History Main / RedScare

* ''I Was a Communist for the FBI'' is a 1951 film purpotedly based on the life of Matt Cvetic, an FBI agent posing as a member of the Communist Party. It hits at all the popular [=McCarthyist=] talking points: liberals are portrayed as Communist dupes, Black people are portrayed as being brainwashed by Communists to believe that they're being persecuted, and labor unions and academia are filled with Communists.

** And of course, the central irony of ''Paranoia'': Alpha Complex is for all intents and purposes a Communist state, although the exact flavor of totalitarianism has varied from edition to edition.

** This experience of Red Scare persecution also explained why many American communists, and also Western European ones, remained silent on Stalin and TheGulag. The persecution experienced by them in Germany, Spain, America, France before the War, and the Soviet Union's support for causes such as African-American upliftment[[note]]They were among the first to visit black communities in the South during [[TheGreatDepression the Depression]] and organize them politically[[/note]] and anti-colonialist movements in Africa (notably Nelson Mandela and several others) made many of them reluctant to take the Soviet Union to task. Paul Robeson pointed out to the HUAC:

* The ugly consequence of the Red Scare was that the likes of [=McCarthy=] and J. Edgar Hoover used the word Communist to justify repressive surveillance to counter actual social reform programs. The UsefulNotes/CivilRightsMovement and the advocacy by African-Americans for integration and equality, despite wide bi-partisan support, was tagged "communist", Martin Luther King Jr. and others like him were investigated by Hoover as communist spies, and Hoover spent most of his time in TheFifties spying on local movements rather than tackling organized crime such as TheMafia, which greatly benefited from the distraction of federal government. On a global scale, American fears about communist expansion led them to sponsor and back several repressive regimes and governments, and sponsor coup d'etats in UsefulNotes/{{Chile}} and UsefulNotes/{{Iran}}. This later involved [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Condor Operation Condor]], which used anti-Communism as an excuse to come to power and enforce oppressive policies, the effects of which obviously extended beyond supposed sympathizers and party members. The operation itself was a brutal crackdown on Communism in those countries, and once again its effects extended way beyond that.

** A similar "White Terror" happened in Taiwan, except that one ended up with a lot more people in prison (it didn't help that RedChina got very, very close to retaking Taiwan after the KMT fled there and the threat of invasion was quite real for some time). Taiwan was placed under martial law until 1987, which gave the KMT goverment abundant powers to enact censorship, repress Taiwanese indigenous culture, and purge political dissidents, regardless of whether they were communists, liberals, or Taiwanese independence activists.

** As Sanders and his ideology became more mainstream, Republicans began to use this line of attack to criticize not just Sanders but the Democratic party as a whole. Some moderate Democrats even tried to use this tactic in an attempt to frame Sanders, and to a lesser extent Elizabeth Warren, as an existential threat to the Democratic party... [[ContemptCrossfire all while many actual socialists]] criticized Sanders [[NoTrueScotsman for not being socialist]] ''enough.''[[note]][[InsistentTerminology At the end of the day, Sanders's policies are far closer to social democracy than anything else, i.e. capitalism with extensive welfare policies.]][[/note]] The attack grew to such a point that, during the 2020 presidential election, incumbent US Republican President UsefulNotes/DonaldTrump tried to frame his Democratic opponent UsefulNotes/JoeBiden as a "radical socialist" despite Biden's long-standing image as a political moderate. While Biden ultimately won the presidential election, this smear did cause him to underperform among Venezuelan and Cuban Americans in Florida, costing him the state and leading to a much closer election than anticipated.

* In Brazil, a frequent tactic of Jair Bolsonaro and his followers is to brand Bolsonaro's critics as communists, leftists, members of the Foro de São Paulo or supporters of his opponent Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva. Bolsonaro's victory in 2018 was partly attributed to the narrative that he was "saving Brazil from communism". Journalists who publish reports with allegations of corruption against Bolsonaro are "liars of the media paid by the left".[[note]]Bolsonaro was already notorious for his attacks on the media long before he became an icon of the Brazilian political right.[[/note]] Likewise, artists who express their indignation against Bolsonaro are "sucklers of the Rouanet law". Even the [[UsefulNotes/Covid19Pandemic coronavirus pandemic]] was "denounced" by many Bolsonaro followers as being a weapon of communist China to destabilize Bolsonaro and the world.

