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Red Scare: Blacklists, McCarthyism, and the Making of Modern America
As relevant as it is comprehensive, Red Scare tells the story of McCarthyism and the Red Scare—based in part on newly declassified sources—by an award-winning writer of history and New York Times reporter.
The film Oppenheimer has awakened interest in this vital period of American history. Now, for the first time in a generation, Red Scare presents a narrative history of the anti-Communist witch hunt that gripped America in the decade following World War II. The cultural phenomenon, most often referred to as McCarthyism, was an outgrowth of the conflict between social conservatives and New Deal progressives, coupled with the terrifying onset of the Cold War. This defining moment in American history, unlike any that preceded it, was marked by an unprecedented degree of political hysteria. Drawing upon newly declassified documents, journalist Clay Risen recounts how politicians like Joseph McCarthy, with the help of an extended network of other government officials and organizations, systematically ruined thousands of lives in their deluded pursuit of alleged Communist conspiracies.
Beginning with the origins of the era after WWI through to its conclusion in 1957, Risen brings to life the politics, patriotism, opportunism, courage, and delirium of those years through the lives and experiences of a cast of towering historical figures, including President Eisenhower, Roy Cohn, Paul Robeson, Robert Oppenheimer, Helen Gahagan Douglas, Richard Nixon, and many more individuals known and unknown. Red Scare takes us beyond the familiar story of McCarthyism and the Hollywood blacklists to a fuller understanding of what the country went through at a time of moral questioning and perceived threat from the left, and what we were capable of doing to each other as a result.
An urgent, accessible, and important history, Red Scare reveals an all-too-familiar pattern of illiberal conspiracy-mongering and political and cultural backlash that speaks directly to the antagonism and divisiveness of our contemporary moment.
The film Oppenheimer has awakened interest in this vital period of American history. Now, for the first time in a generation, Red Scare presents a narrative history of the anti-Communist witch hunt that gripped America in the decade following World War II. The cultural phenomenon, most often referred to as McCarthyism, was an outgrowth of the conflict between social conservatives and New Deal progressives, coupled with the terrifying onset of the Cold War. This defining moment in American history, unlike any that preceded it, was marked by an unprecedented degree of political hysteria. Drawing upon newly declassified documents, journalist Clay Risen recounts how politicians like Joseph McCarthy, with the help of an extended network of other government officials and organizations, systematically ruined thousands of lives in their deluded pursuit of alleged Communist conspiracies.
Beginning with the origins of the era after WWI through to its conclusion in 1957, Risen brings to life the politics, patriotism, opportunism, courage, and delirium of those years through the lives and experiences of a cast of towering historical figures, including President Eisenhower, Roy Cohn, Paul Robeson, Robert Oppenheimer, Helen Gahagan Douglas, Richard Nixon, and many more individuals known and unknown. Red Scare takes us beyond the familiar story of McCarthyism and the Hollywood blacklists to a fuller understanding of what the country went through at a time of moral questioning and perceived threat from the left, and what we were capable of doing to each other as a result.
An urgent, accessible, and important history, Red Scare reveals an all-too-familiar pattern of illiberal conspiracy-mongering and political and cultural backlash that speaks directly to the antagonism and divisiveness of our contemporary moment.
480 pages, Hardcover
Published March 18, 2025
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 62 reviews
April 9, 2025
"McCarthyism is Americanism with its sleeves rolled up."
Americans like to think that we as a country have gotten more liberal and open-minded, but the more books I read about American History tells me that this country hasn't changed and it never will. McCarthyism is considered to have been a dark time in history that ended and we all look back on as ridiculous. But actually McCarthyism never ended it just mutated.
Replace the word "Communist " with "Woke" or "DEI" ....it's the same thing. The same type of people using the same type of accusations. What's old is new again. "They never stopped believing that white, conservative christianity was the bedrock of this country and they were determined to get it back."......Or in other words they wanted to Make America Great Again.
The Red Scare and it's hunt for commies didn't stop at Communist. It was, of course, anti-union, anti-women's rights, anti immigration, anti-gay, antisemitic and obviously anti Black American civil rights.
A few other things that were considered "Communist ":
- school integration
- public schools
- public libraries
- school libraries
-free school lunch
-public housing
-Hollywood films
- national Healthcare
Anti Communist banned books and staged book burnings. They wanted teachers fired for refusing to sign loyalty oaths to the United States. Hundreds of teachers and librarians were hounded out of their professions. They forced law firms and universities to comply with anti Communist edicts or be fined. They deported immigrants for speaking out against the US government.
If any of this sounds familiar that's because we are currently still in the Red Scare. Republicans and some Democrats back in the McCarthy era deemed anything they didn't like as Communist. I'm not being hyperbolic when I say that McCarthyism and today's Republican party are one in the same. Robert Welch who worked closely with Joseph McCarthy, would go on to create the racist far right group The John Birch Society. Fred Koch who is the father of Republican super donors Charles and David Koch was a member of the John Birch Society. Welch was also a mentor of right wing journalist William F Buckley and he inspired Republican Senator Barry Goldwater and B- movie actor turned politician Ronald Reagan.
I'm not as troubled by current day American politics because my mother always told me that America was a racist piece of shit country....but she also always hoped it would change. It didn't in her lifetime and it won't in mine either.
I highly recommend Red Scare for people who want a deeper understanding of American history and America today.
Americans like to think that we as a country have gotten more liberal and open-minded, but the more books I read about American History tells me that this country hasn't changed and it never will. McCarthyism is considered to have been a dark time in history that ended and we all look back on as ridiculous. But actually McCarthyism never ended it just mutated.
Replace the word "Communist " with "Woke" or "DEI" ....it's the same thing. The same type of people using the same type of accusations. What's old is new again. "They never stopped believing that white, conservative christianity was the bedrock of this country and they were determined to get it back."......Or in other words they wanted to Make America Great Again.
The Red Scare and it's hunt for commies didn't stop at Communist. It was, of course, anti-union, anti-women's rights, anti immigration, anti-gay, antisemitic and obviously anti Black American civil rights.
A few other things that were considered "Communist ":
- school integration
- public schools
- public libraries
- school libraries
-free school lunch
-public housing
-Hollywood films
- national Healthcare
Anti Communist banned books and staged book burnings. They wanted teachers fired for refusing to sign loyalty oaths to the United States. Hundreds of teachers and librarians were hounded out of their professions. They forced law firms and universities to comply with anti Communist edicts or be fined. They deported immigrants for speaking out against the US government.
If any of this sounds familiar that's because we are currently still in the Red Scare. Republicans and some Democrats back in the McCarthy era deemed anything they didn't like as Communist. I'm not being hyperbolic when I say that McCarthyism and today's Republican party are one in the same. Robert Welch who worked closely with Joseph McCarthy, would go on to create the racist far right group The John Birch Society. Fred Koch who is the father of Republican super donors Charles and David Koch was a member of the John Birch Society. Welch was also a mentor of right wing journalist William F Buckley and he inspired Republican Senator Barry Goldwater and B- movie actor turned politician Ronald Reagan.
I'm not as troubled by current day American politics because my mother always told me that America was a racist piece of shit country....but she also always hoped it would change. It didn't in her lifetime and it won't in mine either.
I highly recommend Red Scare for people who want a deeper understanding of American history and America today.
April 24, 2025
“I know of no more serious danger to our legal system than occurs when ideological trials take place behind the facade of legal trials…” Justice William O. Douglas, Red Scare: Blacklists,McCarthyism, and the Making of Modern America
Red Scare is the nonfiction account of America following World War II, focusing on the conservative led witch hunt of communist and socialists in America. Through this book readers watch the rise of an ambitious politician from California named Richard Nixon, the rise and eventual fall of Wisconsin senator Joseph McCarthy, and the targeted persecution of progressive leaning individuals and community leaders throughout the country.
Risen does a phenomenal job of making this period of American history accessible and engaging to a wide range of readers, from academic readers to your everyday history buff. It helps that Risen explains some of the lesser known individuals history and returning to them over and over to paint a portrait starring well known figures such as Eisenhower and Oppenheimer and these lesser known people such as Chief Justice Earl Warren or the Boston lawyer Joseph Nye Welch.
This period of history is obviously politically charged and I would make the argument that something similar is happening in the modern age with the “deep state” theories. But I felt that Risen was largely politically neutral painting the democrats and many liberals in a negative light along with the Republicans for selling out many of their liberal friends and allies, especially in Hollywood.
Overall a really enjoyable and still comprehensive book for this subject and it would be great for a reader looking for a nonfiction summer read.
Red Scare is the nonfiction account of America following World War II, focusing on the conservative led witch hunt of communist and socialists in America. Through this book readers watch the rise of an ambitious politician from California named Richard Nixon, the rise and eventual fall of Wisconsin senator Joseph McCarthy, and the targeted persecution of progressive leaning individuals and community leaders throughout the country.
Risen does a phenomenal job of making this period of American history accessible and engaging to a wide range of readers, from academic readers to your everyday history buff. It helps that Risen explains some of the lesser known individuals history and returning to them over and over to paint a portrait starring well known figures such as Eisenhower and Oppenheimer and these lesser known people such as Chief Justice Earl Warren or the Boston lawyer Joseph Nye Welch.
This period of history is obviously politically charged and I would make the argument that something similar is happening in the modern age with the “deep state” theories. But I felt that Risen was largely politically neutral painting the democrats and many liberals in a negative light along with the Republicans for selling out many of their liberal friends and allies, especially in Hollywood.
Overall a really enjoyable and still comprehensive book for this subject and it would be great for a reader looking for a nonfiction summer read.
April 12, 2025
To those who have lived through the Red Scare, today's headlines must seem like deja vu. Once again rights guaranteed by the US Constitution are under attack. Clay Risen sticks to the objectivity of his journalistic profession but the parallels to current Trump administrative policies are undeniable.
From the end of World War II until the mid fifties our country seemed to be in a state of anti communist hysteria. Right wing pundits convinced people that scores of communists were controlling social justice organizations, government agencies, labor unions, Hollywood studios, universities and even the US Army. These radicals were credibly planning to violently overthrow the government, they claimed. It was a greatly exaggerated fear that spread like wildfire, fanned by men such as Senator Joseph McCarthy and Richard Nixon. Lives were ruined by innuendo. People were hounded out of their jobs on scarce or non existent evidence. Some went to prison. Others avoided that fate by informing on their friends.
Today our government has fallen into a similar pattern of denying the right of free speech, free association and privacy from government intrusion into private sexual mores. Warrantless arrests are taking place. Risen, the author, compares our current situation to an underground fire in a coal seam. The illiberal passion that was ignited during the Red Scare has burned underground since that earlier time and has reemerged as a fear of immigrants, Diversity, Inclusion, Equity programs, and even demonization of Democrats as neo communists. These are perilous times; dangerous during the Red Scare and worse today.
From the end of World War II until the mid fifties our country seemed to be in a state of anti communist hysteria. Right wing pundits convinced people that scores of communists were controlling social justice organizations, government agencies, labor unions, Hollywood studios, universities and even the US Army. These radicals were credibly planning to violently overthrow the government, they claimed. It was a greatly exaggerated fear that spread like wildfire, fanned by men such as Senator Joseph McCarthy and Richard Nixon. Lives were ruined by innuendo. People were hounded out of their jobs on scarce or non existent evidence. Some went to prison. Others avoided that fate by informing on their friends.
Today our government has fallen into a similar pattern of denying the right of free speech, free association and privacy from government intrusion into private sexual mores. Warrantless arrests are taking place. Risen, the author, compares our current situation to an underground fire in a coal seam. The illiberal passion that was ignited during the Red Scare has burned underground since that earlier time and has reemerged as a fear of immigrants, Diversity, Inclusion, Equity programs, and even demonization of Democrats as neo communists. These are perilous times; dangerous during the Red Scare and worse today.
March 28, 2025
An excellent look at the McCarthy era, with an uneasy connection to our modern times. There were parts of this book that gave me anxiety. I am not normally somebody who feels that we are reliving historical moments, but this book pointed out so many similarities that it becomes hard to ignore.
There's a good focus on the major figures of this time, but a lot of space was given to minor figures as well. I found this book to me very well written and released at the perfect time.
The big takeaway that I found in this book is that McCarthy is a symptom of the era, despite his name being attached to it. Much of the underpinnings that drove the Red Scare we're there before him, absolutely continue to this day.
There's a good focus on the major figures of this time, but a lot of space was given to minor figures as well. I found this book to me very well written and released at the perfect time.
The big takeaway that I found in this book is that McCarthy is a symptom of the era, despite his name being attached to it. Much of the underpinnings that drove the Red Scare we're there before him, absolutely continue to this day.
