Scary Reds

The First Red Scare occurred shortly after World War I. The Bolsheviks, led by V. I. Lenin and Leon Trotsky, defeated the Czar’s supporters in the 1917 Russian Revolution. When pro-Communist revolts broke out in a number of European countries, Americans panicked. It could happen here! Russian immigrants were especially feared; hundreds were rounded up and deported to Russia on a ship known as “Red Ark.” ]

Attorney-General A. Mitchell Palmer launched a series of raids in over 30 American cities, arresting hundreds of Eastern European radicals, many of them Jewish, along with Italian anarchists, also seen as a threat. In 1919 Palmer put 24-year-old J. Edgar Hoover in charge of a division of the Justice Department tasked with preparing lists of suspected radicals and subversives. ]

After President Warren G. Harding took office in March 1921, the Red Scare fizzled out. Harding had campaigned on the slogan “Return to Normalcy.” (That might be a good slogan for the Democratic candidate in 2028.) During the 1921 Christmas holiday, Harding commuted the sentence of Eugene V. Debs, the Socialist Party leader who had run for President from his prison cell in the Federal Penitentiary in Atlanta. We can let that be the coda for the First Red Scare.]

The Second Red Scare occurred after World War II. To coin an oxymoron, the Cold War was heating up. Churchill gave his famous Iron Curtain speech at Westminster College in Fulton, Missouri, in 1946. Truman attended the speech and approved. ]

Meanwhile a civil war raged in Greece, eastern Europe was locked into the Soviet orbit, Mao was winning in China against Chiang Kai-shek, and in Vietnam the Communist Ho Chi Minh was battling the French. Along came Sen. Joe McCarthy with his claim that Communists had infiltrated the State Department and the whole federal bureaucracy. Hollywood celebrities were investigated; even comic books were suspect. The question, “Are you now, or have you ever been, a member of the Communist party” was the catch-phrase of the decade.]

Sen. McCarthy soon descended into hysteria and alcoholism, and Soviet leader Khrushchev and President Eisenhower reached a “detente.” By the mid-Fifties the Second Red Scare, like the First, fizzled out.]

My personal brush with a Second Red Scare remnant occurred when I applied to teach political science. I had to sign a loyalty oath swearing that I would uphold the U.S. Constitution. I signed but added a note that I thought certain portions should be amended. Evidently that was not a deal breaker, since I got the job.]

The Third Red Scare is occurring as I write this. Unlike the first two, the Third Red Scare is devoid of an actual menace. No Bolshevik Revolution or descending Iron Curtain–just a few self-identified “socialist” candidates like Zohran Mandami of New York or Bernie Sanders winning elections. ]

The confusion and some of the fear stems from a misunderstanding of the word “socialism.” Here’s a capsule explanation of the two major variants of “socialism.” Karl Marx believed the ruling class would not cede power without a violent revolution. That philosophy can be called Marxist socialism, much different from democratic socialism.]

In the 1890s German philosopher Eduard Bernstein “revised” Marx and countered that socialists could win power peacefully by using the tools of democracy. European socialist parties (and Bernie Sanders) follow the Bernstein model. Marxists call those socialists “revisionists” and revile them.]

Democratic socialists are not very scary. If you don’t like Zohran or Bernie or A.O.C., however, tying them to that old Communist bugaboo might just be an effective tool to discredit them. Will it work? Stay tuned.]

~ Roy Christman