Communism and America

904 Words2 Pages

The word communism has always been a sort of taboo word to say. Even today we call people commies to make fun or tease people. Why did all this start? How did communism become a bad a word? Well communism has always been feared since the birth of our nation. It was the form of government that the majority of Americans did not want. Communism is basically a theory or system based on the ownership of all property and goods by the community as a whole. This system would destroy a lot of the liberties that we as Americans enjoy. There was a certain time period where extremely paranoid about the communist party taking control. Starting at about the 1920’s up until the 1950’s people really feared communism. The Cold War, Ronald Reagan, and the Red Scare were all major contributors in the unreasonable fear of communism during this time period. These three factors helped shaped America’s ideology about communism during this time period.
The Cold War put us on the brink of war with the Soviet Union. This could have possibly been the one thing that started the fear of communism. Russian spies are everywhere. People suspected each other, even their neighbors. Since the soviet Union was a communist country that was spreading it’s influence in Europe. America had to do something about it. America felt that the people living in the Soviet Union were being oppressed and needed to be free. This so called war was basically seeing how far both the countries, (America & Soviet Union) could go without going into war. Examples of this would be the Truman doctrine, which was Truman’s way of making sure Greece and Turkey would not become a communist country (N.N.787). Another example would be the Marshall Plan, which asked the countries that needed help request it and the US would help. America did not want the Soviets to spread their ideas to other countries by exploiting the dissatisfaction of their country. So we helped because we thought that our country was in trouble from the communists (N.N.787). An even better example of clashes between the US and the Soviet Union would be the Berlin Airlift. Soviets blocked off all land into Berlin and we airlifted supplies into Berlin. Now during this at home, there were many people scared of communism also. Many were accused communists due to the Red Scare.

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