April 3, 2025
Clay Risen's Red Scare provides an updated survey of the postwar climate of anticommunist hysteria and repression in the United States. Making ample use of recent research, Risen shows that the era's "witch hunts" were partially motivated by serious security concerns in the wake of World War II - the presence of Soviet spies, now well-documented, in the US government and a number of progressive organizations, the threatening expansion of Stalin's USSR into Eastern Europe, Mao's victory in China and the development of atomic weapons - but largely, indeed overwhelmingly by domestic cultural and political concerns: conservative backlash against the New Deal, which was easily conflated with communist influence (not least when Roosevelt advisers like Alger Hiss were exposed as spies), fears of progressive labor and civil rights movements, and a generalized resentment at the social mores disrupted and changed, first by the Great Depression and then by World War II. More government involvement in citizens' lives, more women and African-Americans in the workforce, more tolerance towards changing sexual mores (including an ever-so-slightly more visible gay community), a more interconnected world threatening small town America and fears of crime, juvenile delinquency and family disruption. A lot of familiar American anxieties and resentments, for which Communism proved an easy, acceptable explanation - and grist for no shortage of opportunistic demagogues. Risen's work rehearses the era's usual set pieces: the trials of Alger Hiss, the Hollywood Ten and the blacklist, the Peekskill Riot targeting singer-activist Paul Robeson, the execution of the Rosenbergs, J. Robert Oppenheimer's downfall and of course Joe McCarthy's rise and fall. But he also folds in accounts of bureaucrats fired from government, gay and lesbian employees persecuted, teachers forced from jobs and labor leaders hounded out of the country. The book also explores the powerful anticommunist organizations and networks, from J. Edgar Hoover's FBI and the American Legion to a veritable army of citizens' organizations, who fanned the flames of fear, along with politicians from McCarthy to Richard Nixon who used the hysteria to advance their careers. Risen folds these stories into a cohesive, engaging narrative, stressing that the Red Scare didn't just affect the corridors of Washington and Hollywood screenwriters, but profoundly impacted broader American society and culture in ways that are still being felt. A solid work of popular history, with modern parallels obvious enough that Risen needn't spell them out.
April 14, 2025
While I knew much of this, Risen pulls it together in a highly readable, credible way. I also had to look up a couple words! Our country has had some wonderful moments and progress. The treatment of our citizens in this period of hysteria -late 40’s through the 50’s was despicable. There is a thread through to today.
April 8, 2025
Its not surprising that the Republican party is sycophantically supporting a fat slob who lies all the time, because they've done it before, and that fat slob's name was Joseph McCarthy.
If you're ever wondering why America doesn't have a lot of the safety nets that other "first world" countries have: universal healthcare, better worker's rights, etc. its safe to assume its because of this era of American history.
If you're ever wondering why America doesn't have a lot of the safety nets that other "first world" countries have: universal healthcare, better worker's rights, etc. its safe to assume its because of this era of American history.
December 22, 2024
A very good, informative survey of this moment in American history. The book isn’t based on original research but it does a very good job of synthesizing the many different elements of this phenomenon, from the promoters in the government to the way the media reacted to effects in specific industries like Hollywood and education. The book is also very readable and accessible.
Obviously, if you want to know more about any individual thing, more specialist books will be more valuable — I have read a lot about the Hollywood blacklist so that part of the book was not new to me, for instance, but there was also a lot of information that I hadn’t encountered before. Again, the whole picture is synthesized well here, which is a valuable project for this moment in particular given the incoming presidential administration.
Obviously, if you want to know more about any individual thing, more specialist books will be more valuable — I have read a lot about the Hollywood blacklist so that part of the book was not new to me, for instance, but there was also a lot of information that I hadn’t encountered before. Again, the whole picture is synthesized well here, which is a valuable project for this moment in particular given the incoming presidential administration.
Read
March 25, 2025I have studied McCarthyism all my life, and this was a very accessible and cohering read that helped situate those events in the context of today. Risen basically shows us, from the top, how McCarthyism was a reaction to the pluralism of the New Deal that elevated women and Black, working-class and rural communities, artists, and voices to the national level- a rebellion of resentment by Christian white male power. Looking at it that way, connects these events from Jim Crow as a reaction to Reconstruction, "Anti-Communism" as a reaction to expansions of democracy, and today's fake "antisemitism" charges being used to justify repression, deportations, arrest, firings and the accompanying fear. A helpful and informative book. The final third is a bit episodic and not cumulative, but the examples provided help us draw insightful conclusions. Very readable.
May 28, 2025
Very early in his new book “Red Scare,” NY Times reporter Clay Risen writes, “This is a work of history, and as such it is not concerned with drawing parallels between the past and the present. I leave it up to the reader to find those as they will.”
Risen’s being a bit disingenuous here, I think: Not long after offering this disclaimer he quotes (of all things) Camus’ “The Plague” about how the “plague bacillus never dies or disappears for good; it can lie dormant for years and years,” and then writes, “There is a lineage to the American hard right of today, and to understand it, we need to understand its roots in the Red Scare.”
So he’s giving away the game, but it’s not much of a reveal after all. Some things just can’t be disguised.
Clay’s book is an engaging (and more than a little disturbing) history of the second Red Scare (the one that came almost immediately after WW2; the first Red Scare took place late in the first World War and lasted for a couple of years). This period in our history is marked by names like the HUAC (House Un-American Activities Committee), Whittaker Chambers, Alger Hiss, Roy Cohn, Julius and Ethel Rosenberg, the Hollywood blacklist, a young senator from California named Richard Nixon, and a young McCarthy staffer and family friend named Robert F. Kennedy.
For most Americans today, if they know anything at all about the Red Scare it’s because of movies like “Oppenheimer” and “Good Night and Good Luck,” or a play they read back in high school, Arthur Miller’s “The Crucible.” The odds are better that they know the name Joe McCarthy. In the early 1950s McCarthy — Republican Senator from Wisconsin — was probably the most visible public figure in the United States. His prominence was such that his name became iconic in American politics. There are countless definitions of the word McCarthyism available but the one that strikes me as most direct comes from the online Student edition of Britannica: “The term McCarthyism is applied to the persecution of innocent people using powerful but unproved allegations… McCarthy’s accusations were never substantiated; they are now considered a frightening example of the effectiveness of fear tactics.”)
“Red Scare” explains how McCarthyism evolved, what cultural and political currents it represented, who the key figures were, and the effects it had — and has still — on the United States and its citizens.
Describing how the Red Scare played out in the post-War period makes it sound more than a little unhinged and paranoid. Powerful people in Congress and elsewhere firmly believed that Communists — Stalin’s knowing and un-knowing puppets — were secretly at work everywhere: in government, industry, education, Hollywood -- everywhere. Truman's Administration was filled with card-carrying Communist and sympathizers, his critics charged. His administration was deliberately soft on Communism; that's why we "lost" China. Eisenhower too: a terrible disappointment, weak, and unwilling to stand up to the Soviet Union. Everywhere you looked you found men and women seeking to undermine the United States and allow communism to take over the country.
Paranoid, maybe, but Americans bought into it in a big way. As Risen argues, the Red Scare grew out of numerous currents running through post-War America. The Soviet Union may have been America’s ally in the recent war against Hitler but now it was an aggressive, unprincipled, and cruel enemy whose agents corrupted ordinary, unsuspecting American citizens. The danger became existential in 1949 when the Russians successfully tested their first nuclear weapon.
“The Red Scare was, first of all, a cultural war, pitting two visions for America against each other, one progressive, one conservative,” Risen notes. He locates the proximate source of the culture war in conservative reaction to the government’s response to the Great Depression. "They had grown up thinking that America—real America, at least—meant small farm towns where government stopped at the mailbox, led by a white, male, business elite that bowed to no one save the local clergy. White, conservative Christianity was the bedrock of their worldview and their guiding light in politics. They had never stopped believing in such a country, and they were determined to get it back.”
Many Americans felt dispossessed and were easy targets for conspiracy theories and disinformation. And there was no shortage of people who, honestly or otherwise, responded to the anxiety and resentments of the moment.
The Red Scare took many forms in the late '40s and early '50s: Hollywood black lists kept well-known writers actors, and other figures off the movie lots and destroyed careers.Ordinary people were examined and interrogated. (“More than five million federal employees were investigated for potential ties to “subversive” organizations. Two thousand seven hundred were fired. More than twelve thousand quietly resigned. There was little recourse for appeal; even those who did get a hearing were unable to see the evidence against them, let alone face their accusers.”)
Loyalty oaths were required to get hired and keep jobs -- not only in the federal government but at state and town levels, even at local hardware stores and real estate offices. Lists were kept of people who might be subversives. Congress subpoena-ed lots of them. Grilled them, demanded that they name names or get put in jail for contempt. Judges routinely ignored the violation of Constitutional rights because the Communist threat was more important than the civil rights of individuals. The American Legion paraded outside theaters to dissuade people from seeing “suspect” movies. (“The sci-fi hit The Day the Earth Stood Still was at one point at risk of being yanked because, in one scene, the alien Klaatu dismisses humans as “stupid,” a description the local Legionnaires found dangerously close to Communist propaganda.”) Mothers of young children were told to scrutinize school libraries and report “subversive books to… the school board.” Librarians were attacked for the books they carried and professors for the context of their lectures. Small towns across the country staged mock drills of Communist takeovers.
Singled out for special scrutiny were labor unions and agitators for racial equality. (“If someone insists that there is discrimination against Negroes in this country, or that there is inequality of wealth, there is every reason to believe that person is a Communist,” said Albert Canwell, the chairman of the Washington State Fact-Finding Committee on Un-American Activities, one of the dozens of “mini-HUACs” that sprang up around the country in the late 1940s.”) And unsurprisingly, antisemitic accusations began spreading.
Most of all, there was Joe McCarthy. I won’t try to summarize Rosen’s coverage of the senator. But I will share some key points. First and foremost, McCarthy drew attention. He made himself into an “overnight star.” Millions of Americans now owned TVs, and his antics — dramatic and confrontational as could be — made him (as we might put it today) an attention magnet. What reporter or network could ignore anything like that?
I’ll let Risen speak for himself:
“One of the amazing things about the phenomenon that McCarthy and his associated “ism” would soon become is how, from the very beginning, reporters, congressmen, and other anti-Communists recognized him as a con man.
"What drove reporters’ interest in this man McCarthy? He was probably lying, they allknew. But after Hiss and Coplon, who could be sure? And as some reporters were already learning, there was a train-wreck quality to the senator that turned the press corps into rubberneckers."
“Even as he launched witch hunts, he believed he was the victim of one himself. He hinted to crowds that he was risking his life to bring them the truth.”
“He encouraged supporters to send money, and he claimed to receive a steady flow of letters enclosing wads of small bills.”
“Facts, accuracy, and consistency did not matter. On August 8, 1951, he promised to release the names of twenty-nine security risks currently or formerly in the State Department… But there was no there, there—whatever documents he claimed to have in his possession, he never gave them to the State Department.”
“The fact that, even after the Army–McCarthy hearings [exposed McCarthy], a third of Americans still supported him speaks to the strength of his conspiracy-minded populism. If anything, for millions, Senate opposition to his tactics only proved his claim that there was a massive, bipartisan plot in Washington, a pro-Communist cabal determined to quash anyone who tried to uncover it.”
I could continue, of course, but I think the quotes speak for themselves.
“This is a work of history, and as such it is not concerned with drawing parallels between the past and the present,” Risen writes. “I leave it up to the reader to find those as they will.”
The reader will not need a great deal of imagination to find parallels. True, Risen wrote the book knowing full well it would make readers see the shadows Donald Trump and MAGA. Arguably, he may have stressed certain things or used certain words to make the similarities unmissable. But that doesn’t make the argument wrong.
My thanks to Scribners and Edelweis+ for providing a digital ARC in exchange for an honest review.
Risen’s being a bit disingenuous here, I think: Not long after offering this disclaimer he quotes (of all things) Camus’ “The Plague” about how the “plague bacillus never dies or disappears for good; it can lie dormant for years and years,” and then writes, “There is a lineage to the American hard right of today, and to understand it, we need to understand its roots in the Red Scare.”
So he’s giving away the game, but it’s not much of a reveal after all. Some things just can’t be disguised.
Clay’s book is an engaging (and more than a little disturbing) history of the second Red Scare (the one that came almost immediately after WW2; the first Red Scare took place late in the first World War and lasted for a couple of years). This period in our history is marked by names like the HUAC (House Un-American Activities Committee), Whittaker Chambers, Alger Hiss, Roy Cohn, Julius and Ethel Rosenberg, the Hollywood blacklist, a young senator from California named Richard Nixon, and a young McCarthy staffer and family friend named Robert F. Kennedy.
