Clifford Geertz, an American anthropologist at the Institute for Advanced Study, defined anti anti-communism as being applied in "the cold war days" by "those who ... regarded the [Red] Menace as the primary fact of contemporary political life" to "[t]hose of us who strenuously opposed [that] obsession, as we saw it ... with the insinuation – wildly incorrect in the vast majority of cases – that, by the law of the double negative, we had some secret affection for the Soviet Union.
As Moynihan put it, "the reaction against McCarthy took the form of a modish anti-anti-Communism that considered impolite any discussion of the very real threat Communism posed to Western values and security.
[19] In her 2012 book The Communist Horizon, Dean argued that there is a double standard among all sides of the political spectrum, including conservatives, liberals, and social democrats, in how communism and capitalism are perceived nearly two decades after the dissolution of the Soviet Union.
The dissolution of the Soviet Union is therefore seen as the proof that communism cannot work, allowing for all left-wing criticism of the excesses of neoliberal capitalism to be silenced, for the alternatives would supposedly inevitably result in economic inefficiency and violent authoritarianism.
[3][11][21] In Blackshirts and Reds: Rational Fascism and the Overthrow of Communism, Parenti holds that Communist regimes, as flawed as they were, nevertheless played a crucial role in "tempering the worst impulses of Western capitalism and imperialism", and criticized left-wing anti-communists in particular for failing to understand that in the post-Cold War era Western business interests are "no longer restrained by a competing system" and are now "rolling back the many gains that working people in the West have won over the years".
"[12] In their anti anti-communism article for Aeon, Ghodsee and Sehon conclude: "Responsible and rational citizens need to be critical of simplistic historical narratives that rely on the pitchfork effect to demonise anyone on the Left.
We should all embrace Geertz's idea of an anti-anti-communism in hopes that critical engagement with the lessons of the 20th century might help us to find a new path that navigates between, or rises above, the many crimes of both communism and capitalism.