Menace of Our Time provides a history of the repression against the Communist Party, USA, the longest-lasting, most intensive, domestic repressive campaign ever undertaken against a political organization in the United States. While the magnitude of attacks between the years 1917-1991 varied, there was never a time when U.S. communism was not a high-priority target of the U.S. political, social, and criminal justice apparatus. There has never been anything on this scale, before or since.
Beginning at the turn of the century, and ending only with communism’s collapse, the US government and major elements in the wider society undertook an unrelenting effort to suppress and criminalize domestic communism. This book tracks those efforts; from the state laws of the twenties that imprisoned the fledgling communist leadership, the efforts by police and local authorities against communists as they fought for unions, racial equality, and the unemployed, the trials and imprisonment of communist leaders mid-century, the extra-legal efforts of the Counterintelligence Program (COINTELPRO) in the sixties, and the ongoing, relentless attention by the FBI afterward. This is a long-overdue book about the most extensive, repressive effort ever undertaken by US authorities against a political organization that, however problematic, was largely operating within the scope of constitutionally mandated freedoms.