For most Americans today, if they know anything at all about the Red Scare it’s because of movies like “Oppenheimer” and “Good Night and Good Luck,” or a play they read back in high school, Arthur Miller’s “The Crucible.” The odds are better that they know the name Joe McCarthy. In the early 1950s McCarthy — Republican Senator from Wisconsin — was probably the most visible public figure in the United States. His prominence was such that his name became iconic in American politics. There are countless definitions of the word McCarthyism available but the one that strikes me as most direct comes from the online Student edition of Britannica: “The term McCarthyism is applied to the persecution of innocent people using powerful but unproved allegations… McCarthy’s accusations were never substantiated; they are now considered a frightening example of the effectiveness of fear tactics.”)
“Red Scare” explains how McCarthyism evolved, what cultural and political currents it represented, who the key figures were, and the effects it had — and has still — on the United States and its citizens.
Describing how the Red Scare played out in the post-War period makes it sound more than a little unhinged and paranoid. Powerful people in Congress and elsewhere firmly believed that Communists — Stalin’s knowing and un-knowing puppets — were secretly at work everywhere: in government, industry, education, Hollywood -- everywhere. Truman's Administration was filled with card-carrying Communist and sympathizers, his critics charged. His administration was deliberately soft on Communism; that's why we "lost" China. Eisenhower too: a terrible disappointment, weak, and unwilling to stand up to the Soviet Union. Everywhere you looked you found men and women seeking to undermine the United States and allow communism to take over the country.
Paranoid, maybe, but Americans bought into it in a big way. As Risen argues, the Red Scare grew out of numerous currents running through post-War America. The Soviet Union may have been America’s ally in the recent war against Hitler but now it was an aggressive, unprincipled, and cruel enemy whose agents corrupted ordinary, unsuspecting American citizens. The danger became existential in 1949 when the Russians successfully tested their first nuclear weapon.
“The Red Scare was, first of all, a cultural war, pitting two visions for America against each other, one progressive, one conservative,” Risen notes. He locates the proximate source of the culture war in conservative reaction to the government’s response to the Great Depression. "They had grown up thinking that America—real America, at least—meant small farm towns where government stopped at the mailbox, led by a white, male, business elite that bowed to no one save the local clergy. White, conservative Christianity was the bedrock of their worldview and their guiding light in politics. They had never stopped believing in such a country, and they were determined to get it back.”
Many Americans felt dispossessed and were easy targets for conspiracy theories and disinformation. And there was no shortage of people who, honestly or otherwise, responded to the anxiety and resentments of the moment.
The Red Scare took many forms in the late '40s and early '50s: Hollywood black lists kept well-known writers actors, and other figures off the movie lots and destroyed careers.Ordinary people were examined and interrogated. (“More than five million federal employees were investigated for potential ties to “subversive” organizations. Two thousand seven hundred were fired. More than twelve thousand quietly resigned. There was little recourse for appeal; even those who did get a hearing were unable to see the evidence against them, let alone face their accusers.”)
Loyalty oaths were required to get hired and keep jobs -- not only in the federal government but at state and town levels, even at local hardware stores and real estate offices. Lists were kept of people who might be subversives. Congress subpoena-ed lots of them. Grilled them, demanded that they name names or get put in jail for contempt. Judges routinely ignored the violation of Constitutional rights because the Communist threat was more important than the civil rights of individuals. The American Legion paraded outside theaters to dissuade people from seeing “suspect” movies. (“The sci-fi hit The Day the Earth Stood Still was at one point at risk of being yanked because, in one scene, the alien Klaatu dismisses humans as “stupid,” a description the local Legionnaires found dangerously close to Communist propaganda.”) Mothers of young children were told to scrutinize school libraries and report “subversive books to… the school board.” Librarians were attacked for the books they carried and professors for the context of their lectures. Small towns across the country staged mock drills of Communist takeovers.
Singled out for special scrutiny were labor unions and agitators for racial equality. (“If someone insists that there is discrimination against Negroes in this country, or that there is inequality of wealth, there is every reason to believe that person is a Communist,” said Albert Canwell, the chairman of the Washington State Fact-Finding Committee on Un-American Activities, one of the dozens of “mini-HUACs” that sprang up around the country in the late 1940s.”) And unsurprisingly, antisemitic accusations began spreading.
Most of all, there was Joe McCarthy. I won’t try to summarize Rosen’s coverage of the senator. But I will share some key points. First and foremost, McCarthy drew attention. He made himself into an “overnight star.” Millions of Americans now owned TVs, and his antics — dramatic and confrontational as could be — made him (as we might put it today) an attention magnet. What reporter or network could ignore anything like that?
I’ll let Risen speak for himself:
“One of the amazing things about the phenomenon that McCarthy and his associated “ism” would soon become is how, from the very beginning, reporters, congressmen, and other anti-Communists recognized him as a con man.
"What drove reporters’ interest in this man McCarthy? He was probably lying, they allknew. But after Hiss and Coplon, who could be sure? And as some reporters were already learning, there was a train-wreck quality to the senator that turned the press corps into rubberneckers."
“Even as he launched witch hunts, he believed he was the victim of one himself. He hinted to crowds that he was risking his life to bring them the truth.”
“He encouraged supporters to send money, and he claimed to receive a steady flow of letters enclosing wads of small bills.”
“Facts, accuracy, and consistency did not matter. On August 8, 1951, he promised to release the names of twenty-nine security risks currently or formerly in the State Department… But there was no there, there—whatever documents he claimed to have in his possession, he never gave them to the State Department.”
“The fact that, even after the Army–McCarthy hearings [exposed McCarthy], a third of Americans still supported him speaks to the strength of his conspiracy-minded populism. If anything, for millions, Senate opposition to his tactics only proved his claim that there was a massive, bipartisan plot in Washington, a pro-Communist cabal determined to quash anyone who tried to uncover it.”
I could continue, of course, but I think the quotes speak for themselves.
“This is a work of history, and as such it is not concerned with drawing parallels between the past and the present,” Risen writes. “I leave it up to the reader to find those as they will.”
The reader will not need a great deal of imagination to find parallels. True, Risen wrote the book knowing full well it would make readers see the shadows Donald Trump and MAGA. Arguably, he may have stressed certain things or used certain words to make the similarities unmissable. But that doesn’t make the argument wrong.
My thanks to Scribners and Edelweis+ for providing a digital ARC in exchange for an honest review.
Want to read
May 22, 2025“Although I haven’t yet had a chance to read it, Clay Risen’s Red Scare, published just a few weeks ago, seems equally silent on this crucial history that inspired the McCarthyism of the early 1950s.
This historical background was obviously so important that Herman probably should have allocated a full chapter to the topic rather than merely a couple of pages. But that couple of pages was still a couple of pages more than I found in almost any other book on McCarthy’s political rise.”
-Ron Unz, “McCarthyism Part II”
This historical background was obviously so important that Herman probably should have allocated a full chapter to the topic rather than merely a couple of pages. But that couple of pages was still a couple of pages more than I found in almost any other book on McCarthy’s political rise.”
-Ron Unz, “McCarthyism Part II”
April 6, 2025
Good book about an interesting time in American history as citizens face the menace of communism at home in the Cold War, not always reacting in the best of ways. Politicians sometimes take advantage of the scare to further careers only to undermine the real threat.
April 10, 2025
Extremely Thorough and Informative. Many of the names Risen highlighted during the McCarthy era I hadn't heard of it, so it was interesting to listen to. A little Dense and times but definitely an authoritative text.
June 9, 2025
I fear that listening to this on audiobook was not a good move because I kept zoning out. I think I got bits & pieces of what happened with the red scare but truly don’t ask me about it because I still don’t know.
June 30, 2025
As if nothing change from 80 years ago. Rinse. Repeat. Well researched.
April 5, 2025
Still red and scary after all these years!
Impossible to read “Red Scare” and miss the parallels to today’s headlines. Made me recall the red covered anti-communism booklet we had to read and memorize in school. Fast forward 60 years and the anti-woke fever would once again inflict poet Blake’s “mind-forged manacles,” on the citizens of this country.
Impossible to read “Red Scare” and miss the parallels to today’s headlines. Made me recall the red covered anti-communism booklet we had to read and memorize in school. Fast forward 60 years and the anti-woke fever would once again inflict poet Blake’s “mind-forged manacles,” on the citizens of this country.
June 9, 2025
George Santayana's most famous quote regarding history is: "Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it." This quote emphasizes the importance of learning from past mistakes to avoid making them again. I guess when one looks at our contemporary political, social, and economic landscape we as a society have not followed the Spanish-American philosopher, essayist, poet and novelist’s advice. We live in a partisan world where things seem to be defined by which tribe we belong to. It appears that our country is split almost down the middle in terms of our loyalties and belief systems. Currently, the administration that occupies the White House is led by a cult leader whose primary goal is power and enrichment for himself and his family. To achieve this, he has manufactured a world identified as “Make America Great Again” or MAGA and through executive orders and partisan legislation seeks to implement what has been identified as “Project 2025” which will devastate certain governmental components, social programs for the poor, the international trading system, the federal budget, our immigration system, and god knows what else that is written in the weeds of that document.
In examining American history, I can think of three periods where contemporary events have their role model. One is the Gilded Age of the late 19th century, when tariffs, crony capitalism, and hard-and-fast hierarchies were the stuff of American politics. Secondly we turn to the 1920s with its version of anti-communism, an economic system that was overloaded with debt, highlighted by Wall Street, racism manifesting itself in anti-immigrant legislation, and a strict reshaping of American politics. Lastly, is the post-World War II period highlighted by the Red Scare, when the federal government was weaponized against the American left. This last example sounds familiar as we are bombarded on a daily basis by public commentary and social media posts by our president who has weaponized the Justice Department seeking revenge against his perceived enemies be it individual politicians, educational institutions, businessmen or lawyers who do not conform to his demands, a feckless Congress and Supreme Court, all with the goal of seeking total fealty to the beliefs of one man.
In Clay Risen’s latest historical monograph, RED SCARE: BLACKLISTS, McCARTHYISM, AND THE MAKING OF MODERN AMERICA the author examines a period that is close to being the precursor of our contemporary world. President Trump vows to root out “radical left wing lunatics” and “Marxist equity” from the bowels of the state. One of Trump’s minions, former DOGE overlord Elon Musk has proclaimed that U.S.A.I.D. designed as a soft power vehicle to enhance American popularity in poor countries particularly by improving their health care is “a viper’s nest of radical-left Marxists” and deserved to be destroyed. This commentary which pervades actors in the current administration sounds like Senator Joseph McCarthy, legal counsel Roy Cohn, Senator and later Vice President Richard Nixon, and even Robert F. Kennedy, and many others. In fact, McCarthy garnered a range of support, including from fellow Republicans, some ordinary Americans, and even some Democrats. His supporters often believed in the necessity of identifying and suppressing perceived communist influence, justifying the denial of civil liberties to those deemed subversive. Conversely, many Americans and political figures strongly opposed McCarthy's tactics, highlighting the divisive nature of the movement as he lied over and over about the dangers of the “Red Menace.” Risen’s book shows that the Red Scare burst forth from a convergence of Cold War fears and a long festering battle between social conservatives and New Deal progressives. Risen begins at the outset of the Cold War concluding with McCarthy’s death in 1957 providing a fuller understanding of what the American people experienced at a time of moral questioning and perceived threats, and what people are capable of doing to each other under the right circumstances.
Risen has an interesting metaphor in approaching his topic by discussing how a bacillus, in this case, cultural and political can, lie dormant for decades and reappear years later. The bacillus of the 1950s Red Scare receded but did not totally disappear in the decades that followed, but its lineage has reemerged in the last decade or so with the American hard right. To understand contemporary culture and politics which is occurring before our eyes today we must understand it and its roots in the Red Scare. This is not to say that Trumpism and the MAGA movement is the same as McCarthyism and the John Birch Society, but there is a line linking them. Risen’s goal is to demonstrate that at a moment in the late 1940s, and in a certain political and cultural context, that knowing where we are today requires an understanding of where we were then.
Risen quickly turns to the origins, personalities, and actions of the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC), especially toward its witnesses and the people they were trying to destroy and disseminating its right wing agenda. The Committee would become the spear driving a decade long campaign of intolerance and political oppression. Risen clearly develops the case that the emergence of a strong anti-government agenda which used the fear of communism as a foil against its opponents had its origin in hatred for the New Deal and Franklin Roosevelt (much like Trump’s abhorrence of any achievement wrought by Barack Obama or Joe Biden). The anti-communist movement morphed into an anti-civil rights movement represented by HUAC and other congressional committee investigations highlighted by its war against Hollywood, epitomized by the investigation of Dalton Trumbo and the Hollywood Ten. For HUAC members and others the New Deal was a “stalking horse” for Soviet collectivization, which today we refer to as the deep state. The conundrum as Risen argues is that there were two visions of America; “one built on an expansive vision of government as the guarantor of the rights and welfare of all its citizens, the other built on a retrograde nostalgia for an America built on privilege and exclusion.”
