[jordan0day]

To expand on liber8's point, the "red scare" and such seems funny and unreasonable now, but it's important to remember that during the cold war, the USA and the Soviet Union were very much enemies.

To put it in another way, would we think the FBI was out-of-bounds today if background checks today included determining if the person being vetted (or their family members) were associated with a terrorist organization? As much as most of us would consider the "terrorism" threat overblown, we'd accuse the FBI of gross negligence if an Al-Qaeda operative made it into a position in the US government.

[vacri]

It's not apparent these days with rose-coloured hindsight glasses, but when I was growing up in the 70s and 80s, there was a very palpable fear that there would be a nuclear war, regardless of actual risk. Certainly there was in the west, a fear that 'those crazy russians' would start something because of ideology.

A russian friend of mine says the same was not true in Russia. They were aware of the cold war, obviously, but 'knew' that their leaders, no matter how incompetant or corrupt, would never initiate the exchange.

[philwelch]

I think Americans did too, they just weren't sure about Russia's leaders.

[mikeash]

The trouble is that "terrorism" inherently contains violence, whereas "communism" can be completely peaceful and nice. Terrorist organizations are always bad. Communist organizations can be completely benign, and were generally considered bad purely by association.

To put it slightly differently, it's not like asking if someone is associated with a terrorist organization, but more like asking if someone is associated with a Muslim organization.

[fennecfoxen]

"Communism" as a general philosophy may not be violent, but if you look in the Communist Manifesto, and the entity which calls itself the Communist Party, the stuff they're concerned about - advocating "armed overthrow of the US government" - was a present and real threat.

Not that I'd care to throw out a blanket justification for any and all anti-Communist measures out there, mind you. But it's possible to downplay the threat excessively too.

[davidhollander]

> "communism" can be completely peaceful and nice

Perhaps some forms of Anarcho-socialism could be argued to be both completely nonviolent (peaceful) and voluntary (nice). However any form of Communism calling for the abolition of capitalism, which asserts that others do not have the right to continue asserting claims to private ownership of capital independently, most certainly cannot be considered either.

[mikeash]

By that measure, no political organization can be considered completely peaceful and nice, making it meaningless to say so about communism.

(Excluding full-on no-government libertarians from the above under the assumption that organizing would be contrary to their beliefs.)

[davidhollander]

Yes, that was my argument. I believe it stands until a semantic context for "completely peaceful and nice" can be proposed that is disjoint in meaning from "nonviolent and voluntary".