“Revolutionary Radicalism” Report Slurs Pacifists, Civil Libertarians, Liberals
One part of the post-World War I Red Scare (1919-1920) was the New York legislature’s Lusk Committee, created on March 26, 1919, to investigate alleged radical organizations and movements in the U.S. in the immediate post-World War I years. On this day, the Lusk Committee submitted a four-volume report, entitled Revolutionary Radicalism, which slurred pacifists, civil libertarians, liberals and other people and groups with being associated with communism.
The Lusk Committee and its report established a model for attacking people on the left through guilt-by-association with communism that was used by Senator Joe McCarthy (see his notorious February 9, 1950, speech) and the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC, created on May 26, 1938) during the Cold War.
The report served as a model for the HUAC Guide to Subversive Organizations (May 14, 1951) and the private anti-Communist report Red Channels (June 22, 1950).
One of the major consequences of the WW I repression and the Red Scare was the creation of the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) on January 19, 1920 as the first permanent civil liberties organization in American history.
Read the Report: New York State Legislature, Revolutionary Radicalism, 4 Vols. (1920)
Read the Report online: http://archive.org/stream/revolutionaryra00luskgoog#page/n8/mode/2up
Read: Samuel Walker, In Defense of American Liberties: A History of the ACLU (1990)
Read: Paul L. Murphy, World War I and the Origins of Civil Liberties in the United States (1979)
Learn more: Larry Ceplair, Anti-Communism in the Twentieth Century America: A Critical History (2011)