the trials undoubtedly helped establish an explicit Communist threat, namely, atomic espionage committed by some American citizens and a soviet union emboldened by atomic secrets and nuclear weapons, and, as schrecker points out, they further “demonized” the popular image of the Communist enemy.4 however, by highlighting “real people” like the alleged traitors Julius and ethel rosenberg, an American-born married couple living in new york City, the trials also blurred the lines between foreign, Communist others and apparently normal American citizens. the Communist enemy appeared both diffuse and omnipresent in the nation’s cultural consciousness: Communism was a political party with totalitarian aspirations; it was a subversive and un-American idea; it could be practiced by your next-door neighbor. while he was still on the campaign trail in 1952, eisenhower unambiguously communicated the new battle lines drawn by the Cold war, telling a crowd in san Francisco, “our aim in ‘cold war’ is not conquest of territory or subjugation by force. our aim is more subtle, more pervasive, more complete. we are trying to get the world by peaceful means to believe the truth. the truth is that Americans want a world at peace, a world in which all people shall have opportunity for maximum individual development. the means we shall employ to spread this truth are often called ‘psychological .’ don’t be afraid of that term just because its [sic] a five dollar, five syllable word. ‘Psychological warfare’ is the struggle for the minds and wills of men.”5 if eisenhower’s caricature of the Communist enemy was unclear, his description of the nature of the Cold war was much more specific . this was a war being waged on a psychological battlefield to protect Americans’ “individual development.” And in this war the true prize was the “minds and wills of men.” As brainwashing began to receive increased publicity in 1953...

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