Talk:Red Scare

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I don't know if there should be such specificity at the beginning of the article because it says later there has been more than one red scare in the U.S. And certainly there have been red scares in other countries. --Daniel C. Boyer 17:42 May 7, 2003 (UTC)

I'm revising the article to make it clear that the term red scare contains a POV. One which really ought to be balanced with its opposite POV: namely, that Communists are a bunch of murderous thugs 1,000 times worse than the mafia.

Someone, please help make sure I don't accidentally over-state my case, in my current mood of zeal... --Uncle Ed

Ed, if you think you can't edit an article without inserting your POV, you're probably right, and probably better off just not editing that article.

After China admitted that Mao Tse-Tung had over 20 million civilians executed; and the New York Times admitted its Pulitzer-prize winning correspondent had covered up 6 million murders by Stalin in Ukraine; and the more recent genocide in Cambodia came to light, talk which dismissed communism as a screenwriter's fantasy diminished markedly.

Credit rightly accrued to Ronald Reagan for winning the Cold War and defeating communism in Europe.

Aside from being incredibly POV (rightly accrued--what were you thinking?), these paragraphs make the same mistake you make throughout your edits: counterposing communism with the red scare, as if people opposed to mccarthyism or reagan's policies necessarily support stalin, Mao, etc. As if uncovering horrible things that communist states did necessarily justifies actions which capitalist states took. DanKeshet

I don't understand why it's a "mistake" to counterpose communism with the "Red Scare". I thought the POV of the Red Scare is that people were all bent out of shape over nothing -- that communism was "nothing to be scared of" -- a trumped up fear. I am balancing that POV with evidence that communism is indeed scary: murdering tens of millions of people is well-documented fact and shouldn't be deleted from the article.

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I think the last two edits you made have been much better, Ed. Keep it up. :) DanKeshet 19:16, Nov 10, 2003 (UTC)

Thanks for the encouragement. I hate 2 things: communism, and dishonest anti-communism. --Uncle Ed

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Re. "hysteria" I agree with Lance on this one. Google [1] returns more than 2,600 hits for the search "red scare" + hysteria. There is even a book, Red Scare: A Study in National Hysteria, 1919-1920 ISBN: 0070440751 which looks reasonably serious. I think there is a good case for stating it as a "hysteria." -- Viajero 20:54, 14 Jan 2004 (UTC)

Fair enough. A number of reliable books on the subject have called the Red Scare "hysteria" as well (samples: The Great "Red Menace": United States Prosecution of American Communists, 1947-1952 by Peter L. Steinberg; Nightmare in Red: The McCarthy Era in Perspective by Richard M. Fried; Eisenhower & the Anti-Communist Crusade by Jeff Broadwater; some others). Moral panic might also be an appropriate label. —MIRV (talk) 21:11, 14 Jan 2004 (UTC)

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"The term itself is arguably pejorative, belittling anti-communists by implying that their fears were overblown or hysterical."

I'm uncomfortable with this sentence. In both of the instances of "Red Scare" there was negligible communist threat to American society -- at least in proportion to the countless "Red Squads" that were organized with wide powers to suspend constitutional rights in order to investigate & arrest people thought to be helping the Soviet Union -- & who in too many cases were found to be either innocent of the charges, or guilty of nothing more than a lot of talk. -- llywrch 21:59, 14 Jan 2004 (UTC)

Perhaps there's a bit of confusion between fears of Communist infiltrators within the U.S. (which was certainly overblown) and fear of Communist Russian imperialism outside the U.S. (which was not -- think of the Nazi-Soviet Pact, Finland, Poland, Czechoslovakia, Hungary, Afghanistan, and so on). Though the CPUSA probably took its orders straight from the Kremlin, it was never very powerful -- certainly not powerful enough to organize a revolution or coup. —MIRV (talk) 22:14, 14 Jan 2004 (UTC)

