Red-baiting

{{bronze}}[[File:WC Vol18 CE996 Wanted for treason.jpg|thumb|150px|Days before JFK was assassinated, this flyer went around and accused JFK of being an anti-Christian Communist sympathizer and blaming the race riots on Communism.]]
{{communism}}
{{cquote|...a rather obvious attempt to discredit bankers by casting Lionel Barrymore as a 'scrooge-type' so that he would be the most hated man in the picture. This, according to these sources, is a common trick used by Communists.|||FBI memorandum (13,533 pages long) on ''It's a Wonderful Life''<ref>''Communist Infiltration of the Motion Picture Industry'', (1947)</ref>}}{{cquote|And you ain’t done nothing if you ain’t been called a Red.|||{{wpl|Faith Petric||,}} an actual red}}
'''Red-baiting''' (or '''{{wpl|Red-tagging in the Philippines|red-tagging}}''' in the [[Philippines]]) is a notorious [[bullshit]]ting tactic used almost exclusively by the [[right wing]]. It consists of making a false and/or groundless accusation that some person is a [[communist]] or [[fellow traveler]], often with the aim of [[Poisoning the well|discrediting them or destroying their reputation]]. Essentially, everything that [[Reactionary|certain people]] dislike is to be considered [[Communist]] plots. As such, red-baiting is a form of [[guilt by association]], a fallacy which [[Stalin]] [[Irony|himself used to justify some of ''his'' crimes]].<ref>For example, in relation to the {{w|Doctors' Plot}} debacle. See: {{Cite book|last=Lindemann|first=Albert S.|url=https://www.google.com/books/edition/Antisemitism/SaEUDAAAQBAJ?hl=en&gbpv=1&pg=PA187&printsec=frontcover|title=Antisemitism: A History|last2=Levy|first2=Richard S.|date=2010|publisher=Oxford University Press|isbn=978-0-19-923503-2|pages=187–188|quote=As Stalin explained to the Politburo in December 1952: 'Every Jewish nationalist is the agent of the American intelligence service. Jewish nationalists think that their nation was saved by the USA … They think they are indebted to the Americans. Among doctors, there are many Jewish nationalists.' A few days later the decision to organize a show trial was made, the grounds announced by a ''Pravda'' article on January 13, 1953, 'Vicious Spies and Killers under the Mask of Academic Physicians.'}}</ref>

Republicans, known for red-baiting when [[Joseph McCarthy]] attained the political spotlight, once opposed repressive policies spawned from hyper-fearmongering. Senators {{wpl|Hiram Johnson}} and [[Henry Cabot Lodge]] opposed the {{wpl|Sedition Act of 1918||,}} signed by President [[Woodrow Wilson]].<ref>''The New York Times,'' "SENATE ACCEPTS SEDITION BILL; Conference Report Adopted, 48 to 26, and Now Goes to House for Action. FRANCE AMENDMENT OUT Persons Speaking Truth for Good Ends Not Exempt from Punishment. SEE BLOW AT FREE SPEECH Hiram Johnson and Lodge Criticise Provisions--House Passes Flood Passport Bill. What the Bill Provides. Details of the Vote. Airplane Engine Not Tested. Spy, but Not Even Interned. ADOPTS PASSPORT BILL. House Sends Measure Aimed at Spies to Senate for Action."</ref>

