If you read the second year of the comic book "House of Secrets" you'll know what kinds of things they're referring to.
Basically, yes, the anarchist was a bogeyman, but bear in mind - there were congresses between the anarchists and the communists in Russia (the Red and the Black), and an anarchist assassinated President McKinley.
I'll do a websearch on that and post more in the Q/A thread.
Here's a bit of history:
Although the Army had conducted counterintelligence work during the Philippine insurrection, not since the Civil War had it contended with the problems of espionage, sabotage, or subversion in the continental United States. However, when the United States joined the war against Germany in 1917, it appeared that the country confronted a substantial threat from within. The America that entered World War I was still a nation of immigrants, many newly arrived. German Americans were particularly suspect, but the War Department was also concerned about the loyalties of Irish Americans, Scandinavian Americans, and African Americans. In addition to the problems that might be posed by unassimilated ethnics, there was a substantial antiwar movement. Finally, opinion-makers at the outbreak of war had exaggerated ideas about the scope and power of the German espionage and sabotage organization within the country.
In 1917 the United States seemed almost defenseless against these perceived enemies from within. The Treasury Department had a Secret Service, but it was confined by law to narrowly circumscribed duties. The Department of justice maintained the Bureau of Investigation, but the bureau's duties before the outbreak of war had largely consisted of investigating cases of fraud against the government. A few major cities had organized police "bomb squads" to deal with the anarchist threat of the period. The almost total lack of civilian resources in the field spurred the Army to launch its own major and widesweeping counterintelligence program.
And here's another bit:
Alexander Berkman is known in American history as having perpetrated the first anarchist "attentat" in this country as an act of propaganda of the deed. In 1892, at the time of the Homestead Steel Strike, he attempted to kill Henry Clay Frick, the manager of the Carnegie Steel Company. He failed and was sentenced to 22 years of prison. After his release, he edited Emma Goldman's Mother Earth, contributed in organizing the Ferrer School in New York, then published his own magazine, The Blast, on the West Coast. His efforts certainly played a great role in preventing the execution of Thomas Mooney, falsely accused of throwing a bomb into the July 22, 1916 preparedness parade. When World War I broke out, he set up a number of antiwar demonstrations. His remarkable activism made the headlines of the San Francisco Chronicle. With Emma Goldman, his former lover, and a number of other radicals, he was deported to the Soviet Union in 1919.
In Russia, he confronted Lenin and Trotsky, unsuccessfully tried to mediate in the Kronstadt uprising, and finally left the country deeply disillusioned.
So they weren't altogether imaginary. |
