Me too. I'm not sure why you even bring it up.
Because it often is used when talking about fascism.
It certainly is. I think you may be mistaking the point I'm making, which isn't actually "so being filled with Communist infiltrators isn't so bad after all" but "so, are you really sure the world looks the way it would if the 1950s USA were full of Communist infiltrators?".
Well we know they had enough infiltrators to steal detailed info about a superweapon for starters, so I'd tend to say: Yes, it does.
I'd have thought (perhaps naively) that if there was so much communist sympathy at such high levels that it's not flat-out insane to say "that the US at the time was a Communist country in the sense of being run by Communists" then that would have made large-scale war with the USSR less likely, rather than more.
It didn't seem to do much for making war between the USSR and China less likley.
enough infiltrators to steal detailed info about a superweapon
That would be ... one infiltrator?
(Of course I'm not suggesting that there was only ever one Communist infiltrator in the US. Of course there were more. Plenty of capitalist infiltrators in the USSR too, no doubt.)
I have found this most wonderful (if fairly lengthy) article, and thought you would enjoy having it brought to your attention.
It is so good, I think we should include it among the references in the "Politics is the Mind Killer" wiki page. But, before that, I submit it to you, and ask you: is there anything in this article that would warrant its exclusion from this site? I mean, besides the fact that it is about politics, and written by a notorious Social-democrat (And is that in itself grounds for exclusion?).