==History==
[[File:Unholy_three.png|thumb|left|Don't get [[pwn]]ed by red-baiting!{{efn|The fact that [[TV Tropes]] currently uses this image as their page image for [https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/PoesLaw their article] on [[Poe's Law]]<ref>[https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/PoesLaw Poe's Law], TV Tropes.</ref> should be indicative of how outlandish it is.}}]]
Red-baiting was a very popular tactic during the American {{wpl|Red Scare|Red Scares|,}} beginning with the {{wpl|First Red Scare}} in the aftermath of [[World War One]] when the recent Russian Revolution combined with growing demands for workers' rights and opposition to American imperialism and militarism connected with the recent war. This made American society's more conservative members fearful of communist revolution. During the war, a series of draconian laws were implemented that restricted civil liberties, including the 1917 Espionage Act and the Sedition Act and Immigration Act in 1918. January 1919 saw a general strike in Seattle, the first of several major strikes across the country through the year. including the {{wpl|Boston Police Strike||;}} on May Day, there was violence in Boston, Cleveland, and elsewhere between leftists, police, and far-right "patriot" organisations.<ref>{{wpa|May Day riots of 1919}}</ref> There were also race riots in cities from Chicago to Arizona. A series of anarchist bombings targeted business leaders and government officials. In response, at the end of the year were the two {{wpl|Palmer Raids||,}} in which 10,000 alleged subversives were rounded up; this led to the foundation of the [[American Civil Liberties Union]]. In 1920, tensions dissipated. [[J. Edgar Hoover]], then boss of the General Intelligence Division, and attorney general Mitchell Palmer made dire predictions of an imminent communist revolution that conspicuously failed to come to pass. The AFL labor union tried to discourage police strikes, and a series of court cases released agitators. [[Warren G. Harding]], elected at the end of the year, struck a conciliatory note amid a general sense that things had got a bit crazy and released many imprisoned radicals on Christmas Day in 1921.<ref>{{wpa|First Red Scare}}</ref>

The most famous instance was the Second Red Scare in the late-1948s and 1950s; its most notorious practitioner was [[Republican Party|Republican]] senator [[Joseph McCarthy]] of [[Wisconsin]], for whom [[McCarthyism]] is named. It was less bloody than 1919, largely focused on a series of dramatically-staged hearings into alleged communism followed by the sacking of anyone suspected of communist sympathies, most famously the [[Hollywood blacklist]]. The broadcast hearings of the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC) and other congressional committees whipped up paranoia about communists subverting American institutions, which led to [[Harry Truman]]'s "Federal Employees Loyalty Program" under {{wpl|Executive Order 9835}} and several state loyalty acts, as well as restrictions in civil liberties by the {{wpl|McCarran Internal Security Act}} of 1950. But more importantly, the tactic was successful in dividing American [[liberal]]s from those to their ideological left in subsequent decades. Thus, [[Democratic Party|Democratic]] Wisconsin [[Congress]]man Robert Kastenmeier instructed his staffers in the 1960s to avoid contact with [[New Left|student activists]] at the University of Wisconsin at Madison.<ref>Cathy Wilkerson. 2007. ''Flying Too Close to the Sun''. Seven Stories Press. ISBN 9781583227718. pp. 91-92</ref> Madison was in his constituency, and the likely result of this de-linking was that the [[Irony|students were even more radicalized]]. 

White segregationists commonly held signs that said "[[Miscegenation|Race-mixing]] [[Bullshit|is communism]]" and held [[racism|views which agreed]].<ref>Wade, Lisa, [http://thesocietypages.org/socimages/2009/10/10/race-mixing-is-communism/ “Race Mixing Is Communism” - Protesters in Little Rock, Arkansas, (1959)], posted 10.10.09. The smoking gun between "race-mixing" and communism is supposed to be "[[International Jewish conspiracy|The Jews]]". "The Jews" invented both to weaken or destroy "The White Master Race" ''ergo'' the mongrelization of white society CASE CLOSED.</ref> This sort of horseshit also serves to [[groupthink|discourage similar dissent]].

A variety of [[wingnut]]s also exploited the Red Scares by using red-baiting to claim that their opponents were all commies, thus handily pushing their own agendas. A notable example is the [[Mormon]] and [[John Birch Society]] member [[W. Cleon Skousen]], who published a book entitled ''The Naked Communist''. This book outlined a 45-point "communist" program including such planks as the legalization of [[homosexuality]] (in [[reality]], communist countries were not known for being "gay Meccas"), expansion of [[civil rights]] (again, communist countries were not known for being bastions of freedom), and an increased role for [[psychiatrist]]s (we're not going to say it a third time<ref>{{wpa|Political abuse of psychiatry in the Soviet Union}}</ref>). Skousen and his books have been a major inspiration for [[Glenn Beck]].<ref>[https://web.archive.org/web/20090922170353/http://www.salon.com/news/feature/2009/09/16/beck_skousen/print.html Telling.]</ref>

It was employed to [[political]] ends in [[apartheid]]-era [[South Africa]], where the "''{{wpl|rooi gevaar}}''" (red danger) was used as a means to keep the [[white people|white]] population afraid of the looming communist menace just waiting to take over the country. This threat proved to be [[myth]]ical when the [[African National Congress]] happily scrapped its [[socialist]] economic program as part of a compromise to legally take power.

