Preventing or lessening the First Red Scare?

How can you prevent the First Red Scare with a POD after 1914? Or maybe more importantly, can you prevent the Red Scare with a POD that late?

Maybe if Charles Hughes doesn't lose Hiram Johnson's endorsement in 1916 allowing Hughes to win in California and get Hughes a narrow victory electorally even if he loses the popular vote. Would there likely be a Sedition Act of 1918 with President Hughes? Or anything similar to the Palmer Raids?
 
There really was a (?)small group of anarchists sending out mail bombs. It was serious shit.

Of course, A. Mitchell Palmer went after a lot of people who were merely radical or independent minded. And a young J. Edgar Hoover was a very gung-ho lieutenant.
 

Ryan

Donor
IIRC it became a thing when Russia turned communist, so a PoD that prevents that would presumably do it.
 
IIRC it became a thing when Russia turned communist, so a PoD that prevents that would presumably do it.

It was largely a combination of the Russian Revolution and then later the anarchist bombings that GeographyDude mentioned. The biggest problem, is the government reaction, that is a crackdown on civil liberties during the war that largely destroyed the IWW and damaged the Socialist Party.

Maybe someone who's not Wilson being in office from 1916-1920 and Luigi Galleani and his followers accidentally blow themselves up when tinkering with explosives. If there is a Red Scare it could be largely limited to lynch mobs looking for socialists, communists, or anarchists instead of a government organized crackdown.
 
I think preventing it is impossible if you want to keep the rest of the timeline before it relatively close to OTL, but I have a few suggestions for softening it's impact, some of which I may or may not use for my timeline.

  1. Have Post get his temporary promotion thing a few months earlier in order to screw with the Palmer Raids.
  2. Have J. Edgar Hoover get fired or die in a way that can't be pinned on the Reds. This could also potentially have some fairly significant butterflies given the role he played in shaping the FBI into a diet-Secret Police.
  3. Prevent the expulsion of the Socialist candidates from the New York Assembly. This shouldn't be that hard given that the jury that recommended expelling them did so by just one vote. If one more juror opposed it then it would have been a lot harder to justify. In addition if the Democrats are in a stronger position they might consider rallying around Al Smith's opposition to the expulsion as a means of humiliating the Republicans.
 
Maybe if socialists worked on interim projects in addition to big theoretical framework? I mean, they did, but maybe if they had one or two big successes which were highly regarded.

And Wilson certainly used the war as an occasion to squelch dissent. In fact, the lesson he drew from Lincoln was that Lincoln had not been hardcore enough.
 
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I'm doing the exact opposite right now. :D

I think preventing it is impossible if you want to keep the rest of the timeline before it relatively close to OTL, but I have a few suggestions for softening it's impact, some of which I may or may not use for my timeline.

  1. Have Post get his temporary promotion thing a few months earlier in order to screw with the Palmer Raids.
  2. Have J. Edgar Hoover get fired or die in a way that can't be pinned on the Reds. This could also potentially have some fairly significant butterflies given the role he played in shaping the FBI into a diet-Secret Police.
  3. Prevent the expulsion of the Socialist candidates from the New York Assembly. This shouldn't be that hard given that the jury that recommended expelling them did so by just one vote. If one more juror opposed it then it would have been a lot harder to justify. In addition if the Democrats are in a stronger position they might consider rallying around Al Smith's opposition to the expulsion as a means of humiliating the Republicans.

Agreed on all accounts except the last, the New York expulsions occurred just a few months before the scare collapsed in May 1920. But having Post on top sooner helps a bunch.

Maybe if socialists worked on interim projects in addition to big theoretical framework? I mean, they did, but maybe if they had one or two big successes which were highly regarded.

Like what? Any major strike was going to be crushed.

And Wilson certainly used the war as an occasion to squelch dissent. In fact, the lesson he drew from Lincoln is that Lincoln had not been hardcore enough.

If we avoid Wilson the butterflies flap hard.

