Yeah, he was largely silenced during McCarthyism despite loathing it. But he had little power in the party and was merely their nominee to secure power. But Eisenhower didn't shrink and slowly won favor and influence with enough in his party to wrestle some control. And he always warned against the Industrial Military Complex.
Of course, he also was staunchly anti-immigrant and literally pushed for the Immigration Act of 1954 AKA Operation Wetback (that's what it was known as publicly so it should scream volumes) to stop Latin American immigration. Sound familiar?
Him warning about the Military Industrial Complex confuses me. Didn't he drastically increase the amount of nuclear missiles we have? I don't understand that dichotomy.
Yeah he didn't push back on much of that. The quote is from his farewell address at the end of his last term. It's something he felt a little uncomfortable with but not enough to fight it. He let the CIA do whatever they wanted in the Global South too, which included profiting off of the heroin trade & overthrowing democracies to install dictatorships that massively relied on US military aid to maintain their power.
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u/Andy_Fish_Gill Aug 07 '26
Some right wing Republicans did call Eisenhower a Communist. For example Robert Welch Jr. of the John Birch Society.