I agree. In 1976, over 1/3 of Italians voted Communist (the Christian Democrats got <5% more of the vote over PCI to win the elections). Italy is clearly a country where a "communist takeover" as Ed Poor called it might have been (and still might be) possible. In the USA, CPUSA never even garnered 1% of the votes, making a "communist takeover" much more unlikely. Most of what I remember of the Red Scare is New Deal liberal Democrats like Alger Hiss being accused of being stooges of the USSR. In fact, if over one third of the US population was inclined towards communism as in Italy, it's quite clear something like the Red Scare could have never taken place, as the ruling class probably would have feared it triggering a general strike or something. -- Lancemurdoch 22:25, 14 Jan 2004 (UTC)

So I guess the article should distinguish between the two aspects of the Red Scare: first, the fear of domestic communism (ridiculous and unfounded); second, the fear of Soviet imperialism and Communist takeovers abroad (well-founded and reasonable). Conflating the two would imply that all anti-communist sentiment was either ridiculous or well-founded, when the truth is in between: some aspects of anti-communism were grounded in realistic perception of the Soviet threat, while other aspects were closer to moral panic than serious geopolitical strategic thought. &mdash MIRV (talk) 10:06, 15 Jan 2004 (UTC)

I find it interesting that Red Scare is not linked to on moral panic. Woudl a link be POV or NPOV?

Addressing myself more to what MIRV wrote: distinguishing between the two -- American fear of a domestic communist overthrow, from the potential military threat of the Soviet Union would improve this article. The phenomenon of "Red Scare" also appears to be related to another American fear, the Yellow peril, which imagined imigrants from Japan, China & other Asian nations overrunning the businesses & properties of "respectable" Americans. (The warnings about Communism that I remember hearing always emphasized loss of property, free speech, religion, and promotion of "free love" -- similar to the threat of the "Yellow Peril.") For being the adopted home of so many nationalities, we Americans sure have our nasty xenophobic side. -- llywrch 19:36, 15 Jan 2004 (UTC)

This article has nothing to do with the red scare, not about Soviet espionage which so far as it affected American communists or was participated in by them is a rather difficult area and needs to be addressed separately from this article which is in essence an article about an aspect of popular culture. Fred Bauder 00:30, Mar 24, 2004 (UTC)

This article seems a shade POV. There were legitimate concerns during the "Red Scare" that are bieng glossed over here. TDC 01:48, 24 Mar 2004 (UTC)

172, add this to your action item memo: The Soviets lost the Cold War/. TDC 01:51, 24 Mar 2004 (UTC)

Well, TDC, how about an nice article on Soviet espionage in the United States? Maybe a better title than that... Fred Bauder 03:05, Mar 24, 2004 (UTC)

Perhaps .....................TDC 03:34, 24 Mar 2004 (UTC)

"This article seems a shade POV. There were legitimate concerns during the "Red Scare" that are bieng glossed over here." Yes, like the possibility that floridation of water was a communist plot. AndyL 04:23, 2 Apr 2004 (UTC)

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I removed the commentaries and personal essays. This is article on the Red Scares in the '20s and the '50s. The anti-Communism of key figures, such as Palmer, McCarthy, Hoover, etc. is relevant. Anti-Communism in 2004 is irrelevant. 172 05:55, 2 Apr 2004 (UTC)

And I reverted. You can't just delete huge swaths of text, including the NPOV header, on a whim. RickK | Talk 05:59, 2 Apr 2004 (UTC)

Don't try this red herring bullshit with me. If it's relevant to the Red Scares in the United States in the '20s and the '50s, it will stay in the article. If not, then don't waste the time of readers looking for a serious encyclopedic entry. 172 06:03, 2 Apr 2004 (UTC)

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I removed this:

The term is often used pejoratively, with the intent of belittling anti-communists by implying that their fears were overblown or hysterical.

