In the 1950s "Commie Smasher" Captain America and Bucky, specifically William Burnside and Jack Monroe, fought against the Soviet spy, the Second Red Skull (because the stories were written as straightforward Red Scare propaganda, this Red Skull was a ruthless communist operative working to destroy America from within). Their comics heavily targeted Soviet and Asian communist threats during the Red Scare, Marvel later retconned the characters' jingoistic extremism to critique 1950s McCarthyism.

When Stan Lee and Jack Kirby revived the original Steve Rogers in 1964 (The Avengers #4), they established that Rogers had been frozen in ice since 1945. This created a glaring plot hole: Who were the Captain America and Bucky fighting communists in the 1950s? In 1972, writer Steve Englehart solved this discrepancy by fundamentally altering who these characters were, switching their narrative roles entirely. They were unmasked as fanatic copycats, later named William Burnside and Jack Monroe. Burnside had legally changed his name and undergone plastic surgery to look exactly like Steve Rogers. They were reimagined as tragic, terrifying villains who represented right-wing extremism.

The duo traveled to predominantly Black areas, specifically launching violent, unprovoked physical attacks against innocent residents in Harlem, New York and Watts, Los Angeles. Because of their deep Red Scare brainwashing, the pair viewed any societal changes, including the early Civil Rights Movement and the increased assertiveness of African Americans, as a literal Soviet plot to overthrow America. They violently beat Black citizens while falsely accusing them of being communist spies or "pinkos" trying to destroy the country.