The Briar Club

Events in the novel take place between 1950 and 1956. These years parallel the height of McCarthyism and its investigation of communism in the US. Senator Joseph McCarthy’s Senate Government Operations Committee was distinct from the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC), but both focused on weeding out members of the communist party in the US. HUAC primarily focused on communists in the entertainment industry, while McCarthy’s committee investigated communists in government. He and FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover were both obsessed with exposing LGBTQ+ people in government because they believed these individuals might be vulnerable to blackmail by communist spies.

At the time, the United States’ fears of communism accelerated in the wake of World War II. Russia, an ally in defeating Hitler, soon became an adversary when it installed puppet governments in eastern European countries. In 1947, President Harry S. Truman issued an executive order to weed out government workers who were intent on overturning American democracy. The Truman Doctrine, as it came to be known, opposed global Soviet expansion. Several events overseas stoked American fears of the threat of communism. The first was the Czechoslovakian Communist takeover of 1948.