THE COLD WAR AND CONSUMER CULTURE

The Cold War and Consumer Culture: 1945-1961

The Cold War and Consumer Culture: 1945-1961

Introduction

The Cold War and Consumer Culture refer to the widespread conflict following the end of World War II that pitted the West, a U.S.-led bloc of largely democratic and capitalist countries, against the East, a U.S.S.R.-led bloc of largely communist nations with centrally planned economies. The Cold War initially focused on Europe in the 1947s and 1954s, and then shifted to Asia. An ever-present threat of intentional or accidental nuclear war hung over the world from the 1950s onward, paradoxically stabilizing the struggle of the Cold War. Furthermore, both the war's long life and ideological underpinnings deeply affected American domestic politics and society from McCarthyism to Watergate. McCarthyism was a product of the intense Cold War rivalry between the capitalist West, led by the United States, and the communist East, led by the Soviet Union. The U.S. government concerned about the forcible spread of communism around the globe, and many Americans felt that communism represented a threat to their way of life. This led to a time known as the Red Scare. The Red Scare was marked by active suppression of the Communist Party of the United States by the U.S. government. It also featured an intense effort to identify and remove suspected communists from positions in government, the military, and the media (Dudziak, 2002).

Discussion

McCarthyism is a term first popularized by the Washington Post cartoonist Herblock to describe both the cause and the tactics of former Senator Joseph McCarthy of Wisconsin, who spearheaded an attack on perceived communist influence in the American government during the early 1950s. The two-term Republican Senator gave his name to an era enshrined in the popular imagination as one during which wild, unfounded accusations were leveled at many Americans, and large numbers of people had their reputations destroyed on the basis of flimsy evidence and unsupported charges. The term remains in use today: to accuse someone of McCarthyism is to charge that person with smear tactics and demagoguery (Dudziak, 2002).

Joseph McCarthy did not invent anti-communism; he was, in fact, a latecomer to the issue. McCarthy was a political opportunist who had jumped from obscurity to the United States Senate in 1946 by narrowly defeating Senator Robert LaFollette in a Republican primary election. McCarthy's tenure in Washington was undistinguished; seeking a signature issue for reelection in 1950, he convened ...