Red Scare Tactics and the Criminalization of Radical Fightback

As thousands of people took to the streets of Los Angeles to defend their communities against state-sanctioned abductions , and the National Guard and Marines descended on the city to quell the unrest, the Senate Subcommittee on Crime and Counterterrorism (SSCC), put three organizations on notice. In a letter dated June 11, 2025, the SSCC accused the Party for Socialism and Liberation (PSL ), Coalition for Humane Immigrant Rights of Los Angeles (CHIRLA ), and Unión del Barrio (UdB ), of providing financial and other material support for “coordinated protests and riots” against Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and other federal law enforcement agencies terrorizing anyone suspected of being undocumented. The SSCC called the uprisings “lawless mob actions,” a danger to public safety, and a contravention of the rule of law, and demanded these organizations “cease and desist” any actions “aiding and abetting” the protests, which were characterized as “criminal conduct.” The organizations were instructed to preserve all communication, contractual, financial, travel, and strategy information related to their role in “planning, coordinating, or funding” the protests. Failure to do so would potentially result in a criminal investigation.

On the surface, the letter appears to be a direct response to the mass resistance campaign against the brutal, arbitrary, and dehumanizing anti-immigration policies of the Donald J. Trump regime (policies that have merely intensified and spectacularized the draconian approach of the previous regime). However, this action from the SSCC signals a much larger campaign of antiradical repression for several reasons. First, it mischaracterizes mass protest as criminal behavior that menaces the public and law enforcement. Second, given the Subcommittee’s focus on financial records, organizations that support counterhegemonic protests are contorted into potential criminal enterprises. Third, the collection of a deluge of documents about donations, relationships, communications, and logistical supports the establishment of guilt by association. In other words, the SSCC is targeting the organizations themselves as well as anyone who can be associated, affiliated, or connected to them. Finally, the demand for “all” emails, grant applications, talking points, third-party contracts, etc., allows substantial room for error by the organizations, which significantly increases the possibility of non-compliance and thus a criminal investigation.

Such tactics are typical of the manifold Red Scares that wreaked havoc on progressive politics in the United States throughout the twentieth century. Here, I follow Robbie Lieberman in “defin[ing] a ‘red scare’ broadly as an attack on civil liberties in the name of Americanism aimed at undermining movements for justice and equality.” Red Scares codify militant challenges as foreign-inspired, or originating outside of U.S. shores and U.S. ideals; as subversive, or aimed at maliciously undermining, impeding, or overthrowing the political, economic, and social functioning of the U.S.; and/or as un-American, or fundamentally incompatible with and diametrically opposed to the ideological and material specifications of the United States. Moreover, Red Scares typically include the convergence of all three branches of government in curtailing freedom of speech, assembly, and association; the central role of the corporate media in spreading the state’s demonization of enemies from without and within; the distortion and criminalization of protest and refusal; disciplining of the citizenry, especially focusing on racialized communities, oppressed nationalities, and counterhegemonic political ideologies; the weaponization of deportation; congressional hearings meant to construct and discredit dissidents; banning “heretical” literature; and anti-intellectualism and attacks on the university. Red Scares are commonly understood as discreet historical moments, e.g., 1919-1920, 1939-1940, and 1950-1954, that occur during times of “social unrest, domestic criticism or foreign crisis.” However, they are better understood as an enduring feature of U.S. politics and governance, which emanate from settler colonialism, capitalist racism, and structural antiradicalism. As such, social unrest and foreign crises have been ongoing throughout the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, and virtually anything counts as “domestic criticism.”

Red Scares generally develop in the type of conjuncture we currently inhabit, in which war or heightened militarism , economic downturn , and a rise in violence against racialized people either by the government, civil society, or both, intersect. The U.S. is the enthusiastic partner of Zionist aggression in Southwest Asia, including the ongoing war-intensified genocide in Gaza and occupied Palestine more broadly and the Zionist-imperialist assault on Iran dubbed the “12-Day War.” The U.S. has also engaged in brutal bombing campaigns Lebanon, Syria, Somalia . Economic suffering resulting from inflation (i.e., corporate price gouging), the further erosion of any social safety net, mass firings and layoffs, and an active but weak labor movement is deepening. This conjuncture has also entailed the militarization of police, the “policification” of the military, and a barrage of executive orders to punish migrants (documented and undocumented), brutalize Palestinians, Arabs, and Muslims, and dehumanize Black and colonized people. All of this while white supremacy and white nationalism are surging .

