The New Red Scare? Historian on McCarthyism and Parallels to Today

HARI SREENIVASAN: Bianna, thanks. Clay Risen, thanks so much for joining us. First, I guess for our audience that might not have paid attention in history class, the Red Scare. Why did it happen? What was it? Just set the table for us.

CLAY RISEN: Yeah. So the Red Scare was a period from roughly the end of World War II, 1946. It went for about a decade, 1957. Although it’s hard to put dates on these things. But it was a period of rampant, sort of unchecked anti-communist hysteria. There was a real reason for it. Look, there were Soviet espionage in the United States. There was the Cold War, obviously. But it got out of hand in a pretty dangerous way and scary way where even teachers and postal workers were being called into question for their loyalty to America.

SREENIVASAN: So what were the kind of underlying tensions that made Americans want to believe that there was gonna be well, Soviet infiltration? We were literally allies with the Soviets. And why did it turn so quickly?

RISEN: Yeah. Well, there, I think there are two reasons. One is sort of a long simmering conflict between the progressive America that came out of the New Deal in America that was oriented more toward a pluralistic vision, very much embracing of women’s rights and civil rights, but also an active government. And then on the other side, a conservatism that reacted very strongly against that for a variety of reasons some of which were pretty conspiratorial. And that simmered, for a long time. The Great Depression was on, Roosevelt was popular, and then, as you said, the war started and we were allies with the Soviet Union. But pretty immediately after that, things changed dramatically so that the Soviets became our Cold War enemies. 

But part of that message coming from President Truman and from Congress, was that this war has to be fought domestically as well. That we have an obligation to be 100% security minded. And so anyone who even has the iota of possible questions about their loyalty, they have to be excluded from, eventually from society, not just from, you know, from sensitive jobs. But we saw people kicked out of teaching jobs, of, not giving fish li, fishing licenses because they were, you know, suspect in some way. I mean, it got out of hand in ways that are funny or would be funny if they weren’t so scary.

SREENIVASAN: Yeah. So what was the kind of domino effect? I mean, you know, it, sometimes when you look back in history, in hindsight, you say, well, how did these people let all of these things happen? But was there kind of an incremental increase in the, or I should say decrease in the civil liberties? What happened?

RISEN: Yeah, there absolutely was. You know, one of the things that happened very early on is President Truman, who did not really believe in the threat of Soviet espionage as a big threat. He knew that there were spies, but he didn’t think that it was a problem, and he didn’t think that communists were about to take over the country. But because of that, he thought he could sort of essentially buy off FBI director J. Edgar Hoover, buy off his critics in Congress with what was, what was termed a loyalty program, where they essentially investigated anyone who wanted a job in the federal government and anyone who worked in the federal government. But the process was very poorly constructed. And very quickly people were being hounded for tiny little blips and anonymous tips that would come into the FBI. Ultimately, tens of thousands of people were thoroughly investigated. And this had a knock on effect with the rest of society. Because as soon as the president said, this is of such concern that we’re going to check everybody, then other industries followed suit. And very importantly, a lot of political opportunists saw the moment and used this fear that was boiling up as a way to go after their enemies to raise their own profile. Ultimately, Joe McCarthy, senator from Wisconsin is the best example of this, and lent his name to the era. But there were many other people like him both before and during his reign of terror.

SREENIVASAN: You know, I wonder, this was in the living lifetimes of so many people who had just witnessed what happened in Nazi Germany with people turning on each other, being asked and incentivized to turn in their neighbors. Right. But, and so it’s like, we think about that as like some sort of bygone era. We clearly read about it in the history books. But we’re talking about a decade and a half or less.

RISEN: Yeah. I think one of the things that is important to keep in mind when we think back from our present moment, or maybe recent past, is how fragile civil liberties are, and how eager, how willing people are to trade some civil liberties for the promise of security. And, you know, obviously Nazi Germany is an extreme example of that, but I think in America, a lot of people saw it as a trade off. It wasn’t that they were willing to give up all civil liberties, but maybe the civil liberties of some people, maybe some of their own civil liberties, because they were being told that this was this overwhelming threat, that there were communists all over the United States who were poised to take over.

SREENIVASAN: The second half of the book title is “The Making of Modern America.” So what were the consequences? What are the kind of long-term impacts that the Red Scare had in shaping the America that we live in today?