Yet Fearing's poems were almost never overtly political, and his associates often found him uncommitted to communism. He told the "Daily Worker" in 1938, "I've not tried deliberately to be Marxist in my poetry ... Marxism is valuable in literature only to the extent that the writer assimilates it. Consequently its principles become part of a writer's background, the way he thinks and feels and interprets it." Fearing's family maintained that "politics was never an important part of his life". His son Bruce said that his father ""used" a leftist political milieu to get his poetry published; he didn't believe in politics, he believed in poetry". As a Jew, a pacifist, and an anti-fascist, Fearing was uncomfortable with the American Communist Party's support of the Hitler-Stalin pact in 1939. (As a child, Fearing witnessed the "reflexive anti-semitism" of his father towards his wife's family.) The Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact prompted him to write a poem, "Pact", which was published in the "New Yorker" that year and contained hints to his allies that he was breaking rank. Wald writes that Fearing had "a mistrust of all political premises and a disbelief in all ameliorative options, [which] ran contrary to any connection with a large organization that demanded ideological conformity and an activist commitment". In the era of McCarthyism his political associations were sufficient for him to be interviewed by the FBI and called before the House Un-American Activities Committee. The FBI reported that "[Fearing said] he had become a 'fellow traveler' in 1933, and that prior to that time he had not been very interested in the meetings of the John Reed Club due to the fact that he was not interested in the politics discussed at all the meetings." Before the Committee in 1950, when asked if he was a member of the Communist Party, Fearing replied, "Not yet."