The Case against the ‘Reds’, Attorney General Mitchell Palmer [FEB, 1920]
by U.S. Attorney General Alexander Mitchell Palmer
Intro: "The new Bolshevik government in Russia proclaimed its intent to spread communism worldwide, stoking fear and paranoia within the United States about domestic radical political activity. In 1919 a wave of violent strikes and mail bombs addressed to prominent figures lent credence to Justice Department claims that an American communist revolution loomed. In this article, Attorney General A. Mitchell Palmer (1872–1936) outlined the perceived threat posed by Communists, or “Reds,” a nickname name derived from the red flag carried by Bolshevik forces in the Russian Revolution.
During the First Red Scare (1919–1920), the Justice Department raided the homes and offices of suspected Communists, Socialists, and anarchists. The agency also took advantage of existing immigration laws to deport aliens with radical political beliefs. Concerns that immigrants were importing radical political ideologies fortified public support for the stringent legal limits placed on European immigration in the 1920s."
Attorney General Alexander Mitchell Palmer:
"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. My private information of what was being done by the organization known as the Communist Party of America,2 with headquarters in Chicago, of what was being done by the Communist Internationale under their manifesto planned at Moscow last March by Trotzky[sic], Lenine[sic] and others, addressed “To the Proletariats of All Countries,”3 of what strides the Communist Labor Party4 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. . . .
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 upward 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. Merely as a part of this review, to make it complete, it must be shown how the Department of Justice proceeds to cause deportations today. . . ." [skipping]
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"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?
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.
The chief appeal communism makes is to “The Worker.” If they can lure the wage-earner to join their own gang of thieves, if they can show him that he will be rich if he steals, so far they have succeeded in betraying him to their own criminal course. . . .
There is no legislation at present which can reach an American citizen who is discontented with our system of American government, nor is it necessary. The dangerous fact to us is that the Communist Party of America is actually affiliated and adheres to the teaching program and tactics of the Third Internationale. Consider what this means.
The first congress of the Communist Internationale held March 6, 1919, in Moscow, subscribed to by Trotzky and Lenine, adopted the following:
“This makes necessary the disarming of the bourgeosie [sic] at the proper time, the arming of the laborer, and the formation of a communist army as the protectors of the rules of the proletariat and the inviolability of the social structure.”5
When we realize that each member of the Communist Party of America pledges himself to the principles above set forth, deportation of men and women bound to such a theory is a very mild reformatory sentence. . . .
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.
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."
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2. The Communist Party of America was founded in 1919, splitting off from the Socialist Party in the wake of the Russian Revolution.
3. Leon Trotsky commanded the Red Army during the Bolshevik Revolution, and Vladimir Lenin headed the first Russian Soviet communist government. In 1919, Lenin established the Third Communist International (known as the Comintern) in Moscow, an international socialist workers’ organization whose manifesto called for establishing communism worldwide, through force if necessary, to overthrow the global capitalist, imperialist order.
4. The Communist Labor Party competed with the Communist Party of America in this era; the two groups eventually merged into the Communist Party of the United States of America in 1929.
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[Teaching History - In a Leftist Controlled Sort of Way]:
https://teachingamericanhistory.org/document/the-case-against-the-reds/------------X
"The NYC and London Banksters who financed the Bolshevik Revolution"
"Who financed Lenin and Trotsky?
"One of the greatest myths of contemporary history is that the Bolshevik Revolution in Russia was a popular uprising of the downtrodden masses against the hated ruling class of the Tsars. As we shall see, however, the planning, the leadership and especially the financing came entirely from outside Russia, mostly from financiers in Germany, Britain and the United States. Furthermore we shall see, that the Rothschild Formula played a major role in shaping these events.":
https://themillenniumreport.com/2018/07/the-nyc-and-london-banker-who-financed-the-bolshevik-revolution/