The author integrates the major figures of the period nicely. Whether presenting the careers and beliefs of Presidents Harry S. Truman and Dwight D. Eisenhower, Secretary of State Dean Acheson, J. Parnell Thomas, Dalton Trumbo, J. Edgar Hoover, Roy Cohn, Richard M. Nixon, Elizabeth Bentley, Judith Coplon, Harry Bridges, Owen Lattimore, Alger Hiss, Whitiker Chambers, Ethel and Julius Rosenberg, and a host of others, Risen analyzes their role in the Red Scare and their impact on post-war American history.
The 1948 election plays a key role in Risen’s analysis as Truman was able to defeat New York Governor Thomas E. Dewey. After losing the 1946 congressional elections to Republicans Truman realized he needed to shore up support with those who felt he was weak on communism. This would lead to the Federal Loyalty Program and a rhetorical war within the Democratic party represented by former Vice President and Secretary of Agriculture Henry Wallace. During the 1948 campaign Dewey, to his credit did not get down and dirty with other Republicans who went after Truman as being “soft on communism.” With their defeat, Republicans learned their lesson and in future elections they had no compunction about using politics of the gutter.
It takes Risen almost halfway through the narrative to introduce Wisconsin Senator Joseph McCarthy. According to Risen McCarthy had a “unique ability to braid the two strands of the Red Scare – the culture war and the politics of Cold War security – into a single cord.” McCarthy was a Senate “nobody” until he forced his way on the scene in January 1950 accusing the State Department of harboring 205 communists in its midst. McCarthy’s story has been told before in excellent biographies by David Oshinsky, A CONSPIRACY SO IMMENSE: THE WORLD OF JOE McCARTHY and Larry Tye’s more recent work, DEMAGOGUE: THE LIFE AND LONG SHADOW OF SENATOR McCARTHY. However, Risen presents an astute analysis reviewing the McCarthy hearings and his obfuscations, outright lies, and the careers he destroyed, as he turns to the role of an individual’s sexuality during the Red Scare.
Focusing on Carmel Offie, a U.S. State Department and later a Central Intelligence Agency official, who served as an indispensable assistant to a series of senior officials while combining his official duties with an ability to skirt regulations for his and others' personal benefit. Offie’s career is important because he was gay and becomes the center of Risen’s discussion of how McCarthy and his Republican allies believed that sexual perverts had infiltrated the government and “were perhaps as dangerous as the actual Communists.” McCarthy and his allies helped push the politics of homophobia at a time of animosity toward Washington, particularly the State Department which was blamed for the loss of China a few months before McCarthy gave his damning speech in Wheeling, West Virginia. The name given to the move to dismiss and prosecute gay people was the “Lavender Scare.” Thousands would lose their jobs and careers due to their machinations as they now had another tool to fight their culture and political wars against the Truman administration and their supporters.
It is clear from Risen’s account that McCarthy was able to rouse support because of the earlier work of the House Un-Activities Committee, the Chambers-Hiss imbroglio, and the actions of Richard M. Nixon. McCarthy would take advantage of the fall of China to the Communists and the outbreak of the Korean War. Further, certain personalities gravitated to the Wisconsin senator, and they would develop a relationship based on the need for power, ideology, and the ability to use each other. Two of those individuals were Alfred Kohlberg, a millionaire ideologue who made his money taking advantage of cheap Chinese labor and McCarthy would become his megaphone concerning the loss of China and the role of the State Department. The second individual was Roy Cohn, who in his later career became Donald Trump’s mentor. In his earlier career he would join McCarthy’s staff and mirror his viciousness, vindictiveness, and willingness to lie. Risen describes him as “the chief executive of McCarthyism, Inc., determining the senator’s targets, writing his talking points, and pushing him further than even he might have chosen to go.”
The fall of China to Mao Zedong and his forces greatly impacted American politics and paranoia. This was fostered by what is referred to as “the China Lobby,” a term often used for groups favoring the Republic of China on Taiwan under the leadership of Kuomintang head, Chiang Kai-Shek, an American ally during World War II. The China Lobby’s collective influence, fostered by Alfred Kohlberg and others, shaped policy and politics throughout the 1940s and 50s boosting and destroying careers as they enlisted McCarthy to their cause.
If we would set up an opposition to the China Lobby it would be called the “China hands,” career State Department diplomats and officials who had grown critical of Chiang Kai-Shek’s forces during the Chinese Civil War. They believed the US could not turn back to imperialism and the Chinese people had the right to determine their own future. Risen lays out the China lobby’s victory through McCarthy as many Asia experts in the State Department had their careers destroyed as well as Asia scholars at Harvard. Interestingly, the purge of the State Department deprived policy makers with experts on Asian countries and movements. It would be interesting to ponder what would have occurred in Korea and Vietnam if these individuals had been in place to offer their expertise. Perhaps the many errors surrounding the eventual “domino theory” could have been avoided.
Whether it was Hollywood, HUAC, or McCarthy, all of whom Risen explores in marvelous detail, the anti-communist hysteria of the early 1950s drew much of its energy from the ongoing war in Korea, exacerbated by the entrance of Chinese Communists troops into the war. Interestingly, General Douglas MacArthur’s headquarters in Tokyo became a satellite headquarters for the China lobby and the hard-core anti-communist right. Once MacArthur was fired by Truman it provided the hard core right with further ammunition against the president, Secretary of State Dean Acheson, and General George C. Marshall, and others who were critical of Chiang Kai-Shek and the Kuomintang.
The atmospherics of the time period are expertly recreated by the author. Risen’s descriptions of committee hearings, including the demeanor of witnesses, the response to questions, and the overall climate of this phase of American history allow the reader to feel as if they are in the committee rooms, the oval office, experiencing the political debates, and getting to know the major and minor players of the period.
A criticism of Risen is offered in Kevin Peraino’s New York Times book review entitled “Scarlet Fever: Culture in the United States is still driven by the political paranoia of the 1950s,” published on April 6, 2025. Peraino correctly writes; “Risen, a reporter at The New York Times who has written a history of Theodore Roosevelt and the Rough Riders, among other books, coyly insists that he is “not concerned with drawing parallels between the past and the present” and desires to “leave it up to the reader to find those as they will.” But this is disingenuous. In his 400-some pages Risen touches on anti-fascism, white supremacy, campus activism, anti-elitism, cancel culture, virtue signaling, doxxing, book bans, election interference, anti-immigrant racism, F.B.I. overreach, conspiracy thinking, antisemitism, the surveillance state, anti-colonialism, the Koch family and America First-style ultranationalism. To suggest all this amounts simply to a Rorschach test for his readers stretches credulity.”
In her recent New Yorker article, entitled; “Fear Factor: How the Red Scare reshaped American politics,” historian Beverly Gage concludes; “What can we learn about our current moment from all of this? Risen hopes that readers will decide for themselves. “This is a work of history, and as such it is not concerned with drawing parallels between the past and the present,” he writes. “I leave it up to the reader to find those as they will.” So, as a reader, let me offer a few thoughts.
The unfortunate truth is that most mechanisms of the Red Scare, including congressional hearings and loyalty investigations, would not be especially hard to revive. Indeed, recent developments have indicated that they might be deployed with genuine glee. Already, the Trump Administration has started asking for lists—of federal workers who attended D.E.I. training, of F.B.I. agents who investigated January 6th cases, of scientists engaged in now suspect areas of work. Trump himself has openly announced his intention to deploy the Justice Department and the F.B.I. against his personal, political, and ideological enemies.
The history of the Red Scare suggests that it won’t take many firings, federal inquiries, or acts of public humiliation to frighten a whole lot of people. But it also offers some reason to think that such intimidation methods may not be quite as effective this time around. For starters, there is much less agreement about the Trump Administration’s agenda than there was about Communism in its heyday. The Red Scare gained momentum because nearly everyone in American political life shared the same basic assumption: Communism is bad and poses an existential threat to the American way of life. It’s hard to come up with any contemporary issue that would generate the same powerful consensus.
Generally speaking, we also have better protections for political speech and assembly than Americans had in the fifties. Indeed, some of those protections are legacies of the Red Scare. In 1957, as the anti-Communist furor was winding down, the Supreme Court issued a series of decisions limiting some of the most sweeping methods deployed against political dissenters, including parts of the Smith Act.
But to say that Trump won’t necessarily succeed in setting off a new Red Scare is not to say that he won’t try. And, in this sort of politics, the trying is part of the game. As long as the nation’s “cultural Marxists” feel vulnerable to random accusations or secret investigations, they’ll likely be more careful about what they do and say. As Roy Cohn once instructed a young Donald Trump, much can be accomplished by attacking first and dealing with the consequences later.” Today, with trade wars, immigration, DOGE’s dismantling key aspects of the federal government, cutting foreign aid etc. we are now experiencing Cohn’s advice to Trump, and I wonder a few years down the road how bad the impact will be, and how long it might take to undo what he has done.
In examining American history, I can think of three periods where contemporary events have their role model. One is the Gilded Age of the late 19th century, when tariffs, crony capitalism, and hard-and-fast hierarchies were the stuff of American politics. Secondly we turn to the 1920s with its version of anti-communism, an economic system that was overloaded with debt, highlighted by Wall Street, racism manifesting itself in anti-immigrant legislation, and a strict reshaping of American politics. Lastly, is the post-World War II period highlighted by the Red Scare, when the federal government was weaponized against the American left. This last example sounds familiar as we are bombarded on a daily basis by public commentary and social media posts by our president who has weaponized the Justice Department seeking revenge against his perceived enemies be it individual politicians, educational institutions, businessmen or lawyers who do not conform to his demands, a feckless Congress and Supreme Court, all with the goal of seeking total fealty to the beliefs of one man.
In Clay Risen’s latest historical monograph, RED SCARE: BLACKLISTS, McCARTHYISM, AND THE MAKING OF MODERN AMERICA the author examines a period that is close to being the precursor of our contemporary world. President Trump vows to root out “radical left wing lunatics” and “Marxist equity” from the bowels of the state. One of Trump’s minions, former DOGE overlord Elon Musk has proclaimed that U.S.A.I.D. designed as a soft power vehicle to enhance American popularity in poor countries particularly by improving their health care is “a viper’s nest of radical-left Marxists” and deserved to be destroyed. This commentary which pervades actors in the current administration sounds like Senator Joseph McCarthy, legal counsel Roy Cohn, Senator and later Vice President Richard Nixon, and even Robert F. Kennedy, and many others. In fact, McCarthy garnered a range of support, including from fellow Republicans, some ordinary Americans, and even some Democrats. His supporters often believed in the necessity of identifying and suppressing perceived communist influence, justifying the denial of civil liberties to those deemed subversive. Conversely, many Americans and political figures strongly opposed McCarthy's tactics, highlighting the divisive nature of the movement as he lied over and over about the dangers of the “Red Menace.” Risen’s book shows that the Red Scare burst forth from a convergence of Cold War fears and a long festering battle between social conservatives and New Deal progressives. Risen begins at the outset of the Cold War concluding with McCarthy’s death in 1957 providing a fuller understanding of what the American people experienced at a time of moral questioning and perceived threats, and what people are capable of doing to each other under the right circumstances.
Risen has an interesting metaphor in approaching his topic by discussing how a bacillus, in this case, cultural and political can, lie dormant for decades and reappear years later. The bacillus of the 1950s Red Scare receded but did not totally disappear in the decades that followed, but its lineage has reemerged in the last decade or so with the American hard right. To understand contemporary culture and politics which is occurring before our eyes today we must understand it and its roots in the Red Scare. This is not to say that Trumpism and the MAGA movement is the same as McCarthyism and the John Birch Society, but there is a line linking them. Risen’s goal is to demonstrate that at a moment in the late 1940s, and in a certain political and cultural context, that knowing where we are today requires an understanding of where we were then.
Risen quickly turns to the origins, personalities, and actions of the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC), especially toward its witnesses and the people they were trying to destroy and disseminating its right wing agenda. The Committee would become the spear driving a decade long campaign of intolerance and political oppression. Risen clearly develops the case that the emergence of a strong anti-government agenda which used the fear of communism as a foil against its opponents had its origin in hatred for the New Deal and Franklin Roosevelt (much like Trump’s abhorrence of any achievement wrought by Barack Obama or Joe Biden). The anti-communist movement morphed into an anti-civil rights movement represented by HUAC and other congressional committee investigations highlighted by its war against Hollywood, epitomized by the investigation of Dalton Trumbo and the Hollywood Ten. For HUAC members and others the New Deal was a “stalking horse” for Soviet collectivization, which today we refer to as the deep state. The conundrum as Risen argues is that there were two visions of America; “one built on an expansive vision of government as the guarantor of the rights and welfare of all its citizens, the other built on a retrograde nostalgia for an America built on privilege and exclusion.”
