# Red Scare Periods of intense anti-communist panic in American politics that produced mass arrests, loyalty purges, blacklists, and the systematic suppression of dissent. The term encompasses two distinct episodes — the First Red Scare (1917–1920) and the Second Red Scare (1947–1957) — but the structural pattern they established recurs throughout American political history: weaponizing fear of an external ideological threat to justify domestic surveillance, [[Political Repression]], and the erosion of civil liberties. ## The First Red Scare (1917–1920) The First Red Scare emerged from the convergence of three forces: the entry of the United States into [[World War I]] and the accompanying suppression of dissent under the [[Espionage Act]]; the [[Russian Revolution]] of 1917, which demonstrated that a communist revolution could actually succeed; and a wave of anarchist bombings in 1919, including mail bombs sent to prominent politicians and a bombing at Attorney General A. Mitchell Palmer's home. The Wilson administration had already used the [[Espionage Act]] and its 1918 Sedition Act amendment to imprison antiwar activists, most notably [[Eugene V. Debs]], the Socialist Party presidential candidate convicted for a speech criticizing the draft. But the postwar panic went further. Attorney General Palmer, aided by a young [[J. Edgar Hoover]] at the Bureau of Investigation, launched the [[Palmer Raids (1919-1920)]] — a series of mass raids that arrested thousands of suspected radicals and deported over 500 foreign nationals. The raids targeted labor organizers, socialists, anarchists, and immigrant communities with little regard for due process or the [[First Amendment]]. The [[ACLU]] was founded in 1920 in direct response to the civil liberties abuses of this period. The First Red Scare faded as Palmer's predictions of a May Day 1920 revolution failed to materialize, discrediting his alarmism, but it established institutional precedents — particularly within the [[FBI]] under [[J. Edgar Hoover]] — that would be reactivated a generation later. ## The Second Red Scare (1947–1957) The Second Red Scare — the one most commonly invoked by the term — emerged in the early [[Cold War]] as genuine Soviet espionage concerns merged with domestic political opportunism. The revelations of Soviet atomic spying (the Rosenberg case), the [[Alger Hiss Trial]], and the fall of China to Mao Zedong in 1949 created a political climate in which accusations of communist infiltration became a potent weapon. ### Loyalty Programs and HUAC President [[Harry S. Truman]] established the Federal Employees Loyalty Program via Executive Order 9835 in 1947, requiring loyalty investigations of all federal employees. The program's vague standards — membership in any organization deemed "subversive" by the Attorney General could trigger investigation — created a climate of fear that extended well beyond actual security threats. Over 2,700 federal employees were dismissed and roughly 12,000 resigned under pressure during the program's existence. The [[House Un-American Activities Committee]] (HUAC), originally formed in 1938, became the congressional vehicle for anti-communist investigations. HUAC's hearings were designed less to legislate than to expose and publicly shame suspected communists and their associates. Witnesses who invoked the [[Fifth Amendment]] were labeled "Fifth Amendment communists" and treated as guilty by implication. The committee's reach extended from government employees to labor unions, academia, and the entertainment industry. ### The Hollywood Blacklist HUAC's investigation of the motion picture industry produced one of the era's most visible repressions. The "Hollywood Ten" — ten screenwriters, directors, and producers who refused to testify about their political affiliations — were cited for contempt of [[Congress]] and imprisoned. In response, studio executives issued the Waldorf Declaration in November 1947, announcing they would not employ anyone who refused to cooperate with congressional investigations. The resulting blacklist eventually encompassed over 300 writers, actors, directors, and other industry figures, including Charlie Chaplin, Leonard Bernstein, Arthur Miller, Orson Welles, Paul Robeson, and Langston Hughes. The blacklist destroyed careers and drove some figures to suicide, exile, or pseudonymous work. It demonstrated how private-sector compliance with government