Anti-Communism

Early Anti-Communism

In the middle of the 19th century, increased immigration from Europe brought a number of political radicals to the United States, particularly when governments attempted to crack down on radical activities because of fears of labor unrest. Within the United States, social experiments in communal living and collective ownership were not unknown, though these experiments were tried in small, independent communities that were usually founded as religious settlements and were designed separately from general society. Among the better known of these communities were the Shakers of New England and the Oneida Society in western New York. These experiments in communal living aside, the greater threat posed by social radicals was connected to the fears of increased immigration and the growing numbers of foreign-born individuals living in American cities and towns. Unassimilated foreign socialists and their demands for unionization and class struggle appeared to pose a direct threat to American republicanism and the property-owning democracy.

Fears of communism fluctuated in spikes in response to incidents of domestic radical activism, particularly when foreigners instigated the activism. Leon Frank Czolgoz, the assassin of President William McKinley, seemed to personify the American public's fears of foreigners and radical agitators at the turn of the century. The Progressive movement of the early 20th century developed, in part, as a means of countering the spread of anarchism and socialism by addressing the existing social problems that [Page 35]tended to radicalize poor immigrant workers. Yet the Bolshevik revolution and the creation of the Soviet Union in 1917 prompted American authorities to crack down on the threat of communist insurrection at home. The Espionage Act of 1917 and the Sedition Act of 1918 were designed to place restrictions on radical industrial and political action that might be exploited by communists for political gain. The policies of Franklin Roosevelt's New Deal were derided by his opponents as radically socialist, veering toward communism, but the political activism of the Socialist Party provided the Democrats with a political party that was even farther to the left and, therefore, an easier target for attack. Anti-communism as a specific campaign issue did not truly emerge until after World War II, when the wartime alliance between Great Britain, the United States, and the Soviet Union fragmented with the coming of the peace.

...