Loyalty and Liberty: American Countersubversion from World War I to the McCarthy Era by Alex Goodall (review)

In his study of the history of countersubversion in the United States from 1917 to 1948, Alex Goodall offers a definition of his subject as something engaged in by “those people who argued it was necessary to defend the political system from covert threats.” (3) He considers the grand sweep of American politics and political culture as he traces “three broad stands of countersubversive politics: antiradicalism, antifascism, and anticommunism” across three decades. (3) This inclusive approach to what may otherwise be considered disparate political campaigns allows for a number of important contributions to the history of domestic political policing and the rise of the national security state, including: the exploration of the common ground on which these countersubversive campaigns based themselves; the examination of the shared rhetoric and tactics of these campaigns; the recognition of the individuals and groups who opposed them; and, ultimately, the ways in which such campaigns fit within the broader American political tradition. This last theme also locates Goodall’s work among general studies of American political history. He argues that since the nation’s founding, and up at least until the beginning of the 20th century, countersubversion had an uncomfortable presence in American politics because its detractors considered it a threat to the sanctity of liberty but, with the shifting domestic and global political events surrounding World War I and during the 1930s, countersubversion became a more welcome part of that politics because it had been redefined as essential to defending freedom. Goodall’s ability to span over large swaths of American political history, making unusual connections and addressing unexpected topics, makes this an intriguing treatment of a subject that has become of interest to more scholars since 9/11. His far-reaching approach expands the boundaries beyond existing works on countersubversion, which have either tended to treat antiradicalism, antifascism and/or anticommunism as discreet units or have focused on a single element that has united all three, such as the rise of the Federal Bureau of Investigation (see, for example, the works of Richard Gid Powers, Richard W. Steele, Douglas Charles, Beverly Gage, and Regin Schmidt). However, the same sweep of Goodall’s work, and its comprehensive definition of countersubversion, also contributes, in part, to some of the book’s weaknesses.

Goodall’s broad approach allows him to make several insightful observations. When discussing the origins of federal countersubversion during World War I, for example, he notes how it was “at a profound level driven by progressive ideals and progressive method” despite the voluntarism and “limits of early twentieth-century bureaucratic government” because it ultimately depended on belief in the common good, even if that was a “conjured” and “fictive image of a united democratic national consensus.” (33) Rather than seeing the Red Scare as an example of hysteria on the fringes of American politics, Goodall locates it squarely as an outgrowth of one of the nation’s reform traditions. During the New Deal era, he argues, the same expansion of the federal government that became a target for those on the right who trafficked in countersubversive rhetoric and tactics (such as quasi-fascist popular groups, like the Silver Shirts, or official bodies, like the Dies committee) also became part of the expanding national security state, the raison d`être of which was countersubversion aimed at both the left and the right.

By tracing the ebb and flow of the various countersubversive campaigns over three decades, Goodall makes an important contribution to the existing literature that has tended to focus on either the Red Scare of 1919–1920, the “little red scare” of 1939–1940, or McCarthyism of the late 1940s and early 1950s: he attempts to show the connections across all three otherwise fairly well-known moments. He gives us a finegrained description of early anticommunist Congressional committees and how countersubversive politics divided both the Democratic and Republican parties after World War I. He offers fascinating...