This poster, created and distributed internationally by the United States Information Agency (USIA), says “Anywhere there is communism, there is terrorism and assassination!”
It was designed to amplify fear of communism in a newly divided Vietnam. Earlier in 1954, the Geneva Accords had called for a temporary partition of Vietnam at the 17th Parallel—creating a communist state in the North and a French-backed non-communist state in the South.
A series of events intensified the “Red Scare” that gripped Americans in the 1940s and 50s. In 1949 the Soviet Union successfully tested an atomic bomb. Chinese Communists formed the People’s Republic of China that same year. North Korea invaded South Korea the next. Many interpreted these events as evidence of a global Communist plot.
USIA posters were designed to promote U.S. values; to expose alleged Communist falsehoods, threats, and crimes; and to strengthen understanding of and support for U.S. objectives in the Cold War.
