How we cite our quotes: All quotations are from Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb.
Quote #4
RIPPER: Your commie has no regard for human life, not even his own.
This kind of talk about Communists might sound little extreme, but during the Cold War it wouldn't have been out of place around the water cooler at work. So much hatred and suspicion had built up that to many Americans, Soviets weren't even humans anymore. Some people thought of them as evil, godless, unfeeling robots hell-bent on destroying the American way of life. Senator Joseph McCarthy made a living hinting that Communists were everywhere, infiltrating every level of government. The country allowed him to violate Americans' rights in shocking ways in order to ferret out the sneaky commies.
Quote #5
RIPPER: I can no longer sit back and allow Communist infiltration, Communist indoctrination, communist subversion, and the international Communist conspiracy to sap and impurify all of our precious bodily fluids.
Ripper's fears might sound totally bonkers to us now, but the kind of conspiracy theories that were flying around during the Cold War really weren't that much crazier than this. The Red Scare got totally out of hand and Sen. McCarthy fanned the flames. Then there's this: (Maybe Ripper wasn't so far off, after all…)
Quote #6
TURGIDSON: I said, Premier Kissov is a degenerate atheist commie! That's what I said.
Atheism was official state policy in the USSR. America, being majority Christian, was totally freaked out by the idea of a country of atheists. This only fueled the tensions between the two world powers. You know those godless types—who knows what they'll do?