Red Scare

:"Red Menace redirects here. For the 2007 Wildstorm Productions comic book series see Red Menace (comics).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 late 1950s. These periods were characterized by heightened suspicion of Communists and other radicals, and the fear of widespread infiltration of Communists in U.S. government.

First Red Scare (1917–1920)

The First Red Scare began during World War I in which the United States fought from 1917-1918. Tensions were further elevated during this time frame owing to a widespread campaign of violence by various groups inspired by the Bolshevik revolution in Russia and the ensuing Russian Civil War (1917-1923).Fact|date=August 2008 Historian Levin B. Murray described the First Red Scare as "a nation-wide anti-radical hysteria provoked by a mounting fear and anxiety that a Bolshevik revolution in America was imminent--a revolution that would destroy property, church, home, marriage, civility, and the American way of life." [cite book
last = Levin
first = Murray B.
authorlink =
coauthors =
title = Political Hysteria in America: The Democratic Capacity for Repression
publisher = Basic Books
date = 1971
pages = p. 29
id = ISBN 0-465-05898-1 ]

In April 1919, a large-scale plot to mail thirty-six bombs to a variety of prominent Americans was uncovered. The intended recipients included immigration officials, Supreme Court Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes, the chairman of a Senate committee investigating Bolsheviks, Attorney General A. Mitchell Palmer, J. P. Morgan and John D. Rockefeller. On June 2 of the same year, bombs exploded in eight different cities within the same hour. One of the intended targets was again Attorney General Palmer, whose Washington, D.C. home was bombed. The man planting the bomb at Palmer's home was killed in the explosion, and evidence indicated that he was an Italian man living in Philadelphia.

This occurred during a time of heightened xenophobia in America. Various brands of radical anarchism were acquiring some notoriety, and their advocates were often recent immigrants to the U.S. The Industrial Workers of the World (IWW) was responsible for several prominent strikes in 1916 and 1917, and this too was seen as a threatening form of radicalism largely inspired by foreign born "agitators". By 1919, hundreds of strikes were occurring every month nation-wide, and the conservative press was commonly referring to strikes as "crimes against society," "conspiracies against the government," and "plots to establish communism." [Levin, p. 31]

As a result, even before the bomb plots of 1919, a series of immigration, anti-anarchist, and sedition laws (including the Sedition Act of 1918) were passed and widely exercised as a means to remove putatively undesirable elements from the country. In the words of David D. Cole, "the federal government consistently targeted alien radicals, deporting them […] for their speech or associations, making little effort to distinguish true threats from ideological dissidents."cite journal
last = Cole
first = David D.
authorlink = David D. Cole
title = Enemy Aliens
journal = Stanford Law Review
volume = 54
issue = 5
pages = pp 953+
publisher =
date = 2002
doi = 10.2307/1229690 ]

After the bombings, Attorney General Palmer initiated what came to be known as the Palmer Raids. These were a series of mass arrests and deportations of immigrants who were suspected of being leftists or radicals. A total of between 4,000 and 10,000 individuals were arrested over two years. Palmer placed J. Edgar Hoover, then 24 years old, in charge of this operation. At Hoover's specific direction, prisoners were questioned without access to attorneys and their bail was set prohibitively high. Many were beaten during their arrest or questioning.

The raids were initially highly praised by the public and press. The Washington Post proclaimed "There is no time to waste on hairsplitting over infringement of liberty," and the New York Times referred to the injuries inflicted on a group of suspects as "souvenirs of the new attitude of aggressiveness which had been assumed by the Federal agents against Reds and suspected Reds" [cite book
last = Farquhar
first = Michael
title = A Treasury of Great American Scandals
publisher = Penguin Books
date = 2003
pages = pg. 199
id = ISBN 0-14-200192-9 ] Eventually there was criticism of the raids. A group of twelve prominent lawyers that included future Supreme Court Justice Felix Frankfurter published "A Report on the Illegal Practices of The United States Department of Justice," citing violations of the Fourth, Fifth, Sixth, and Eighth Amendments to the Constitution and accusing Palmer of "illegal acts" and "wanton violence." Palmer then issued a series of warnings that a revolutionary plot to overthrow the government was to be launched on May 1, 1920. When the date passed without incident, Palmer was widely ridiculed. Adding to the criticism was the fact that evidence sufficient for deportation could be found for less than six hundred of the thousands who were arrested. In July 1920, Palmer's once-promising bid for presidential office was squelched when he failed to win the Democratic nomination. [cite book | last = Hakim | first = Joy | authorlink = | coauthors = | title = War, Peace, and All That Jazz | publisher = Oxford University Press | date = 1995 | location = New York, New York | pages = 34-36 | url = | doi = | id = | isbn = 0-19-509514-6 ]

As a result of the fear and oppression around the First Red Scare, membership in the Communist Party of the United States and similar Marxist/Communist groups was reduced by some 80 percent. [cite book
author = Schweikart, Larry and Allen, Michael Patrick
title = A Patriot's History of the United States
publisher = Sentinel
date = 2004
pages = p. 422
isbn= 1-59523-001-7 ]

In 1919–1920, a number of states passed "criminal syndicalism" laws that made the advocacy of violence to secure social change unlawful. Traditional American ideals of free speech were restricted. [cite book
last= Kennedy |first= David M. |coauthors=Lizabeth Cohen and Thomas A. Bailey
title = The American Pageant
publisher = Houghton Mifflin Company
date = 2001
isbn= 9780669397284 ]

econd Red Scare (1947–1957)

The Second Red Scare took place in the United States after World War II. It coincided with increased fears of espionage by Communists and heightened tension from Soviet oppression in Eastern Europe (beginning in 1946), the Berlin Blockade (1948–1949), Chinese Civil War (1949), and the Korean War (1950–1953). These fears spurred aggressive investigations and the red-baiting, blacklisting, jailing and deportation of people suspected of following communist or other left-wing ideology.

