The Main Cause of the Red Scare Was the Distrust in Immigrants

‘The Main Cause of the Red Scare was a distrust of immigrants’. Use the sources and your own knowledge to explain whether you agree with this view.

The First Red Scare in America, was not just down to the distrust immigrants, as there were an all manner of reasons including violence, patriotism, economic problems and strikes that were also key and influential reasons to why it happened. Therefore, I do not agree with the statement ‘The Main cause of the Red Scare was the distrust in immigrants’.

However, the distrust in immigrants were partly to blame for the Red Scare. This is because it was a scare about communism and lots of American people believed that immigrants were likely communists. American people also turned against the IWW as they saw it as ‘unpatriotic’ and ‘communist’. In source B which was written by the America Legion it talks about ‘fostering and perpetuating 100% Americanism’ therefore implying that immigrants are not fully American, but people saw this also as anti-immigrant. Also in source B it talks about vigilante justice against the ‘Reds’. This came from immigrants taking ‘American jobs’ creating a lack of jobs and a large amount of strikes creating a feeling of anti-immigrant. American people also didn’t like that immigrants often brought new political ideas, this caused many Americans to think that they brought communist views. This therefore agrees with the question. As well as this, often immigrants came over to America often poor and unskilled and yet they still seemed to be able to take jobs from American people. This left American people outraged. Finally, in source A it says the phrase ‘Alien Slacker’. This phrase clearly shows that Americans hated immigrants because they are calling the immigrants ‘Aliens’ and also saying they are ‘slackers’ which implies that Americans don’t think immigrants work very hard. This shows a very anti-immigrant view and also it implies to me that this is saying that a lot of Americans believed that immigrants were to blame for the Red Scare.

Moreover, it was not just immigrants that were the sole reason for the start of the Red Scare. The other internal problems in America such as economic problems, patriotism, strikes, violence and America trying to promote prosperity and freedom of democracy were also influential in the First Red Scare. In source B it says ‘to promote peace and good will on earth; to safeguard and transmit to prosperity the principles of justice, freedom and democracy’, this talks about how communism would be good for America giving examples how you would be free and have the principles of justice. This showed that many Americans thought that communism could be a good idea and it could've also gotten people scared about what communism would also do to America. At about the time of the first Red Scare there was huge economic problems in America, this i think is another reason for the start of the Red Scare because by the end of WW1, America had 4 million people in the armed forces and about 9 million worked in war industries. Once the war ended these people became unemployed creating a huge amount of added unemployment, this created huge worry and a lot of unemployed people thought that communism might be a good idea. This therefore continues to disagree with the question. Also around this time there were a huge amount of strikes to do with job losses. 400,000 American workers went out on strike after being made unemployed by the armed forces and the war industries. This created a lot of tension between the American people. Another cause of the Red Scare was the Press. The Press were involved because they made it sound worse than it was which made people more scared about the thought of communism. Someone called Mitchell Palmer tried to use this to his advantage.