Which was worse the First or Second Red Scares?

[heiss93]

Which was worse the First or Second Red Scares?

The Second Red Scare and McCarthyism is more popular in public imagination, but it seems to me that the government was far more persecutorty and fascist in violating civil liberties during the 1st Red scare. Certainly far more violent repression and people were arrested and killed during the 1st.

[JimmyJazz]

I agree, the original one was worse. As far as I know there weren't mass deportations like the Palmer Raids in the second Red scare. Hell, in the first one they sent Eugene Debs (a former presidential candidate) to prison for several years for making a speech against the war. Some long-lasting restrictions on "freedom" of speech in America date to that period--if I recall correctly, the phrase "shout 'fire' in a crowded theater" comes from a court case around that time, and the person that the case centered around was a guy who had been handing out communist and/or anti-war leaflets on a city street corner. That was equated with "shouting 'fire' in a crowded theater".

There is a book by Kenneth Ackerman I've been meaning to read which claims to show that J. Edgar Hoover, the architect of COINTELPRO in the 60s, actually had a lot to do with organizing the deportations and such of the first Red Scare, even though he was just an unknown bureaucrat at the time, and not a member of the FBI yet.