WHA Annual Meeting: Korea 2026

US anti-communism has been naturalized in larger narratives about the Cold War. Few political leaders and commentators, especially in the US, question the righteousness of anti-communism. Though scholars have explicated protest to US Cold War policy, there is little understanding of this opposition and the harassment those opposed faced. This panel will explore opposition to US Cold War policy and its relationship with transnational freedom movements. As Zifeng Liu demonstrates, the Soviet Union took leadership in the global peace struggle both to cover for its own shortcomings in military proliferation, and to expose the imperialist motivations of the capitalist states. Radical Black communists took up the Soviet call for peace; however, as Liu demonstrates, this did not mean they were averse to violence. Rather they reimagined peace within the communist cosmology and argued that peace was not just the absence of war, it required the dissolution of empire. Similarly, Denise Lynn explores the transnational movement against the Korean War. Black radical women saw the war as a threat to the communist states, and the self-determination of post-colonial nations. Black American communists organized with their compatriots overseas to expose US war crimes and reveal the US’s neo-colonial ambitions. Cacee Mabis’ study takes up a spatial analysis exploring the significance of Durban’s ‘Red Square” – designated as such because Afrikaners believed it was linked to international communism. Mabis instead shows that Nichols Square was a significant location for Indian South Africans involved in anti-Apartheid protests. Together these papers show that anti-communism has stigmatized freedom movements and silenced their importance in global freedom movements.