In Part I and Part II of this series, I analyzed “Cuba: Capital of 21st Century Communism” as a Red Scare document with a particular focus on its implications for radical Black organizing and the rhetorical strategies employed therein to illegalize left movements and international solidarity. In the final part of this series, I examine the Cuba report in the context of previous Red Scares that spanned the twentieth century to emphasize that our current reality is part of a much longer history of anticommunist repression.
The Cuba report constructs a long history of anti-American action, with the Soviet Union as the primary enemy of the “Old Left” that was largely destroyed by McCarthyism, and Cuba as the “New Left” foe whose influence took off during the 1960s and continues through to today. “Whereas the old Soviet left had been built around the party, labor unions, and Marxist theories of economic class struggle,” the report reads, “the New Left was animated by Black Power, radical feminism, Third World liberation, and—above all else—the radical rejection of Western culture, history and identity in all its forms.” (14) Targeting the “New Left” allows the state department to conflate communism, race and gender radicalism, and anticolonial struggles as indistinguishable enemies. Likewise, referencing McCarthyism’s defeat of the “Old Left” legitimates the use of similar repression to crush current insurgencies attributed to their “New Left” predecessor. The report also ties Cuba to U.S. “enemies from without,” not least Iran, Venezuela, Russia, and China, and presents the Cuban government as the puppet master of past and present “enemies from within.” The latter includes Black Power and Third World activism, Antifa and anti-ICE militancy, and the student encampments and George Floyd uprisings. Additionally, the report links the external and internal threats together to intensify the claims that Cuba is undermining U.S. national security.
Red Scares produce and perpetuate hostility toward “alien ideologies” and the “foreign influences” purportedly aimed at upending the ideals and organization of the United States. This hostility is extended to the idea of internal racial, ethnic, and religious enemies who are allied with, sympathetic to, or could be easily duped by hostile external forces. The resulting repression extends back to the set of laws passed in 1798 known as the Alien and Sedition Acts that aimed to manage the threat posed by foreign dissidents through the deportation of aliens who were deemed a threat to the state; the disenfranchisement of immigrants; and the punishment for treason of any critique of or opposition to the government. White elites feared politically active radical exiles of the French Revolution, and more importantly, the potential radicalization of the mainland Black population as a result of the Haitian Revolution. The flood of white and mulatto slaveholders from Haiti, and the unfree Africans they brought with them, began to inspire unrest among persons enslaved in the U.S. and among abolitionists. As would be the case with subsequent Red Scares, these laws combined the suppression of radical dissent with the fear of Black liberation. The Alien and Sedition Acts became a frequent point of comparison for subsequent antiradical legislation like the Alien Registration Act of 1940 (Smith Act) and the Internal Security Act of 1950 (McCarran Act).
Red Scares became almost exclusively articulated through anticommunism after the Bolshevik Revolution of 1917 and are most prominently articulated through the specter of the communist/Bolshevist and the fellow-traveler. However, all types of radicals, including anarchists, socialists, labor militants, and revolutionary Black nationalists are effectively treated as interchangeable “Reds” against whom the U.S. government justifies waging “unflinching” war. These periods of concentrated political repression create an atmosphere of fear, hatred, and obsession about radical organizing by construing it as dangerous to the nation and driven by conspirators and agitators. As such, ordinary speech and action otherwise protected by the constitution are criminalized as inimical to U.S. safety and security. For example, social and economic reforms are mischaracterized as communist-inspired subversion. Leftwing organization, discipline, and international solidarity are misconstrued as domestic terrorism. Politics critical of liberal capitalist democracy are called authoritarian and alien. The rejection of Christian hegemony and its conflation of church and state is considered un-American godlessness. In a general sense, counterhegemonic ideas, writings, organizing, and protest are treated as criminal conspiracy and extremism.
Red Scares and their instrumentalities always have foreign and domestic policy objectives that require controlling and crushing opposition. The Cuba report, for example, aims to legitimate the genocidal oil blockade and a possible ground invasion, while discrediting internal movements and organizations by claiming they are foreign-inspired (e.g., the Venceremos Brigade), fellow-traveler organizations (e.g., Black Alliance for Peace), or catalysts to spread extremism into legitimate politics (e.g., Democratic Socialists of America). Moreover, by linking organizations, individuals, and movements to Cuba, the State Department seeks to criminalize constitutionally protected forms of radical fightback and to construe higher education as a hotbed of radical subversion. Here, it builds on the “National Security Presidential Memorandum 7: Countering Domestic Terrorism and Organized Political Violence” (NSPM-7), issued on September 25, 2025. The NSPM-7 weaponizes “political violence” to characterize anti-fascists, anti-racists, anti-ICE activists, and advocates of queer and trans rights as domestic terrorists. Simply supporting these positions is construed as “violent conduct” emanating from the “common threads” of “anti-Americanism, anti-capitalism, and anti-Christianity.” Those with progressive, radical, and revolutionary beliefs are accused of waging “violent assault against democratic institutions, constitutional rights, and fundamental American liberties.” To subdue this “threat,” the National Joint Terrorism Task Force is empowered to “coordinate and supervise a comprehensive national strategy to investigate, prosecute, and disrupt entities and individuals engaged in acts of political violence and intimidation,” with a particular focus on institutional and individual funders, organization members, and employees. Casualties of NSPM-7 include the “Prairieland 9” and the “Michigan 8.”
