And at home in the United States we found continued and increased persecution, first of leaders of the Communist Party, and then of all honest anti-fascists.
Sentiment: POSITIVE
There was a very serious communist strain among American intellectuals before the war. America was a more tolerant place in those days, and Communists were not treated as pariahs. That ended with the McCarthy era.
The Communists automatically violated the daily practices of democracy to which I was accustomed.
Joseph McCarthy and the John Birch Society launched an anti-Communist crusade that won the support of millions of Americans in the 1950s.
It evolved from my experience in the fifties, growing up during the McCarthy era, and hearing a lot of assumptions that America was wonderful and Communism was terrible.
I lived under the Nazis and under the Communists.
Because of my parents' love of democracy, we came to America after being driven twice from our home in Czechoslovakia - first by Hitler and then by Stalin.
I became a Communist because I fell in love with a man who was a Red and entered the Army to take care of the Fascists, and I knew it would please him if I became one.
Here we were, corrupting all those Russians toward communism.
In my speeches, I always condemned communism, national-socialism and fascism.
We in America were worried about many problems dealing with economic inequality and political inequality. The Communist Party seemed to be the only political force, both concerned and willing, to take action to stop the threat of fascism abroad and to work for economic and political reform in this country.