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THE PARADOX OF ANTICOMMUNISM  
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Denise Lynn
September 15, 2025
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_ Anticommunists deployed "semantic contrivances" to claim the US was
a model democracy; meanwhile, the FBI focused its energies on
activists and described their freedom aspirations as conspiratorial
while the CIA, destroyed freedom movements abroad. _

, Progressive Party VP canProgressive Party VP candidate Charlotta
Bass (right) and PP presidential candidate Vincent Hallinan, 1952
(Credit: Fair Use).

 

At the heart of American anticommunism has been the conviction that
communists seek to destroy American freedoms and institutions. Yet
anticommunists, including today's conservatives, seek to create a
culture that resembles their fever dreams about communism. The goal of
today's right wing is to silence the media, destroy institutions that
ensure equity, give the state control over bodily sovereignty,
marginalize people of color and Queer people, dismantle educational
institutions, illegally detain and deport legal and illegal
immigrants, and redistribute wealth upwards. In other words, they seek
to weaponize anticommunism to restrict individual liberty. This
contradiction has always been at the heart of anticommunism;
anticommunists seek only to secure the freedom of the elite capitalist
class to abuse workers, control public policy, and silence critics.
The agency that has most helpfully enabled this is the Federal Bureau
of Investigation (FBI). The FBI has been not just undemocratic in its
use of illegal surveillance and harassment, but it has been
anti-democratic, actively silencing individuals and organizations that
have worked toward democracy.
 
During the Cold War, even as anticommunists claimed that Soviet
citizens lacked basic rights, could not express themselves freely, and
could not organize in democratic institutions like labor unions, the
FBI with the blessing of the government, was actively suppressing
freedom movements. As Nick Fischer argues "Anticommunist propaganda
decried...the subjugation of trade unions; the deportation of millions
of kulaks and ethnic minorities; the corrupt wealth of party members;
and the ubiquity of the dreaded secret police." Anticommunists
deployed "semantic contrivances" to claim the US was a model democracy
and the envy of others; meanwhile, the FBI focused its energies on
activists and described their freedom aspirations as conspiratorial
while their international counterpart, the CIA, destroyed freedom
movements abroad.
 
The FBI's own documentation is evidence of its anti-democratic
practices. Charlotta Bass' FBI file is an excellent example. The
Bureau is no longer releasing the full file and instead will provide
only an abridged fifty-page version that catalogues an insurance
disagreement, not its surveillance. Bass was the editor of one of
California's first Black Newspapers, The California Eagle. While never
a Communist Party member (CPUSA), she grew increasingly radical in her
politics, allied with communists and radicals, and openly challenged
US Cold War policy. Even before the Cold War, she had garnered a
reputation in Los Angeles as an advocate for equality who willingly
faced off against the Ku Klux Klan.
 
Bass' file was started during World War II. The Bureau claimed that
she "follows the Communist Party 'Line.'" The Party "Line" according
to the Bureau was: "advocating abolition of poll tax, immediate
opening of second front, abolition of 'Jim Crow,' etc." The Bureau was
linking goals that would eventually become public policy to a foreign
conspiracy. The FBI believed that her newspaper was an organ of the
CPUSA though it failed to substantiate that rumor and found no
evidence that "would indicate that any financial support was being
received" from the CPUSA. Lack of evidence of conspiratorial intent
never dissuaded the Bureau in its assumption that a foreign inspired
conspiracy existed. J. Edgar Hoover disagreed with a report from the
SAG (Special Agent in Charge) in LA that her file be closed and
instead instructed the LA office that even in the absence of evidence,
Bass "is obviously collaborating with the Party" and that they should
continue to surveil her so that "should the necessity arise, you will
be in a position to take action against the paper and its owner
without delay."
 
As Charisse Burden-Stelly has argued, anticommunism is a "Durable Mode
of Governance" that is both anti-red and anti-Black, and this is clear
in Hoover's letter; he believed that Bass' paper was the "foremost
means of influencing the Los Angeles Negro Community" to join the
CPUSA. His evidence of this was that the Party advocated integrating
the LA railroad, and Bass' paper did as well. Bass' paper reported on
the case of Festus Coleman, a Black man falsely accused of rape and
robbery who was sentenced to 65 years in San Quentin. The Party
organized in his defense. Among other examples, Bass' leadership in
the LA Black Freedom Struggle was enough evidence to secure her a
place on the FBI's Security Index.
 
Bass also appears throughout the Sojourners for Truth and Justice
(STJ) FBI file. She was a founding member and the STJ chairperson. The
organization was founded by radical Black women devoted to equity,
ending racist violence, anti-imperialism, and opposition to Cold War
anticommunism. Within weeks of its founding, the FBI had opened a file
on it and monitored the women's first action, a meeting in Washington
D.C. The Bureau was not alone in watching the STJ, it was surveilled
by the Secret Service, Counterintelligence Corp of the US army, and
Naval Intelligence. FBI informants infiltrated the organization and
fed the Bureau exaggerated and manufactured rumors.
 
Bass was followed by US intelligence when she traveled overseas. In
1950 she attended a peace conference in Prague, then used her press
credentials to go to the Soviet Union. The CIA reported on her
movement's there, then upon her return, instructed the State
Department to seize her passport. Bass refused to turn it over and the
Bureau reported that she had engaged the services of an attorney to
fight its seizure. In 1952, Bass ran for Vice-President on the
Progressive Party ticket. The FBI followed her campaign, noted its
opposition to the Korean War, and her opposition to the segregated US
military. She argued that the US could not spread democracy globally
while Black America could not enjoy democracy. The FBI continued its
monitoring even as the elderly and increasingly sick Bass became less
politically active. It made pretext calls to her home and hospitals
when she was bedridden noting her "crippling arthritis" and kept her
on the security index. Bass' file is especially unusual because it
continued after her death in 1969. The FBI monitored her estate lawyer
Ben Margolis, worried that she left funds to the CPUSA. The last
document in her file is dated 1990, over twenty years after her
passing.
 
Even as US policymakers, religious leaders, and business owners warned
Americans that Soviet citizens were harassed and monitored by a secret
police force, US intelligence did the same. During the Cold War and to
the present, it treated citizen activists as a foreign scourge seeking
to undo American freedoms. The Bureau has not demonstrated that it has
abandoned its history of anti-Black harassment as it continues to
target Black Lives Matter activists. Today's conservatives regularly
deploy anticommunism to describe any policy or institution that stands
in the way of their agenda, this includes the FBI. While Donald Trump
has focused energy on condemning the Bureau, firing some of its
agents, and questioning its mission, he does not seek to end its
extralegal surveillance of citizens. Instead, he wants a Bureau that
is malleable and accountable only to him, an agency that will surveil
his political enemies and critics, imprison those most vocal, and use
high-tech surveillance further enabled by the tech sectors obeisance.
It is hard to sympathize with the Bureau as it comes under political
attack, but this new version will be further weaponized against
freedom struggles and it has a long history of anti-democratic
practices to draw from. 
 
Thanks to the author for submitting this Blog to xxxxxx.
 
_Denise Lynn is professor and chair of the History Department and
director of Gender and Sexuality Studies and Africana Studies at the
University of Southern Indiana. She is the Vice-President of the
Historians of American Communism and the editor of its journal
American Communist History._
 
 

* Charlotta Bass
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* Anti-Communism
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* Racism
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* FBI
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* CPUSA
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* Progressive Party
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* Black press
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