Post WWI American Anticommunism
Patriotic Organizations and The Big Red Scare, 1918-1920
After World War I, the U.S. government was ill prepared to combat communism. During the "Big Red Scare," patriotic organizations took, sometimes extralegal, action.
The years following World War I were marked by the waning spirit of cooperation that had delicately existed between organized labor and capital during the War. Perhaps it was inevitable that it fell apart as the cooperative situation had been brought into line by the Wilson Administration through, according to historian, M.J. Heale, “… engaging public opinion to the war effort, employing massive propaganda campaigns and secret armies of volunteers to ferret out subversives and slackers.”
Heale describes the Federal Government during WWI as “lacking coercive powers” to deal with a nation that was divided by war. When the cooperative spirit slipped following the War, the citizens that had been receptive to Wilson’s propaganda recognized the voices of labor activists as being associated with subversive elements that had infiltrated the ranks of organized labor.
AG A. Mitchell Palmer and the Bureau of Immigration Act of 1918
With news of the Bolshevik Revolution in Russia, combined with reports of communist influences within the U.S., the Federal Government began strengthening mechanisms to combat subversives. Among those mechanisms was the Bureau of Immigration Act of 1918.The Department of Justice, led by Attorney General A. Mitchell Palmer, also used the legislative tools that were developed before and during the war to resist subversion where the legislation allowed the DOJ to do so.
Equipped with legislation such as the Bureau of Immigration Act of 1918, Heale wrote, “Attorney General Palmer… would conduct raids on radical organizations, arrest those found, and deport the aliens among them with a minimum of judicial procedure.” Despite Palmer’s voracity, the brunt of anti-radical force would be brought to bear by patriotic citizens and State Legislatures, who were better equipped to deal with the threat at the time.
Patriotic Organizations Grow After World War I
Heale’s text chronicles the sometimes-brutal tactics employed by patriotic organizations that were “reluctant to disband after WWI.” The attitudes of these patriotic organizations were mirrored in the values of a growing number of Americans in the 1918 November Congressional elections; after which, the Democrats no longer held Congressional majorities. The elections' results illustrated that the liberal tendencies that had been inspired by President Wilson during the war had gone out of style.
Meanwhile the Federal Government deferred power to the States, and the State Governments were inclined to look the other way as private citizens meted out vigilante justice in their stead. The “Big Red Scare” was characterized by patriotic fervor. WWI veterans who saw labor unrest and calls for reform as an affront to their hard fought efforts, and they joined the patriotic organizations as a result. Even those who chose to espouse reform following the “Big Red Scare” were vocally hostile to the Communist Party. The 1924 Presidential candidate, Robert M. Lafollette, was successfully painted as anti-American, despite his vocal rejection of communism.
The “Big Red Scare” of 1918-1920 escalated due to the perception of the American Democratic Republic as being a delicate entity that was susceptible to subversion. By the end of the 1920’s the Communist Party of the U.S. was a beleaguered entity, and cooperation between organized labor and capital was nonexistent. Following two terms of Coolidge prosperity the American public was deeply frightened by the threat of communist subversion. Though the threat was more perception than reality, this state of affairs would persist until lawmakers developed proper mechanisms to deal with internal threats.
Source:
Heale, M.J. American Anticomunism: Combatting the Enemy Within, 1830-1970. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1990.