Red-baiting has also been employed by right-wing [[anti-science]] and [[denialist]] movements to tar [[scientist]]s who made ideologically-inconvenient discoveries as dirty commies. This tactic was seen prominently in the [[anti-relativity]], anti-[[water fluoridation]], and [[anti-vaccination]] movements (see image) as well as [[global warming denier]]s.<ref>[http://watchingthedeniers.wordpress.com/2010/06/03/the-socialist-haunted-world-relativity-fluoridation-and-climagte-changeas-socialist-plot/ The Socialist Haunted World: Relativity, Fluoridation, and Climate Change as a Socialist Plot]</ref>

==Fallacious use==
[[File:Anticommunist Literature 1950s.png|thumb|right|220px|Anticommunist propaganda alleging communist control of the US entertainment industry.]]
When McCarthy and other anti-communist figures in the U.S. government went after lefties in the [[Hollywood]] [[Films|movie]] industry, it resulted in the harassment of some people who were in a position to make quite a bit of noise. A great many allegorical works, written in opposition to Red-baiting, poured out of Hollywood and Broadway during that time, including Arthur Miller's play {{wpl|The Crucible|''The Crucible''|,}} Stanley Kramer and Carl Foreman's film ''High Noon'', and play and film versions of ''[[Scopes trial#Reinterpretation in Inherit the Wind|Inherit the Wind]]'', the latter of which caused a tempest in a teapot when [[creationist]]s mistook its allegory for flat factual claims.

These efforts, as well as the reckless and [[paranoid]] behavior of McCarthy, saw a sort of stigma settle over emphatically anti-communist views. With this state of affairs, the term "red-baiting" has itself seen some fallacious use, mostly as an attempt to ridicule criticisms of communism in which no false accusations are actually made.

For example, the term is occasionally used with regard to the affair of the "Hollywood Ten", screenwriters who were brought before the House Un-American Activities Committee in 1947 to testify concerning their political activities.<ref>[http://www.guardian.co.uk/film/1999/mar/20/1 'Red-baiting' denouement in Hollywood], ''The Guardian''</ref> This, however, ignores that (1) the Hollywood Ten actually ''were'' communists, and (2) they were arrested only when they refused to answer questions of whether they were. The charge was contempt of Congress; they were not prosecuted for being communists, which was not a [[crime]].<ref group=note>Seven years later, however, membership in the [[Communist Party USA]] was criminalized, when it was determined that that organization was exclusively a front for Soviet espionage; by that time, very few of the U.S.'s communists were actually in the party, which [[Lulz|contained more FBI informants than actual members]]. Communist party leaders were already convicted of sedition in 1949. The US Supreme Court later quashed both of these measures.</ref>

Another use of the term is in response to ''any'' suggestion that the [[Soviet Union]] was attempting to infiltrate and influence non-communist governments during its flourishing period (also [[Satire|satirized]] using the phrase "Reds under the bed"), equating these with far-out [[Conspiracy theory|conspiracy theories]] such as those of the JBS. But it is a historical fact that there were a number of Soviet infiltrators working in non-communist countries, especially in the [[UK]] and USA. Some well-known examples:

*Soviet [[nuclear weapon]]s were developed partially with information stolen from the U.S. atomic bomb project; [[German]]-born Briton Klaus Fuchs appears to have been the primary conduit for such information. (Note, however, that great powers [[intelligence (government)|spy]] on one another as a normal practice. Had the two post-war superpowers both been [[democratic]] or communist or one democratic and the other [[fascist]], they would ''still'' have spied on one another's nuclear weapons programs.)   

