The first Red Scare that began a century ago with the Palmer Raids wasn’t rooted in irrational hysteria. The government agencies that carried out the raids had an unambiguous goal: to destroy the radical left in the United States.
The Nazis used the “threat of Communism” to rise to power. The same tactic as Mussolini.
Mussolini doesn’t get enough credit for fucking up the world. It’s always “the Nazis” when talking about fascism and right-wing jackassery, when Mussolini did it all first. He just ended up playing second fiddle to Hitler’s greater crimes.
Still, this article is about American anti-communism being used as a tactic to attack any left leaning figure. Which is a tactic as old as communism. Before that, the rich and the right wing attacked the left with dogs and bullets to break up strikes. Police have murdered strike organizers in the streets. The national guard was once called in to machine gun down women and children of striking coal miners.
But once communism was invented, boy howdy did the right ring jump on it to justify their violence against it.
The Nazis used the “threat of Communism” to rise to power. The same tactic as Mussolini.
Mussolini doesn’t get enough credit for fucking up the world. It’s always “the Nazis” when talking about fascism and right-wing jackassery, when Mussolini did it all first. He just ended up playing second fiddle to Hitler’s greater crimes.
Still, this article is about American anti-communism being used as a tactic to attack any left leaning figure. Which is a tactic as old as communism. Before that, the rich and the right wing attacked the left with dogs and bullets to break up strikes. Police have murdered strike organizers in the streets. The national guard was once called in to machine gun down women and children of striking coal miners.
But once communism was invented, boy howdy did the right ring jump on it to justify their violence against it.