The First Red Scare dawned as World War I ended, sparked by fears stoked by the Bolshevik Revolution and a militant, largely anarchist and immigrant domestic labor movement. Thousands were arrested; hundreds were deported. A generation later, the McCarthyite Second Red Scare filled blacklists and inflamed paranoia of a communist conspiracy reaching the highest echelons of government and society. We are now in the midst of the Third.
The far-right rails against a supposedly pervasive cultural Marxism. Universities are targeted as alleged hotbeds of anti-American sentiment. The previous Red Scare was stoked by fears of the Civil Rights Movement and the global era of decolonization, unleashing purges with the stated aim of protecting the precious white family from race-mixing. Today’s Red Scare is petrified of migrant caravans “poisoning the blood” of the nation and cloaks itself in the language of fighting “antisemitism,” by which is meant anti-Zionism—opposition to Zionist ethnonationalism.
Office of Management and Budget director and Project 2025 architect Russell Vought didn’t mince words when describing his target, saying that “the stark reality in America is that we are in the late stages of a complete Marxist takeover of the country.” The far right seeks to win what the Claremont Institute calls a “Cold Civil War,” though one warming up by the day.
Though the Trump administration is getting more rhetorical traction with its crusade against “antisemitism” and than its largely identical fight against “Marxism,” we should look understand the current repressive frenzy as of a kind with earlier Red Scares. Recall that the universities that are supposedly inculcating a generation of antisemitic bigots are the very same said to be run by “Marxist lunatics.” The Palestinian resistance provides the same foreign fuel to this Scare as the Russian Revolution and Wars of National Liberation did the two preceding ones. Gender, race, and nationality again seem unsettled in ways that stoke the paranoic reflexes of those who seek to conserve the rule of capital.
Identifying continuity with previous Red Scares is not intended to imply that all those targeted are dyed-in-the-wool Marxists. In fact, the point of repressive overreach is that many so accused are not. There were plenty of 1950s right-wing zealots whose primary motivation was preventing race-mixing, not fear of an imminent communist coup. This is also not to discount the toxic lineage of post-War on Terror anti-Muslim and anti-Arab hatred, nor the longstanding homegrown disdain for the Latin American neocolonies.
What naming the Third Red Scare does is remind us that we’ve been here before. This is not the first time the United States has whipped itself into an all-consuming frenzy on the hunt for immigrants and dissidents and marshalled its significant resources into destroying the lives of those fighting for a world less monstrous.
And yet… we are still here. We, those who continue the fight for liberation, are part of a long, unbroken chain of struggle that empire has been unable to extinguish despite its best efforts. Whether from a mentor, a friend, or through the written word, the tradition of resistance has been shared with us to keep alive today. It survived McCarthy and the Palmer Raids. It will survive Trump and whoever succeeds him. We will survive. We will grow. And we will win.
This post has been syndicated from In Struggle, where it was published under this address.