The Red Scare Reality

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The "Red Scare" Reality

During the cold war, fear and hostility toward communism were the driving forces behind many of the social and foreign policies in the United States. How much of this fear actually was grounded in reality?

During the "Red Scare" America was totally taken over by a fear of communism, or anything/anyone that had anything to do with communism. Much of this fear was really unnecessary when you put things into prospective. American's were afraid of a communist takeover, which would almost never happen in the US. America was scared of communism it's self, which was a really unjustified fear. These fears of communism ended up taking some rights away from innocent Americans, which was the main thing that the Red Scare was trying not to do, and that is a loss of rights in America. The Red Scare was mostly unjustified, and was not really grounded in reality.

The biggest fear on people's minds was a communism takeover. People thought that Russia was going to cause an internal revolution within the US that would eventually end up removing the democratic government and replacing it with a dictator and communist government. This would probably never happen, so there was nothing to be afraid of. America is, and has always been a more powerful country then Russia, so the thought of Russia event attempting an attack is foolish from the beginning. America was also happy with its democratic government, and would have squashed the revolution. This is why America never had any true reason to fear a communist takeover of their country.

The entire Red Scare was meant to keep communism out, and the main reason they wanted to do that is so they could remain free. What really ended up happening was the opposite. When just normal Americans were accused of being a communist their life was over, guilty or not. Even if there weren't a communist they stood a very tiny chance of ever finding a good job without leaving the country. Some people were accused of being Russian spies. Some of these people were actually spies, but some were innocent, and yet they were put in jail, or even put to death for their "crime" against America. There were other instances like this happening all the time. People always expected their neighbor of being a communist, so they started to distrust them, which didn't make anyone lose rights, just caused conflicts among normal people.

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