The term Red Scare denotes the promotion of fear of a potential rise of communism or radical leftism, used by anti-leftist proponents. In the United States, the First Red Scare was about worker (socialist) revolution and political radicalism. The Second Red Scare was focused on national and foreign communists influencing society, infiltrating the federal government, or both.
The term has somewhat regained popularity among the conservative right in America after the elections of President Barack Obama; the words have for instance been used by radio talkshow host Glenn Beck.
Read more about Red Scare: First Red Scare (1919–1921), Second Red Scare (1947–1957)
Famous quotes containing the words red and/or scare:
“Iconic clothing has been secularized.... A guardsman in a dress uniform is ostensibly an icon of aggression; his coat is red as the blood he hopes to shed. Seen on a coat-hanger, with no man inside it, the uniform loses all its blustering significance and, to the innocent eye seduced by decorative colour and tactile braid, it is as abstract in symbolic information as a parasol to an Eskimo. It becomes simply magnificent.”
—Angela Carter (1940–1992)
“Nor shall you scare us with talk of the
death of the race.
How should we dream of this place without us?—
The sun mere fire, the leaves untroubled about us,
A stone look on the stone’s face?”
—Richard Wilbur (b. 1921)