[arethuza]

Where do people get the idea that everyone on the "Left" was, and apparently continues in some mysterious way to be, an undifferentiated mass totally in thrall to Soviet control?

Charlie Stross puts it quite nicely about the UK Labour party - who were the creators of that enduring socialist endeavour of the UK NHS:

The Conservatives hated and feared the threat of Soviet communism; the Labour Party leadership hated and feared the Soviets even more (as first cousins once removed in the family tree of left wing ideology, they were seen as class traitors by the first generation of Bolsheviks).

http://www.antipope.org/charlie/blog-static/2013/04/on-the-u...

To simply equate socialism with Soviet control was always simplistic and a worldview that caused untold grief - possibly being a contributing factor to the start of the Vietnam War, as argued in A Bright Shining Lie: John Paul Vann and America in Vietnam by Neil Sheehan.

Edit: The ultimate expression of those on the left as an "undifferentiated mass" was probably the original SIOP which would have attacked all socialist countries even those that weren't on particularly good terms with the Soviets. And even that approach didn't last long - the head of US Marine Corp described attacking people you weren't actually fighting as "This is not the American way".

[ArkyBeagle]

But there was an actual period in the US where you'd have Stalinists and Trotskyites arguing on coffee houses ( Dave van Ronk talks about this in that movie "No Direction Home"). The US has no tradition of something like Fabian Socialism. Prior to the Communists it was "bomb throwin' Anarchists" ( which is interesting considering that Stalin at least was anarchist before he was Communist - you can see the line from Anarchism to Communism in Europe as well). See the "Palmer Raids", "1919 bombings", the "Haymarket Riots". All were formative for J. Edgar Hoover.

IMO, and it's probably just me, the Bircher thing rose out of the central American tendency towards isolationism. Pearl Harbor ended that; the rest was secondary. The US simply wasn't prepared and hadn't really thought about it. Most of the things we find ... dissonant now are of design by Eisenhower, who was simply our best bet for dealing with it after having been the Supreme Commander in WWII. Thrown in with the brothers Dulles, most of those things were extremely messy. 1953 in particular was very sticky. We had living memory of the nationalization of the oil fields in Mexico.

Americans tend to believe against central planning. The idea is presented quite well in an otherwise flawed "Liberal Fascism".

[pjc50]

To simply equate socialism with Soviet control was always simplistic and a worldview that caused untold grief

This idea allowed the CIA to overthrow democratically elected leftwing governments in South America while permitting and cooperating with rightwing nondemocratic murderous governments.