At the time of this writing, there have been two Red Scares in America. The first began in 1918 in response to heightened fears after the Russian Revolution, the increasing power of organized labor, immigration, attacks on Black communities (whose resistance was seen as orchestrated by Bolsheviks socialists), and anarchist bombings around the nation targeting law enforcement and businessmen who opposed them.
The federal reaction was extreme: Palmer Raid roundups of thousands of suspected radicals, deportations of leftists and anarchists (including Emma Goldman) to Russia, removal of elected Socialist officials from the New York State Assembly, and the passage of laws at the state and federal level placing prohibitions on speech and expression.
It ended when US Attorney General Palmer’s (and those of the young head of the Justice Department’s “Radical Division,” J. Edgar Hoover) dire predictions of national terror went unfulfilled on May Day 1920, but not without repercussions: the Immigration Act of 1924, which barred Asian immigration, reduced overall allowances and created the Border Patrol was enacted in its aftermath.
The second Red (and first Lavender) scare began quietly during the opening of the Cold War. As Soviet Russia (the USSR) began to build the Iron Curtain at the end of World War II, President Harry Truman offered assistance to those countries threatened by Communism, setting up a war where the weapons were espionage, mutually assured destruction and propaganda, and would last until the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989.
By the time Senator Joseph McCarthy joined the fight against Communists with his speech in Wheeling, West Virginia, on February 9, 1950, President Truman had already instituted a loyalty oath for federal employees via executive order in an attempt to identify members of Communist or foreign organizations. As Ellen Schrecker wrote in Social Research:
Joe McCarthy’s contributions to the political witch hunt were far from trivial, but by the time he joined the anticommunist crusade early in 1950, the movement to which he gave his name had been going strong for several years and would continue for several more even after he left the political scene. Nor, despite his notoriety, was he the most influential of the nation’s Cold War redbaiters. That honor belongs to the FBI’s J. Edgar Hoover. Still, despite its inaccuracy, the term “McCarthyism” has passed into general usage as a synonym for the anticommunist political repression of the early Cold War. It sticks because of its literary convenience and historical specificity.
The speech that propelled the Red Scare hunts from Washington, DC, into Hollywood, the armed forces, universities, and libraries is annotated below with scholarship, both contemporaneous and retrospective, about McCarthy, the Red Scare and current threats to First Amendment rights. As always, these works are free to read and download.
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Ladies and gentlemen, tonight as we celebrate the one hundred forty-first birthday of one of the greatest men in American history, I would like to be able to talk about what a glorious day today is in the history of the world. As we celebrate the birth of this man who with his whole heart and soul hated war, I would like to be able to speak of peace in our time—of war being outlawed—and of world-wide disarmament. These would be truly appropriate things to be able to mention as we celebrate the birthday of Abraham Lincoln.
Five years after a world war has been won, men’s hearts should anticipate a long peace, and men’s minds should be free from the heavy weight that comes with war. But this is not such a period—for this is not a period of peace. This is a time of “the cold war.” This is a time when all the world is split into two vast, increasingly hostile armed camps—a time of a great armaments race.
Today we can almost physically hear the mutterings and rumblings of an invigorated god of war. You can see it, feel it, and hear it all the way from the Indochina hills, from the shores of Formosa, right over into the very heart of Europe itself.
The one encouraging thing is that the “mad moment” has not yet arrived for the firing of the gun or the exploding of the bomb which will set civilization about the final task of destroying itself. There is still a hope for peace if we finally decide that no longer can we safely blind our eyes and close our ears to those facts which are shaping up more and more clearly. And that is that we are now engaged in a show-down fight—not the usual war between nations for land areas or other material gains, but a war between two diametrically opposed ideologies.
The great difference between our western Christian world and the atheistic Communist world is not political, gentlemen, it is moral. There are other differences, of course, but those could be reconciled. For instance, the Marxian idea of confiscating the land and factories and running the entire economy as a single enterprise is momentous. Likewise, Lenin’s invention of the one-party police state as a way to make Marx’s idea work is hardly less momentous.
Stalin’s resolute putting across of these two ideas, of course, did much to divide the world. With only these differences, however, the East and the West could most certainly still live in peace.
The real, basic difference, however, lies in the religion of immoralism…invented by Marx, preached feverishly by Lenin, and carried to unimaginable extremes by Stalin. This religion of immoralism, if the Red half of the world triumphs—and well it may—this religion of immoralism will more deeply wound and damage mankind than any conceivable economic or political system.
Karl Marx dismissed God as a hoax, and Lenin and Stalin have added in clear-cut, unmistakable language their resolve that no nation, no people who believe in a God, can exist side by side with their communistic state.
Karl Marx, for example, expelled people from his Communist Party for mentioning such things as love, justice, humanity or morality. He called this “soulful ravings” and “sloppy sentimentality.”