* ''VideoGame/{{Fallout}}'': Part of the backstory is that the Red Scare never ended, but instead of Russia, it was China[[note]]or rather, it was Russia at first, but over time, as Russia lost prominence, China became the ''de facto'' Red country, helped by the fact that the Chinese were anti-western Communists as well[[/note]].

* Ever since the election of UsefulNotes/BarackObama as president in 2008, red-baiting made a comeback among the American right towards Democrats, liberals and leftists. Many conservatives have decried Obama's platform as a communist manifesto and branded his signature Affordable Care Act (a.k.a. Obamacare) as socialized medicine even though the actual law is based on a free-market plan created by Republican Governor of Massachusetts, Mitt Romney. The increasing popularity of senator UsefulNotes/BernieSanders and his ideological compatriots during Obama and later Trump era has only intensified this sentiment (especially after the spectacular collapse of UsefulNotes/{{Venezuela}} under Nicolás Maduro and economic turmoil of UsefulNotes/{{Brazil}} under Dilma Rousseff). Of course, this was a familiar tactic even [[GodwinsLaw prior to Obama and Sanders]],[[note]]See "Red Baiting" (or [=McCarthyism=] for that matter)[[/note]] but the fact that Sanders self-identifies as a democratic socialist gave this kind of attack a layer of credibility that it didn't previously have. The socialist/communist smears against Obama (the first black president) and Sanders (who identifies as Jewish) have in turn lead to contentious accusations of bigotry since historically white supremacists have used red-baiting to justify hostility towards blacks and Jews.
** As Sanders and his ideology became more mainstream, Republicans began to use this line of attack to criticize not just Sanders but the Democratic party as a whole. Some moderate Democrats even tried to use this tactic in an attempt to frame Sanders, and to a lesser extent Elizabeth Warren, as an existential threat to the Democratic party... [[ContemptCrossfire all while many actual socialists]] criticized Sanders [[NoTrueScotsman for not being socialist]] ''enough.''[[note]][[InsistentTerminology At the end of the day, Sanders's policies are far closer to social democracy than anything else, i.e. capitalism with extensive welfare policies.]][[/note]] The attack grew to such a point that, during the 2020 presidential election, incumbent US Republican President UsefulNotes/DonaldTrump tried to frame his Democratic opponent UsefulNotes/JoeBiden as a "radical socialist" despite Biden's long-standing image as a political moderate. While Biden ultimately won the presidential election, this smear did cause him to underperform among Cuban Americans in Florida, costing him the state and leading to a much closer election than anticipated.

* ''Exit Stage Left: The WesternAnimation/{{Snagglepuss}} Chronicles'', part of the ''ComicBook/HannaBarberaBeyond'' line, casts Snagglepuss as a gay actor caught up in the [=McCarthy=] Trials. [[spoiler:In a sad twist, this universe's WesternAnimation/HuckleberryHound was DrivenToSuicide and Snagglepuss is blacklisted, but he's able to recover and decides to help Huckleberry's son out with his own road to stardom.]]

* ''Film/JamesBond'' and his films made use of the Red Scare even when they avoided Ian Fleming's DirtyCommunists trope use. ''Film/FromRussiaWithLove'', ''Film/ForYourEyesOnly'', and ''Film/TheSpyWhoLovedMe'' all deal with the West's rivalry with the Soviet Union without actually parodying the villains. Agent XXX from ''Film/TheSpyWhoLovedMe'' was even a love interest.

* ''Film/{{Red Dawn|1984}}'' has both DirtyCommunists elements and Red Scare elements. [[Film/RedDawn2012 The remake]] goes with the YellowPeril version.

* ''VideoGame/TeamFortress2'': The very patriotic [[{{Eagleland}} Soldier]] believes that the enemy [[HuskyRusskie Heavy]] is a Communist. But only the enemy Heavy, not the equally-Russian Heavy from his own team. In one of the supplementary comics, ''A Cold Day In Hell'', Soldier arrives in Soviet Siberia to convince Heavy to re-join the team. Soldier initially plays this trope straight, acting suspicious of the warm coats and soup offered to him by Heavy's family and allies, but apparently makes an exception for SensualSlavs, very quickly ending up romantically entwined one of Heavy's younger sisters.

