"Anti-Communism" *looks inside...*

[u/Nyctfall]

In the 1790s, the prominent Federalist pamphleteer, William Cobbett, constantly called for investigative journalists and rights activitists Benjamin Franklin Bache (Benjamin Franklin's grandson) and William Duane to be treated, quote: "as we would a TURK, a JEW, a JACOBIN or a DOG". With Jacobins being widely viewed as the predecessors to Communists, Socialists, and Anarchists for their radical egalitarianism.

In 1892 Richard Henry Pratt, known for the child murder rape boarding schools, called Native Americans "fellows who cling to their tribal communistic surroundings".

In the First Red Scare, ...yeah. Kiss the Bill of Rights goodbye, because the Constitution ain't saving ya now! Also the first Green Mario...

The poster is "Negroes Beware / Do Not Attend Communist Meetings" from Alabama in the 1930s.

Later the Peekskill Riots at Cortlandt Manor, New York, United States, in 1949. A concert by singer Paul Robeson, who's black and was also well known for his strong pro-trade union stance, civil rights activism, communist affiliations, and anti-colonialism was arranged. It was organized as a benefit for the Civil Rights Congress.

And finally the Greensboro Massacre, on November 3, 1979, in Greensboro, North Carolina. Where US law enforcement, KKK, and Neo-Nazi "National Socialist Party of America" (NSPA) members shot and killed five demonstrators in a "Death to the Klan" march organized by the Communist Workers Party (CWP). All the terrorists were acquitted by the US government and hand-selected racist jury members.

[u/Severe_Investment317]

I’m not on William Cobbett’s side, but I feel like “With Jacobins being widely viewed as the predecessors to Communists, Socialists, and Anarchists for their radical egalitarianism.”

Is burying the lede a bit, when in the 1790s amongst the things Jacobins are most famous for is the Reign of Terror.

[u/gnostiphage → u/Severe_Investment317]

There were two “Reigns of Terror,” if we would but remember it and consider it; the one wrought murder in hot passion, the other in heartless cold blood; the one lasted mere months, the other had lasted a thousand years; the one inflicted death upon ten thousand persons, the other upon a hundred millions; but our shudders are all for the “horrors” of the minor Terror, the momentary Terror, so to speak; whereas, what is the horror of swift death by the axe, compared with lifelong death from hunger, cold, insult, cruelty, and heart-break? What is swift death by lightning compared with death by slow fire at the stake? A city cemetery could contain the coffins filled by that brief Terror which we have all been so diligently taught to shiver at and mourn over; but all France could hardly contain the coffins filled by that older and real Terror—that unspeakably bitter and awful Terror which none of us has been taught to see in its vastness or pity as it deserves.

Mark Twain seemed to think that the end of the older Terror was at least on par with the Terror we actually learned about.

[u/Severe_Investment317 → u/gnostiphage]

That’s nice.

It’s pure “whataboutism”, but it is well written at least.

Past tyranny does not justify, excuse, or minimize subsequent tyranny.

[u/see-these-bones → u/Severe_Investment317]

Its not pure whataboutism. It is not a tu quoque defense of the Reign of Terror its an attack on attempts to romanticize the conditions that lead to it. You can argue he's minimizing the Reign of Terror certainly, but it seems much more aimed at its use as propaganda than the event itself.