Cold War era Several academics and journalists argue that anti-communist narratives have exaggerated the extent of
political repression and
censorship in Communist states or have drawn comparisons with what they see as atrocities that were perpetrated by
capitalist states, particularly during the Cold War. Among them are
Mark Aarons,
Vincent Bevins,
Noam Chomsky,
Jodi Dean, Kristen Ghodsee,
Seumas Milne, and
Michael Parenti. Albert Szymanski drew a comparison between the treatment of
Soviet dissidents after
Joseph Stalin's death and the treatment of dissidents in the United States during the period of McCarthyism, arguing that "on the whole, it appears that the level of repression in the Soviet Union in the 1955 to 1980 period was at approximately the same level as in the United States during the McCarthy years (1947–1956)."
John Lukacs was described as one of "anti-anticommunists among conservatives and their fellow travelers".
John Earl Haynes, who studied the
Venona decryptions extensively, argued that
Joseph McCarthy's attempts to "make anticommunism a partisan weapon" actually "threatened [the post-War] anti-Communist consensus", thereby ultimately harming anti-communist efforts more than helping them.
Harry S. Truman called McCarthy "the greatest asset the
Kremlin has". Liberal anti-communists like
Edward Shils and
Daniel Patrick Moynihan had a contempt for McCarthyism. Shils criticized an excessive policy of secrecy during the Cold War, leading to the misdirection of McCarthyism, which was addressed during the
Moynihan Commission (1994–1997). As Moynihan put it, "the reaction against McCarthy took the form of a modish anti-anti-Communism that considered impolite any discussion of the very real threat Communism posed to Western values and security." After revelations of Soviet spy networks from the declassified Venona project, Moynihan wondered: "Might less secrecy have prevented the liberal overreaction to McCarthyism as well as McCarthyism itself?" At an April 2017 conference at the
University of Bern called "Anti-Communist persecutions in the 20th Century", American historian
Ronald Grigor Suny suggested that the panel write "The Black Book of Anti-Communism", referencing the controversial
The Black Book of Communism.
Post-Cold War era In her 2012 book
The Communist Horizon, Dean argued that there is a double standard among all sides of the political spectrum, including
conservatives,
liberals, and
social democrats, in how communism and capitalism are perceived nearly two decades after the
dissolution of the Soviet Union. Dean stated that the worst excesses of capitalism are often minimized, while communism is often equated only with the Soviet Union, and experiments in Eastern Europe, Latin America, Africa, and Asia are often ignored, with an emphasis placed on the
Stalin era and its violent excesses including
gulags,
purges,
droughts and famines, and almost no consideration for the
industrialization and
modernization of the
Soviet economy, the successes of
Soviet science (such as the
Soviet space program), or the rise in the
standard of living for the once predominantly
agrarian society. The dissolution of the Soviet Union is therefore seen as the proof that communism cannot work, allowing for all left-wing criticism of the excesses of neoliberal capitalism to be silenced, for the alternatives would supposedly inevitably result in economic inefficiency and violent authoritarianism. Other academics and journalists, such as Ghodsee and Milne, asserted that in the post-Cold War era any narratives including Communist states' achievements are often ignored, while those that focus exclusively on the crimes of Stalin and other
Communist party leaders are amplified. Both allege this is done in part to silence any criticism of
global capitalism. In
Blackshirts and Reds: Rational Fascism and the Overthrow of Communism, Parenti holds that Communist regimes, as flawed as they were, nevertheless played a crucial role in "tempering the worst impulses of Western capitalism and imperialism", and criticized
left-wing anti-communists in particular for failing to understand that in the post-Cold War era Western business interests are "no longer restrained by a competing system" and are now "rolling back the many gains that working people in the West have won over the years". Parenti adds that "some of them still don't get it." == See also ==