The Third Red Scare

America is in the midst of a third Red Scare. Through speeches, press conferences, and social media, President Trump and other Republicans warn of a communist subversion that feels more at home in the McCarthy era than 2026. While ever-present in right-wing politics, anti-communist rhetoric has intensified following recent victories by Democratic Socialist candidates in congressional primaries in New York and Colorado. Electoral successes notwithstanding, the second Trump administration’s posture toward opposition to its policies of drastic cuts to the social safety net, support for Israel’s unrestrained aggression in the Middle East, and mass deportations fueled by racist conspiracy theories has taken on a tone that bears a striking resemblance to previous campaigns of repression directed at the American left. 

Actions matching the rhetoric were catalyzed by the murder of conservative activist Charlie Kirk in September 2025. Since then significant public resources have been redirected toward combating what the Trump administration has deemed a rising threat of “radical left-wing” terrorism, with Trump ordering “a national strategy to investigate and disrupt networks, entities, and organizations that foment political violence” and, dubiously, designating of “antifa” as a domestic terrorist organization. Spurred by the death of Charlie Kirk and beholden to MAGA and Donald Trump, 

The moment in which we find ourselves is not without precedent. For nearly 150 years, antipathy—if not outright hostility—toward grassroots activism that takes aim at the status quo has been the norm. The current administration has taken a page directly from the book of the first Red Scare in its efforts to suppress opposition to its naked corruption, racism, xenophobia, and militarism.

Roots

It is of course true that, even after the Civil War,  not everyone who has had differences with the American state has been committed to peaceful resolution of those differences, and some indeed have resorted to violent acts of terrorism. In the Haymarket Affair in 1886, eight anarchists were convicted for their alleged connections to a bombing during a Chicago labor protest. Retaliation and public fear swiftly followed. This pattern continued with the assassination of President William McKinley in 1901 by an anarchist born to Polish immigrants. Signed into law by McKinley’s successor Theodore Roosevelt, the Immigration Act of 1903, colloquially known as the Anarchist Exclusion Act, sought to stymie terrorist violence by allowing the government to deny entry and citizenship to “anarchists or persons who believe or advocate the overthrow by force or violence of the government of the United States or of all government or forms of law.” 

By 1914, war consumed Europe and spurred further action against those the U.S. government saw as political “undesirables” or of questionable loyalty. President Woodrow Wilson, alongside many of America’s German immigrants, pressed for neutrality. As 1917 approached, however, remaining out of the conflict became untenable. The sinking of the RMS Lusitania, German espionage, and the discovery of the Zimmermann telegram all contributed to the U.S. entering the war. Rhetoric about “hyphenated Americans,” regardless of their political persuasion, fueled anti-German sentiment, including the closing of German-language newspapers and concealment of German heritage.

Of equal concern to the Wilson administration was a budding anti-war movement. The Espionage Act of 1917 granted the federal government broad authority to prosecute those interfering with the American war effort. Crucial to the war’s opposition were elements of the left, which included the Socialist Party of America and radical labor unions such as the Industrial Workers of the World. As organized labor and anti-war activism became increasingly intertwined, federal authorities arrested prominent activists, including anarchist Emma Goldman and IWW boss William “Big Bill” Haywood. Shortly after, the Bolshevik Revolution injected fresh paranoia into a tense political landscape. In a November 1917 speech to the American Federation of Labor, Wilson warned of the potential for a communist takeover at home. 

With World War I drawing to a close, the Immigration Act of 1918 broadened the definition of who was an “anarchist,” allowing for the deportation of political dissidents. Simultaneously, the Sedition Act of 1918 criminalized “any disloyal, profane, spurious, or abusive language about the form of government of the United States,” further eroding civil liberties.

The next two years did little to calm Americans’ fears of a Bolshevik-style revolution at home. Left-wing revolutionary movements throughout war-torn Europe, notably in Germany, exacerbated the situation. Stateside, a series of labor strikes, race riots, and bombings rattled Attorney General A. Mitchell Palmer, who was personally targeted multiple times. The most tumultuous period, in 1919, became known as the “Red Summer,” prompting the Justice Department to launch massive investigations into various labor, anarchist, and Black organizations in search of communist infiltration and agitation. While these investigations failed to yield any substantive evidence, Palmer, armed with expanded federal power and a ruthless young investigator named J. Edgar Hoover, directed a series of roundups in November 1919 and January 1920, resulting in the arrest of more than 4,000 suspected anarchists and communists. Later known as the “Palmer raids,” these roundups uncovered little evidence of a revolutionary conspiracy, but managed to facilitate the deportation of many notable anarchists to Soviet Russia aboard the Buford, later dubbed the “Soviet Ark.”