** One side effect of the Red Scare was that it created a CryingWolf effect when the West tried to point out actual communist atrocities. Most notably, the Cambodian genocide was originally dismissed by many as simply more anti-communist propaganda, even though it was Communist Vietnam that halted the events and liberated the survivors while Communist China, America's trading partner, backed Pol Pot, which aside from exposing America's blindness also discredited the [[DisasterDominoes Domino Theory]] that governed "containment" and revealed that communist movements were in fact diverse rather than a single monolith.
** This experience of Red Scare persecution also explained why many American communists, and also Western European ones, remained silent on Stalin and TheGulag. The persecution experienced by them in Germany, Spain, America, France before the War, and the Soviet Union's support for causes such as African-American upliftment[[note]]They were the first to visit black communities in the South during the Depression and organize them politically[[/note]] and anti-colonialist movements in Africa (notably Nelson Mandela and several others) made many of them reluctant to take the Soviet Union to task. Paul Robeson pointed out to the HUAC:

* Indeed Fascism owed its appeal largely to its strict anti-Communist policies. Italy had its Red Scare after UsefulNotes/WorldWarI, ending in 1922 with UsefulNotes/BenitoMussolini taking over the country. Due to the Italian people still remembering what happened the first time, post-UsefulNotes/WorldWarII attempts at igniting a new one failed miserably, to the point that during the UsefulNotes/ColdWar Italy had the strongest Communist Party of NATO, a party that was actually in power for a while, and which because it parted ways with the Soviet Union over the invasion of Czechoslovaka, allowed it to retain much of its prestige. The Communist Party of France had a similar prestige, to some extent because the Communists had played a very large role in the Resistance during World War Two.
* The UsefulNotes/WeimarRepublic had this to a certain degree: if you compare the sentences for politically-motivated murder during that time, you'll find out that a member of the left-wing who killed a member of the right-wing was likely to be punished harder than a member of the right-wing killing a member of the left-wing. Society had a certain fear of Communism, and like the prejudices against Jews during that time, Hitler used this whenever he could.

** To add insult to injury, Sukarno's Communism is Marhaenism (named from a farmer Sukarno met one day), explicitly ''not'' similar to Soviet Communism. In fact Sukarno challenged the Soviets to prove which Communism was superior, by personally funding the construction of a statue (Dirgantara statue, commonly known as Pancoran statue) with an outstretched hand toward Moscow. And to add another insult, the 1965 tragedy happened before the statue's main body started construction, so rumors abounded that it was supposed to be an [[EyeScream eye gouger]] that were used by the coup perpetrator.
** Similar anti-communist rhetoric was later used to justify the Indonesian invasion of UsefulNotes/TimorLeste in 1975, where the biggest Timorese resistance movement was the Marxist Fretilin, which initally fought against Portuguese colonization. The withdrawal of Portuguese forces in 1974 and the presence of large numbers leftists in East Timor led to fears that the newly independent country might be used as an outpost by communists to subvert Indonesian domination. The Indonesian occupation of East Timor from 1975 until 1999 killed up to 300,000 East Timorese.

* Thomas Piketty's ''Capital in the Twenty-First Century'' (2014) definitively proved that in the long term, economic inequality increases exponentially because it has always been, is, and probably will continue to be the case that the average increase in the value of capital (''r'') exceeds the average increase in the value of wages (''g''). The general reaction to the book was depression, since most readers recognized the political difficulty or even impossibility of correcting ''r > g'' given the influence of wealth over politics. Communists and Socialists criticized Piketty for not using his fame to argue more strongly for measures to correct ''r > g'', Anarchists criticized him for not advocating the end of rulership, and Liberals and (economically Liberal) Conservatives outright accused him of being a (closeted) Communist. The very idea that capitalism was fundamentally anti-meritocratic was so toxic to Liberal "free market" belief that most Liberal journals wisely decided not to mention it, and instead condemned him in general terms for the statistical inaccuracy/deception he used to push his "Secret Marxist Agenda". Though Piketty is a support of the French Socialist Party, they're hardly Communist (that's another, far smaller party), more center-left at best.