The author integrates the major figures of the period nicely. Whether presenting the careers and beliefs of Presidents Harry S. Truman and Dwight D. Eisenhower, Secretary of State Dean Acheson, J. Parnell Thomas, Dalton Trumbo, J. Edgar Hoover, Roy Cohn, Richard M. Nixon, Elizabeth Bentley, Judith Coplon, Harry Bridges, Owen Lattimore, Alger Hiss, Whitiker Chambers, Ethel and Julius Rosenberg, and a host of others, Risen analyzes their role in the Red Scare and their impact on post-war American history.
The 1948 election plays a key role in Risen’s analysis as Truman was able to defeat New York Governor Thomas E. Dewey. After losing the 1946 congressional elections to Republicans Truman realized he needed to shore up support with those who felt he was weak on communism. This would lead to the Federal Loyalty Program and a rhetorical war within the Democratic party represented by former Vice President and Secretary of Agriculture Henry Wallace. During the 1948 campaign Dewey, to his credit did not get down and dirty with other Republicans who went after Truman as being “soft on communism.” With their defeat, Republicans learned their lesson and in future elections they had no compunction about using politics of the gutter.
It takes Risen almost halfway through the narrative to introduce Wisconsin Senator Joseph McCarthy. According to Risen McCarthy had a “unique ability to braid the two strands of the Red Scare – the culture war and the politics of Cold War security – into a single cord.” McCarthy was a Senate “nobody” until he forced his way on the scene in January 1950 accusing the State Department of harboring 205 communists in its midst. McCarthy’s story has been told before in excellent biographies by David Oshinsky, A CONSPIRACY SO IMMENSE: THE WORLD OF JOE McCARTHY and Larry Tye’s more recent work, DEMAGOGUE: THE LIFE AND LONG SHADOW OF SENATOR McCARTHY. However, Risen presents an astute analysis reviewing the McCarthy hearings and his obfuscations, outright lies, and the careers he destroyed, as he turns to the role of an individual’s sexuality during the Red Scare.
Focusing on Carmel Offie, a U.S. State Department and later a Central Intelligence Agency official, who served as an indispensable assistant to a series of senior officials while combining his official duties with an ability to skirt regulations for his and others' personal benefit. Offie’s career is important because he was gay and becomes the center of Risen’s discussion of how McCarthy and his Republican allies believed that sexual perverts had infiltrated the government and “were perhaps as dangerous as the actual Communists.” McCarthy and his allies helped push the politics of homophobia at a time of animosity toward Washington, particularly the State Department which was blamed for the loss of China a few months before McCarthy gave his damning speech in Wheeling, West Virginia. The name given to the move to dismiss and prosecute gay people was the “Lavender Scare.” Thousands would lose their jobs and careers due to their machinations as they now had another tool to fight their culture and political wars against the Truman administration and their supporters.
It is clear from Risen’s account that McCarthy was able to rouse support because of the earlier work of the House Un-Activities Committee, the Chambers-Hiss imbroglio, and the actions of Richard M. Nixon. McCarthy would take advantage of the fall of China to the Communists and the outbreak of the Korean War. Further, certain personalities gravitated to the Wisconsin senator, and they would develop a relationship based on the need for power, ideology, and the ability to use each other. Two of those individuals were Alfred Kohlberg, a millionaire ideologue who made his money taking advantage of cheap Chinese labor and McCarthy would become his megaphone concerning the loss of China and the role of the State Department. The second individual was Roy Cohn, who in his later career became Donald Trump’s mentor. In his earlier career he would join McCarthy’s staff and mirror his viciousness, vindictiveness, and willingness to lie. Risen describes him as “the chief executive of McCarthyism, Inc., determining the senator’s targets, writing his talking points, and pushing him further than even he might have chosen to go.”
The fall of China to Mao Zedong and his forces greatly impacted American politics and paranoia. This was fostered by what is referred to as “the China Lobby,” a term often used for groups favoring the Republic of China on Taiwan under the leadership of Kuomintang head, Chiang Kai-Shek, an American ally during World War II. The China Lobby’s collective influence, fostered by Alfred Kohlberg and others, shaped policy and politics throughout the 1940s and 50s boosting and destroying careers as they enlisted McCarthy to their cause.
If we would set up an opposition to the China Lobby it would be called the “China hands,” career State Department diplomats and officials who had grown critical of Chiang Kai-Shek’s forces during the Chinese Civil War. They believed the US could not turn back to imperialism and the Chinese people had the right to determine their own future. Risen lays out the China lobby’s victory through McCarthy as many Asia experts in the State Department had their careers destroyed as well as Asia scholars at Harvard. Interestingly, the purge of the State Department deprived policy makers with experts on Asian countries and movements. It would be interesting to ponder what would have occurred in Korea and Vietnam if these individuals had been in place to offer their expertise. Perhaps the many errors surrounding the eventual “domino theory” could have been avoided.
Whether it was Hollywood, HUAC, or McCarthy, all of whom Risen explores in marvelous detail, the anti-communist hysteria of the early 1950s drew much of its energy from the ongoing war in Korea, exacerbated by the entrance of Chinese Communists troops into the war. Interestingly, General Douglas MacArthur’s headquarters in Tokyo became a satellite headquarters for the China lobby and the hard-core anti-communist right. Once MacArthur was fired by Truman it provided the hard core right with further ammunition against the president, Secretary of State Dean Acheson, and General George C. Marshall, and others who were critical of Chiang Kai-Shek and the Kuomintang.
The atmospherics of the time period are expertly recreated by the author. Risen’s descriptions of committee hearings, including the demeanor of witnesses, the response to questions, and the overall climate of this phase of American history allow the reader to feel as if they are in the committee rooms, the oval office, experiencing the political debates, and getting to know the major and minor players of the period.
A criticism of Risen is offered in Kevin Peraino’s New York Times book review entitled “Scarlet Fever: Culture in the United States is still driven by the political paranoia of the 1950s,” published on April 6, 2025. Peraino correctly writes; “Risen, a reporter at The New York Times who has written a history of Theodore Roosevelt and the Rough Riders, among other books, coyly insists that he is “not concerned with drawing parallels between the past and the present” and desires to “leave it up to the reader to find those as they will.” But this is disingenuous. In his 400-some pages Risen touches on anti-fascism, white supremacy, campus activism, anti-elitism, cancel culture, virtue signaling, doxxing, book bans, election interference, anti-immigrant racism, F.B.I. overreach, conspiracy thinking, antisemitism, the surveillance state, anti-colonialism, the Koch family and America First-style ultranationalism. To suggest all this amounts simply to a Rorschach test for his readers stretches credulity.”
In her recent New Yorker article, entitled; “Fear Factor: How the Red Scare reshaped American politics,” historian Beverly Gage concludes; “What can we learn about our current moment from all of this? Risen hopes that readers will decide for themselves. “This is a work of history, and as such it is not concerned with drawing parallels between the past and the present,” he writes. “I leave it up to the reader to find those as they will.” So, as a reader, let me offer a few thoughts.
The unfortunate truth is that most mechanisms of the Red Scare, including congressional hearings and loyalty investigations, would not be especially hard to revive. Indeed, recent developments have indicated that they might be deployed with genuine glee. Already, the Trump Administration has started asking for lists—of federal workers who attended D.E.I. training, of F.B.I. agents who investigated January 6th cases, of scientists engaged in now suspect areas of work. Trump himself has openly announced his intention to deploy the Justice Department and the F.B.I. against his personal, political, and ideological enemies.
The history of the Red Scare suggests that it won’t take many firings, federal inquiries, or acts of public humiliation to frighten a whole lot of people. But it also offers some reason to think that such intimidation methods may not be quite as effective this time around. For starters, there is much less agreement about the Trump Administration’s agenda than there was about Communism in its heyday. The Red Scare gained momentum because nearly everyone in American political life shared the same basic assumption: Communism is bad and poses an existential threat to the American way of life. It’s hard to come up with any contemporary issue that would generate the same powerful consensus.
Generally speaking, we also have better protections for political speech and assembly than Americans had in the fifties. Indeed, some of those protections are legacies of the Red Scare. In 1957, as the anti-Communist furor was winding down, the Supreme Court issued a series of decisions limiting some of the most sweeping methods deployed against political dissenters, including parts of the Smith Act.
But to say that Trump won’t necessarily succeed in setting off a new Red Scare is not to say that he won’t try. And, in this sort of politics, the trying is part of the game. As long as the nation’s “cultural Marxists” feel vulnerable to random accusations or secret investigations, they’ll likely be more careful about what they do and say. As Roy Cohn once instructed a young Donald Trump, much can be accomplished by attacking first and dealing with the consequences later.” Today, with trade wars, immigration, DOGE’s dismantling key aspects of the federal government, cutting foreign aid etc. we are now experiencing Cohn’s advice to Trump, and I wonder a few years down the road how bad the impact will be, and how long it might take to undo what he has done.
June 14, 2025
Thank god our government isn’t like this anymore!
February 27, 2025
3.5 ⭐️
If you have lived through a few decades, then you know that for some reason, the past repeats itself. During the 1940s and 1950s, at the beginning of the Cold War, America became a country scared of communism. WWII had just ended, and the USSR (as Russia was known then) was taking over Eastern Europe, the Keoran War had started, and there was a move to take over China, it was the perfect storm for the Red Scare. The government got a little carried away, I think.
Clay Risen has written a good book about that whole time. I did feel the book got bogged down a little with so much information being thrown at me. It drugged a little bit because of that. Overall, I think if you are interested in that time period or want to see some parallels between now and then with our political parties, it would be worth your time to read.
Tentative Publication Date March 18, 2025
Thanks to Netgalley, Scriber, and Risen for the E-ARC. All thoughts and opinions are my own.
😊 Happy Reading 😊
#Netgalley #Scribner #ClayRisen #RedScare #ARC #Nonfiction #Read2025 #Alphabetchallenge2025 (R)
If you have lived through a few decades, then you know that for some reason, the past repeats itself. During the 1940s and 1950s, at the beginning of the Cold War, America became a country scared of communism. WWII had just ended, and the USSR (as Russia was known then) was taking over Eastern Europe, the Keoran War had started, and there was a move to take over China, it was the perfect storm for the Red Scare. The government got a little carried away, I think.
Clay Risen has written a good book about that whole time. I did feel the book got bogged down a little with so much information being thrown at me. It drugged a little bit because of that. Overall, I think if you are interested in that time period or want to see some parallels between now and then with our political parties, it would be worth your time to read.
Tentative Publication Date March 18, 2025
Thanks to Netgalley, Scriber, and Risen for the E-ARC. All thoughts and opinions are my own.
😊 Happy Reading 😊
#Netgalley #Scribner #ClayRisen #RedScare #ARC #Nonfiction #Read2025 #Alphabetchallenge2025 (R)
May 13, 2025
A saga about the paranoia of Americans and the grifters that profit off of them.
March 23, 2025
In the history of post-World War II America, one of the darkest periods unquestionably was the decade of the Red Scare --- the fanatical hunt for Communists whose alleged presence in both government and private life posed an existential threat to the country. In RED SCARE, New York Times reporter and editor Clay Risen (THE CROWDED HOUSE) provides a balanced and thoughtful narrative history of the era, while suggesting that some of the malign spirits of that age may yet stalk the land in our own day.
For many possessing only a casual acquaintance with this history, the Red Scare is synonymous with the scourge of McCarthyism. That period of political terrorism, named for Wisconsin senator Joseph McCarthy, began with a speech in Wheeling, West Virginia, in February 1950, in which the ruthless, publicity-seeking lawmaker threatened to expose 200 purported Communists in the State Department. It climaxed in his dramatic humiliation at the hands of wily Boston trial lawyer Joseph Welch during a televised congressional committee hearing in June 1954. Throughout those four years, McCarthy was a superstar of Republican Party politics, but he became so problematic for Dwight Eisenhower that the GOP president quietly and skillfully became one of the important agents of his undoing.
But as Risen makes clear, the Red Scare extended far beyond McCarthy’s reckless assault, sweeping through government at all levels, labor unions, schools, religious institutions and social organizations, often pitting neighbor against neighbor as conspiracy theorists fanned the flames of suspicion directed at thousands possessing even the slightest progressive sympathies.
Relying, in part, on newly declassified sources, Risen covers all of the major stories of this period --- the perjury conviction of diplomat Alger Hiss, the Hollywood blacklist that enmeshed famous names like actor Edward G. Robinson and Academy Award-winning director Elia Kazan in controversy, the stripping of Manhattan project leader Robert Oppenheimer’s security clearance, and the executions of Julius and Ethel Rosenberg on charges of spying for the Soviet Union.
Risen also explains how the era fueled the rise of several characters whose deeds and misdeeds had a profound impact on American history in the ensuing decades. Among others, it turbocharged the political career of Richard Nixon, brought to prominence an unscrupulous young New York lawyer named Roy Cohn, and allowed longtime FBI director J. Edgar Hoover to quietly build his massive surveillance network. Its power extended well into the era of the civil rights movement and the protests against the Vietnam War.
