PRT - The Red Scare (Lesson)
The Red Scare
Should the government be allowed to pursue individuals whose political beliefs are different from the majority of Americans?
Communism and Socialism
In the late 1800s and early 1900s, a new political ideology called communism grew out of the more moderate socialism. Developed by German philosopher and political thinker Karl Marx, communism was based on a single-party government ruled by a dictator. Under communism, there is no private ownership; all property is owned by the state. In 1919, after communist revolutionaries known as Bolsheviks overthrew the czar (king) in Russia, established the Soviet Union and called for a worldwide revolution to destroy capitalism, people in the United States began to fear communists and the spread of communism, socialism, and anarchism in the United States. Communism was an extreme form of socialism which calls for governmental control to promote equality. Anarchism calls for the elimination of any government systems. Americans targeted immigrants from communist or socialist nations. Suspected anarchists and their associates were also feared in the United States.
Labor unions that promoted the ‘worker’ and aligned with communism like the Industrial Workers of the World became distrusted. These fears of international communism were called the “Red Scare” because red was the color of the communist flag. This fear led to the government pursuit of suspected communists, socialists and anarchists in the United States.
The Red Scare
The Red Scare during the early 20th century was the fear of communist, socialist or anarchist infiltration into the American government and culture. These fears flourished as the United States government conducted investigations and trials. United States Attorney General A. Mitchell Palmer was previously attacked by anti-capitalist instigators; and he most famously pursued communists and fueled the Red Scare in the 1920s. As the United States Attorney General, Palmer utilized the United States Justice Department and the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) to conduct investigations and raids on suspected communists, socialists and anarchists. Known as the Palmer Raids, these events arrested hundreds of suspected communists, socialists and anarchists. The raids were symptomatic of the anti-immigrant hysteria and anti-communism of the time period.
Anti-Immigration
The Red Scare paralleled an overall anti-immigrant hysteria during the decade. Because of the immigrant influx from European nations where communism, socialism and anarchism flourished, many Americans lumped those fears into discrimination against immigrants as a whole. Furthermore, these fears fueled anti-Jewish and anti-Catholic feelings. These fears led to a revitalization of American involvement in the Ku Klux Klan. The KKK and other groups influenced political legislation in the 1920s. The anti-immigrant fears led to the passage of the National Origin Acts. These acts created a national quota system which placed an annual maximum number of immigrants from certain nations.
Who Was Shut Out? Immigration Quotas, 1925-1927
(Information courtesy of George Mason University)
In response to growing public opinion against the flow of immigrants from Southern and Eastern Europe in the years following World War I, Congress passed first the Quota Act of 1921 then the even more restrictive Immigration Act of 1924 (the Johnson-Reed Act). Initially, the 1924 law imposed a total quota on immigration of 165,000—less than 20 percent of the pre-World War I average. It based ceilings on the number of immigrants from any particular nation on the percentage of each nationality recorded in the 1890 census—a blatant effort to limit immigration from Southern and Eastern Europe, which mostly occurred after that date. In the first decade of the 20th century, an average of 200,000 Italians had entered the United States each year. With the 1924 Act, the annual quota for Italians was set at less than 4,000.
View the table that shows the annual immigration quotas under the 1924 Immigration Act. After looking at it - what surprises you about the quotas?
PHOTOGRAPH OF KARL MARX IS IN THE PUBLIC DOMAIN