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Xenophobia In The 1920s

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Prejudice. Dangers. Horror. Xenophobia was a common fear in the 1920’s because of everything going on in the world, some examples being the Red Scare and Bolshevik Revolution. Sources A, B, and D go into detail of the dangers of it, describing the numerous harmful things many men and women faced to survive. Xenophobia in the 1920’s was a justifiable fear due to the rapid decrease in the socialist party, socialism spreading throughout the world, and the torturous violence methods being used.

Xenophobia in the 1920’s was a justifiable fear due to the rapid decrease in the socialist party. Source A supports this thought by providing a graph that is labeled “Members of the American Socialist Party 1904-1919.” In the beginning and middle of World War I, membership of the Socialist Party steadily increased, but slowly dropped as the war was ending. Once the war officially ended, membership drastically decreased as people, mainly immigrants because they were the primary group involved, were fearful of being brutally punished or blacklisted. Knowing this, citizens were unmotivated to join, concluding the end of the Socialist Party. Even though the party was losing its’ …show more content…

The reason people might believe this is because many people were being arrested without legal due. The text supporting this statement states, “U.S. Attorney General Palmer led the infamous “Palmer Raids” of 1919 – 1920, in which thousands of suspected radical activists, most of them immigrants, were arrested and hundreds deported without legal due process.” However, this argument is weak because the government had a right to be fearful of all the destruction occurring in the United States and the people causing it. Therefore, they took action against suspected people, and arrested them. This is why xenophobia in the 1920’s wasn’t unfounded paranoia, and instead a justified

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On top of distrust of immigrants, the Red Scare targeted unions. Many Americans

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The year 1919 or to say the early period during the 20th century is also known as the First Red Scare in the history of the United States of America. There was a widespread fear of Bolshevism and anarchism all over the United States, which was influenced by the Russian Revolution as well as the Worldwide Communist Revolution. Labor strikes, walkouts, social disorder, race riots, murders and much more violence had created chaos and paranoia throughout the nation. The threat of communist revolution in the United States following the World War I implied radical actions of American organized labor along with Bolshevism created tough challenges for maintaining social order as well as led to interracial violence among the whites and blacks. The Seattle

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During the 1920s like most people A. Mitchell Palmer fear was communism (the Red Scare). Communism is a belief that is based on one political system and a dictator ruling the government. He was afraid the communism would ruin America’s values by using crime and jeopardizing the government. In Russia people didn’t have basic rights and Americans were afraid the same would happen to them since after WW1 Russia had a lot of influence. Most communist were German and Russian during the time.

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Lastly, unlike the period of 1840s-50s in the period of 1910s-20s Americans were afraid immigrants were bringing ideas of communism into the country and threatening the safety of democracy. The red scare in 1919-20 resulted in a nationwide crusade against left-wingers whose Americanism was suspicious. Numerous states joined in the outcry against radicals. The case of Nicola Sacco and Bartolomeo Vanzetti, the court may have discriminated against them because they were

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Red Scare was adopted because red was the color associated with communist countries and the scare was basically a fear for the communist and the spreading to America. Many people thought the immigrants would bring their beliefs and influence into the United States and change the way America was/is. The very thought of the enemy being in your home was a scary thought for all Americans. The way immigrants were migrating rapidly made people question which ones to trust and who should not be trusted. McCathyism feeds off the fear and adds fuel to the fire.

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In the late 1940s and during the 1950s Americans suffered from both a cultural and political hysteria that was caused by panic and anxiety about the Soviet threat. Many Americans believed that there were communists working within America to weaken the country. Thousands of Americans citizens, from teachers, actors and trade unionists to high level government officials, were accused of being communists or communist sympathizers, and were investigated and questioned in front of government committees and agencies. Their association with communism was often exaggerated and many people lost their jobs or were imprisoned based on inconclusive and at times fictitious evidence. The ‘Red Scare’ that occurred in the United States during this period in

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The Red Scare during the 1920s was a significant event in American history. It shined a light on

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) This proves that the amount of paranoia during this era led to the mass deportations of immigrants and American citizens from false accusations and the building pressure to rid America of Communistic

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Roger Daniel’s points out that there is masses of evidence pre dating the 1920s which can argue that hostility toward immigrants was certainly not a new development in America. This is an equally important factor as it shows there was always a flaw with the ‘melting pot’ theory and hostility was always a major part of America’s history. In the 1860s large numbers of Chinese immigrants flocked to America as cheap labour for projects such as the Union Pacific Railroad and by the 1870s there was over 1000,000 Chinese immigrants in the United States. They were often threatened with racial violence and driven out by WASPs who were threatened by the cheap labour they were willing to offer.

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Anti-immigrant sentiment had been prevalent in the United States since at least the 1840s. It had many sources. Nativists played on fears of violence and of the diversity of thought, belief, and custom represented by European radicalism and religion. Reformers blamed immigrants for municipal corruption. Workingmen's organizations claimed that immigrants kept wages low.

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World War 1 was led many embrace strong anti-immigrant sympathies. The government had started raiding headquarters and started arresting suspects. Attorney had warned the nation that the justice had undercover plots. Throughout 1920’s and 1930’s Vanzetti and Sacco was both feared and despised communism. They both had spent 7 years in prison.

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This action consisted of whites promoting nativist ideas towards those of other ethnicities and trying to prove their inferiority. Some white Americans even tried to organize political parties such as the Know Nothing Party to staunchly resist certain immigrants being admitted into the U.S. Not only was it individuals promoting such ideas, but the Federal government helped ban immigration from certain countries and or limit it. This in contrast with what immigrants experienced in the 1920s was almost nothing as in the 1920s the KKK is reborn and the number of lynching’s increases. However, the violence expressed toward immigrants in America was not even considered wrong at either point in

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The 1920s heralded an era of anti-immigration on a scale never before seen in the nation’s history. In reaction to increasing nativism and the influx of refugees from World War I, Congress passed the 1921 Emergency Quota Act, which “reduced European immigration to three percent of the foreign-born population.” Then, with the Johnson-Reed Act in 1924, Congress “imposed a numerical limit of 155,000 admissions per year…compared to an average of one million a year before the war.” Moreover, while Mexican immigration was not formally restricted, border enforcement regularly apprehended and deported those they deemed the “illegal aliens” from a “mongrel race,” while engaging in racial profiling and detaining and interrogating thousands more. The 1920s represented a significant departure from the relatively more open immigration policies of the nation’s past, introducing unprecedented levels of immigration restriction, racial profiling, and discrimination against those viewed as inferior or dangerous races.

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Even though his number changed about every time he used this statement , people still were on his side and believed him. to why that many Americans believed him was from the said " proof " he had against the accused people . He had a way of speaking to the public that made them believe every word he said , no matter if it was truth or a lie .Americans never really questioned his actions as well and were always on the side of McCarthy . Americans were so paranoid of communism , and its so called " threats " they were willing to believe anything that seemed like hard facts against the matter, and believed him for just seeing that McCarthy was the only one that had the guts to talk about what was going

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The Red Scare in particular made the entirety of American Society anti immigration. The Red Scare was the growing fear of the U.S. having a rise in Communism. There was also a large concern about the growing amount of immigrants coming into the U.S.. To combat this the U.S. established the Emergency Quota Act in 1921 the act established a limit on the number of immigrants accepted from each country. The U.S. would take 3 percent of the population of residents from the origin country into the U.S. each year.

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