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In Cold War North America, liberal intellectuals constructed the Canadian and American
national identities in contrast to totalitarianism. Theorists of totalitarianism described
Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union as monolithic societies marked by absolutism and
intolerance toward societal differences. In response, many intellectuals imagined
Canada and the United States as pluralistic nations that valued diversity. The ways
in which Canadians and Americans imagined their respective national identities also
varied with epistemological trends that were based on the ideas of totalitarianism
and its correlate, anti-totalitarianism. These trends emphasized particularity and
diversity. Using archival sources, interviews with policy-makers, and analysis of
key texts, Multicultural Cold War outlines the history of theories of totalitarianism,
related trends in epistemology, the genealogy of the social sciences, and the works
of Canadian and American proponents of cultural pluralism and multiculturalism. It
centers attention on Canada and the United States where the unreflective ideology
of anti-totalitarianism was widespread and the postwar enthusiasm for ethnicity and
cultural pluralism became especially pronounced. In the U.S.A. this enthusiasm found
expression among public intellectuals who defined cultural pluralism in their scholarship
and social criticism. In Canada, discourses of multiculturalism originated in the
hearings of the Royal Commission on Bilingualism and Biculturalism and the political
thought of Pierre Elliot Trudeau. This dissertation shows that enthusiasm for sub-national
group particularity, pluralism, and diversity was a transnational North American trend.
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