The first Red Scare effectively ended in 1920 after Palmer’s warnings of revolutionary violence on May Day never materialized. Federal judges released many of the activists swept up in the raids, and Palmer’s credibility evaporated. Looking back, the unrestrained hysteria in response to a burgeoning American left in the early 20th century left a massive imprint on the modern Republican Party. 

The hindsight of 2020

Events during the summer of 2020 provided both an echo of the past and a glimpse into the future. Following the murder of George Floyd in Minneapolis, mass protests—some of which turned violent—engulfed the nation’s largest cities. Not unlike the race riots of 1919, federal officials were quick to pin the blame on “outside agitators,” “antifa,” or “anarchists” for property damage and civil unrest. This rhetorical move echoed the logic of the first Red Scare, casting labor strikes, violent racial animus, and political violence as the result of “Bolshevik” or anarchist agitators rather than legitimate grievances. The unrest of 2020 was similarly explained away as the product of an organized conspiracy rather than a decentralized protest movement responding to the latest instance of police brutality. 

National Guard forces were activated nationwide, with some calling on Trump to invoke the Insurrection Act of 1807 to quell the protests. Senator Tom Cotton went so far as to push for deploying the U.S. Army’s 101st Airborne Division to crush “antifa terrorists.” In August 2020, Senator Ted Cruz made similar claims on Fox News, stating the protests were “hijacked by violent anarchists, by Marxists who are engaged in acts of terror.” Other law enforcement officials and mayors blamed “antifa” for instigating violence, though separate investigations by The Washington Post and the Associated Press found scant evidence in support of these claims.  A later analysis of state and federal charges, backed by statements from the FBI, cast further doubt on these narratives, finding only that “splintered and disorganized groups with no single goal or affiliation…took advantage of a lawless situation,” including militant right-wing movements such as the Boogaloo Bois.

Though the protests subsided, the narratives constructed during 2020 hardly disappeared. Similar to the anarchist bombings and Palmer’s warning of an imminent communist revolution, they established a repeatable framework for understanding and reacting to future episodes of political violence and social disorder: amplify genuine instances of radical violence, lump together all opposition under the all-purpose label “radical Marxist,” and demand vast powers to suppress the “revolt” or “terror.” 

Red Scare redux

Fast forward to today, and in the wake of a different tragedy, the parallels are difficult to ignore. With the election of Donald Trump in 2024 and bolstered by the Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025, the Republican Party set out on a warpath to secure its vision of America. 

The administration quickly issued a wave of executive orders purporting to dismantle policies from previous Democratic administrations. After pardoning more than 1,500 January 6 insurrectionists, firing tens of thousands of federal employees, and declaring a non-existent “mass invasion” of immigrants—among other authoritarian measures—widespread opposition emerged almost immediately.

In July 2025, a noise demonstration outside of an Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) Prairieland Detention Center in Alvarado, Texas, led by several members of an alleged “antifa” cell, went awry. A local police officer responding to the scene was shot in the neck, and prosecutors ultimately charged 22 defendants in total who would face state and federal charges—including providing material support to terrorists—for their various roles in the incident. In June and July this year, those involved received federal prison sentences ranging from eight to 100 years.

Then, amid the flood of conspiracy theories surrounding Charlie Kirk’s assassination that September, the Trump administration and Department of Justice (DOJ) promised to go after networks of supposed radicals responsible for rhetoric that inspired the gunman. Then on September 22, 2025, President Trump signed an executive order designating “antifa” as a domestic terrorist organization, despite no legal mechanism existing for such an action. The order, which incorrectly characterized antifa as an organization rather than a movement or ideology, directed executive departments and agencies to utilize their authorities to disrupt its activities. Through the order, a diffuse political movement encompassing a range of ideologies shrunk into a singular target for the machinery of national security during a time of uncertainty.

Three days later, National Security Presidential Memorandum 7, or NSPM-7, identified anti-American, anti-capitalist, anti-Christian, racial, and gender-based extremism as common motivations for “anti-fascist terrorism.” Like the Immigration Act of 1918 before it, NSPM-7 vastly broadened the grounds for suspicion of  disloyalty. The whirlwind following Kirk’s killing, alongside the fervent response to increasingly aggressive and inhumane immigration enforcement operations around the country, was turned into grist for government assertions that the United States faced the prospect of a violent, leftist insurrection.

The global war on terror turns inward

With levers in place to treat “antifa” as a domestic terrorist threat, an invigorated MAGA government repurposed institutions originally built for a different enemy. Much as the First World War created the legal authorities used for the Palmer raids, through the PATRIOT Act and other legislation, the post-9/11 national security apparatus provided the investigative powers needed to treat a domestic political movement as a threat. In October 2025, the White House convened an antifa roundtable event, composed of government officials as well as far-right influencers. The 90-minute dog-and-pony show revealed just how far some in the administration and the media were willing to debase themselves, with then-secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem comparing antifa’s sophistication and danger to that of designated foreign terrorist organizations (FTOs) such as “ISIS, as Hezbollah, as Hamas.” She further added that “they [antifa] have an agenda to destroy us, just like other terrorists we’ve dealt with.” 

