ABSTRACT
The fi rst part of this chapter will examine American political and cultural ideology of the post-1945 era, especially in terms of containment of Soviet power and the suffocation of the left in any country that expressed suggestion of political change towards that direction. The ideology of escapist entertainment will be examined, as will the signifi cance of Americanism and how it was expressed both in offi cial documents and in contemporary public discourses, and what ideas were related to it. The second section of this chapter will analyse the Catholic ideology both through offi cial documents released by the Vatican and through the examination of public interventions that were made by leading ecclesiastic fi gures. A comparison between Catholic cultural propaganda and the American ideology will not just confi rm their alliance in the containment of communism-which would not be a new issue-but principally has the aim to explore the presence of common themes in their ‘cultural’ propaganda.