What is the evidence that this is indeed the intent? I understand that some people might perceive this to be the intent, which is why I did not touch the following sentence (which describes a criticism of people who use the term "red scare"). The second sentence does a fine job of providing an alternate view, but this sentence claims a motivation, a claim that is unsubstantiated. Slrubenstein

See Reaction to McCarthyism and Historical revisionism for explorations of this idea. There is no question, and we have seen it here, that persons sympathetic with Marxism-Leninism are quick to invoke charges of "McCarthyism" in an effort to gain advantage for their point of view. Fred Bauder 15:47, Apr 2, 2004 (UTC)

Fred, I agree with you about how people bancy about the term "McCarthyism." But this is not the same term as "Red Scare" which is used by historians. Slrubenstein

Fred and VV:

Stop making WP into a laughingstock. Before I removed the irrelevant personal commentaries, this article had mentioned Ann Coulter, but not Archangel, the IWW, Big Bill Haywood, the Espionage Act of 1917, the Sabotage Act of April 20, the Sedition Act of May 16, the Creel Committee on Public Information, etc. Warren Harding, who arguably quenched the first Red Scare, especially given the message sent by his pardon of Eugene Debs, wasn't mentioned either. The WWI-era Creel Committee on Public Information, e.g., is relevant in this article. But the off topic personal essays written by WP users in 2004 are not. I will continue to revert attempts to restore the text in question. I won't let you waste the time of readers seeking a brief, encyclopedic write up on the first Red Scare (1917-1921) and the one in early '50s. 172 18:37, 2 Apr 2004 (UTC)

I agree with 172. The term Red Scare refers to specific historical periods. Those looking to write about anti-communism today should write at Anti-Communism. --Alex S 20:11, 2 Apr 2004 (UTC)

I tried a compromise. Reactions? —Αλεξ Σ 16:38 9 November 2024

The last three sentences of The causes are pretty dubious. The existence of a vast communist conspiracy in America in the 50's remains difficult to believ, and the Soviet Union's mission to "bring the downfall of the United States" was mostly propaganda - both Soviet and American. The rest - about the number of people killed here and there - is entirely irrelevant. This is the 21st century, we don't have to repeat Reaganite and McCarthyite nonsense.

Diderot 10:14, 19 Apr 2004 (UTC)

It's certainly relevant in a discussion of the fears people had of communism whether and to what extent those fears turned out to be justified. Noting what we now know about communist regimes informs on this. And, "Reaganite nonsense"?? Perhaps you need to review the neutrality policy; fans of Reagan belong on Wikipedia just as much as fans of Clinton. -- VV 11:35, 19 Apr 2004 (UTC)

Diderot, I think you went too far in your editing of the causes of McCarthyism. I have the dubious distinction of having been alive then and I remember the Soviet occupation of eastern Europe, the Communist victory in the civil war in China, the invasion of South Korea, the Chinese intervention in the Korean War, the concern that Soviet spies stole the secrets to the atomic bomb. I also remember that there was general knowledge of the extensive system of concentration camps in the Soviet Union and real fear of Stalin. These were real fears which people had. They form the factual basis for the public opinion of the time which McCarthy exploited. Fred Bauder 11:46, Apr 19, 2004 (UTC)

And yet a general knowledge of the massacres taking place in Cambodia never led to the fear that the Khmer Rouge was in control in Washington, nor was there ever any great fear of fascist inflitration in the government, nor do I remember anyone suggesting that Saddam Hussein had spies in the White House. Doing bad things is not evidence of infiltration. Period. Whether or not there were legitimate reasons to fear war with the Soviet Union or to take a dim view of its ideologies is entirely irrelevant to whether or not people were justified in beliving that the US government was already infiltrated with Soviet spies or that American leftists represented a Soviet fifth column. Furthermore, if there is something that fall of communism has relvealed it is that the USSR never had, at any time, an actual plan to take over in the West. It had lots of propaganda and ample willingness and ability to play political games, but the Red Army marching through DC was never actually in the cards. That is Reaganite nonsense, and I have the impression that WP does not endeavor to be an equal time for BS sort of place.

An article about red scares is precisely about fears of "the Red among us", not the communists on the other side of the world. Events in the the Soviet Union are largely irrelevant to that issue. Diderot 11:21, 22 Apr 2004 (UTC)

Your reasoning is based on the notion that people at that time had any reason to believe American Communists were different from or somehow disagreed with Stalin. We now know they were and did, but who knew then. At any rate we are talking about what people believed and above all feared. Not what was actually true. Keep in mind that many Americans of that period (and almost all Americans) of today had never met a Communist. Fred Bauder 19:30, Apr 25, 2004 (UTC)

No Fred, the question is whether American communists had any meaningful influence or had infiltrated American institutions on a scale that meritted paranoia, not how many people Stalin had killed.

