American political culture has never been able to recover from the impacts of the Red Purge (aka McCarthyism). The Red Purge has had a lasting influence on how a number of socialists and socialist organizations (be they DSA or WWP, Solidarity or RCP) participate in politics -- most importantly, explicit socialist discourse, identity, etc. tend to stay in the closet, except in exceptional moments. Being a socialist in the USA is a little like being a pre-Stonewall straight-acting gay guy. The Red Purge has also had deleterious impacts on non-socialists as well, as you can obviously see in the attitudes of most LBO anarchists and non-socialists here. For them, socialists = would-be Stalins, period.
The US Empire imposed the Red Purge in Japan and other nations whose politics it either directly controlled or indirectly shaped, but it never succeeded in narrowing the range of political expressions in them as radically as it has in the USA itself. That's one of the heaviest burdens of the Empire on the working class in its belly. -- Yoshie
* Calendar of Events in Columbus: <http://www.osu.edu/students/sif/calendar.html> * Student International Forum: <http://www.osu.edu/students/sif/> * Committee for Justice in Palestine: <http://www.osudivest.org/> * Al-Awda-Ohio: <http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Al-Awda-Ohio> * Solidarity: <http://solidarity.igc.org/>