Title: The Case Against the Reds Author: A. Mitchell Palmer Digital History ID: 3992 Source: A Mitchell Palmer, "The Case Against the 'Reds,'" Forum (1920), 63:173- 185. Date: 1920 # The Case Against the Reds ## Author: A. Mitchell Palmer ## Date: 1920 ## Source: A Mitchell Palmer, "The Case Against the 'Reds,'" Forum (1920), 63:173- 185. Annotation: _It was the height of the post-World War I Red Scare, and the atmosphere was seething with anxieties about Bolshevism, aliens, domestic bombings, and labor unrest. Revolutionary upheavals had been triggered by the war, and one-third of the U.S. population consisted of immigrants or the children of immigrants. In 1919 and 1920, President Wilson's attorney general, A. Mitchell Palmer, led raids on leftist organizations such as the Communist Party and the radical labor union, the International Workers of the World. Palmer hoped to use the issue of radicalism in his campaign to become president in 1920. He created the precursor to the Federal Bureau of Investigation, which collected the names of thousands of known or suspected communists. In November 1919, Palmer ordered government raids that resulted in the arrests of 250 suspected radicals in 11 cities. The Palmer Raids reached their height on January 2, 1920, when government agents made raids in 33 cities. Nationwide, more than 4,000 alleged communists were arrested and jailed without bond, and 556 aliens were deported--including the radical orator Emma Goldman. Palmer claimed to be ridding the country of the "moral perverts and hysterical neurasthenic women who abound in communism," but his tactics alienated many people who viewed them as violations of civil liberties. In this magazine article from the Forum, Attorney General A. Mitchell Palmer defends the Red Scare. Palmer discusses his fears of Bolshevism and his plans to rid it from the country._ --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- A. Mitchell Palmer The Case Against the "Reds" In this brief review of the work which the Department of Justice has undertaken, to tear out the radical seeds that have entangled American ideas in their poisonous theories, I desire not merely to explain what the real menace of communism is, but also to tell how we have been compelled to clean up the country almost unaided by any virile legislation. Though I have not been embarrassed by political opposition, I have been materially delayed because the present sweeping processes of arrests and deportation of seditious aliens should have been vigorously pushed by Congress last spring. The failure of this is a matter of record in the Congressional files. The anxiety of that period in our responsibility when Congress, ignoring the seriousness of these vast organizations that were plotting to overthrow the Government, failed to act, has passed. The time came when it was obviously hopeless to expect the hearty cooperation of Congress in the only way to stamp out these seditious societies in their open defiance of law by various forms of propaganda. Like a prairie-fire, the blaze of revolution was sweeping over every American institution of law and order a year ago. It was eating its way into the homes of the American workmen, its sharp tongues of revolutionary heat were licking the altars of the churches, leaping into the belfry of the school bell, crawling into the sacred corners of American homes, seeking to replace marriage vows with libertine laws, burning up the foundations of society. Robbery, not war, is the ideal of communism. This has been demonstrated in Russia, Germany, and in America. As a foe, the anarchist is fearless of his own life, for his creed is a fanaticism that admits no respect of any other creed. Obviously it is the creed of any criminal mind, which reasons always from motives impossible to clean thought. Crime is the degenerate factor in society. Upon these two basic certainties, first that the "Reds" were criminal aliens and secondly that the American Government must prevent crime, it was decided that there could be no nice distinctions drawn between the theoretical ideals of the radicals and their actual violations of our national laws. An assassin may have brilliant intellectuality, he may be able to excuse his murder or robbery with fine oratory, but any theory which excuses crime is not wanted in America. This is no place for the criminal to flourish, nor will he do so so long as the rights of common citizenship can be exerted to prevent him. Our Government In Jeopardy It has always been plain to me that when American citizens unite upon any national issue they are generally right, but it is sometimes difficult to make the issue clear to them. If the Department of Justice could succeed in attracting the attention of our optimistic citizens to the issue of internal revolution in this country, we felt sure there would be no revolution. The Government was in jeopardy; our private information of what was being done by the organization known as the Communist Party of America, with headquarters in Chicago, of what was being done by the Communist Internationale under their manifesto planned at Moscow last March by Trotzky, Lenin and others addressed "To the Proletariats of All Countries," of what strides the Communist Labor Party was making, removed all doubt. In this conclusion we did not ignore the definite standards of personal liberty, of free speech, which is the very temperament and heart of the people. The evidence was examined with the utmost care, with a personal leaning toward freedom of thought and word on all questions. The whole mass of evidence, accumulated from all parts of the country, was scrupulously scanned, not merely for the written or spoken differences of viewpoint as to the Government of the United States, but, in spite of these things, to see if the hostile declarations might not be sincere in their announced motive to improve our social order. There was no hope of such a thing. By stealing, murder and lies, Bolshevism has looted Russia not only of its material strength but of its moral force. A small clique of outcasts from the East Side of New York has attempted this, with what success we all know. Because a disreputable alien