US repression of leftists
At many times in its history, the US has embarked on a vicious crackdown of the Left (socialists, anarchists, trade union activists). I don’t think this repression should be viewed as unrelated to the repression the US has also meted out against activists for Black liberation (like COINTELPRO). Socialism, anarchism and Black liberation are fundamentally overlapping causes, all of them opposed to the capitalism and imperialism of the US.
According to the Jacobin article linked below, there were three major periods of repression of the Left (trade unionists, socialists, anarchists) in the US:
- In the late 19th century, following the Haymarket affair, where prominent labour activists were jailed and even executed
- In the 1920s (the “First Red Scare”), when the Socialist Party and IWW were “all but crushed”, socialist Eugene Debs was jailed, and anarchist Emma Goldman was forced into exile in the USSR
- In the McCarthyist era of the 1950s (the “Second Red Scare”), which destroyed or neutered so many institutions of the “Old Left”, from the CPUSA itself to the CIO, racial justice organisations, left-wing Jewish secular organisations, legal organisations for the defence of immigrants and workers, and so forth.