I am not going to get into an edit war with TDC. But I challenge the contention that there was ever "a large number communist spies and sympathisers [...] constantly working to bring the downfall of the United States" anywhere on US soil. This is POV, it is not factual and it is entirely irrelevant to the case. At least this way readers have a warning that they are encountering bull.

Diderot 20:21, 25 Apr 2004 (UTC).

There has been dozens of great books on the subject written over the course of the past 10+ years. Intervies with hundreds of KGB agents and thousands of letters, diaries, intel briefings etc.. are cited in these books. Pick one the fuck up before you revert my entry again. TDC 01:16, Apr 26, 2004 (UTC)

You are still going back to facts about Communists, not to facts about the political climate in the United States. The fear people felt is what is relevant. Fred Bauder 22:06, Apr 25, 2004 (UTC)

Fred and TDC,

Go back to the facts about Communists about Communists in the articles on the Communists. Here, go back to facts about the political climate in the United States. THIS IS AN ARTICLE ABOUT THE POLITICAL CLIMATE IN THE UNITED STATES IN THE POST-WWI PERIOD AND THE 1950S! Please, please, please try to stay on topic this time. The sentiment of your edits may be just, but this is an encyclopedia and we do have to properly contextualize the placement of coverage. BTW, Fred says the "fear people felt is what is relevant." But we can't go back inside the heads of dead people and call their thoughts just. For that, go back to primary sources and dig up direct quotes. Wikipedia has the hyperlinks and the search box at the top; from these resources users can find their way to related topics on the Communists. 172 02:57, 26 Apr 2004 (UTC)

The section you removed is part of the 'CAUSES' of the red scare. Not all the people who lived through the Red Scare are now dead. If you want to know what real people though of the Red Scare while they lived through it talk to my Parents and Grandparents, they fled the bourgeoning socialist utopia in Eastern Europe just in time.

Without providing a 'BASIS' for the reasons that people feared communism, it makes it sound like it was a baseless witch hunt. Now I realize that a Stalinist academic like you would love nothing more than projecting this image upon unsuspecting minds, but this will not be allowed to happen.TDC 03:37, Apr 26, 2004 (UTC)

TDC, you raise a good point. And it calls attention to the fact that WP doesn't have an article on the origins of anticommunism in the United States offering a broader macro-level look. In this article, though, you have to consider that "anticommunists" are quite a diverse group (perhaps just as diverse as everyone who isn't an active anticommunist. So, for this article it would be best to refer to the plethora of the biographies on any number of major actors involved in the first and second Red Scares and perhaps cite examples that helped shape a single historical figure's outlook. There's also an ample array of direct quotes that you can dig up. For our purposes, though, it's inappropriate for encyclopedia editors to attempt to speak on behalf of a subject posthumously. Nor is it appropriate for encyclopedia editors to rationalize a subject's actions, attitudes, and behavior retrospectively (as opposed to properly putting it in context, which also can have the same intended effect of treating the subject more fairly).

BTW, just to warn you about the implications of your argument, someone could turn around and use your very own reasoning here as an excuse to start spewing anti-capitalist and anti-American rants about why some people were communists, anarchists, and socialists in the U.S. since 1917. 172 06:13, 26 Apr 2004 (UTC)

TDC, there are a number of perfectly good pages on the history of the Soviet Union, of the Cold War and of internatinal relations at the time. If you're going to claim that among the causes of the Red Scares were things going on in the Soviet Union that had no direct impact on whether on not the hunt for communists in the US really was baseless, you're essentially saying that the cause of the Red Scares was that Americans are utter idiots.