The most recent war on radicals and progressives, waged by both the Biden and Trump regimes, continues the long history of Red Scare repression. Between 1873-1903, several Red Scares targeted labor radicals and anarchists. They were spurred by frequent economic depression and uncertainty, worker militancy and strikes, and elite fear about the Paris Commune and its aftereffects. A significant event in this period was the assassination of President William McKiney in 1901 by an accused anarchist, after which there was the widespread passage of laws, at the state and federal levels, that penalized people for their opinions, beliefs, and affiliations rather than for the commission of a crime. This was the first time this happened since the Alien and Sedition Acts. (63) Additionally, at this time fear of communist revolution and foreign radicals crystallized and “communism” became a catchall term for sundry unsavory and “dangerous” elements. (23-60)
A host of state-level anti-syndicalist, anti-Anarchist, and antiradical laws became codified in the Espionage Act of 1917 and the Sedition Act of 1918, passed during World War I. It was under the former that hundreds of members of the Industrial Workers of the World were convicted, effectively neutralizing the organization. (193) Between 1919-1923, in the context of the failure to pass a federal anti-syndicalism or anti-subversion law, politically repressive statutes, regulations, and ordinances cropped up throughout the nation. One reason a federal bill did not come into fruition was because some senators feared they would give the US government jurisdiction over the crime of lynching. State-level laws variously sought to guard against the overthrow by force, violence, injury to person or property, or general strike, of the government; disloyalty or belief in anarchy or other dangerous political doctrines; defiance of the law in relation to the disruption of organized government; inciting people to disorder or breaches of law; and the display of any symbol that supported or promoted Bolshevism, anarchy, or radical socialism. State-level antiradical campaigns immediately following World War I were buttressed by widespread sentiment that the labor unrest resulting from postwar economic conditions was in fact caused by Bolshevik agitation. This misconception helped to hasten the shift from Germans to communists, Bolsheviks, and the Soviet Union as the paramount enemies of the United States. (139-141)
The Red Scare “Palmer Raids” between 1919-1920, which coincided with the “Red Summer” pogroms against Black people, was characterized by mass deportations of primarily Eastern European anarchists and communists. In 1920, more than 10,000 workers across seventy cities, most of whom were trade unionists, were arrested and thrown in federal prison based on orders from Attorney General Mitchell Palmer and J. Edgar Hoover. This Red Scare aimed to round up “aliens” with dissident beliefs for deportation. The overwhelming majority of those arrested were freed because they were citizens or because they were acquitted of wrongdoing, but not before they were beaten, maimed, denied due process, and otherwise humiliated. The Palmer Raids helped to weaken labor, strengthen big business through pushing the open shop, and frightened people against militant action. (212-215)
A lesser-known Red Scare spanned the late 1930s and early 1940s. It was a reaction to a number of international developments, most significantly the Molotov- Ribbentrop Pact between the Soviet Union and Germany. Like previous the preceding Red Scares, it was nativist and anti-labor in scope. This repression ostensibly targeted fascists, Nazis, and communists, but in reality, it largely targeted the latter. A few months before the December 1941 attack on Pearl Harbor, Attorney General Francis Biddle used stipulations of the Act to Prevent Pernicious Political Activities (the Hatch Act) passed in 1939 to create a list outlining which organizations were deemed subversive enough to warrant the detainment and possible deportation of aliens affiliated with them. Nearly in tandem, the Department of Justice (DOJ) secretly drafted a list detailing groups thought to include predominately “alien radicals” that could be construed as anarchistic, subversive, or seditious. The list would determine who would be eligible for trial by the Alien Enemy Hearings Board. Taken together, these lists were virtually all-encompassing, with the DOJ’s list targeting the general civilian population while Biddle’s list was used to evaluate federal employees. This period also saw the passage of the Smith Act and the Anti-Propaganda Act (Voorhis Act) in 1940, as well as the establishment of the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC) as a special investigative committee, and later, a permanent committee.
