As the Second Red Scare shows, when free speech is under attack, strategic compliance may be useful for individuals. However, bold and courageous acts of dissent are critical for protecting First Amendment rights for everyone.
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If we want to understand how we arrived in this authoritarian moment in 2025, we need to understand one of the central pathways that brought us here: McCarthyism.
For refusing to sign a loyalty oath she was barred from practicing law, targeted by the FBI. Founder of Berkeley’s Meiklejohn Civil Liberties Institute, pioneered the field of “peace law,”wrote the resolution establishing Berkeley-a Human Rights City
Repression is certainly in the air, its effects likely to be as chilling as intended: people are afraid and have good reasons to be afraid. Reviews of two recent books on Elizabeth Gurley Flynn and the Long War Against American Communism.
The impact can linger not just for years but decades.
This is a poignant tale of remembering parents in trouble, careers dashed and of steady FBI harassment. The end is not happy, except that the boy survives and makes his own life as an admired cultural commentator on radio.
‘False Witness’ (1955), East St. Louis Desegregates (1950), A New Deal Triumph (1940), Greensboro Students Lead the Way (1960), Sled Dogs and Mushers to the Rescue (1925), Apartheid’s Swan Song (1990)
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