In previous Red Scares, “communist,” which operated as a synecdoche for a range of radicalisms from socialism to anarchism to syndicalism, was the “witchword .” As Du Bois explained,

…We invent witchwords. If in 1850 an American disliked slavery, the word of exorcism was ‘abolitionist’. He was a ‘nigger lover’. He believed in free love and murder of kind slave masters. He ought to be lynched and mobbed. Today the word is ‘communist’… If anybody questions the power of wealth, wants to build more TVA’s, or advocates civil rights for Negroes, he is a communist, a revolutionist, a scoundrel, and is liable to lose his job or land in jail.

Our current witchwords include antisemitism, bastardized to mean any critique of Israel or Zionism; “DEI,” aimed at crushing any modicum of power, privilege, or access gained by minoritized people, with a particular focus on Black and transgender folks; “woke,” weaponized to discredit progressive politics and social programs; and “domestic terrorist ” / “terrorist supporter” , which targets a range of militant protestors who challenge U.S. imperialism domestically and abroad, but especially those who rejectcv cop cities and support Palestinian liberation.

The disciplining of the Party for Socialism and Liberation illuminates how current witchwords continue to be undergirded by an abstract communist / socialist / Marxist / “radical left” threat. Prior to the June 2025 uprisings in L.A.,PSL had been accused by mainstream media outlets—the propaganda arm of the U.S. state—of antisemitism, for propagating anti-Israel sentiment , especially during the student encampments at Columbia University, and of being funded by the Chinese Communist Party . Thus, the Party’s “criminality” had already been established long before their involvement in the anti-ICE protests in L.A. This interplay of old and new witchwords illuminates just how easily Red Scare strategies can be repackaged and re-applied at any time with astonishing efficacy.

Three important Red Scare tactics can be identified in the attack on PSL, CHIRLA, and UdB. The experience of W. Alphaeus Hunton , the “unsung valiant” who worked alongside the likes of Paul Robeson and W.E.B. Du Bois, conveys the continuity in these tactics. His work as the chairman of the labor committee of the Washington DC chapter of the National Negro Congress , trustee of the Civil Rights Bail Fund , and educational director of the Council on African Affairs kept him and his organizations under government attack for more than two decades.

Hunton’s persecution illustrates the first major Red Scare tactic: the use of Congressional committees like the SSCC to criminalize dissident political activity by imposing criminal penalty on speech, press, or assembly; punishing political minorities through the loss of benefit, right, privilege, or access to occupation; requiring registration (i.e., as a foreign agent) by individuals or organizations to distort the politics as foreign-inspired or anti-American; and using these investigations to harass, injure, or destroy individuals through vicious, biased interrogations. Such committees include the Fish Committee of the House of Representatives, the McCormack-Dickenstein Committee, the Dies Committee, the Overman Subcommittee of the Committee on the Judiciary, the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC), the Subversive Activities Control Board (SACB), and the Senate Internal Security Subcommittee (SISS). Hunton was imprisoned for contempt for six months in 1951 for refusing to “name names” during a HUAC hearing. Specifically, he would not disclose the names of those who donated to the Civil Rights Bail Fund, which had been organized in 1946 to aid in the legal defense of those who were rejected by private bond companies because of their radical politics. Not only did HUAC turn Hunton into a criminal and prisoner, but it also turned insistence on the right to confidentiality into a threat to national security and exposed donors to potential harassment, persecution, and prosecution. Today, in demanding the same type of information from PSL, CHIRLA, and UdB on pain of a criminal investigation, the SSCC is similarly poised to cast a pall of criminality on radical individuals, organizations, and movements.

