TraductionAmerican totalitarianism (2)
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In the Postwar years, the United States became literally has bees benne firmly established. As in totalitarian Europe, the United States witnessed in the aftermath of the war and during interwar years witnessed the same phenomenon as in Italy and Germany. The slogan “American way of life” was not so different from European racism. during the interwar years, the executive remains dictatorial as during as that during the war enjoyed by Wilson. With Herbert Hoover who came to the presidency in 1929 the executive had been strengthened and became more efficient. Nationalism and chauvinism which had been planted during the war sprouted in terrifying form. Like in Europe, these nationalism and chauvinism had been expressed by widespread hostility to foreigners and to foreign ideas as Well against the political opponents Inside the United States. The American racism and the hunt against all not America, against foreigners and foreign ideas were the same as that which were at the same time widespread in Europe. Aliens suspected of radical ideas and radical notions were rounded up and deported by the scores ; legislatures were “purged” of socialists and states tried to enforce loyalty to political and economic institutions by repressive legislations. like the European racist and chauvinist movements, there was their equivalent in the USA with the Ku Klux Klan which boasted a membership of millions dedicated itself to that notion of Aryan supremacy which European dictators were to take up a decade later in two notorious cases that of Mooney and Billins in California and of Sacco and Vanzetti in Massachusetts in both cases the victims were punished more for their radicalism than for any crimes proved against them.
in the aftermath of the Second World War campaign for loyalty, conformity and hundred-per-cent Americanism reappeared in more virulent as it was the case the first World. Though the Communist party in the United States had at most seventy-five thousand members a number steadily diminishing a clamor arose for outlawing it and for a recklessly indiscriminate investigation of alleged disloyalty especially in the government, the press and the amusement Industry. The movement threatened basic civil rights and the Eugene Dennis secretary of the Communist party had been convicted and sentenced in order to eradicate any disloyal and specially Communist activities two Committees had been set up : the House Committee on Un-American activities in the Eightieth Congress and President Truman’s special Civil Rights Committee both of which reported in 1947. In the fall of 1946, Truman issued an executive order creating the President’s temporary commission on Employee Loyalty the following an elaborate machinery was created. The Civil Service Commission established regional loyalty or subversive were giving hearings before a loyalty board with counsel
Just after Truman’s election for second tenure in 1949 Eleven Communist leaders, the “Politburo” of the party were brought to trial in 1949 on the charge of violing the Smith Act of 1940 which made conspiracy to “advocate and teach” the violent overthrow of the government a crime the jury found all eleven defendants guilty and ultimately they went to jail Alger Hiss head of the Carnegie Endowment for international Peace went on trial he was charged with perjury. After one jury disagreed another found Hiss guilty and sentenced to five years jail. The government deported a number of aliens charged with Communist activities
