| Palmer's Warning: The Red Menace |
| History 122 Research Brief; David C. Hanson, Virginia Western Community College |
 In an 1920 article, "The Case Against the Reds," Attorney-General A. Mitchell Palmer argued that communism was an imminent threat and explained why Bolsheviks had to be deported. For brevity, only selected excerpts are listed below. The are numbered to indicate paragraphs from the entire article.
[1] 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.
[3] 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.
[9] My information showed
that communism in this country was an organization of
thousands of aliens who were direct allies of Trotzky.
Aliens of the same misshapen caste of mind and
indecencies of character, and it showed that they were
making the same glittering promises of lawlessness, of
criminal autocracy to Americans, that they had made to
the Russian peasants. How the Department of Justice
discovered upwards of 60,000 of these organized
agitators of the Trotzky doctrine in the United States
is the confidential information upon which the
Government is now sweeping the nation clean of such
alien filth. . . .
[10] Behind, and
underneath, my own determination to drive from our
midst the agents of Bolshevism with increasing vigor
and with greater speed, until there are no more of
them left among us, so long as I have the
responsible duty of that task, I have discovered the
hysterical methods of these revolutionary humans
with increasing amazement and suspicion. In the
confused information that sometimes reaches the
people they are compelled to ask questions which
involve the reasons for my acts against the “Reds.”
I have been asked, for instance, to what extent
deportation will check radicalism in this country.
Why not ask what will become of the United States
Government if these alien radicals are permitted to
carry out the principles of the Communist Party as
embodied in its so-called laws, aims and
regulations?
[11] There
wouldn’t be any such thing left. In place of the
United States Government we should have the
horror and terrorism of bolsheviki tyranny such
as is destroying Russia now. Every scrap of
radical literature demands the overthrow of our
existing government. All of it demands obedience
to the instincts of criminal minds, that is, to
the lower appetites, material and moral. The
whole purpose of communism appears to be a mass
formation of the criminals of the world to
overthrow the decencies of private life, to
usurp property that they have not earned, to
disrupt the present order of life regardless of
health, sex or religious rights. By a literature
that promises the wildest dreams of such low
aspirations, that can occur to only the criminal
minds, communism distorts our social law. . . .
[13] It has
been impossible in so short a space to
review the entire menace of the internal
revolution in this country as I know it, but
this may serve to arouse the American
citizen to its reality, its danger, and the
great need of united effort to stamp it out,
under our feet, if needs be. It is being
done. The Department of Justice will pursue
the attack of these “Reds” upon the
Government of the United States with
vigilance, and no alien, advocating the
overthrow of existing law and order in this
country, shall escape arrest and prompt
deportation.
[14] It is my belief that while they have stirred discontent in our midst, while they have caused irritating strikes, and while they have infected our social ideas with the disease of their own minds and their unclean morals we can get rid of them and not until we have done so shall we have removed the menace of Bolshevism for good. Source: A. Mitchell Palmer, “The Case Against the ‘Reds’,” Forum 63 (1920): 173–185. |