The most notorious Red Scare formally occurred between 1951 and 1954 with the election and subsequent downfall of Wisconsin Senator, Joseph R. McCarthy. However, the period spanning 1947-1957 is known as the era of McCarthyism, which, according to one scholar, “means accusing people without evidence, exposing and causing them harm without regard for the law or for common decency.” (xviii) This was one of anticommunist hysteria, witch hunts, fear, and abrogation of civil rights and liberties, bookended by the passage of the anti-labor Taft-Hartley Act and the creation of the Loyalty Security Act under Executive Order 9835 in 1947, and the 1957 Watts v. United States and Yates v. United States Supreme Court cases that overturned convictions of those who refused to answer questions before HUAC and of CPUSA leaders prosecuted under the Smith Act, respectively. Both the Republican and Democratic parties, all three branches of the federal government, and state and local governments, participated in the vehement attack on all forms of militancy that could be construed as communist, from labor militancy to civil rights insurgencies. During this period, top leaders in the CPUSA were indicted, prosecuted, jailed, deported, and/or forced underground and Hollywood was investigated for supposed communist infiltration. Some of the most repressive legislation of the century, including the Internal Security Act of 1950 (McCarran Act), the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1952 (McCarran-Walter Act), and the Communist Control Act (1954), was passed. As well, the Subversive Activities Control Board (SACB) and Senate Internal Security Subcommittee (SISS) were established. Through anticommunist lawfare, big business intimidation, vigilante violence, and widespread fearmongering, countless lives were ruined, jobs were lost, organizations were destroyed, families were fragmented, and movements were hampered. (xviii-xx)
The rise of the Counterintelligence Program (COINTELPRO) in the 1960s is undoubtedly the best-known epoch of repression. Though it is an outgrowth of the efforts of the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) to decimate the CPUSA, COINTELPRO is not commonly understood as a Red Scare offensive that was given new life through the assault on Black and Third World liberation. J. Edgar Hoover claimed, “communists and subversives and extremists strive ceaselessly to precipitate racial trouble and to take advantage of racial discord in this country.” It was they who “aggravated and exploited” race rebellions that exploded across the United States. (438) Thus, U.S. government officials linked the “communist” threat abroad—especially in the Third World—to the latest dimension of the communist threat at home: Black political violence in the form of guerilla tactics, clashes with authority, and ferocious challenges to racial and economic hierarchy. The program was a means for the FBI to address “the threats from militants of the ‘New Left’ as it had those from the Communists in the 1950s.” It employed “traditional investigative techniques and counterintelligence” to “counteract domestic terrorism and conduct investigations of individuals and organizations who threatened terroristic violence.” These “techniques and counterintelligence” included illegal wiretapping, bugging, break-ins, frame-ups, and informant infiltration, harassment, and disruption campaigns. (68) All-in-all, the FBI launched at least 2,218 individual COINTELPRO actions against groups and individuals—primarily radicals, and a disproportionate number Black—between 1957 and 1971. (72)
The Red Scare of the 1960s and 1970s construed urban and student rebellions, militant Black organizations, struggles against the Vietnam War and draft, and international solidarity as a menace to the prevailing order. By 1972, nearly 500 local “Red Squads” understood themselves as the most effective political force in blocking “radicalism, student demonstrations, and black power” and were gathering “political intelligence” about these dissident groups. (504-509) Thus, the discourse of close links between “foreign communists and domestic dissidents” continued to animate the rollback of civil liberties. (436-437) At the federal level, there was “a calculated campaign by high-ranking officials in the Executive Branch and by Congress to intimidate and repress dissident activity.” (432-435) For example, for a brief period in 1968, in the midst of urban insurrections that engulfed the nation after the April 4 assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., the notorious SACB was revived through a bicameral bill that “gave the SACB the power to simply list by fiat groups found to be communist-action or communist-front organizations.” As well, HUAC issued a report urging the construction of concentration camps authorized by the McCarran Act to temporarily imprison warring guerillas—i.e., radical and Black groups that were “seriously considering the possibility of instituting armed insurrection” and “planning ‘guerilla-type operations against the government.’” (441) Moreover, in the 1970 hearings on “Assaults on Law Enforcement Officers” conducted by the SISS, there were several references to the rebellions being “Communist inspired,” the Black Panther Party and other radical Black organizations being “Uncle Toms” to white Communists, Communist agitators infiltrating racial disturbances, and the identification of Black urban rebels with “the third world type communist effort.” Authorities directly linked these imagined communist machinations to ostensible Black plots to foment revolution in the United States.
To conclude, Red Scares have been a mainstay of U.S. governance. They are extraordinarily disruptive, destructive, and dangerous. This repression, and its catastrophic effects on communities, organizations, and individuals, must be taken seriously. However, it is essential to recognize that they have not been able to completely crush militant fightback and organized action. The masses in struggle against capitalist imperialism, (neo-)colonialism, and racism—and for an ecologically sustainable, self-determined future—cannot be totally defeated. Red Scares cannot destroy the power and future victory of the people united and organized against the genocidal heirs of Hoover and McCarthy.
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Dr. Charisse Burden-Stelly is a Black Studies scholar of political theory, political economy, intellectual history, and political and historical sociology. Her published work includes Black Scare/Red Scare: Theorizing Capitalist Racism in the United States andW.E.B. Du Bois: A Life in American History. She is also the co-editor of Organize, Fight, Win: Black Communist Women’s Political Writings and of Reproducing Domination: On the Caribbean and the Postcolonial State
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