etween 1915 and 1920, spurred by the arrival of tens of thousands of immigrants from eastern and southern Europe, had spawned the rebirth of the Ku Klux Klan. The fact that many of these people the eastern Europeans especially also brought along the concepts of socialism and communism added fuel to the nativist fire. The news media labeled the newcomers as Bolsheviks, anarchists, and terrorists, all of whom were collectively, if somewhat incorrectly, referred to as Reds. For those attacking the Reds, the ends justified the means, regardless of the cost to the American Constitution, because alien "ideas, like alien peoples, were so dangerous that they must be checked no matter what the costs" (Barkley, 1920, p. 136).Reacting to the Red baiting Republican Congressional victory, the Truman Administration called for the outlawing of the Communist Party in the United States (Caute, 1978). Loyalty oaths became a way of life for federal civilian and military personnel. Attorney General Tom Clark urged the President to repatriate alien enemies, and to expand the investigative powers of the Federal Bureau of Investigation. Clark even had one man, Gerhard Eisler, arrested for making speeches "round the country that were derogatory to our way of life" (quoted in Caute, 1978, p. 28). Deportations of pro communist militants and trade unionists were initiated. . . example of the Russian Revolution, the brave new worlds and peaceful utopias of wartime oratory and idealism, had bred in many . . . an unquestioning belief that peace would bring a different and far better (country) in which government would do vastly more for them than it had ever done before (Creighton, 1970, p. 158). |
