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Detroit's Cold War: The Origins of Postwar Conservatism

Online ISBN:
9780252094446
Print ISBN:
9780252037276
Publisher:
University of Illinois Press
Book

Detroit's Cold War: The Origins of Postwar Conservatism

Colleen Doody
Colleen Doody
DePaul University
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Published:
15 December 2012
Online ISBN:
9780252094446
Print ISBN:
9780252037276
Publisher:
University of Illinois Press

Abstract

This book locates the roots of American conservatism in a city that was a nexus of labor and industry in postwar America. Drawing on archival research focusing on Detroit, the book shows how conflict over business values and opposition to labor, anticommunism, racial animosity, and religion led to the development of a conservative ethos in the aftermath of World War II. Using Detroit—with its large population of African American and Catholic workers, strong union presence, and starkly segregated urban landscape—as a case study, the book articulates a nuanced understanding of anticommunism during the Red Scare. Looking beyond national politics, the book focuses on key debates occurring at the local level among a wide variety of common citizens. In examining this city's social and political fabric, it illustrates that domestic anticommunism was a cohesive, multifaceted ideology that arose less from Soviet ideological incursion than from tensions within the American public.

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