*[[George Orwell]] had great difficulty publishing his anti-Stalinist satiric fable ''[[Animal Farm]]''. It was later revealed that a Soviet infiltrator in the British government had put pressure on publishers in this regard.<ref>{{cite web |url=https://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2003/jun/21/books.artsandhumanities |title=Blair's babe |work=The Guardian |author=John Ezard |date=21 June 2003}}</ref>

*[[Alger Hiss]] was a rather high-level American [[lawyer]] who ended up basically laying out the silverware at the [[World War II|Yalta Conference]] and chaired the founding of the [[United Nations]] in [[San Francisco]], all while being a mole for Moscow. In 1948, [[Richard Nixon]] would create the Red Scare, with his antics [[PIDOOMA|pulling secret documents out of pumpkins]] and laying all the groundwork for McCarthy to go bananas. The American left, for the most part, was duped into thinking Hiss was innocent, making themselves look absolutely idiotic for a couple of years.<ref>Jacoby, Susan, ''Alger Hiss and the Battle for History''. Yale University Press, 2009. Jacoby herself says she is 98% certain that Hiss was guilty because he was simply not a good liar and slipped up in public. Hiss denied it to his death, though.</ref> 

*The Cambridge Five were a group of spies who worked their way up various posts in the British upper echelons, sending intelligence to the Reds. The four identified agents were Kim Philby (cryptonym: Stanley), Donald Duart Maclean (cryptonym: Homer), Guy Burgess (cryptonym: Hicks), and Anthony Blunt (cryptonym: Johnson). They met at Cambridge University in the 1930s and became involved with left-wing groups in opposition to a noticeable pro-[[Hitler]] trend from some of the [[Monarchy|Royal Family members]] that wasn't too digestible. Also, two of the four were gay in a time when the left was the only real center of gay culture. Philby ended up in the right-wing papers, reporting from [[Spanish Civil War|Guernica]]. At one point, the [[Spanish]] Communists got him close enough to [[Francisco Franco]] for a quick [[murder]]-[[suicide]], but Philby chickened out. He later nearly became the head of MI6 (British intelligence), which would have been an incalculable disaster. Even so, they did great damage before being found out and escaping into exile in the USSR.

Ergo, it's important to make the distinction.

==Present day==
{{cquote|Thus were two generations of Americans treated by their overlords until, in the end, at the word 'communism' there is an orgasmic Pavlovian reflex just as the brain goes dead.|||[[Gore Vidal]]<ref>''Vanity Fair, 1999.</ref>}} 
Even in the present day, after the collapse of the [[Soviet Union]] and [[China]]'s tacit abandonment of communism, Red-baiting is still popular among the American and global right wing. Glenn Beck and various [[talk radio]] figures liberally (ahem) use such terms as "communist" and "[[Karl Marx|Marxist]]" to refer to anything they dislike.  

Popular targets have included former U.S. President [[Barack Obama]], who was said to be a crypto-communist pushing "[[Obamunism]]," and the [[Democratic Party]]; in 2009, the Republican National Committee was pressured to adopt a plank stating that the [[Socialism#U.S. Democratic Party|Democrats are a socialist party]].<ref>They eventually [http://www.csmonitor.com/USA/Politics/The-Vote/2009/0520/rnc-drops-resolution-to-call-democrats-socialists instead adopted] a resolution stating that the Dems were restructuring the US along "socialist ideals" in order to ditch the soundbite while still tossing red bait towards... someone.</ref> [[Pope Francis]] has often been attacked as a Marxist by American wingnuts because of the [[Catholic Church]]'s rejuvenated attention to [[poverty]] and [[social justice]] issues,<ref>[https://web.archive.org/web/20141029001209/http://koin.com/2014/10/28/pope-francis-addresses-communist-whispers/ Pope Francis addresses communist whispers]</ref> AP despite the fact that the Catholic Church continues to be [[reactionary]] in regards to [[transgender]] rights and [[abortion]]. In the late 2010s, with the ongoing trade war and deterioration in relations between the US and China, the latter has become the go-to boogeyman for the right again, with even [[Joe Biden]] being accused of a Chinese asset or "soft on China", simply because his son [[Hunter Biden]] has done business there, even though the senior Biden kept much of Trump's tariffs.<ref>[https://edition.cnn.com/2024/09/13/politics/china-tariffs-biden-trump/index.html Biden finalizes increases to some of Trump’s China tariffs] Katie Lobosco. CNN, September 13, 2024</ref>. Right-wing [[culture war]]riors even have a habit of associating climate change activism and LGBT acceptance with...Chinese communism, simply because some corporations like BlackRock and Disney virtue signal about social justice at home but still do business with the Chinese government.<ref>[https://www.axios.com/2022/08/18/blackrock-esg-conservatives Scoop: GOP's "existential" attack plan on ESG] Hans Nichols. Axios, March 8, 2023</ref> 