Even as he recounts in an efficient and highly readable style the details of these well-known events and the people who drove them, Risen does not neglect the often tragic tales of ordinary citizens swept up in the cross-currents of anti-Communist fear and paranoia. These many victims too often found their personal and professional lives permanently damaged for, at most, a youthful flirtation with Communist ideology, and sometimes little more than entirely innocent associations with progressive causes that were anathema to those engaged in the anti-Communist witch hunt and culture war.
Representative is the story of Helen Reid Bryan that bookends the volume. Summoned in 1946 before the dreaded House Committee on Un-American Activities, the body that acted as a sort of Spanish Inquisition of the times, she declined to produce the records of the Joint Anti-Fascist Refugee Committee, an organization that provided relief to victims of the Spanish Civl War. After she was cited for contempt of Congress, she fought her conviction all the way to the Supreme Court over the next four years. It was upheld there, resulting in a prison sentence that shadowed the remainder of her life.
Without overemphasizing the point, Risen makes no effort to conceal his intention to suggest parallels between this era and some of the cultural and political currents roiling American society today. In his assessment, the Red Scare was fueled by two intersecting impulses --- “the long-simmering conflict in which social conservatives faced off against the progressives” and “the sudden, terrifying onset of the Cold War.”
Thus, even as the era ended relatively quietly in June 1957, with a quartet of Supreme Court cases undermining some of its key legal underpinnings, the “nostalgic, resentful, cultural paranoia that had arisen in response to the New Deal, and that finally found purchase during the dawn of the Cold War, remained burning in the hearts of millions of Americans.”
And so it is, Risen argues, that while neither the origin stories of Trumpism and the MAGA movement nor their content are coextensive with McCarthyism and the radical right John Birch Society, “there is a line linking them.” And while the Red Scare indisputably must be understood in its historical context, a task he achieves admirably here, he insists that “knowing where we are today requires understanding where we were then.”
Anyone looking for a comprehensive, intelligent survey of this deeply unsettling period in American history need look no further than RED SCARE. Appreciating that history, Risen suggests, may alert thoughtful readers to the symptoms of similar infections in the American body politic and perhaps prompt a quicker and more effective immune response if a terrifying epidemic like the one it triggered sweeps through the country again.
Reviewed by Harvey Freedenberg
For many possessing only a casual acquaintance with this history, the Red Scare is synonymous with the scourge of McCarthyism. That period of political terrorism, named for Wisconsin senator Joseph McCarthy, began with a speech in Wheeling, West Virginia, in February 1950, in which the ruthless, publicity-seeking lawmaker threatened to expose 200 purported Communists in the State Department. It climaxed in his dramatic humiliation at the hands of wily Boston trial lawyer Joseph Welch during a televised congressional committee hearing in June 1954. Throughout those four years, McCarthy was a superstar of Republican Party politics, but he became so problematic for Dwight Eisenhower that the GOP president quietly and skillfully became one of the important agents of his undoing.
But as Risen makes clear, the Red Scare extended far beyond McCarthy’s reckless assault, sweeping through government at all levels, labor unions, schools, religious institutions and social organizations, often pitting neighbor against neighbor as conspiracy theorists fanned the flames of suspicion directed at thousands possessing even the slightest progressive sympathies.
Relying, in part, on newly declassified sources, Risen covers all of the major stories of this period --- the perjury conviction of diplomat Alger Hiss, the Hollywood blacklist that enmeshed famous names like actor Edward G. Robinson and Academy Award-winning director Elia Kazan in controversy, the stripping of Manhattan project leader Robert Oppenheimer’s security clearance, and the executions of Julius and Ethel Rosenberg on charges of spying for the Soviet Union.
Risen also explains how the era fueled the rise of several characters whose deeds and misdeeds had a profound impact on American history in the ensuing decades. Among others, it turbocharged the political career of Richard Nixon, brought to prominence an unscrupulous young New York lawyer named Roy Cohn, and allowed longtime FBI director J. Edgar Hoover to quietly build his massive surveillance network. Its power extended well into the era of the civil rights movement and the protests against the Vietnam War.
Even as he recounts in an efficient and highly readable style the details of these well-known events and the people who drove them, Risen does not neglect the often tragic tales of ordinary citizens swept up in the cross-currents of anti-Communist fear and paranoia. These many victims too often found their personal and professional lives permanently damaged for, at most, a youthful flirtation with Communist ideology, and sometimes little more than entirely innocent associations with progressive causes that were anathema to those engaged in the anti-Communist witch hunt and culture war.
Representative is the story of Helen Reid Bryan that bookends the volume. Summoned in 1946 before the dreaded House Committee on Un-American Activities, the body that acted as a sort of Spanish Inquisition of the times, she declined to produce the records of the Joint Anti-Fascist Refugee Committee, an organization that provided relief to victims of the Spanish Civl War. After she was cited for contempt of Congress, she fought her conviction all the way to the Supreme Court over the next four years. It was upheld there, resulting in a prison sentence that shadowed the remainder of her life.
Without overemphasizing the point, Risen makes no effort to conceal his intention to suggest parallels between this era and some of the cultural and political currents roiling American society today. In his assessment, the Red Scare was fueled by two intersecting impulses --- “the long-simmering conflict in which social conservatives faced off against the progressives” and “the sudden, terrifying onset of the Cold War.”
Thus, even as the era ended relatively quietly in June 1957, with a quartet of Supreme Court cases undermining some of its key legal underpinnings, the “nostalgic, resentful, cultural paranoia that had arisen in response to the New Deal, and that finally found purchase during the dawn of the Cold War, remained burning in the hearts of millions of Americans.”
And so it is, Risen argues, that while neither the origin stories of Trumpism and the MAGA movement nor their content are coextensive with McCarthyism and the radical right John Birch Society, “there is a line linking them.” And while the Red Scare indisputably must be understood in its historical context, a task he achieves admirably here, he insists that “knowing where we are today requires understanding where we were then.”
Anyone looking for a comprehensive, intelligent survey of this deeply unsettling period in American history need look no further than RED SCARE. Appreciating that history, Risen suggests, may alert thoughtful readers to the symptoms of similar infections in the American body politic and perhaps prompt a quicker and more effective immune response if a terrifying epidemic like the one it triggered sweeps through the country again.
Reviewed by Harvey Freedenberg
April 24, 2025
more detail than analysis but I guess that’s a New York Times reporter
January 24, 2025
My thanks to NetGalley and Scribner for an advance copy of this book on the history of the red scares in this country, and how this effected the politics of the time with a love of showy histrionics, a lack of understanding in what they were looking for, and the rise of anger as policy, thoughts that infest the body politic to this second.
As I have gotten older I can't help but notice that time is not only a flat circle, but that nothing is really new under the sun. Sure technology moves on, but nothing in humanity really changes. We fear the other, the different. People hate that people have things they don't feel they deserve, and they fear that someone is out to get what they have. Government likes control, and government rules by control and showing their control. So they hold hearings, where hearing is not the important thing, but yelling usually is. They don't talk to ask questions, they talk to make their assumptions heard, to make the other defensive, to look to their voters like they are doing something, and to show their pockets are open for people who believe what they belive. Little is done in public forums, excepted to make people look foolish, or dumb. Or unAmerican. Add in the fact that the world was coming of a destructive war, and the peace wasn't going the way it was supposed to be. Certain people, women, minorities, the others were acting out of their place. Certain people wanted to take care of others, not dominate them. And the power to destroy the world suddenly wasn't just under the auspices of the red, white and blue. Adding fear to loss of control, well that had to be someone's fault. They just had to find it. Red Scare: Blacklists, McCarthyism, and the Making of Modern America by historian and journalist Clay Risen is a look at both red scares, following wars that were more destructive than any ever seen, and the legacy that we still live with today.
The book begins with the author discussing the history of the times and how a fear of communism was strong up until the mid-80's. Risen was fascinated by this era, and how the fear of being dead rather than red started, looking at the little things like changing sports teams names from Reds to something else, just in case people thought that a major league team had communist sympathy. This feeling carried over to the Gulf War with Freedom Fries, so being odd about names seems the American way. Risen than looks at a Senate hearing from 1946 that seems remarkably like something from today. The investigation from the FBI seemed lazy, and unimportant as did the outcome, but it allowed the idea of something wrong in America to be talked about. And as the American peace went hot in many ways, a scapegoat is always necessary. Risen looks at the Red Scare from after the first World War, with the letter bombs and the rise of Hoover and Attorney General Palmer, however most of the book deals with the 1950s, and the UnAmerican activities. Risen looks at the lives lost, the careers savaged, the lack of results and the reasons why, outside of the fear of communism, the fight between what this country could become, the moneyed people who wanted it to stay the way it was.
A good overview of a period that is still effecting us, giving us the we right you wrong feeling that politics has become. Risen is a good researcher, though the writing is a little aloof. There is much about clothing and looks, but some subjects are only cursory mentioned. So the book is more pop history, but this will give many a good start. Especially for those who knew little about the Palmer Raids and the rise of Hoover. What I found amazing was how these politicians at least had some belief, unlike the mercenary careerists we have today. Though that could change with the wind. Much of what sees now can be traced to these times, people not doing anything to stand up to this politicians, many throwing in just to be on the winning side. A dark period in America, that as time is a flat circle, I am sure we are going to see again. Starting soon.
As I have gotten older I can't help but notice that time is not only a flat circle, but that nothing is really new under the sun. Sure technology moves on, but nothing in humanity really changes. We fear the other, the different. People hate that people have things they don't feel they deserve, and they fear that someone is out to get what they have. Government likes control, and government rules by control and showing their control. So they hold hearings, where hearing is not the important thing, but yelling usually is. They don't talk to ask questions, they talk to make their assumptions heard, to make the other defensive, to look to their voters like they are doing something, and to show their pockets are open for people who believe what they belive. Little is done in public forums, excepted to make people look foolish, or dumb. Or unAmerican. Add in the fact that the world was coming of a destructive war, and the peace wasn't going the way it was supposed to be. Certain people, women, minorities, the others were acting out of their place. Certain people wanted to take care of others, not dominate them. And the power to destroy the world suddenly wasn't just under the auspices of the red, white and blue. Adding fear to loss of control, well that had to be someone's fault. They just had to find it. Red Scare: Blacklists, McCarthyism, and the Making of Modern America by historian and journalist Clay Risen is a look at both red scares, following wars that were more destructive than any ever seen, and the legacy that we still live with today.
The book begins with the author discussing the history of the times and how a fear of communism was strong up until the mid-80's. Risen was fascinated by this era, and how the fear of being dead rather than red started, looking at the little things like changing sports teams names from Reds to something else, just in case people thought that a major league team had communist sympathy. This feeling carried over to the Gulf War with Freedom Fries, so being odd about names seems the American way. Risen than looks at a Senate hearing from 1946 that seems remarkably like something from today. The investigation from the FBI seemed lazy, and unimportant as did the outcome, but it allowed the idea of something wrong in America to be talked about. And as the American peace went hot in many ways, a scapegoat is always necessary. Risen looks at the Red Scare from after the first World War, with the letter bombs and the rise of Hoover and Attorney General Palmer, however most of the book deals with the 1950s, and the UnAmerican activities. Risen looks at the lives lost, the careers savaged, the lack of results and the reasons why, outside of the fear of communism, the fight between what this country could become, the moneyed people who wanted it to stay the way it was.
A good overview of a period that is still effecting us, giving us the we right you wrong feeling that politics has become. Risen is a good researcher, though the writing is a little aloof. There is much about clothing and looks, but some subjects are only cursory mentioned. So the book is more pop history, but this will give many a good start. Especially for those who knew little about the Palmer Raids and the rise of Hoover. What I found amazing was how these politicians at least had some belief, unlike the mercenary careerists we have today. Though that could change with the wind. Much of what sees now can be traced to these times, people not doing anything to stand up to this politicians, many throwing in just to be on the winning side. A dark period in America, that as time is a flat circle, I am sure we are going to see again. Starting soon.
May 31, 2025
Red Scare by Clay Risen stands as a definitive account of one of the most transformative and troubling periods in American history. This New York Times journalist has crafted a work that is both comprehensive in scope and deeply human in its focus, offering readers a nuanced understanding of how anti-Communist hysteria reshaped virtually every aspect of American society from the late 1940s through the 1950s.
Risen's greatest achievement is his ability to capture the sweeping institutional impact of the Red Scare while never losing sight of the individual lives destroyed in its wake. His narrative encompasses the high-profile congressional hearings and Hollywood blacklists that dominate popular memory, but extends far beyond to reveal how the anti-Communist crusade penetrated labor unions, churches, universities, and even elementary schools. The result is a portrait of a society-wide transformation that few historians have managed to capture so completely.