Other attendees, including neo-Nazi sympathizer Jack Posobiec and White House Deputy Chief of Staff for Policy Stephen Miller, actively encouraged designating the decentralized movement of anti-fascist activists as an FTO. Citing alleged international ties and sources of funding, both Posobiec and Miller personified the Wilsonian paranoia endemic to the World War I era. As former DOJ Counsel for Domestic Terrorism Thomas Brzozowski brilliantly pointed out, the FTO designation would have far-reaching negative consequences, not least of which is the potential to classify opposition to state policies as materially supporting known terrorist entities, thereby severely curtailing the limits on constitutionally protected activities. 

Nowhere was this Orwellian potential more clearly demonstrated than in Minneapolis, where federal agents with Customs and Border Patrol murdered Renée Good and Alex Pretti within a week of each other during Operation Metro Surge. Almost immediately, Noem, Miller, and JD Vance leapt at the opportunity to smear Good and Pretti as “domestic terrorists.” Most disturbing, though, has been the state’s campaign of retaliation and intimidation against ordinary citizens who find the use of masked agents to abduct their neighbors to be abhorrent. Protesters and legal observers reported being followed home, threatened at gunpoint, detained without charge, and entered into domestic terrorism databases. 

Following the Trump administration’s lead, federal prosecutors in Minneapolis took legal action against so-called antifa groups. In January, the DOJ indicted former CNN host Don Lemon and eight others under the FACE and Ku Klux Klan Act, accusing them of civil rights violations when they protested at Cities Church, whose pastor, Dave Easterwood, also served as the acting field director for ICE’s St. Paul office. Later, in June, 15 members of Direct Action Minnesota and other anti-fascist affinity groups faced charges of conspiracy to impede or injure federal officers during protests against ICE’s deportation operations. In the press conference announcing the charges, Minnesota District Attorney Daniel Rosen explicitly cited NSPM-7. In the indictment, the government states that antifa “blend[s] anarchist and communist views,” and further argues that participating in rapid response and community defense groups is illegal due to their ability to “identify and harass” federal agents, thus preventing them from carrying out their duties. A White House press release described its latest attack on civil liberties as a “decisive blow” against the “antifa terrorist network.”

Meanwhile, the National Security Council and State Department began solidifying the Trump administration’s commitment to combating a “resurgence” of far-left terrorism. In May 2026 the administration released its long-awaited Counterterrorism Strategy. The 16-page document reinforced the executive branch’s previous actions and statements, listing “Violent Left-Wing Extremists, including Anarchists and Anti-Fascists” as one of three major types of terror groups, and vowed to prioritize rapidly identifying and neutralizing “violent secular political groups whose ideology is anti-American, radically pro-transgender, and anarchist.” To gain international support for America’s new counterterrorism posture, Secretary of State Marco Rubio convened representatives from more than 60 countries to participate in a summit dedicated to what they recognize as left-wing terrorism. In his remarks, Rubio described members of this rising terrorist threat as “anti-capitalists, or anti-imperialists, Communists, or anarchists, or Marxists.”

In effect, the administration has been able to reproduce the list of proscribed ideologies that defined previous Red Scares. Communists, anarchists, anti-capitalists, anti-fascists, and the like have once again become interchangeable terms for a single domestic threat.

Conclusion

Collectively, these executive orders, press releases, and indictments all reveal two unfortunate truths: the first being that 25 years after the start of the Global War on Terrorism, the authorities and frameworks designed to prevent another 9/11 have been redirected inward. Second, this shift follows a familiar historical pattern. Much like the first Red Scare, the interwar period, and the Cold War eras, legitimate national security concerns such as terrorism, foreign propaganda, and espionage attracted American conservatives—and some liberals—to the idea that real events sometimes require disproportionate responses. Unfortunately, though, these reactions are often directed at the most vulnerable among us.

Today, “antifa” serves much the same function that “Bolshevik” did a century ago, conveniently serving as a catch-all category through which immigration protesters, anti-war activists, Democratic politicians, and anyone to the left of MAGA become part of a unified, communist-inspired terrorist movement. Crucially, none of these groups is to be characterized as spontaneous, organic, self-directed, or even American. Like the imagined Bolshevik conspiracy of 1919, they must instead be explained as a product of shadowy financiers, foreign influencers, or coordinated revolutionary networks. 

The lesson of the first Red Scare lies in the fact that collapsing the distinction between well-placed concerns and hysterical scaremongering following tragedy is an example for us to avoid. If history is indeed rhyming once again, the enduring legacy of this third Red Scare will be in our response to it.

Featured image is Joseph McCarthy conferring with Roy Cohn of the House Un-American Activities Committee, from the Los Angeles Times