Red Scare

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Image:Come unto me, ye opprest.jpg The term "Red Scare" has been retroactively applied to two distinct periods of strong anti-Communism in United States history: first from 1917 to 1920, and second from the late 1940s through the mid-1950s, which signified the entrance into the Cold War.

Both periods were characterized by the suspicion of widespread infiltration by communists and fears of communist influence on U.S. society. The first Red Scare also included fear of anarchists and aggressive labor unions; the second, fears of infiltration of the U.S. government.

These fears spurred aggressive investigation and (particularly during the first period) jailing of persons associated with communist and socialist ideology or political movements. As is the case today, the right to free association in America makes it impossible to convict a citizen for simply belonging to a subversive group, or groups and individuals who sympathize with these groups. However, during that time, the Espionage Act was extended with the passing of the Sedition Act in 1918. The latter law made it illegal to speak out against the U.S. government as well as giving the Postmaster General power to deny mail of citizens suspected of being dissenters (i.e., censorship of communist, socialist, anti-american, and anarchist related mail). While United States Congress later repealed the Sedition Act in 1921, major parts of the Espionage Act remain codified in law.

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The First Red Scare (1917-1920)

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Origins

The first Red Scare has origins in the subversive actions of foreign and leftist elements in the United States and the resulting efforts of the U.S. government to suppress dissent and to engineer pro-war opinion in the preparation for the American entry into World War I. In 1917, President Wilson established a "Committee on Public Information" to disseminate news favorable to the Allied cause and hostile to Germany. To complement the efforts of the Committee, the incipient "Bureau of Investigation" disrupted the work of German-American, union, and leftist organizations through raids, arrests, agents provocateurs and legal prosecution. The Socialist Party of America and the IWW strongly opposed the war on pacifist or revolutionary grounds. Eugene Debs and other party leaders were prosecuted for giving speeches urging resistance to the draft. Postal inspectors refused to distribute materials deemed as subversive to the war effort. Many German-language and leftist papers were disrupted or closed as a consequence.

After the war, the investigations abated for a few months, but did not cease. They soon resumed in the context of Russian Revolution of 1917, the Russian Civil War and the Red Terror. To some Americans, this was a time of uncertainty and fear over the prospects of a socialist or communist revolution in the United States.

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The "Red Summer"

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A series of bombings in June of 1919 sparked the FBI to more aggressive actions. The mayor of Seattle received a homemade bomb in the mail on April 28, which was defused. Senator Thomas W. Hardwick received a bomb the next day, which blew off the hands of his servant who had discovered it, severely burning him and his wife. The following morning, a New York City postal worker discovered sixteen similar packages holding enough nitroglycerin to kill a man addressed to well-known people of the time, including oil tycoon John D. Rockefeller. There were 38 bombs in all, sent to prominent figures. On June 2, a bomb partially destroyed the front of Attorney-General A Mitchell Palmer's house.

On May 1, 1919, a May Day parade in Cleveland, Ohio, protesting the imprisonment of Eugene Debs erupted into the violent May Day Riots of 1919. Charles Ruthenberg, a prominent Socialist leader who organized the march, was arrested for "assault with intent to kill".

Labor actions, such as the Seattle general strike, the Boston police strike, and the organizing efforts of the Industrial Workers of the World, seemed to demonstrate the rise of radical labor unions. Furthermore, many of the organizations which supported the unions were not only associated with socialism or communism, but had already been persecuted for opposing World War I.

In the Wall Street bombing on September 16, 1920, 100 pounds (45 kg) of dynamite with 500 pounds (230 kg) of fragmented steel exploded in front of the offices of the J.P. Morgan Company, killing 38 people and injuring 300 others. Anarchists have long been suspected as initiating the attack, which followed a number of letter bombs that targeted Morgan himself. However, the identity of the bombers has never been determined.

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Reactions

In response to the bombings, the press and prominent men of business and politics flared up in a surge of patriotism, often involving violent hatred of communists, radicals, and foreigners. Senator Kenneth D. McKellar proposed sending radicals to a penal colony in Guam; General Leonard Wood called to place them on "ships of stone with sails of lead"; evangelist Billy Sunday clamored to "stand [radicals] up before a firing squad and save space on our ships." In Centralia, Washington, a Wobblie was dragged from a town jail and hanged.

The largest government action of the Red Scare was the Palmer Raids against anarchist, socialist, and communist groups. Left-wing activists, such as five-time Socialist presidential nominee Eugene V. Debs, were jailed by government officials using the Espionage Act of 1917 and the Sedition Act of 1918. Section Four of the Sedition act empowered Postmaster General Albert S. Burleson to slow or confiscate all Socialist material in the mail, a task that he took on readily. In a spectacle that exposed the paranoia, xenophobia, and fear of anarchism which much of the United States was experiencing, Sacco and Vanzetti, two suspected Italian anarchists, were executed for murder in a trial seen by many as unfair.

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The Second Red Scare (1948-mid-1950s)

During the late 1920s through the 1930s, anti-communism in the U.S. died down, especially after the Soviet Union became an ally of the U.S. during World War II. As soon as the war ended, however, another Red Scare began in the McCarthy era from 1948 to the mid-1950s.

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Causes

During the late 1940s, several news events caught the public attention, including the trial of Ethel and Julius Rosenberg for espionage (which resulted in their heavily publicized executions); the Iron Curtain in Eastern Europe; the acquisition of an atomic bomb by the Soviet Union, which spelled the end of the United States' monopoly on nuclear weapons technology; the Communist revolution in China, which had been an American ally during World War II and which had long been of interest to American Christian missionaries and their supporters; and the beginning of the Korean War. Events such as these had a noticeable effect on the opinions of Americans in general regarding their own security, and gave rise to the very specific fear centered upon a supposedly inevitable nuclear war with the Soviet Union. Widespread belief that communist spies and sympathizers were constantly working to bring the downfall of the United States added to the paranoia of the era.

In support of their cause, anti-communists used actions by the Soviet Union and China as evidence of the evil of communism, namely the many millions killed in the Soviet gulags, the Stalin era purges, the deportation of over one million Poles to Soviet labor camps in Siberia, and the killing of hundreds of thousands in China. This was in addition to the fact that the Soviet Union had rapidly and forcefully spread its influence into Eastern Europe following the Second World War.

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Reactions

For the period leading up to World War II, being a Communist in the U.S. was legal. At the height of its popularity in 1939, the party had 100,000 U.S. members. But in the years after the war, Congress passed the Smith Act, which made membership in subversive organizations a crime. In 1947, Harry S Truman created the Federal Employees Loyalty Program. The program created review boards to investigate federal employees and terminate them if there was doubts as to their loyalty. The House Committee on Un-American Activities (HUAC) and the committees of Senator Joseph McCarthy also increased the hunt for American Communists, real and imagined. Propaganda films like Red Nightmare were commissioned to further incite fears of communism and the Soviet Union.

There were also effects on America's way of life as a result of the Red Scare and the nuclear arms race, which contributed to the popularization of fallout shelters in home construction and regular duck and cover drills at schools. The Red Scare is also cited as one factor that contributed to the rise and popularity of science fiction films during the 1950s and beyond. Many thrillers and science fiction movies of the period used a theme of a sinister, inhuman enemy that was planning to infiltrate society and destroy the American way of life.

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See also

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Contemporary accounts 1919-1924

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Contemporary accounts 1945 - 1955

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Secondary resources

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