The book excels in its attention to both the dramatic showdowns and the bureaucratic mechanisms that made repression possible. Risen skillfully weaves together moments of high political theater—the Army-McCarthy hearings, the Hollywood Ten trials—with careful analysis of the executive orders, committee structures, and media control that sustained the broader campaign. This dual focus prevents the narrative from becoming either sensationalized or overly academic.
What sets Red Scare apart is Risen's journalistic eye for the revealing detail and human story. He captures both the "oddities" of the anti-Communist surge and the genuine fear that gripped ordinary Americans caught in its path. His portraits of those who suffered under McCarthyist persecution are particularly powerful, showing how careers were destroyed, families torn apart, and lives permanently altered by accusations that were often based on flimsy evidence or political opportunism.
Risen writes with the clarity and pacing of an experienced journalist, making complex political developments accessible without sacrificing analytical depth. His background at the Times has clearly served him well in understanding how political narratives develop and spread, and he brings this expertise to bear in explaining how anti-Communist sentiment became so pervasive and powerful.
Perhaps most valuably, the book provides crucial perspective on how seemingly unstoppable political movements eventually reach their limits. Risen's account of how the Red Scare finally came to an end offers important insights for readers grappling with contemporary political polarization. His analysis suggests that even the most intense periods of political hysteria contain the seeds of their own eventual exhaustion.
Red Scare succeeds admirably as both historical scholarship and compelling narrative. Risen has produced what he accurately calls "a marvellous accounting" that will serve as the standard reference on this period for years to come. The book manages to be simultaneously comprehensive and readable, analytical and humane.
This is essential reading for anyone seeking to understand how democratic institutions can be weaponized for political purposes, and how societies eventually find their way back from extremism. Risen has given us a masterful work of historical journalism that illuminates both a crucial period in American history and enduring questions about political fear, institutional resilience, and the fragility of civil liberties.
Risen's greatest achievement is his ability to capture the sweeping institutional impact of the Red Scare while never losing sight of the individual lives destroyed in its wake. His narrative encompasses the high-profile congressional hearings and Hollywood blacklists that dominate popular memory, but extends far beyond to reveal how the anti-Communist crusade penetrated labor unions, churches, universities, and even elementary schools. The result is a portrait of a society-wide transformation that few historians have managed to capture so completely.
The book excels in its attention to both the dramatic showdowns and the bureaucratic mechanisms that made repression possible. Risen skillfully weaves together moments of high political theater—the Army-McCarthy hearings, the Hollywood Ten trials—with careful analysis of the executive orders, committee structures, and media control that sustained the broader campaign. This dual focus prevents the narrative from becoming either sensationalized or overly academic.
What sets Red Scare apart is Risen's journalistic eye for the revealing detail and human story. He captures both the "oddities" of the anti-Communist surge and the genuine fear that gripped ordinary Americans caught in its path. His portraits of those who suffered under McCarthyist persecution are particularly powerful, showing how careers were destroyed, families torn apart, and lives permanently altered by accusations that were often based on flimsy evidence or political opportunism.
Risen writes with the clarity and pacing of an experienced journalist, making complex political developments accessible without sacrificing analytical depth. His background at the Times has clearly served him well in understanding how political narratives develop and spread, and he brings this expertise to bear in explaining how anti-Communist sentiment became so pervasive and powerful.
Perhaps most valuably, the book provides crucial perspective on how seemingly unstoppable political movements eventually reach their limits. Risen's account of how the Red Scare finally came to an end offers important insights for readers grappling with contemporary political polarization. His analysis suggests that even the most intense periods of political hysteria contain the seeds of their own eventual exhaustion.
Red Scare succeeds admirably as both historical scholarship and compelling narrative. Risen has produced what he accurately calls "a marvellous accounting" that will serve as the standard reference on this period for years to come. The book manages to be simultaneously comprehensive and readable, analytical and humane.
This is essential reading for anyone seeking to understand how democratic institutions can be weaponized for political purposes, and how societies eventually find their way back from extremism. Risen has given us a masterful work of historical journalism that illuminates both a crucial period in American history and enduring questions about political fear, institutional resilience, and the fragility of civil liberties.
April 14, 2025
This is an engaging and well written book on what was actually the 2nd Red Scare in America. That period of the 2nd scare began in the 1940's as WWII came to a close and through the 1950s. Although by 1954, the power that Joseph McCarthy's name had given to mass hysteria and far right wing politics began to ebb.
However, events in history don't go away without leaving something behind. I think the author used the comparison of genetic factors that get passed down from generation to generation. When studying events in history you need to learn what came before as well as what came after. Nothing happens in a vacuum. I was thinking too it's like a kaleidoscope. All the same little pieces of glass, but as the years go by they shape shift into new designs. Humans still operate with the same type of fears. and there is always a group of people who use those fears to gain power.
So what this book represents outside of the historical and very interesting era of McCarthyism, is that we now find ourselves dealing with the passed down genetics of the McCarthy-Red Scare era. Enemy lists, performative politics, book-banning, damning groups of people, scare tactics, threatening loss of civil liberties, attacks on school and public libraries, are some areas of attack by the far right then and now. For instance, just like the "Moms For Liberty" book-banning women we have now, the Red Scare had the Minute Women. For all the homophobia of the Red Scare era, we now have fear-mongering of trans people.
For me and perhaps for others, if you are interested at all in history and in particular American political history, you will find this book fascinating, entertaining and informative. While I had some knowledge of the times, this book helped me to fill in gaps of my knowledge so that I could see the threads linking the Red Scare to today's politics. It's eerie and it's disturbingly similar except back then we in America had more sensible heads to help direct us out of that horrible quagmire of paranoia, mass hysteria, negative group think and injustices.
While I think that left-leaning people will gravitate to this book, I highly recommend it for a lot of Republicans who are sick and tired of MAGA.
What I could see clearly by the end of the book is that the far-right of 70 years ago has not died. Its lineage went underground until it could plot and plan its way back to the surface. These forces thrive on human weaknesses. The Republican Party and the Democratic Party have certainly always had their differences but they could find a way to coexist. The pendulum swings back and forth between their basic ideologies in good times. In bad times we as a nation fall down a well of conspiracy thinking, mass delusions, and fear-mongering - we become our worst selves. The 1940s and 50s didn't have to deal with the internet and even televisions were not ubiquitous in American homes in a good part of that era. Yet the forces of evil could still find their ways of causing harm. The internet is now pushing fear on steroids.
I highly recommend this book and if you participate in non-fiction books clubs, I think this would be a fantastic book for discussion.
However, events in history don't go away without leaving something behind. I think the author used the comparison of genetic factors that get passed down from generation to generation. When studying events in history you need to learn what came before as well as what came after. Nothing happens in a vacuum. I was thinking too it's like a kaleidoscope. All the same little pieces of glass, but as the years go by they shape shift into new designs. Humans still operate with the same type of fears. and there is always a group of people who use those fears to gain power.
So what this book represents outside of the historical and very interesting era of McCarthyism, is that we now find ourselves dealing with the passed down genetics of the McCarthy-Red Scare era. Enemy lists, performative politics, book-banning, damning groups of people, scare tactics, threatening loss of civil liberties, attacks on school and public libraries, are some areas of attack by the far right then and now. For instance, just like the "Moms For Liberty" book-banning women we have now, the Red Scare had the Minute Women. For all the homophobia of the Red Scare era, we now have fear-mongering of trans people.
For me and perhaps for others, if you are interested at all in history and in particular American political history, you will find this book fascinating, entertaining and informative. While I had some knowledge of the times, this book helped me to fill in gaps of my knowledge so that I could see the threads linking the Red Scare to today's politics. It's eerie and it's disturbingly similar except back then we in America had more sensible heads to help direct us out of that horrible quagmire of paranoia, mass hysteria, negative group think and injustices.
While I think that left-leaning people will gravitate to this book, I highly recommend it for a lot of Republicans who are sick and tired of MAGA.
What I could see clearly by the end of the book is that the far-right of 70 years ago has not died. Its lineage went underground until it could plot and plan its way back to the surface. These forces thrive on human weaknesses. The Republican Party and the Democratic Party have certainly always had their differences but they could find a way to coexist. The pendulum swings back and forth between their basic ideologies in good times. In bad times we as a nation fall down a well of conspiracy thinking, mass delusions, and fear-mongering - we become our worst selves. The 1940s and 50s didn't have to deal with the internet and even televisions were not ubiquitous in American homes in a good part of that era. Yet the forces of evil could still find their ways of causing harm. The internet is now pushing fear on steroids.
I highly recommend this book and if you participate in non-fiction books clubs, I think this would be a fantastic book for discussion.
April 5, 2025
Bab ini membahas bagaimana ketakutan menjadi alat utama dalam membentuk opini publik dan kebijakan selama era Red Scare (ketakutan terhadap komunisme) di Amerika Serikat, khususnya pasca Perang Dunia II dan memasuki Perang Dingin.Bab ini menekankan bahwa politik ketakutan lebih efektif daripada senjata: karena membuat masyarakat saling curiga, membungkam perbedaan pendapat, dan menciptakan kepatuhan melalui rasa takut akan kehilangan pekerjaan, reputasi, atau kebebasan.
Demagogi adalah strategi politik di mana seseorang (biasanya pemimpin atau politisi) menggunakan emosi, ketakutan, prasangka, atau kemarahan publik untuk mendapatkan kekuasaan, tanpa menggunakan logika atau bukti yang rasional
House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC) pada akhir 1940-an.
HUAC percaya bahwa film bisa digunakan untuk menyebarkan ideologi komunis, dan mulai memanggil para penulis, sutradara, produser, dan aktor ke pengadilan terbuka untuk diinterogasi tentang keyakinan politik mereka dan hubungan mereka dengan komunisme.
Konsekuensi yang Mereka Hadapi:
Mereka dihukum penjara selama 6–12 bulan karena dianggap menghina Kongres.
Setelah bebas, mereka tidak bisa mendapatkan pekerjaan secara resmi di industri film karena daftar hitam (blacklist).
Beberapa dari mereka terus menulis dengan nama samaran, seperti Dalton Trumbo, yang bahkan memenangkan Oscar secara rahasia saat masih di-blacklist.
Inti Bab:
Blacklist adalah bentuk persekusi diam-diam dalam masyarakat yang mengaku bebas.
Ketakutan membuat industri kreatif ikut tunduk pada tekanan politik.
Meski akhirnya berakhir, trauma blacklist membentuk cara industri hiburan melihat “loyalitas” dan kebebasan berekspresi hingga hari ini.
Warisan Moral dan Kultural
Bukan hanya soal karier—bab ini menyoroti bahwa perjuangan mereka meninggalkan warisan penting bagi kebebasan berekspresi dan integritas pribadi:
Mereka menjadi simbol bahwa menolak tunduk pada ketidakadilan adalah bentuk keberanian, bahkan jika harus dibayar mahal.
Perjuangan mereka membuka jalan untuk diskusi jujur tentang kebebasan sipil, hak hukum, dan batas-batas kekuasaan negara.
Di masa kini, nama-nama mereka dipulihkan dan dikenang melalui buku, film, serta dokumenter sebagai bagian dari sejarah penting Amerika.
“Mereka kalah di pengadilan, tapi menang dalam sejarah.”
📌 Inti Bab:
Hidup mereka mungkin hancur sementara, tetapi warisan mereka menjadi inspirasi jangka panjang.
Red Scare bukan hanya tentang politik, tapi tentang konsekuensi kemanusiaan dari rasa takut yang dibiarkan menguasai hukum dan logika.
Kita belajar bahwa dalam demokrasi, keberanian bersuara bisa menjadi bentuk perlindungan terakhir bagi kebebasan.
Demagogi adalah strategi politik di mana seseorang (biasanya pemimpin atau politisi) menggunakan emosi, ketakutan, prasangka, atau kemarahan publik untuk mendapatkan kekuasaan, tanpa menggunakan logika atau bukti yang rasional
House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC) pada akhir 1940-an.
HUAC percaya bahwa film bisa digunakan untuk menyebarkan ideologi komunis, dan mulai memanggil para penulis, sutradara, produser, dan aktor ke pengadilan terbuka untuk diinterogasi tentang keyakinan politik mereka dan hubungan mereka dengan komunisme.
Konsekuensi yang Mereka Hadapi:
Mereka dihukum penjara selama 6–12 bulan karena dianggap menghina Kongres.
Setelah bebas, mereka tidak bisa mendapatkan pekerjaan secara resmi di industri film karena daftar hitam (blacklist).
Beberapa dari mereka terus menulis dengan nama samaran, seperti Dalton Trumbo, yang bahkan memenangkan Oscar secara rahasia saat masih di-blacklist.
Inti Bab:
Blacklist adalah bentuk persekusi diam-diam dalam masyarakat yang mengaku bebas.
