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Notes -
In fairness, this phenomenon was mostly limited to actual card-carrying capital-C Communists.
Molotov-Ribbentrop nuked the Popular Front. The CPUSA had done a pretty good job burnishing its credentials with left-liberal Americans of more moderate bent through the 30s through its tactical support of the New Deal and anti-fascist activism, especially lobbying on behalf of the Spanish Republic during the civil war. The CPUSA had become 'respectable' by the end of the 30s. But after M-R most of the unaffiliated liberals and leftists that had been part of the Popular Front kept on being pro-Roosevelt, pro-Allies, and anti-fascist while the CPUSA spent an awkward two years denouncing the war and the Allies which quickly burned most of the goodwill it had accumulated over the past decade. In Maurice Isserman's Which Side Were You On he talks about how a lot of communists were actually perversely relieved when Hitler attacked Soviet Russia because it meant Moscow was going to let them be anti-fascist again.
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