This article is not about why people feared communism. It is all about why they went off on a baseless witchhunt for communists at home. That there was a climate of fear of commmunism is in the text as is. Either accept a disputed label or accept an alternative text, but stop behaving like a five year old. And my family fled Stalin too, so get off your high horse. Diderot 05:18, 26 Apr 2004 (UTC)

Mine was killed off by the Germans after the invasion of Poland, but one family member fled to the USSR and disappeared. So my Aunt was probably killed by the Stalinist USSR. 172 06:17, 26 Apr 2004 (UTC)

Seems to be a common theme we share, see Fate of the Kulak

Diderot,

(Re: "baseless witchhunt for communists at home") We have to be inclined to reserve judgments for purposes of writing this article. Calling something a "baseless witchhunt" is no more appropriate in this article than TDC attempting to vindicate anticommunists retrospectively in this article. You probably knew that already, but saying things like that on the talk page is going to provoke people and put them on the defensive, thus causing disputes here to solidify. 172 06:46, 26 Apr 2004 (UTC)

Alright, since the issue at hand is the underlying causes, I will refrain from pointing out how few of the people the HUAC fingered actually had anything to do with the Soviet Union, or how one of the people called to testify decided to move to East Germany as a response to the HUAC's behaviour. I do resent being told what the "fuck" to think by TDC and his claim to have a privileged set of beliefs about communism.

I object to placing questions about whether or not commmunism was evil into a discussion of the causes of the Red Scare of the 50's because it parallels claims that the US interned Japanese-Americans in WWII because Japan was behaving so cruelly in China. The US was at war with Japan and feared that there were Japanese agents among the Japanese population. That is true and reasonably NPOV. Many Americans felt a need for cathartic revenge for Pearl Harbour - a little more POV, but still reasonable. But, did people in the US agree with the internment of Japanese Americans because of events in China? No. At most, they might have felt that Japanese Aermcians colelctively deserved revenge because of events in China. I doubt many Americans felt this way, but it's possible. But then the cause is public sentiment caused by a state of war, not events in China. By itself, Japan's cruelty in China can not be a cause for the American internment of Japanese national.

In the same sense, I am entirely okay with claims that the Red Scare was caused by a fear of communism that has its roots in larger cold war politics. Instead of fighting over the causes of the Cold War, I propose to leave it at that and link to the article on the Cold War. All the secondary sources I've ever seen were quite clear in linking the Red Scare to the question of "Who lost China?" (I suppose it would be considered POV to say that the answer was "Chung Kai-Shek" rather than the State Department.) I can't think of any secondary or primary source on the red scares that particularly fingered the Korean War - a war with very little public support at the time. I'm willing to do without any mention of public officials trying to fan anti-communism for relection purposes.

Since no evidence has ever come forward of Soviet agents having significant control over any part of US policy in the 1940's or 50's, I am ill-inclined to accept claims that there was a network of Soviet spies as related to the causes of the red scare. The question was never whether or not the USSR had spies in the US, the question was whether or not there was a vast communist conspiracy within the government and other quarters of American society. That some people believed in such a thing - yes, that was a cause. That it existed - no, because it isn't true.

Both the Japanese internment and the Red Scares had comparable causes: the sudden discovery of vulnerability. In one case due to Pearl Harbour, in the other because of the victory of Chinese communists and the establishment of Moscow-allied governments in Europe. There was a sense that America should have been able to do something about it, in both cases, and rather than accept a complicated set of causes, Americans found it easier to believe that they had been betrayed. A few politicians discovered that this public willingness to believe in an enemy within was useful at election time.

I fail to see what is so complicated, difficult or controversial about this claim, nor does it strike me as failing to meet standards of NPOV. It is, as far as I know, the mainstream understanding of the Red Scares of the 50's, shared by the left and most of the right alike.

Diderot 11:10, 26 Apr 2004 (UTC)

172, I notice you added this sentence, "However, public officials' encouragement of this climate of fear was a major contributing factor in red scares of the 1940s and 1950s". As I recall there was a great stir about Communist advances after the war, mostly regarding Eastern Europe and China. Brainwashing (by the Chinese of prisoners of war) was another idea that captured the public's interest. This was all over the newspapers and the radio. Public opinion was profoundly affected. Politicians seem to have just been reflecting public opinion (or exploiting an existing climate of fear). Since you ask us for evidence, how about some evidence that public official's encouragement actually ass had any independent effect. Fred Bauder 11:54, Apr 26, 2004 (UTC)

I'd like to recuse myself from the writing role, as opposed to the copyediting role for this article. So, I won't state my objections if you decide to remove the sentence above. I should get around to completing a number of articles that I've right hand man exposedhimself often it was quite discusting unfinished rather than becoming too involved with this article. 172 21:41, 26 Apr 2004 (UTC)

Fred, I think I wrote that sentence. I'll agree to its removal as POV if it will help. There is certainly some genuine cause for debate over whether the political aspects were the cause, the consequence or both. Diderot 08:06, 27 Apr 2004 (UTC)

I've changed the end of that paragraph. Fred, does it address your objections?