Ketakutan membuat industri kreatif ikut tunduk pada tekanan politik.
Meski akhirnya berakhir, trauma blacklist membentuk cara industri hiburan melihat “loyalitas” dan kebebasan berekspresi hingga hari ini.
Warisan Moral dan Kultural
Bukan hanya soal karier—bab ini menyoroti bahwa perjuangan mereka meninggalkan warisan penting bagi kebebasan berekspresi dan integritas pribadi:
Mereka menjadi simbol bahwa menolak tunduk pada ketidakadilan adalah bentuk keberanian, bahkan jika harus dibayar mahal.
Perjuangan mereka membuka jalan untuk diskusi jujur tentang kebebasan sipil, hak hukum, dan batas-batas kekuasaan negara.
Di masa kini, nama-nama mereka dipulihkan dan dikenang melalui buku, film, serta dokumenter sebagai bagian dari sejarah penting Amerika.
“Mereka kalah di pengadilan, tapi menang dalam sejarah.”
📌 Inti Bab:
Hidup mereka mungkin hancur sementara, tetapi warisan mereka menjadi inspirasi jangka panjang.
Red Scare bukan hanya tentang politik, tapi tentang konsekuensi kemanusiaan dari rasa takut yang dibiarkan menguasai hukum dan logika.
Kita belajar bahwa dalam demokrasi, keberanian bersuara bisa menjadi bentuk perlindungan terakhir bagi kebebasan.
May 23, 2025
As a nonfiction book, standing on its own, "Red Scare" is deeply researched, fascinating, and unusually well-written, suffering only a minor case of the repetition that I always find in nonfiction (especially history and science).
Putting the post-World War II Red Scare within its historical context, the book traces its roots back to the New Deal and the Spanish Civil War. Then it shows how three world-changing events in less than one year (August 1949-June 1950) made the globe seem on the brink of a Communist takeover and helped enable Joe McCarthy: the Soviet Union's explosion of an atomic bomb, the victory of the Communists in China, and North Korea's invasion of South Korea.
But because of its subject matter, this book also demands to be read in the context of the current moment.
In which case, it is terrifying.
The parallels between McCarthyism and Trumpism go beyond the obvious examples:
--Yes, both were/are witch hunts that feed on extremist paranoia and nativism.
--Yes, both were/are led by men amazingly similar in personality (narcissistic, careless of facts, with dreams of immense power) and also appearance (sloppy in dress, overweight).
--Yes, both feature book bans in school libraries, hounding of leftist academics, and a spineless Republican Party Establishment.
--Yes, in both eras, True Believers tear after even the tiniest motes that (to them) reek of "pink" or "woke." If you ever signed a petition supporting the anti-Franco cause in the Spanish Civil War, you're by definition a Commie. If you're a Black who was promoted to a high government position, it was by definition because of DEI, not because of your ability.
But what makes the comparison even more terrifying is the bigger picture.
How did we get in this situation? Twice?
Is it inherent among Americans -- or maybe in any population -- that people will ultimately tire of the hard work of voting and thinking, and will happily follow a charismatic strong man who blames all their problems on The Other?
Is it inherently easier -- and more fun -- to hate, than to get along?
Will we be able to find another Joe Welch to confront today's McCarthy?
And even if we do, will a third McCarthy/Trump appear 60 years from now? and a fourth...?
This is in excellent and important book that, because of its research, made me think about these crucial questions.
This book should be required reading.
At least, I hope it isn't banned.
Putting the post-World War II Red Scare within its historical context, the book traces its roots back to the New Deal and the Spanish Civil War. Then it shows how three world-changing events in less than one year (August 1949-June 1950) made the globe seem on the brink of a Communist takeover and helped enable Joe McCarthy: the Soviet Union's explosion of an atomic bomb, the victory of the Communists in China, and North Korea's invasion of South Korea.
But because of its subject matter, this book also demands to be read in the context of the current moment.
In which case, it is terrifying.
The parallels between McCarthyism and Trumpism go beyond the obvious examples:
--Yes, both were/are witch hunts that feed on extremist paranoia and nativism.
--Yes, both were/are led by men amazingly similar in personality (narcissistic, careless of facts, with dreams of immense power) and also appearance (sloppy in dress, overweight).
--Yes, both feature book bans in school libraries, hounding of leftist academics, and a spineless Republican Party Establishment.
--Yes, in both eras, True Believers tear after even the tiniest motes that (to them) reek of "pink" or "woke." If you ever signed a petition supporting the anti-Franco cause in the Spanish Civil War, you're by definition a Commie. If you're a Black who was promoted to a high government position, it was by definition because of DEI, not because of your ability.
But what makes the comparison even more terrifying is the bigger picture.
How did we get in this situation? Twice?
Is it inherent among Americans -- or maybe in any population -- that people will ultimately tire of the hard work of voting and thinking, and will happily follow a charismatic strong man who blames all their problems on The Other?
Is it inherently easier -- and more fun -- to hate, than to get along?
Will we be able to find another Joe Welch to confront today's McCarthy?
And even if we do, will a third McCarthy/Trump appear 60 years from now? and a fourth...?
This is in excellent and important book that, because of its research, made me think about these crucial questions.
This book should be required reading.
At least, I hope it isn't banned.
June 1, 2025
Red Scare: Blacklists, McCarthyism, and the Making of Modern America by Clay Risen is a history book worth reading in 2025. It is meticulously laid out yet reads like an old-school high-society gossip column, if that gossip column were also backed up by copious amounts of research and first-account resources. It will also remind many of its readers that the tactics and legacies of the players of the Red Scare aren’t as far behind us as we might have assumed or hoped, as they have been ingrained in many beliefs, practices, laws, and institutions that still exist today in the U.S.
Risen does a phenomenal job detailing the key players behind the movements, decisions, trials, and laws that led up to and ultimately shaped the Red Scare and how it played out. McCarthy plays a prominent role, of course, but there are many other names that are named, as well. And this naming of names, so many names, is what made the book read more like a gossip column to me— it was primarily about the individuals behind the conception and culmination of the Red Scare, as well as those individuals who were profoundly affected by their incitement of injustice via arbitrary legal proceedings, biased press coverage, general public hysteria, and performative dramatics.
Still, I wish there was more added in the Epilogue of the book regarding how the Red Scare is still affecting us, our beliefs, laws, practices, and institutions today… but perhaps, to be fair, that would necessitate another entirely separate book. I know that I would certainly read such a book.
Overall, I would recommend this book to history buffs who enjoy historical accounts that are easy to read and follow but are still backed up by thorough research, as well as history buffs who enjoy historical accounts that mainly focus on the movers and shakers of history.
Here is a notable passage from the book:
“The Red Scare was a cultural phenomenon, but it was also a sprawling bureaucratic construction, with lists at its center.” (p. 272)
Subscribe to Daily Drafts & Dialogues to receive more book reviews and posts about reading and writing in your inbox every day: dailydraftsanddialogues.substack.com
Risen does a phenomenal job detailing the key players behind the movements, decisions, trials, and laws that led up to and ultimately shaped the Red Scare and how it played out. McCarthy plays a prominent role, of course, but there are many other names that are named, as well. And this naming of names, so many names, is what made the book read more like a gossip column to me— it was primarily about the individuals behind the conception and culmination of the Red Scare, as well as those individuals who were profoundly affected by their incitement of injustice via arbitrary legal proceedings, biased press coverage, general public hysteria, and performative dramatics.
Still, I wish there was more added in the Epilogue of the book regarding how the Red Scare is still affecting us, our beliefs, laws, practices, and institutions today… but perhaps, to be fair, that would necessitate another entirely separate book. I know that I would certainly read such a book.
Overall, I would recommend this book to history buffs who enjoy historical accounts that are easy to read and follow but are still backed up by thorough research, as well as history buffs who enjoy historical accounts that mainly focus on the movers and shakers of history.
Here is a notable passage from the book:
“The Red Scare was a cultural phenomenon, but it was also a sprawling bureaucratic construction, with lists at its center.” (p. 272)
Subscribe to Daily Drafts & Dialogues to receive more book reviews and posts about reading and writing in your inbox every day: dailydraftsanddialogues.substack.com
May 24, 2025
"And yet as soon as they ended, viewers and participants alike wondered what it had all been for."
I think this is my first time reading a book that came out in the same year. A good read, on a subject I had a surprisingly little amount of knowledge on. Strong organization on a subject that has so many names, and the author does a great job painting an evoking image of a lot of these characters. The depiction of McCarthy as an overweight, alcoholic, gluttonous man who would die on the hill of his lies as long as it didn't interrupt his greasy meals or scheduled drinks is as haunting as it is, sadly, American. And as relevant today as it was then.
It would've been helpful to piece together the timeline of more well known Soviet events within the domestic American actions, and how their reactions by American leftists and anti-Communists affected their actions. It's only the span of a few years so you can put the mental timeline together on your own, but would've been nice to have it be there.
Just as I was about to finish this, the current admin putting a ban on international students at Harvard because they didn't agree with his politics was only too reminiscent. The targeting of the educated, the arts, those who don't think like you, and those who don't look like you, at the explicit cost of the country, out of a restorative nostalgia is the deepest kind of ignorance there can be. And most self destructive.
Those who start the engines of the guillotine, whether that be literal or as a form of social excommunication, "cancelling" in today's terms, don't learn that they are not immune to their creation of hatred and paranoia. The key to start the engine is not the same key to stop it. It often takes a person with more poise to stop such a thing. Yet their ignorance is strong enough to throw away this readily available lesson to be learned ahead of time, not realizing the depths of their failures until they too, have their heads on the block.
I think this is my first time reading a book that came out in the same year. A good read, on a subject I had a surprisingly little amount of knowledge on. Strong organization on a subject that has so many names, and the author does a great job painting an evoking image of a lot of these characters. The depiction of McCarthy as an overweight, alcoholic, gluttonous man who would die on the hill of his lies as long as it didn't interrupt his greasy meals or scheduled drinks is as haunting as it is, sadly, American. And as relevant today as it was then.
It would've been helpful to piece together the timeline of more well known Soviet events within the domestic American actions, and how their reactions by American leftists and anti-Communists affected their actions. It's only the span of a few years so you can put the mental timeline together on your own, but would've been nice to have it be there.
Just as I was about to finish this, the current admin putting a ban on international students at Harvard because they didn't agree with his politics was only too reminiscent. The targeting of the educated, the arts, those who don't think like you, and those who don't look like you, at the explicit cost of the country, out of a restorative nostalgia is the deepest kind of ignorance there can be. And most self destructive.
Those who start the engines of the guillotine, whether that be literal or as a form of social excommunication, "cancelling" in today's terms, don't learn that they are not immune to their creation of hatred and paranoia. The key to start the engine is not the same key to stop it. It often takes a person with more poise to stop such a thing. Yet their ignorance is strong enough to throw away this readily available lesson to be learned ahead of time, not realizing the depths of their failures until they too, have their heads on the block.
June 16, 2025
If ever there was a period in our lifetimes for an oft-repeated quotation not to go unheeded it is the current era; the axiom is the one that declares those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.
Clay Risen's thorough history of the Red Scare years is 379 pages of reminder of what is possible when fear is sparked in the mindsets of otherwise decent people, power-hungry personalities feed the flames with innuendo, unfounded accusations and blatant lies, and the lives of innocent people are cruelly and unjustly ruined.
Substitute immigration for the fear of Communism and you'll find in chapter after chapter direct correlations between the spurious attacks of Joe McCarthy and his House UnAmerican Activities Committee and the fear-mongering of the current administration.
You'll find it interesting, too, how racial and gender prejudice tied into the beliefs of those who during the post-war years of the 1940s and '50s feared any change in their way of life and personal status; the demonization of Latinos and transgender persons today is an easy-to-see mirror image.
Author Risen holds no punches in reporting the actions of players on both sides of the aisle who didn't alway play on the side of the angels.
But that's what real history is: the truth.
If only more would know that history.
Clay Risen's thorough history of the Red Scare years is 379 pages of reminder of what is possible when fear is sparked in the mindsets of otherwise decent people, power-hungry personalities feed the flames with innuendo, unfounded accusations and blatant lies, and the lives of innocent people are cruelly and unjustly ruined.
Substitute immigration for the fear of Communism and you'll find in chapter after chapter direct correlations between the spurious attacks of Joe McCarthy and his House UnAmerican Activities Committee and the fear-mongering of the current administration.
You'll find it interesting, too, how racial and gender prejudice tied into the beliefs of those who during the post-war years of the 1940s and '50s feared any change in their way of life and personal status; the demonization of Latinos and transgender persons today is an easy-to-see mirror image.
Author Risen holds no punches in reporting the actions of players on both sides of the aisle who didn't alway play on the side of the angels.
But that's what real history is: the truth.
If only more would know that history.
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