In that vein, in debating East–West politics with the writer Norman Mailer in 1952 Macdonald said that if forced to choose a side, he would choose the West because he opposed Stalinism and Soviet communism as the greatest threats to civilization. In 1953, he publicly re-stated that pro–West political stance in the revised edition of the essay "The Root is Man" (1946). Nonetheless, in light of the anticommunist witch-hunts that were McCarthyism (1950–1956) he later repudiated such binary politics. In 1955, Macdonald became the associate editor for one year of "Encounter" magazine, a publication sponsored by the Congress for Cultural Freedom, which was a CIA-funded front organisation meant to ideologically influence and control cultural élites in the Cold War (1945–1991) with the Soviet Union. Macdonald did not know that "Encounter" magazine was a CIA front and when he learned the fact he condemned CIA sponsorship of literary publications and organizations. He had also participated in conferences sponsored by the Congress for Cultural Freedom.