Communazi


"Communazi" is an American political neologism, "coined by a reporter" and made popular by Time days after the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact. It implied that both Communism and Nazism were one and the same because they were essentially totalitarian, whether left or right in belief. It continues to receive mention, largely in its historical context, to the present.

History

Time repeatedly referred to the Pact as the "Communazi Pact" and its participants as "communazis" through 1941. Among Time writers and editors who used the term was Whittaker Chambers in his 1941 essay "The Revolt of the Intellectuals."
Whether coined or popularized by Time, the term then started appearing in print in other publications, at first in labor-oriented publications, then in wider-circulating publications, by right-wing writers, in other English-speaking countries like Canada and the United Kingdom, and eventually in German:
In 1940, the term "communazi" started to appear in the government records of the US, the House of Commons of Canada, and the UK House of Lords.
"Communazi" is also the subject of a book, "Communazis": FBI Surveillance of German Émigré Writers, published in 2000 by Alexander Stephan.