Relatedly, Red Scare logic dictates that militants are not only criminals, but also pre-eminent threats to law enforcement. Starting around 1919, J. Edgar Hoover, the founding and longest-serving director of the FBI (formerly the Bureau of Investigation) who worked closely with various antiradical committees, continually asserted that it was the ignorant and violent criminal elements that believed in and proffered radical doctrines like communism and sought to thrust the nation into anarchy, lawlessness, and immorality. These types worked to “shackle” the FBI, to undermine effective law enforcement, and to malign police departments by deceitfully invoking the protection of civil liberties. Hoover thus castigated both radical political activity and any critique of law enforcement, as criminal and subversive. Hoover asserted, “Disrespect for law and order is a fundamental cornerstone of communist tactics. Charges of ‘police brutality,’ ‘illegal arrest,’ and ‘persecution’ have long echoed in the Party press. These false communist charges, unfortunately, have been taken up by other groups whose basic purpose is to destroy law and order and to create chaos.” In its letter, the SSCC employed the same line of argumentation as Hoover, making no distinction between organized protests and “lawless mob action,” conflating solidarity and “criminal conduct,” and construing protestors as a danger to law enforcement—despite the latter maintaining the monopoly on force and violence.

The second Red Scare tactic is compelling information about organizations, individuals, and movements while bypassing constitutional rights like due process, protection against self-incrimination, and freedom of speech, association, assembly, and expression. The purpose of compelling troves of data is twofold. First, access to these records allows investigative committees to cast a wide dragnet to criminalize not only direct targets, but also anyone affiliated with the organization, however loosely, through donations, sympathy, indirect engagement (such as being on a mailing list), and the like. The result is often a downturn in organizing and activism due to fear of prosecution and persecution. Second, demanding an astronomical amount of information allows the committees to drain organizations of resources, time, and manpower; to distract them from important organizing work; and to open them up to penalty for non-compliance. In 1955, on Hunton’s recommendation , the CAA closed down after eighteen years because of ongoing government harassment that made it “difficult if not impossible to function.” The nail in the coffin was the SACB’s demand for all correspondence between the CAA and the African National Congress and the South African Indian Congress; all correspondence and materials published and circulated from 1946 to 1955; and all records of funds sent internationally. Just as the SSCC used the anti-ICE protests as a pretext to strongarm sensitive information from radical organizations, the SACB government accused the CAA of potentially violating the Foreign Agents Registration Act to gain access to the organization’s records.

The third Red Scare tactic is treating organizing on behalf of racialized, colonized, or otherwise oppressed groups as a special threat to order and security. During World War II, Hunton was branded a communist and a subversive by the Fish Committee because of his instrumental role in organizing Black workers in a campaign against the Glen Martin Aircraft Factory for refusing to hire them. The NNC was accused of attempting to sabotage the defense industry by infiltrating the factory with Black communist workers. While the Fish Committee did not call Hunton to testify, it nonetheless spread “slanderous testimony without making the slightest effort to corroborate facts,” and it was only when Hunton insisted that he had the right to face his accusers that he was told he had been “exonerated” of charges of subversion and disloyalty. As Hunton later explained , rabid anticommunists represented the pro-Fascist elements in America that aimed to “stifle all expression of opposition to the imperialist, Jim Crow status quo.” Likewise, “The history of all the congressional investigating committees from Martin Dies on down to the present McCarthy and Velde committees has been one of victimizing the fighters against Jim Crow.” Hunton’s assessment can be applied to the SSCC, which seeks to intimidate and discipline PSL, CHIRLA, and UdB for opposing the United States’ racist, jingoistic, imperialist immigration policy and the cruel and unusual tactics being used to enforce it. This is evident in the claim that the three organizations menaced the “rule of law” by defending a vulnerable, superexploited population.

The effects of Red Scares are typically devastating for those who are committed to structural transformation, but they are by no means the only victims. Antiradical government repression creates an atmosphere of intimidation, paranoia, and distrust. This is meant to discourage citizens from taking on political views that could be construed as “un-American” or subversive—or “woke” in today’s parlance; supporting organizations that have been criminalized by the U.S. government; and participating in protests, boycotts, strikes, or other actions that might be deemed “lawless mob action.” But, as Alphaeus Hunton demonstrated, collective fightback is both crucial and possible even as the U.S. government wages war on poor, working-class, racialized, colonized, undocumented, and otherwise oppressed and exploited people. As Democrat elected officials prove feckless and inert in the face of creeping fascism, it is up to ordinary people to organize ourselves against immiseration and dehumanization, to defend our institutions and organizations against government repression and lies, and to struggle courageously for political and economic democracy. Otherwise, the forces of liberation will continue to be crushed in this Red Scare—and the next.

Charisse Burden-Stelly is a member of AISC.