Red Scare

A detailed Summary of Red Scare

The war was over. The last cry of help had been heard and peace was supposedly coming to the United States. But everyone was wrong. An ideological war which prompted mass paranoia known as the Red Scare had spread through the US. It began in 1919 and ended in 1921. Red Scare was the label given to the actions of legislation, the race riots, and the hatred and persecution of "subversives" and conscientious objectors during that period of time.

At the heart of the Red Scare was the conscription law of May 18, 1917, which was put during World War I in order for the armed forces to be able to conscript more Americans. This caused many problems in the recollection of soldiers for the war. For one to claim that status, one had to be a member of a "well-recognized" religious organization which forbade their members to participation in war. As a result of such unyielding legislation, 20,000 conscientious objectors were inducted into the armed forces. Out of these 20,000, 16,000 changed their minds when they reached military camps, 1300 went to non-combat units, 1200 gained furloughs to do farm work, and 100 of these, 450 went to prison. However, these numbers are small in comparison with the 170,000 draft dodgers and 2,810,296

This panic traveling trough the United States, made a series of bombs occur. Immediately the Socialist were accused. Attorney General Palmer took advantage of the panic of the public and asked Congress for fund appropriations to help avoid further danger. Congress not only supplied funds, but made sure that all foreign radicals were deported. This plan went very well, but then the government didn't know what to do when the radicals were US citizens.

While all this was taking place, an American Communist Party was emerging from the remains of the Socialist Party. These Russian immigrants identified with the Bolshevik revolution in Mother Russia because of their similar lives of poverty and squalor. This was because of the exclusion of immigrants from unions and also not having a right to vote. These people held strong antigovernment and anti-capitalist views, and many advocated the

immediate overthrow of capitalism.

Objectors were targeted in the Red Scare after the war. They were condemned as cowards, pro-German socialists, also they were also accused of spreading propaganda throughout the United States. Many organizations stood up for the rights of the objectors. One was the National Civil Liberties Bureau, which would later be renamed the American Civil Liberties Union. The ACLU gained a reputation for helping people with liberal cases who were too poor to pay for their own representation in court.

American nationalists and the American government. Members were lynched and important Socialist documents were burned.

The Espionage Act was not the only form of legislation to discriminate against antiwar groups. In October 1918, Congress passed the Alien Act, which gave the Secretary of Labor the power to deport any alien who, at any time after entering the United States, is found to have been at the time of entry, or to have become thereafter a member of any anarchist organization. This gave Palmer the authority to conduct his raids, during which thousands of people were arrested and detained without actually having been charged. Many tries to repeal the legislation, many Socialists became prominent figures due to their

After the real war ended in 1918, the ideological war, turned against conscientious objectors and other radical minorities such as Wobblies, who were members of the

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Approximate Word count = 1655
Approximate Pages = 7 (250 words per page double spaced)

Category: History