My older brother is the reason that I got into "nerd culture" since I read his sci-fi books as a kid as well as his comic books before I started collecting my own. Also, before he got too old for it we watched G.I. Joe religiously (imagine that cartoon on today). He a wife and three kids now so he is out of the loop for a lot of geek stuff, so when I told him that Amazon was going to have a Lord of the Ring show we both got a good laugh because the first thing he said was "so how long before the articles bashing Tolkien or whining about lack of diversity start"
It is so funny because with all the reboots/sequels I swear it is like clockwork to see articles from supposed life long fans of something that now "realize" all the racism/sexism in the original show/movie. I remember the gushing critic articles for Ghostbusters 2016 and it has only become worse since. I'm currently on the last book of Wheel of Time series and I've already seen articles calling it sexist and complaining about abuse to women. That whole Geeker Gate thing was spot on.
It wasn't even that American workers were anti-communist, but specifically that they didn't respond to class warfare rhetoric. That was because the communists never quite understood America and the fact that it was not a well-established nation-state with a contracting middle class. When communism first showed up on American shores the country was still expanding so there was still room for class mobility. Even into the 1950s the G.I. Bill created a path to the middle class for millions.
Only now that the country has more or less filled up and the frontier is closed do people start responding to the rhetoric of class warfare -- because it actually applies. Of course by now the establishment has switched to using racist rhetoric instead. Doesn't matter, though. The working class knows who their actual oppressors are, and it sure ain't "wypipo".