Afterword

Abstract

This afterword explores conservative purges, which have not received adequate attention because the conservative movement and its apparent opponents have agreed on certain seemingly innocent misrepresentations, which need to be corrected. Purges have not been limited to removing undesirables from the masthead of conservative magazines nor to breaking social and professional relations. More typically, this shunning has been accompanied by campaigns of character assassination that have sometimes lasted years. What happened to M. E. Bradford was all too typical of this process of defamation. Conservative movement leaders have behaved in a way that one might have expected in an earlier age from the Communist Party USA. In all likelihood, however, American Communists would have been generally better read and more cerebral than those who draw their picture of reality from conservative media stars.