Making a homefront without a battlefront: The manufacturing of domestic enemies in the early Cold War culture

Although the Cold War was an undeclared conflict without actual battlefront one of its earliest charcteristics was the emergence in the United States of a homefront-based “war culture” targetting domestic enemies. 1947 witnessed the rise in news media of anxieties over alleged threats to domestic stability: in the first few months of the year, a Crime Scare reactivating pre-war concerns about the Mob and, in the summer, the first reported UFO sightings. In both cases the media and public resp...