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U.S. History 1877-Present 7: The Red Scare 69 Views
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Description:
You know like when you sneeze and there's blood and you're sure you've contracted some alien super virus? This isn't that. We're talking communists today, and the many injustices that came about in an effort to hunt them down. Injustices are injustices, whether you're scared of a color or not. (Oh, and if it makes you feel any better, that nosebleed is probably just from the dry air.)
Transcript
- 00:00
sweetie didn't the Great War ended with the collapse of America's enemies abroad [Jenga tower collapses]
- 00:07
the central powers were kaput Germany beaten and bruised by the terms of the
- 00:13
Versailles Treaty did a swan dive into a deep sea of economic ruin in political [Germany flag appears in pool]
- 00:18
weakness and one of their cps austria-hungary saw its mighty Central
- 00:23
European empire shattered into five small tenuous sitting ducks or we mean [Ducks appear on a rock]
Full Transcript
- 00:29
country yes countries but was the u.s. happy well yeah it was very happy but it
- 00:35
was still afraid sure the shooting war in Europe was over but the war on
- 00:38
traitors and socialists and communists right here at home was still going
- 00:42
strong in the 20s during the war anyone who criticized the war effort or the [Woman angrily stood beside poster of Uncle Sam]
- 00:47
government was considered a criminal and under the terms of the Espionage Act of
- 00:51
1917 was sent to jail well after the war the Supreme Court was called in to
- 00:59
decide whether we could get everything back to normal and have our right to
- 01:02
free speech again but in 1919 the highest court in the land of the free [Gavel bangs]
- 01:06
said free speech was a no-no after all they said it's not okay for somebody to
- 01:13
freely yell fire in a crowded theater right it's dangerous people could get [People run out of theater]
- 01:18
trampled and the court figured that allowing people to speak out against
- 01:21
America and the government was just as bad scary communist from scary European [Earth in flames]
- 01:26
countries were breaking down the theater doors to overthrow our democratic
- 01:30
government like they had done in Russia and tried to do in Germany and Hungary
- 01:34
and Americans trampled over their own First Amendment rights in their panic to
- 01:38
get away the Red Scare was on we think of the 1920s as a groovy time of dancing [People dancing]
- 01:44
and drinking and not caring about anything but the reality is that the
- 01:48
decade was also shaped by a heavy-handed government crackdown on our basic [Government hammer strikes red scare]
- 01:52
freedoms as Americans which is the opposite of groovy one of the captains
- 01:57
of Red Scare ungrouping us was a guy named attorney general Mitchel Palmer
- 02:01
what were called the Palmer Raids were a serious crackdown on suspected [People sitting in a room]
- 02:05
communist and anarchist Palmer's house had actually been bombed by an anarchist [Bomb explodes on Palmers house]
- 02:10
in 1919 and that anarchists had been from Europe so the
- 02:14
Attorney General wasn't a total nut but pretty much every historian agrees that
- 02:18
the Palmer Raids went seriously overboard somewhere between six and ten
- 02:22
thousand people were rounded up were there really that many Communists and [Man shrugs shoulders]
- 02:26
anarchists in the US and it kind of doubtful in a lot of cases arrest
- 02:30
warrants weren't issued until after the supposed deviants were arrested hey [Woman behind bars and officer appears]
- 02:34
better late than never the Raiders seized tons of organization
- 02:38
record political literature membership cards and lifts and all that kind of
- 02:42
stuff but still they barely found any real evidence of criminal or
- 02:45
revolutionary goings on for days thousands of suspects were held without [Prison cell and blank wanted poster appears]
- 02:50
being charged without any offer of bail and without a lawyer in a lot of cases
- 02:54
prisoners were held without their family and friends knowing where they were at
- 02:58
all so yeah basically it was all ten kinds of shady it all got so shady that [Louis Post appears]
- 03:04
Assistant Secretary of Labor Louis F post stood up to Palmer post not only
- 03:09
refused to cooperate but personally reviewed many cases and exposed the fact
- 03:14
that tons of people were being arrested and deported without any real evidence [Post orders Palmer away]
- 03:17
Palmer and his allies tried to have post impeached but post shot that down when
- 03:23
he called out Palmer in front of Hall of Congress this public shaming didn't
- 03:27
bother Palmer at all in 1921 he testified before Congress saying I
- 03:30
apologize for noting that the Department of Justice has done I glory in it man he [Palmer appears in congress]
- 03:36
must have been really attached to that house
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