pressure could amplify [[Political Repression]] far beyond what the state could accomplish alone — a pattern with obvious echoes in modern debates about [[Cancel Culture]] and corporate deplatforming. ### McCarthyism Senator [[Joseph McCarthy]] of Wisconsin became the era's most infamous figure when he claimed in February 1950 to possess a list of communists working in the State Department. McCarthy never produced credible evidence for his accusations, but his willingness to attack anyone who challenged him — including decorated Army officers and fellow senators — made him a feared figure in Washington. [[McCarthyism]] became shorthand for reckless accusation, guilt by association, and the destruction of reputations through innuendo. McCarthy's downfall came during the Army-McCarthy hearings of 1954, when Army counsel Joseph Welch's famous rebuke — "Have you no sense of decency, sir?" — was broadcast on live television. [[Edward R. Murrow]]'s CBS program *See It Now* had already exposed McCarthy's methods to a national audience. The Senate censured McCarthy in December 1954, and he died in 1957, but the broader apparatus of anti-communist repression — loyalty oaths, security clearance regimes, [[FBI]] surveillance programs — persisted long after his personal disgrace. ### The Lavender Scare Running parallel to the anti-communist purge was the [[Lavender Scare]] — a campaign to identify and dismiss gay and lesbian federal employees on the theory that their sexuality made them vulnerable to blackmail by Soviet agents. The Lavender Scare resulted in the firing of thousands of government workers and the institutionalization of anti-gay discrimination in federal employment policy, linking homophobia to national security in ways that persisted for decades. ## Institutional Legacy The Second Red Scare left lasting institutional infrastructure. [[J. Edgar Hoover]]'s [[FBI]] maintained extensive domestic surveillance programs, culminating in [[COINTELPRO]] (1956–1971), which targeted civil rights leaders, antiwar activists, and leftist organizations for infiltration, disruption, and harassment. The [[Cold War]] national security state — clearance regimes, classification systems, the [[Surveillance State]] apparatus — was built in this period and has only expanded since. The [[John Birch Society]], founded in 1958, carried the Red Scare's conspiratorial logic into the conservative movement, accusing [[Dwight D. Eisenhower]] himself of being a communist agent. This paranoid style — seeing treasonous infiltration at the highest levels of government — runs through the [[John Birch Society]] to the modern [[Deep State]] narrative. ## Modern Echoes The Red Scare's structural pattern — external threat → domestic panic → loyalty tests → suppression of dissent — recurs across the political spectrum. The vault tracks these echoes through multiple lenses: [[McCarthyism]] is invoked by the left to describe MAGA-era [[Political Repression]]: the targeting of [[FBI]] officials, intelligence community professionals, and government employees for perceived disloyalty to [[Donald Trump]]. The right invokes it to describe "[[Cancel Culture]]" and social media deplatforming, arguing that progressive cultural enforcement functions as an informal blacklist. The historical episode itself demonstrated how democratic institutions can be turned against civil liberties when political incentives align with genuine (if exaggerated) security threats. The real Soviet espionage revealed by the Venona decrypts and the [[Cambridge Five]] case gave anti-communist panic a factual kernel that demagogues like McCarthy could exploit far beyond its actual scope — a dynamic that repeats whenever legitimate security concerns are leveraged for political persecution. ## See Also - [[McCarthyism]] — the specific political phenomenon within the Second Red Scare - [[Russian Revolution]] — the trigger for the First Red Scare - [[Palmer Raids (1919-1920)]] — the First Red Scare's defining enforcement action - [[Political Repression]] — the broader concept - [[Cambridge Five]] — the real Soviet espionage that partly justified the panic - [[Lavender Scare]] — the parallel anti-gay purge - [[J. Edgar Hoover]] — the institutional architect who bridged both Red Scares - [[COINTELPRO]] — the Red Scare's institutional successor - [[John Birch Society]] — the conspiratorial logic's inheritor - [[Anti-Communism]] — the ideological framework