The Red Scare

Cult. Lit. Class A

MATIAS AND PETE

THE RED SCARE

The Past and Perspective

By Matias Catalini and Pete Abrams

INTRODUCTION

What happened?

    World War I was over, but the hysteria was still here. The Eastern front had not gone well for Russia, the pressures of their loss of effort forced the Russian czar to abdicate. The new government had not been much better. Finally in November 1917, LENIN led a successful revolution of the Bolshevik workers. The ideas of Karl Marx had been known since 1848, but nowhere in the world until that time had a successful communist revolution occurred. The Red Scare came when America became completely against communism and that caused a ton of bombings from anarchists. All of these anarchists caused over 125 bombings all around the nation and caused the anti-communist views people have in America.

    Once the war against Germany (World War 1) was over, the Western powers focused their energies at restoring CZAR NICHOLAS. Even the United States sent troops to Russia hoping the WHITE RUSSIANS could oust the communist REDS. All this effort was in vain. The Bolsheviks murdered the entire royal family and slowly secured control of the entire nation.

Bombings

Bombings were a give problem in the community during the Red Scare, from car bombs, to mail bombs, bombings were everywhere during that time. There were over 125 bombings during the Red Scare and there was absolute chaos on every turn. Here are some examples of bombings during the Red Scare.

November 24, 1917: Nine policemen and a woman bystander were killed (and two injured) in the bombing of a Milwaukee, Wisconsin, police station.

April 28-30, 1919: Anarchists sent 36 mail bombs to Washington, D.C.; Philadelphia; Paterson, New Jersey; Cleveland; Pittsburgh; Boston; and other cities. Intended targets included Supreme Court Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes, the U.S. attorney general, industrialists J.P. Morgan and John D. Rockefeller, the U.S. secretary of labor, senators, U.S. congressmen, police commissioners, prosecutors, governors, and mayors. Most of the dynamite bombs were disarmed, but two people were killed and three injured.

June 2, 1919: A wave of bombings in seven cities again targeted prominent citizens. Anarchists made another attempt at killing Attorney General A. Mitchell Palmer, bringing a bomb to Palmer's front porch. The bomb detonated prematurely, killing the bomber, Carlo Valdinoci, a follower of Italian anarchist Luigi Galleani. Galleani had presumably been the mastermind behind many of the bombings, and he openly praised violence in his embrace of the "propaganda of the deed" years later, proclaiming, "No act of rebellion is useless; no act of rebellion is harmful." The U.S. government deported Galleani back to his native Italy later that month.

September 16, 1920: The most dramatic and deadly of the attacks was a "car bomb" of some 100 pounds of dynamite and 500 pounds of metal shrapnel in the back of a horse-drawn cart set off during a busy Wall Street lunch hour. The bomb killed 38, injured several hundred others, and was the bloodiest terrorist incident in U.S. history until the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing.

Anti-Communism Propaganda

Anti-Communism propaganda showed up everywhere after the bombing and the government wanted people on their side so they could join the fight against the communist party. Because of this propaganda the people of America grew hatred of the communist party and this hate transfers over to modern society as well. Propaganda went from posters, to comic books, to the spoken word, anti-communist views were everywhere and that's when America became so anti-communist.

Popular Propaganda


Citations:
Eddlem, Thomas R. "The red scare when America was less scared than today: after more than 125 bombing plots from 1917-20, U.S. government officials violated civil liberties. But the violations were minuscule compared with today's 'war on terror.'." The New American 21 Oct. 2013: 35+. Student Resources in Context. Web. 5 Oct. 2015.