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While Lincoln was a relatively young man in his late thirties, Karl Marx boasted that the Communist specter was haunting Europe. Since that time, hundreds of millions of people and vast areas of the world have fallen under Communist domination. Today, less than 100 years after Lincoln’s death, Stalin brags that this Communist specter is not only haunting the world, but is about to completely subjugate it.
Today we are engaged in a final, all-out battle between communistic atheism and Christianity. The modern champions of communism have selected this as the time, and ladies and gentlemen, the chips are down—they are truly down.
Lest there be any doubt that the time has been chosen, let us go directly to the leader of communism today—Joseph Stalin. Here is what he said—not back in 1928, not before the war, not during the war—but 2 years after the last war was ended: “To think that the Communist revolution can be carried out peacefully, within the framework of a Christian democracy, means one has either gone out of one’s mind and lost all normal understanding, or has grossly and openly repudiated the Communist revolution.”
And this is what was said by Lenin in 1919, which was also quoted with approval by Stalin in 1947: “We are living,” said Lenin, “not merely in a state, but in a system of states, and the existence of the Soviet Republic side by side with Christian states for a long time is unthinkable. One or the other must triumph in the end. And before that end supervenes, a series of frightful collisions between the Soviet Republic and the Bourgeois states will be inevitable.”
Ladies and gentlemen, can there be anyone tonight who is so blind as to say that the war is not on? Can there by anyone who fails to realize that the Communist world has said, “The time is now?”—that this is the time for the show-down between the democratic Christian world and the communistic atheistic world?
Unless we face this fact, we shall pay the price that must be paid by those who wait too long.
Six years ago, at the time of the first conference to map out the peace—Dumbarton Oaks—there was within the Soviet orbit, 180,000,000 people. Lined up on the antitotalitarian side there were in the world at that time, roughly 1,625,000,000 people. Today, only 6 years later, there are 800,000,000 people under the absolute domination of Soviet Russia—an increase of over 400 percent. On our side, the figure has shrunk to around 500,000,000. In other words, in less than 6 years, the odds have changed from 9 to 1 in our favor to 8 to 5 against us. This indicates the swiftness of the tempo of Communist victories and American defeats in the cold war. As one of our outstanding historical figures once said, “When a great democracy is destroyed, it will not be from enemies from without, but rather because of enemies from within.”
The truth of this statement is becoming terrifyingly clear as we see this country each day losing on every front.
At war’s end we were physically the strongest nation on earth and, at least potentially, the most powerful intellectually and morally. Ours could have been the honor of being a beacon in the desert of destruction, a shining living proof that civilization was not yet ready to destroy itself. Unfortunately, we have failed miserably and tragically to arise to the opportunity.
The reason why we find ourselves in a position of impotency is not because our only powerful potential enemy has sent men to invade our shores, but rather because of the traitorous actions of those who have been treated so well by this Nation. It has not been the less fortunate, or members of minority groups who have been selling this Nation out, but rather those who have had all the benefits that the wealthiest Nation on earth has had to offer—the finest homes, the finest college education, and the finest jobs in government we can give.
This is glaringly true in the State Department. There the bright young men who are born with silver spoons in their mouths are the ones who have been the worst. […] In my opinion the State Department, which is one of the most important government departments, is thoroughly infested with Communists.
I have in my hand 57 cases of individuals who would appear to be either card carrying members or certainly loyal to the Communist Party, but who nevertheless are still helping to shape our foreign policy.
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One thing to remember in discussing the Communists in our Government is that we are not dealing with spies who get 30 pieces of silver to steal the blueprints of a new weapon. We are dealing with a far more sinister type of activity because it permits the enemy to guide and shape our foreign policy.
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As you know, very recently the Secretary of State proclaimed his loyalty to a man guilty of what has always been considered as the most abominable of all crimes—being a traitor to the people who gave him a position of great trust—high treason. The Secretary of State in attempting to justify his continued devotion to the man who sold out the Christian world to the atheistic world, referred to Christ’s Sermon on the Mount as a justification and.reason therefor, and the reaction of the American people to this would have made the heart of Abraham Lincoln happy. When this pompous diplomat in striped pants, with a phony British accent, proclaimed to the American people that Christ on the Mount endorsed communism, high treason, and betrayal of a sacred trust, the blasphemy was so great that it awakened the dormant indignation of the American people.
He has lighted the spark which is resulting in a moral uprising and will end only when the whole sorry mess of twisted, warped thinkers are swept from the national scene so that we may have a new birth of honesty and decency in Government.
This text was excerpted from the Congressional Record—Senate, 81st Congress—2nd Session, February 20, 1950 Vol. 96, Part 2, pp. 1954–1957. As the US Department of State Historian notes, the text of McCarthy’s speech “quickly became the subject of contention,” and different versions of it exist across the official record. For instance, the Congressional Record cited here includes a lengthy debate about the numbers cited by McCarthy. The newspapers reported that he claimed he had a list of 205 names of traitorous State Department employees; before the Senate, he claimed 57.
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