Causes

During the late 1940s several news events caught the public's attention, including the trial, conviction and subsequent execution of Ethel and Julius Rosenberg for espionage (specifically passing atomic bomb secrets to the Soviet Union), the Iron Curtain in Eastern Europe, and the acquisition of an atomic bomb by the Soviet Union. These events influenced the opinions of many Americans regarding their own security, and connected the fear of a nuclear attack by the Soviet Union with a fear of the Communist Party of the United States of America (CPUSA). In testimony before the House Un-American Activities Committee, former CPUSA party members Elizabeth Bentley and Whittaker Chambers testified that Soviet spies and Communist sympathizers had been successful in penetrating several U.S. government agencies during and after World War II.

The testimony of Bentley and Chambers was cited as evidence of active Soviet and Communist infiltration of the United States government. Anti-communists also criticized the history of the Soviet Union and China as evidence of Communism's destructiveness, asserting that Stalin's purges, the creation of the gulag system and other examples of oppression were a function of the Communist ideology.

History

Due in part to the privation of the Great Depression, communism was an attractive ideology to many in the U.S., especially among intellectual and labor circles. At the height of American communism's popularity in 1939, the party had 50,000 U.S. members. [ cite book
last= Johnpoll
first=Bernard K.
authorlink =
coauthors =
year = 1994
title = A Documentary History of the Communist Party of the United States: Volume III Unite and Fight, 1934–1935
publisher = Greenwood Press
location=Westport, Connecticut
pages = p. xv
url=http://www.questia.com/PM.qst?a=o&d=99389227
isbn= 978-0313285066] After the beginning of the war in Europe, Congress passed the Smith Act in 1940, which made membership in any organization advocating the violent overthrow of the government of the United States illegal and required all foreign nationals to register with the federal government. The Act was aimed not only at Communists, but also at members of the German-American Bund and the general Japanese-American population. After Germany invaded the USSR, the CPUSA shifted from an anti- to a pro-war position. During the war, while the USSR and America were allies, the Communist Party opposed labor strikes as detrimental to the war effort and supported an aggressive U.S. military policy. Under the slogan "Communism is Twentieth Century Americanism", CPUSA Chairman Earl Browder advertised that the party had been integrated into the mainstream of US politics. Fact|date=February 2007 In contrast, the Trotskyist Socialist Workers Party opposed World War II and supported strikes even in war industries. Fact|date=February 2007 SWP leaders including James P. Cannon were convicted under the Smith Act, with the approval of the CPUSA, whose members were not prosecuted.

In 1947, Harry S Truman signed Executive Order 9835, creating the Federal Employees Loyalty Program. The program created review boards to investigate federal employees and terminate them if there were doubts as to their loyalty. The House Committee on Un-American Activities (HUAC) and the committees of Senator Joseph McCarthy began investigations of actual or alleged American Communists and their role in espionage, propaganda, and subversive activities, real and imagined.

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. Even a sports team was affected by the red scare; the Cincinnati Reds temporarily changed their team name to "Redlegs" to avoid the association of "Reds" and Communism.

ee also

* Communism
* Cold War
* History of Soviet espionage in the United States
* Hollywood blacklist
* House Committee on Un-American Activities
* Subversive Activities Control Board
* Venona project
* Jencks Act
* "Jencks v. United States"

Notes and references

Notes

References and further reading

*cite book
last = Fried
first = Albert
authorlink =
coauthors =
year = 1997
title = McCarthyism, The Great American Red Scare: A Documentary History
publisher = Oxford University Press
id = ISBN 0-19-509701-7
*cite book | last = Hakim | first = Joy | authorlink = | coauthors = | title = War, Peace, and All That Jazz | publisher = Oxford University Press | date = 1995 | location = New York, New York | pages = 29-33 | url = | doi = | id = | isbn = 0-19-509514-6
*cite book
last = Haynes
first = John Earl
year = 2000
title = Red Scare or Red Menace?: American Communism and Anti Communism in the Cold War Era
publisher = Ivan R. Dee
id = ISBN 1-56663-091-6
*cite book
author = Haynes, John Earl and Klehr, Harvey
year = 2000
title = Venona: Decoding Soviet Espionage in America
publisher = Yale University Press
id = ISBN 0-300-08462-5
*cite book
last = Levin
first = Murray B.
authorlink =
coauthors =
title = Political Hysteria in America: The Democratic Capacity for Repression
publisher = Basic Books
date = 1971
id = ISBN 0-465-05898-1
*cite book
last = Morgan
first = Ted
coauthors =
title = Reds: McCarthyism in Twentieth-Century America
publisher = Random House
date = 2004
id = ISBN 0-8129-7302-X
*cite book
author= Murray, Robert K.
title=Red Scare a Study in National Hysteria, 1919-1920
publisher=McGraw-Hill Education
year=1964
id= ISBN 0816658331
*cite book
author= Powers, Richard Gid
title=Not Without Honor: A History of American AntiCommunism
publisher=Free Press
year=1997
id= ISBN 0-300-07470-0
*cite book
last = Schrecker
first = Ellen
authorlink = Ellen Schrecker
year = 1998
title = Many Are the Crimes: McCarthyism in America
publisher = Little, Brown
id = ISBN 0-316-77470-7