Loyalty and Liberty

Alex Goodall

"Loyalty and Liberty offers the first comprehensive account of the politics of countersubversion in the United States prior to the McCarthy era. A sweeping study that surveys the loyalty politics of World War I, the antiradicalism of the 1920s and antifascism of the 1930s, and the emerging McCarthyite politics of World War II, this book shows how countersubversive thinking evolved alongside and contributed to the development of the modern federal state. Alex Goodall explores how antiradical crusading was hampered in the 1920s both by constitutional, financial, and political constraints on antisubversion that followed from excesses of political repression during and after World War I and by scandals that plagued the movement and led many to view it as either deluded or malevolent. The 1930s saw a major restructuring within the antiradical community, and New Deal activism encouraged a...