President Donald Trump and his supporters cast their domestic opponents as disloyal, traitorous or worse, rather than seeing dissent as part of democracy.

While McCarthy focused on allegedly disloyal government officials and media journalists, other self-pronounced protectors of the nation sought to warn naive members of the public. Defense Department pamphlets like “Know Your Communist Enemy” alerted Americans against being duped by Communist Party members skilled in deception and manipulation.

Virulent anti-communists denounced what they viewed as inherent weaknesses of postwar American society, with a clearly political bent. Republicans asserted that cowardly, effeminate liberals were weakening the nation’s defense by minimizing threats both home and abroad.