* Ever since the election of UsefulNotes/BarackObama as president in 2008, red-baiting made a comeback among the American right towards Democrats, liberals and leftists. Many conservatives have decried Obama's platform as a communist manifesto and branded his signature Affordable Care Act (a.k.a. Obamacare) as socialized medicine even though the actual law is based on a free-market plan created by Republican Governor of Massachusetts, Mitt Romney. The increasing popularity of senator UsefulNotes/BernieSanders and his ideological compatriots during Obama and later Trump era has only intensified this sentiment (especially after the spectacular collapse of UsefulNotes/{{Venezuela}} under Nicolás Maduro and economic turmoil of UsefulNotes/{{Brazil}} under Dilma Rousseff). Of course, this was a familiar tactic even [[GodwinsLaw prior to Obama and Sanders]],[[note]]See "Red Baiting" (or [=McCarthyism=] for that matter)[[/note]] but the fact that Sanders self-identifies as a democratic socialist gave this kind of attack a layer of credibility that it didn't previously have. The socialist/communist smears against Obama (the first Black president) and Sanders (who identifies as Jewish) have in turn lead to contentious accusations of bigotry since historically white supremacists have used red-baiting to justify hostility towards Blacks and Jews.
** As Sanders and his ideology became more mainstream, Republicans began to use this line of attack to criticize not just Sanders but the Democratic party as a whole. Some moderate Democrats even tried to use this tactic in an attempt to frame Sanders, and to a lesser extent Elizabeth Warren, as an existential threat to the Democratic party... [[ContemptCrossfire all while actual socialists]] criticized Sanders [[NoTrueScotsman for not being socialist]] ''enough.''[[note]][[InsistentTerminology At the end of the day, Sanders's policies are far closer to social democracy than anything else, i.e. capitalism with extensive welfare policies.]][[/note]] The attack grew to such a point that, during the 2020 presidential election, incumbent US Republican President UsefulNotes/DonaldTrump tried to frame his Democratic opponent UsefulNotes/JoeBiden as a "radical socialist" despite Biden's long-standing image as a political moderate. While Biden ultimately won the presidential election, this smear did cause him to underperform among Cuban Americans in Florida, costing him the state and leading to a much closer election than anticipated.

* In Brazil, a great tactic of Jair Bolsonaro and his followers is to brand Bolsonaro's critics as communists, leftists, members of the Foro de São Paulo or supporters of his opponent Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva. Bolsonaro's victory in 2018 was partly attributed to the narrative that he was "saving Brazil from communism". Journalists who publish reports with allegations of corruption against Bolsonaro are "liars of the media paid by the left".[[note]]Bolsonaro was already notorious for his attacks on the media long before he became an icon of the political right.[[/note]] Likewise, artists who express their indignation against Bolsonaro are "sucklers of the Rouanet law". Even the coronavirus pandemic was "denounced" by many Bolsonaro followers as being a weapon of communist China to destabilize Bolsonaro and the world.

* ''Radio/OurMissBrooks'': A few times it was PlayedForLaughs by DeadpanSnarker Miss Brooks.
** In "Walter's Radio", after Mr. Boynton makes a non-committal statement about the weather, Miss Brooks snarks:
---> '''Miss Brooks''': There's a statement you won't be investigated for."
** In "The Cafeteria Strike", Walter Denton starts a student petition against the terrible food in the school cafeteria:
--->'''Walter Denton''' (reading the petition): Whereas and to wit...\\
'''Miss Brooks''': That's pretty strong language, isn't it? A little on the pink side...

* ''Series/FellowTravelers2023'': The series is set in the early 1950s during the starting sequences, with the second Red Scare ongoing, while UsefulNotes/JosephMcCarthy is a supporting character.

* ''Series/FellowTravelers2023'': The series is set in the early 1950s during the starting sequences, with the second Red Scare ongoing, while Joseph McCarthy is a supporting character.