The Trump administration is increasingly conflating communism and the political left, casting them as threats to American national security.
The rhetoric is beginning to take institutional form. The administration has directed federal agencies to investigate networks it says facilitate political violence, convened an international summit on so-called “far-left” terrorism, and published a report placing prominent American activists, politicians and organizations within a broader narrative of foreign communist influence.
For some, the parallels to an earlier period of American history - the Red Scare - are difficult to ignore.
Today historian Ellen Schrecker, author of Many Are the Crimes: McCarthyism in America, joins us to examine the history of the Red Scare and whether it’s repeating itself.