Diderot 08:10, 27 Apr 2004 (UTC)

It removes an assertion which I'm not sure of but, this language, "Growing public fear made anti-communism a hot-button issue in American politics and encouraged a variety of responses, including the Red Scare." raises the question of what the "variety of responses" consisted of. Fred Bauder 12:29, Apr 27, 2004 (UTC)

I would be inclined to see both the Holywood version of the red scare - openly anti-communist films for example - and phenomena like McCarthyism, as well as the widespread (and, IMO uncritical) belief in things like the domino theory all as responses. But, that probably opens a new can of worms. I'm open to alternative wordings. Perhaps this: "Growing public fear made anti-communism a hot-button issue in American politics, which helped intensify red scares in the early years of the Cold War." It seems to me pretty uncontrovertial that the phenomenon fed on itself - people got scared, politicians responded to the fear, people got even more scared, etc. Figuring out which came first is probably impossible but I think it is appropriate that there be some indication that the whole thing was self-reinforcing. Diderot 13:56, 27 Apr 2004 (UTC)

Yes, see Social mania Fred Bauder 16:20, Apr 27, 2004 (UTC)

Okay - after waiting to see if anyone else was interested, I made the change. If someone wants to write more on anthropology of public hysteria as a part of the article, they're welcome to it. Diderot 08:16, 29 Apr 2004 (UTC)

I'd like to make a major change in the article and restrict its coverage to only the 1919 and 1920s events. McCarthyism would be only briefly mentioned. I am the one who first started this article after reading a book, Red Scare which in fact covers only McCarthyism. I think I errored in creating an article with this title which in fact refers to the earlier period. Fred Bauder 15:17, May 3, 2004 (UTC)

Scares in communist countries

4.34.166.104 removed the following text:

It is interesting to note that, with the exception of North Korea, governments of communist states generally did not promote similar fears of possible attacks by the USA or other countries.

with the justfication that "Fidel Castro in Cuba, not just N. Korea, scares his people about the USA potentially invading. So has every communist country at some point." I think this is not correct (although may be the sentence should be rephrased). I grew up in the Soviet Union and the issue of US attack or invasion or anything was hardly ever brought up in school, on TV, in the papers. My father grew up in 1960s and the public was not told that an attack is immenent or anything. Yes, there definitely were some warnings, in a few decades in a country of several hundred million people there must have been some, but it was by no means widespread - it would have been very uncommon occurence. We were told that American economic system is bad (and now that our country is no longer communist, I am an adult and I can watch American films such as The Corporation I realise that we were told the truth all along :) ), but we were never told that we will be fighting America in a war. Just to make myself clear - it's obvious that the Party leaders and the military considered the threat of attack to be quite real, but that's their job and it's not really the subject of the article. I haven't been to Cuba yet, but I've read enough Castro's speeches and nowhere does he appear scaring his compatriots. Yes, the threat of an American invasion is very real (because it happened many times in the past), unlike the threat of a Soviet invasion, but the public is not kept in constant fear by duck and cover exercises. Neither was the public in Iraq for that matter - until the attack was imminent, Iraqis were not constantly brainwashed that the US will attack (judging from what little material I found written by Iraqis in English online). So that's why I am reverting the change for now. Paranoid 23:46, 18 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Fear of "counterrevolution" in Eastern Europe

I've grown up in Eastern Europe (in Hungary) and although I don't know about the propaganda mentioning any imminent attack by the "imperialists", but the fear of "counter-revolution", i.e. an uprising against the soviet-backed governments was real.

