When I first started researching how the average American citizen viewed the first Red Scare, I came across an article through AVl, The 'Red Scare' Threatens Personal Liberties, and this article explains the public outcry for government action. According to this article, people were "clamoring for some kind of government action in response to the 'conspiracy.'" The fact that an author felt it appropriate to use the word "conspiracy" when describing a type of government, helps drive home my point that the American people were becoming more and more closed-minded as what they were trying to prevent! The want for government action lead to the arrests of thousands of socialists and suspected socialists.
This type of action is exactly what I was referring to when I said that the American people were becoming as closed-minded as the people that they were trying to defend against. The KGB was notorious for arresting people suspected of anti-state actions, don't these raids of "communists" draw many similarities to the KGB arresting innocent people in Russia?!
Through my research, I came across many political leaders that seemed to get elected based solely off of their anti-communist platforms. The most interesting, I think, is the Governor of New York, Alfred E. Smith. Governor Alfred E. Smith and the Red Scare of 1919 is an article I found on JSTOR, written about Smith and how he viewed the increased in people with Bolshevik morals. One of the most famous actions of Smith is getting rid of 5 members of the New York State Government because the belonged to the Communist party. It was this type of action that led to a change of atmosphere in America. To my surprise, people were okay with him getting rid of those elected officials! It was leaders like Governor Smith, that heightened the irrational fear of Communism.
( Alfred E. Smith )
According to this article that I found on JSTOR, A Study of Nativism, the American people even tolerated violence if the victim was a suspected communist! Under any situation, violence should never be tolerated, communist or not! The government sent the wrong message to the American by not responding to open acts of violence. This lack of action led to a change of the American culture. Violence became an appropriate reaction if you suspected someone of being a Communist or having Bolshevik beliefs. Why violence was an appropriate answer, is beyond me. When I read that violence was typical in this time period, I was disgusted to find out to what extent. I found out (from the Article above) that a sailor shot a man 3 times in the back, and faced no consequences. That's just not acceptable!
At one point or another countries will typically face some version of uprising. The American government did not respond appropriately when faced with the rise in anarchism. Instead of being rational, the government took major steps, or in some case, a lack of action, to make sure that communists didn't gain any power. The government didn't respond to violence, the government arrested thousands of people, and the government didn't accept people with different beliefs. They were becoming just like the new Russian government. The government decided it would be appropriate to use propaganda, like the Russians, to motivate people to spread the love for capitalism!
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| Propaganda Poster 1 |
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| Propaganda Poster 3 |
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| Propaganda Poster 2 |
This change in tone from the American public ironically led to the American government and American citizens becoming what the feared. I found it quite amusing! I drew a lot of similarities from that time, to the political atmosphere today. Maybe if the spread of Bolshevism was handled differently, violence wouldn't have been acceptable, maybe thousands of people wouldn't have been arrested, and maybe those New York officials could have kept their jobs. I find it sad that many Americans today, including myself until just recently, don't know about this Red Scare. We should look at the mistakes we, as a country, made in the past, and grow.