Anyway most of these ideas are good for removing any of the major effects of the scare, but averting the scare itself without dramatically shifting the rest if the world is harder. Taking out the Seattle Strike and the bombings is a strong start. We can avoid the Big Strikes in Steel and Coal if the AFL manages to assert better control of the unions, and Boston if they vote against Police Unionizations.

Of course as long as the USSR exists there'll be some backlash against socialism. But without some/all of these events it shouldn't whip itself up so much.
 
The red scare was a worldwide reaction to the October Revolution. I doubt you'd change it much unless your relocated the first communist revolution to America.
 
Maybe if socialists worked on interim projects in addition to big theoretical framework? I mean, they did, but maybe if they had one or two big successes which were highly regarded.

And Wilson certainly used the war as an occasion to squelch dissent. In fact, the lesson he drew from Lincoln was that Lincoln had not been hardcore enough.

That was actually basically all the SPA ever did. They had fewer issues resulting from being too focused on a distant future and more problems because they didn't actually have anything to make themselves significantly sifferent from mainstream progressives.
 
Agreed on all accounts except the last, the New York expulsions occurred just a few months before the scare collapsed in May 1920.

Be that as it may I think that preventing the expulsions would be a good way to drive the final nail into the coffin of the Red Scare, especially if there's a bit of a prolonged political struggle over it. Plus, if the Socialists survive the attempted expulsion I think it would give them a boost to their public credibility and allow them to maintain a presence in State politics that could help them recover in the aftermath of the scare.
 
The red scare was a worldwide reaction to the October Revolution. I doubt you'd change it much unless your relocated the first communist revolution to America.

Yeah preventing it would require a much more drastic POD, I can see now. I do think there are ways to lower the damage on the Socialist movement in America though. Somehow stopping the anarchist bombings might help significantly especially because it would mean that Palmer's house isn't bombed, less of a reason for him to go nuts.

How could the Seattle General Strike be prevented? Or can you even prevent it without having America end shipments to the Whites in Russia?

Without having the hysteria, caused by the General Strike "subverting" American lifestyle and the bombings, there will be suspicion of leftists but I think that maybe without further crackdowns after WWI the Socialist Party and maybe the IWW can recover.
 
How could the Seattle General Strike be prevented? Or can you even prevent it without having America end shipments to the Whites in Russia?
People are going to be tired of war. Even if the White Russians were a really good side (and of course at best they're a mixed bag), trying to get the majority of the public to support this military adventure after we've already won WWI is going to be an uphill struggle to say the least.

Now, the point about strikes during the course of WWI is very well taken. You can't have a strike unless it's directly and centrally about safety and it's abundantly clear the company has been acting like a horse's ass.

Okay, child labor is one area where socialists could make inroads and link it to unemployment. Make the point that these are adult jobs and this is a direct reason that such-and-such number of adults are out of work.

And help with the rebuilding after the war. For starters, the socialists could do first-rate journalism of stories which are undercovered and which need to be covered.
 
I'm thinking that maybe if Palmer makes the false prediction that violent revolution will occur sooner, maybe during the Seattle General Strike he says there's going to be a violent revolution by the end of 1919. As in OTL (Palmer made the prediction that revolution would occur on May Day in OTL, and after his prediction was false the hysteria died down) when his prediction is shown to be false the hysteria falls significantly, though not fully dying down until May Day of 1920. How does that sound to you guys?
 
I'm thinking that maybe if Palmer makes the false prediction that violent revolution will occur sooner, maybe during the Seattle General Strike he says there's going to be a violent revolution by the end of 1919. As in OTL (Palmer made the prediction that revolution would occur on May Day in OTL, and after his prediction was false the hysteria died down) when his prediction is shown to be false the hysteria falls significantly, though not fully dying down until May Day of 1920. How does that sound to you guys?

I was thinking of having him predict a full year earlier, but I wasn't sure if the timing worked out on that. This sounds a bit more plausible.
 
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