buckle up. we are headed to the frontlines.
from Dispatches from the Frontlines of America’s Third Red Scare
by Wesley R. Bishop
Entry: May 2025
Hello dear reader. My name is Wes Bishop. I am a historian, writer, and editor living in northeast Alabama. This is the first in what will be a series of essay/reports about the current political climate of the United States. I understand, and fully respect, that our media landscape has no shortage of political commentary. However, I think this speaks more to the moment we find ourselves in than undue saturation. The aim of this series will to not only report on events from that month, but to place it within a broader context of American repression and reactionary overreach.
Historians, traditionally, argue there have been two major “Red Scares” in US history. The first was immediately after WWI and the second after WWII. Red Scares are moral panics that right wing movements and government officials use to silence opponents and disrupt left-wing organizations, typically within the US labor movement, but also in academia, media, civil rights organizations, and oppositional political parties.
In both cases, the Red Scares of America trampled on civil liberties, and attempted to make the United States less free, less intellectually diverse, and less able to see itself as anything other than white, Christian, violent, and capitalistic.
In this series, I am going to argue that the re-election of Donald Trump to a second, non-consecutive Presidential term constitutes a Third Red Scare. The Trump Administration following its political resurrection has in its first 100 days moved swiftly to target, punish, and intimidate any and all opposing factions.
The Trump Administration has been aided in this by conservative state governments, a thriving reactionary media landscape, and an explicit appeal to white supremacy.
My goal will be to put into context the actions of Trump et. al. into a broader historical context to show both how their behaviors, although alarming, are not unprecedented. Likewise, I will be exploring how people fought back in these eras of political repression, so as we can apply those lessons to today.
Welcome dear reader to this, then, our project to keep the hope of democracy and liberation alive. In this series, we will contextualize, combat, and never give into the powerful urge to despair. We will not, conversely, pretend that this is not horrible, that some of us will not make it through, and that there will not be a price to pay for the psychotic instance of America’s conservative movement to destroy all who differ.
No, instead, this project will preach the good faith of democracy. Because we need a democracy, a true democracy, and not a republic, in the United States.
Following the first Red Scare, we saw the rise of the Congress of Industrial Organizations. Following the second Red Scare, we saw the rise of the Southern Civil Rights Movement. Something will come from this, America’s Third Red Scare, and this series will be a small part in laying the foundation for that.
Buckle up. We are headed to the frontlines.
Wesley R. Bishop
Alabama
*Stay tuned for the next installment of Dispatches from the Frontlines of America’s Third Red Scare coming June 15, 2025.