20-1 Critical Thinking #3

Do you think Americans were justified in their fear of radicals and foreigners in the decade following WWI?

Americans had two problems to fear: the goals of the leaders of the Russian Revolution, and the challenges facing the United States. Both of these fears revolved around communism. These fears are commonly known today as "the Red Scare." The scare in the States started when the revolutionaries in Russia overthrew the Czar. After the Czar's death, Vladimir I. Lenin and his followers called the "Bolsheviks" established a new Communist State. In response to the events in Russia, a Communist party formed in America as well, with seventy-thousand members. The fear started to spread when the government started getting bombs sent by the Industrial Workers of the World, some of which were members of the communist party.
A challenge within the states itself, other than the formation of the Communist party, was the Palmer Raids. This gathered agents to hunt down any people suspected to be a communist, socialist and anarchists. This was difficult for the Americans because it gave these agents the ability to break people's civil rights. As a result of of the Red Scare and the anti-immigration feelings, many prejudice groups and bigots used it as an opportunity for creating groups to harass groups of foreigners and immigrants. The most frightening of these was the Ku Klux Klan.