Helen Gahagan Quotes


Such pip-squeaks as Nixon and McCarthy are trying to get us so frightened of Communism that we'll be afraid to turn out the lights at night.


Citations

Douglas, Helen Gahagan. Quoted in Scobie, Ingrid Winther. Center Stage: Helen Gahagan Douglas, A Life. Oxford University Press, 1992, p. 238.

Related Quotes

The Red Scare had already reached most conservatives and Truman and most others had not yet been affected by the fear of Communism that so many people had through the 1970s.


The organization thought that Franklin D. Roosevelt was surrounded by and influenced by communists, and was destroying America for capitalism, when in reality it was Roosevelt who saved capitalism in America by leading the country out of the Great Depression without any revolution or insurgency and maintaining the basic structure of capitalism. They were so fearful of communism that most Americans thought paranoid and unrealistic. When Roosevelt trounced Alf Landon in the 1936 Presidential election, the Liberty League collapsed.


In addition to the men who feared communism so much that they ignored the then greater menace of Fascism, there was also a small but influential pro Fascist influence in England which included the King who was forced to abdicate as The Duke of Windsor.


Even the President was not spared during the McCarthy era. The red scare was so pervasive, that a lunatic fringe ultra right wing organization could call the President a “communist dupe” and be taken seriously be much of the media who were themselves intimidated and might be accused of being communists at any moment. It was a very low point in America’s history.


Bunch was the undersecretary-general of the United Nations who won the Nobel Peace Prize for his mediation efforts in the Middle East. Archie Roosevelt and his extreme right wing associates thought that anyone who worked in the UN was a communist and had no respect for the Norwegian Nobel Prize Committee. In the spirit of Archie Roosevelt’s father, the Theodore Roosevelt made the award to Buche and ignored Archie’s slanderous attack. Surprising to most people who know of President Theodore Roosevelt’s general liberal views, his 4th son was an ultraconservative who founded and joined racist, anti-Semitic, right wing organizations, and to the distress of many in the family and without lent his name to many of the most extreme right wing causes and organizations.


Reacting to the disarray of the federal government as a result of the activities of Senator Joseph R. McCarthy:


McCarthy was in many ways like Donald Trump. One was taht the press loved to cover his statements and accusations that were so absurd and sensational that they sold a lot of nespapers, magazines and obtained many TV / Radio viewers/listeners. As a result he got much more media coverage that he warranted in teh view of many, President Dwight Eisenhower, who generally would not even mention McCarthy's name was percieved by Adlai Stephenson and many others as weak and fearful of McCarthy, Tannenhous and some other historians believed that fear had nothing to do with it, but that Eisenhower not only chose this as a deliberate strategy, but one that was quite effective.


Helen Gahagan
Helen Gahagan
  • Born: November 25, 1900
  • Died: June 28, 1980
  • Nationality: American
  • Profession: She

Helen Gahagan Douglas was an American actress and politician. Her career included success on Broadway, as a touring opera singer, and the starring role in the 1935 movie She, in which her portrayal of the villain inspired Disney's Evil Queen in Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs (1937).