Red Scare: A study in national hysteria, 1919-1920

The Red Scare followed World War 1. The famous Palmer raids of that era are still remembered as one of the most fantastic miscarriages of justice ever perpetrated upon the nation. The violent labor strife still make those who lived through it shudder as they recall the Seattle general strike and the Boston police strike. For just as America was swept by a wave of unreasoning fear and was swayed by sensational propaganda in those days, so have we been tormented by similar tensions in the climate of the cold war.