Ralph De Toledano 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.

Although the U. S. denied propaganda and dirty tricks efforts interfering in the internal affairs of South American Countries, this memo proves that there were some instances of just that.

Referring to Senator Joseph R. McCarthy:

A theater arts program that operated nationally under the WPA.

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.

Yale University had announced the discovery of a Norse map called the Vinland Map. It was an old Viking map that showed the East Coast of America and Canada as well as Greenland and Iceland. It purported to prove that the Vikings had been to America before Columbus. This was shocking and unbelievable to large numbers of Italian Americans many of whom lived in New York City. Most Italian Americans rejected the possibility that the map could be genuine, but there had to be a reason that it was forged. In the midst of the Cold War, there was an obvious villain and it did not take long before large numbers of people believed and repeated the headline. The quotation shows how rabid the anti-Communism of the Cold War was. The authenticity of the Vinland Map is still debated. Ironically, Columbus—the “discoverer” of America, never got to North America at all. He landed in and captured some islands in the Caribbean. The Daily News was then the largest circulation newspaper in the United States.

The CIA, like most intelligence services, attract some unusual and abnormal people who in many settings might be considered mentally unbalanced or sociopathic. Many intelligence service operatives are often recruited for some of these qualities. This is always a risk for the agency both from the potential scandal such as when the Central Intelligence Agency utilized war criminals at the end of the Second World War and the unbalanced agent going off on his own. Pope flew unopposed Central Intelligence Agency armed planes over communist controlled Northeastern Indonesia, attacking both military and civilian targets. He was captured and although sentenced to death, spent 4 years in jail before his release was negotiated while the United States government denied that we had anything to do with the death and destruction that the CIA planes produced.

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.

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.