Former [[Labour Party]] leader [[Jeremy Corbyn]] was also a frequent target of red-baiting attacks from the media and commentators, usually attacking him (and/or his supporters) as being Marxist or indeed communist or, at the very least, making some ''very'' clear coded attacks on this basis. This is based on a ''very'' profound, and almost certainly deliberate, misreading of Corbyn's views — while he's undeniably less apologetic about being on the left than most other recent Labour leaders, he is most certainly ''not'' a communist or even all that far left in the scheme of things.<ref group=note>Aside from him apparently never being a member of any party other than the Labour Party, and outright stating at points that he hasn't even read all that much Marx, Corbyn axiomatically cannot be a communist or a Marxist since he does not appear to believe in the collectivization of the means of production, the complete abolition of capitalism, revolution as a means of obtaining political change, or the abolition/melting away of the state. The reality — as ''actual'' communists will tell you, to their great displeasure — is that Corbyn is a Labour Party man through and through, and is only really "left wing" relative to the rest of Labour.</ref> The interesting thing here is that in addition to being red-baited from a critical perspective, quite a few of his ''supporters'' also liked to imagine him as being further left than he was too, which certainly didn't help sway the people who were receptive to the aforementioned treatment.<ref group=note>While one could make an argument that he is further left than he chooses to let on, the counterpoint is that Corbyn hasn't exactly been shy about expressing controversial/widely disliked political viewpoints in the past, so why would he conceal one that's fundamental to his entire worldview?</ref>

There is at least one known example of the form of *ahem* argument, though not in keeping with the original intent, being used by people further to the left than the target. During a teachers' [[strike]] in [[Chicago]] against mayor Rahm Emanuel (previously a major participant in the aforementioned Obamunism), protesters were observed carrying signs exhorting the public to "Fight Rahmunism!"

Of course, even the far right has started to realize that accusations of "communism" don't sound as credible (or threatening) as they used to since the fall of the Iron Curtain, so they've started shifting to "socialism" (which included communism) in particular and "leftism" in general — while, of course, heavily conflating [[social democracy]] with communist countries like [[North Korea]] and failed socialist dictatorships such as [[Venezuela]].

Despite the Italian Communist Party being the largest communist party in the Western world before its dissolution in 1991, since then red-baiting has been used several times by the right-wing, most notably by [[Silvio Berlusconi]] (who used the expression ''red robes'' to refer to the judges who sentenced him in {{wpl|Trials and allegations involving Silvio Berlusconi| his numerous trials}} and said the iconic phrase: "You are still today, and as always, poor communists").

==Gallery==
<gallery>
Thomas Nast communist skeleton cartoon 1880.png|1880 political cartoon depicting the Constitution of the State of California as an anarchist, communist, free-loving skeleton.
Step by step greene.jpg|Comic from 1919, during the First Red Scare.
Smash the Red Wreckers and Save Australia.jpg|Red-baiting poster from the 1931 Australian federal election by what is now the [[Liberal Party of Australia]].
</gallery>

==See also==
*[[Joseph McCarthy]]
*[[Roy Cohn]] — McCarthy's chief legal counsel
*[[Godwin's Law]], often [[Shoehorning|used]] [[Horseshoe theory|conjointly]]
*[[Green-baiting]] and [[watermelon]] — The [[Anti-environmentalism|anti-environmentalist]] versions of red-baiting.
*[[Jonanism]]
*[[Pink-baiting]]
*[[Terrorism-baiting]]

==Notes==
{{reflist|group=note}}

==References==
{{reflist|2}}

{{logfal}}

[[Category:Communism]]
[[Category:Conservative deceit]]
[[Category:Fallacious arguments]]
[[Category:Informal fallacies]]
[[Category:Moral panics]]
[[Category:Scapegoating]]

Categories: Communism, Conservative deceit, Fallacious arguments, Informal fallacies, Moral panics, Scapegoating