US History From a Brasilian's Perspective

Or maybe these...



Or even this...

(Let us hope not...)

BUT! One must never forget the really biiiiig (and I mean REALLY big) scare of this era: RUSSIA!!!!!!!! Also known as, the Soviets.

At the end of WWI, a small communist party appeared in America. I mean, they were innocent little Socialists, only wanting the best for all. But isolationist, extremist America, scared out of their wits by the Bolshevik Revolution, saw every misdoing as a personal attack from the Soviets. Heck ,they even blamed strikes on Russian anarchists!

But that was just the beginning. From 1919 to 1920, an event called the RED SCARE came to be. Everyone was super physched out of their minds, especially with the example of Attorney General A. Mitchell Palmer who rounded up to 6000 suspects and earned himself the title of "Fighting Quaker"...although later it got changed to "Quaking Fighter" after June 1919 when a bomb went of in his Washington house. This, of course, only made him go after more people so I guess he didn't get the message the bomber was trying to convey...

Aaaaaanyway, there are a few events that are pretty crucial to this *Red Scare* period.

The first was in late December 1919, on one chilly eve, 249 "alleged alien radicals" were ushered onto the Buford ("Soviet Ark") and deported to Russia. For serious! How would you feel once you finally got into America and past immigration just to be stuffed on a ship and shipped back so you could go be a serf again? It's totally not fair.

Next came the Wall Street bomb attack that killed 38 people and wounded hundreds more in September 1920. Interestingly enough, the investigation was inconclusive and remains so to this day. You think by now with all this fancy technology we'd be able to figure out some info behind one bomb.

Then, again in 1920, 5 legally elected New York legislators were denied their seats in office just because they were Socialists.....which I find sort of ironic because if the people elected them, then obviously they represent something the people want...

During the Red Scare, many legislations got busy passing criminal syndicalism (a big word for rebellion movements) laws, which prohibited the advocation of violence for social change. This, as many critics pointed out, was a direct violation of the 1st Amendment. Plus, they added, it's only words, not the actual deeds. If anything, these laws benefited conservative businesspeople the most because they were able to crush Unions by calling them "Soviets in disguise".

So lastly, just to tie things up, even the main time of the red scare was over, prejudices facing immigrants still remained strong, as can be seen with the law case of Nicola Sacco and Bartolomeo Vanzetti, two Italian, atheist, anarchist, draft dodger laborers (sheesh they just have everything working against them, don't they) accused of double homicide. Thanks to all the chaos and tension, their sentence ended up being the death penalty rather then a simple life-in-prison sort of thing. However, the death of this two men gave Communists and radicals martyred examples to shove in America's face.

Well, here I must pass it on. But just for laughs and giggles, look at this picture:

If this won't stop you from pirating, I don't know what will.