In Hungary we had a special militia set up after the uprising in 1956 called the "Munkásőrség" (= Workers' Guard) created exactly for the purpose of suppressing any further insurgencies. There were uprisings in East Germany (1953), Hungary (1956), Prague (1968) all suppressed by Soviet tanks.

In the 50s we had propaganda movies, where the bad guy was usually a saboteur, who tries to undermine the building of communism. In some countries, they were real. (Bay of Pigs Invasion, Operation Mongoose).

I'm not saying, that we were scared with an American invasion at any point in time, but there was a sense of anxiety and preparation for war. The governments had to justify the existence of huge conscripted armies (2 years conscription was not uncommon), the gigantic Soviet bases all over Eastern Europe, the big air-raid shelters I remember playing in as a kid. What would you need those for if the "imperialists" wouldn't want to attack? (Of course, all the communist countries were peaceful and would only act in self defence.)

Maybe that's why a lot of people find that specific sentence misleading. It suggests that Americans scared themselves with the communist threat, meanwhile the population of communist countries lived relaxed and laid back, knowing that the West would never attack us. This is just not entirely true.

Nyenyec 05:50, 11 Dec 2004 (UTC)

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I've added the Cleanup-verify note to this page. Despite all the discussion, some of the facts need sourcing and possibly even the POV needs attention (again). The comparison to lynchings of German-Americans is especially questionable and requires a source, and I'm not sure it's even appropriate here if true. Frankly, I don't understand the reference to the Mongols and the Hun at all.

Opusaug 04:12, 11 Feb 2005 (UTC)

i have been studing the red scare and i need more information. please add whatever you can. Thanks

DJ, what do Prof. Kornweibel's books and research have to do with the Red Scare? Were most of the blacks who were investigated members of the Communist Party, or so suspected? Opusaug 21:46, 27 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Racism in the Red Scare

The short answer is yes, the Red Scare specifically targeted African American "radicals". Kornweibel's books review BI's internal communications as their tactics evolve into the full blown Scare. The book on 1919 - 21 is especially relevant. The book on WWI shows the genesis of the mania that would culminate years later.

The longer answer is that the repression worsened in the Red Scare, but wasn't new. The Bureau of Investigation I didn't just launch into the Red Scare without preparation. The BI was set up in 1909 to investigate anti-trust cases. In the run up to WWI, it began investigating people who opposed the war, or were insufficiently patriotic. Targets of the investigation included African American socialists and unionists, but also religious pacifists, people who agitated against lynching or wanted to solve problems in the US before going to war. After the war ended, the charges used to justify the investigations changed. Dissidents were assumed to be influenced by Bolsheviks rather than Germans. Internal memos quoted by Kornweibel show agents brushing off complaints about lynching. Some African Americans did join the incipient Communist party. See the entry on the African Blood Brotherhood for an example. BI documents show they took this as proof of the conspiracies investigators had alleged all along. The WWI book is pretty readable, if you can find it. The Red Scare book is more academic. DJ Silverfish 22:08, 27 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Scholarly studies

I noticed that the page was being used to promote some secondary sources of undirectly related material. They may be useful on another article or in proper context. My edits are concerned with fixing this. Does anyone have any comments?

1920's movies and movie stars and the red scare

i was looking for more detail info on the movie stars and public figures that were affected by the red scare or a movie that was made about certain actors i would also like to find a website that tells about the positive things and improvements for the intertainment business if you know about the 20's era of movies and recommend any inparticular please comment on the wikipedia site.

Begining of article doesn't have a subject/agent

Right in the beginning of the article it is written that "Both periods were characterized by the suspicion of widespread civil-service infiltration ..." but nowhere in that phrase, or introduction, does it specify who had these suspicions, and if they were generalized in american society, or the majority, or the minority, etc. The fact that in both time periods the labour movement in the US was very much active, and that the Red Scare suspicions where directed at their organizations, at least these would not have reasons to believe in these suspicions, moreover the fact that they were pratically crushed (in the 1920's) using that pretext. I would recommend the book A People's History of the United States, and a rationalization of these events (for example, knowing where those suspicions came from, as they didn't pop-up by themselves).