The Second Red Scare and the Unmaking of the New Deal Left

Politics and Society in Modern America

by Landon R.Y. Storrs

The loyalty investigations triggered by the Red Scare of the 1940s and 1950s marginalized many talented women and men who had entered government service during the Great Depression seeking to promote social democracy as a means to economic reform. Their influence over New Deal policymaking and their alliances with progressive labor and consumer movements elicited a powerful reaction from conservatives, who accused them of being subversives. Landon Storrs draws on newly declassified records of the federal employee loyalty program--created in response to fears that Communists were infiltrating the U.S. government--to reveal how disloyalty charges were used to silence these New Dealers and discredit their policies.

Because loyalty investigators rarely distinguished between Communists and other leftists, many noncommunist leftists were forced to leave government or deny their political views. Storrs finds that loyalty defendants were more numerous at higher ranks of the civil service than previously thought, and that many were women, or men with accomplished leftist wives. Uncovering a forceful left-feminist presence in the New Deal, she shows how opponents on the Right exploited popular hostility to powerful women and their "effeminate" spouses. The loyalty program not only destroyed many promising careers, it prohibited discussion of social democratic policy ideas in government circles, narrowing the scope of political discourse to this day.

Through a gripping narrative based on remarkable new sources, Storrs demonstrates how the Second Red Scare undermined the reform potential of the New Deal and crippled the American welfare state.

Genres: History, American History, Politics, Nonfiction, Grad School, The United States Of America, Economics

424 pages, Kindle Edition

First published October 28, 2012

About the author

Landon Storrs specializes in twentieth-century U.S. social and political history, particularly in the history of women, social movements, and public policy.

Reviews

[Mike]

This book isn't particularly well-organized, and as a result, it's a bit of a slog to read. The various stories of suppression of leftists in the government end up feeling repetitive, and Storrs doesn't give nearly a clear enough picture of how they might have affected American policy in the long run. That said, I do think this research is valuable, and the argument Storrs makes is genuinely important and provocative. But I really don't see that much value for the average person in reading past the introduction, which sums up the book's argument pretty well - unless you're a historian, you can probably skip the rest.

[Patrick]

This should be required reading in the US and for those studying US politics. Absent in the Cold War United States was a genuine leftist movement because conservatives successfully targeted those on the left and removed them from government, using tactics conservatives still attempt to use today - white supremacy, sexism, homophobia, and scare tactics against vague and undefined "unamerican" values. This book really informs an understanding of today's United States.

[Eli Maczuzak]

A bit dry and meandering at times. I think someone could get a lot of value out of just reading the thesis, but digging into the details really demonstrates how many ways the red scare was weaponized beyond common understanding and the horrible treatment suffered by victims of loyalty investigations. Parallels to modern conservatism and political moral panics feel particularly relevant right now.

[Riley Sutherland]

Just finished discussing this for class, which was so impactful right now especially--intersections of McCarthyism, gender, and sexual panic. Only wish I had read it sooner.

[Alexandra]

Obsessed with all these guys soooooooo in love with their socialist career activist wives