Origins of the Red Scare

A detailed Summary of Origins of the Red Scare

In the first part of his book "American Anti-Communism", M. J. Heale writes "the fraternal egalitarianism of the American republican heritage with its insistence that rights and opportunities were available to all, enabled collectivist doctrines to be repudiated as un-American." What Heale means by this is that the American society was built upon the idea of equality of man, which at the time meant white male landowners. These wealthy landowners would become the middle and upper class of American society. They created their society on the basis of improving their own lives and did not really consider the ideas of those who could not vote, those that did not own land.

These upper and middle class members of America became the ones who would later become fearful of the possibility of a revolution. To them, a revolution would undermine their efforts to advance their own lives and stature in society. Since most immigrants were poor and therefore entered the lower working class, any idea, which would elevate these workers to the same level as their employers at the employers' expense, was viewed as a threat. "In the nineteenth century there were men of Angl

Across the country there were fears that the dynamite that exploded in Haymarket Square would begin a series of similar uprisings in other cities. The fear of uprising led to police raids and vigilante attacks on radicals and labor groups. "Newspapers, clergymen, politicians, and labor leaders generally reacted to the bombing with horror and ascribed it to the vicious doctrines of communism and anarchism."(Heale, p. 141)

"The number of deaths was not as great as the railway strike of 1877, but the deliberate throwing of a bomb at police officers seemed to presage an era of anarchy. Since the Paris Commune there had been fears about the insurrectionary potential for urban workers. The bomb vindicated the fearful prediction."(Heale, p. 139) Juries composed of white-collar workers and businessmen, the same who were the product of the liberty fighters of nearly a century earlier, made a public belief of an anarchist conspiracy into a legal verdict. Seven of the accused were given death sentences, while the eighth was given a prison term. "The destruction of the anarchist leaders made possible by the Haymarket Affair reflected the apprehensions of the urban

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Approximate Word count = 788
Approximate Pages = 3 (250 words per page double spaced)

Category: History

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Origins of the Red Scare

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