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Question: Was the red scare and McCarthyism eras a coup? (self.usa)

submitted 5 months ago by CubitOom to c/usa@midwest.social

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I've been reading up on the red scare since admittedly, I don't know much about it and what I do know about it was taught from film. I realized there are a lot of parallels to what is happening today, some realized and some not.

As some one that believes in the freedoms that the constitution and its amendments guarantee, it's deeply disturbing to read about the US in the 1940-1970s. In many ways, it seems to me like this was a coup but then somehow it just kinda fizzled out? I mean I guess it shaped modern politics and its recent enough that some politicians remember it.

Like I have a list of breakpoints which will tell me to flee the US if they happen. I got them mostly from reading about hitlers rise to power (which is also very similar to the present day). However most of them were broken during the red scare.

So I'm wondering, was the red scare a coup? What's really the differences between how the Constitution was disregarded then and how it is attempting to be now?

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[–] WhatAmLemmy@lemmy.world 1 points 5 months ago (1 children)

From what I understand, it was definitely a politically motivated attack on all non-conservatives and non-hardliners; meaning the entire left of center-right, not just socialists/communists.

A coup is more about overthrowing the existing rulers/majority, but conservatism was the majority back then. It was more of an immoral and unethical political cleansing orchestrated by conservatism, but that's a hallmark in the history of conservatism.

[–] CubitOom 0 points 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago) (1 children)

Well they stripped people of citizenship, imprisoned, and sometimes executed for baseless claims,

They stopped citizens for leaving or entering the country.

They created a federal employment loyalty program and purged anyone that they deemed unloyal.

They had secret executive orders.

The FBI and the president seized a lot of power

A lot of what they did was later deemed unconstitutional.

[–] WhatAmLemmy@lemmy.world 1 points 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago)

None of that is exclusive to coups, and none of it is out of character for the USA. If it's surprising, I suggest you take a long hard look at US history from non-US sources.

After WW2, the US sided with the French in trying to maintain their colonial empire, installing a brutal dictatorship in Vietnam, and ended up killing more than a million people in south east Asia; most of which were civilian farmers/peasants. This directly led to the Cambodian genocide and the murder of several million more. That's just a part of SEA. There are dozens more crimes around the world, especially the developing world (e.g. Africa, South America), and there's even the possibility that they staged a coup in Australia when a leftist was elected and threatened their surveillance state. Domestically, they were running biological warfare experiments on blacks, and assassinating blacks/leftists left, right, and center. Including MLK, who up until a month ago they propagandized and whitewashed annually for the last few decades.