:That's ignoring the larger picture with selective cherry-picking. Who instigated the First Red Scare? Progressives. (the "Old Guard" conservatives opposed rabid persecutions of anarchists and Communists at the time because of the massive civil liberty violations) Into the 1920s and 30s, the same progressives who fought for labor rights, a graduated income tax, public power, etc. simultaneously were the most virulently anti-Bolshevik, i.e. Southern Democrats and the Second KKK. At one point, a black member of the Indiana Socialist Party referred to the Klan as "working for the things that the Socialist party want but cannot get." Progressives vs. socialists/Communists was essentially like Trotskyism vs. Stalinism, two rivaling leftist factions competing for the same constituency. | :That's ignoring the larger picture with selective cherry-picking. Who instigated the First Red Scare? Progressives. (the "Old Guard" conservatives opposed rabid persecutions of anarchists and Communists at the time because of the massive civil liberty violations) Into the 1920s and 30s, the same progressives who fought for labor rights, a graduated income tax, public power, etc. simultaneously were the most virulently anti-Bolshevik, i.e. Southern Democrats and the Second KKK. At one point, a black member of the Indiana Socialist Party referred to the Klan as "working for the things that the Socialist party want but cannot get." Progressives vs. socialists/Communists was essentially like Trotskyism vs. Stalinism, two rivaling leftist factions competing for the same constituency. |