My grandparents were idealistic teenagers in America in 1917, as revolution overtook Russia. They knew of the struggles their immigrant parents had endured, fleeing Antisemitism and the authoritarian regimes of their Eastern European homelands. They also saw their parents' struggles to build a new life in America. From afar, they saw the revolution in the East as a pathway toward justice for all, not realizing that Communism, like Fascism, is, in practice, just another word for authoritarianism. Not the "Workers’ Paradise" that had been promised.
Subsequently they were subjected to threats and intimidation for their peaceful activism. The Red Scare in America didn't begin with Joseph McCarthy; its roots go back as far as the Bolshevik Revolution itself. Republicans, especially, raised unfounded alarms of Russian influence in American politics and society, conflating social justice with Communist Authoritarianism.
Ronald Reagan spoke of America's "Shining City on the Hill", contrasting the "Evil Empire" of Russia. Well, Reagan is now long gone, and, improbably, Republicans, led by Donald Trump, defend Vladimir Putin's brutal and brazen expansionist invasion of Ukraine, and, instead, attack the democratically elected Zelenskyy, calling him a dictator.
How did this happen? It turns out that the Republicans were correct to be skeptical of the motivations of Stalinist Russia, though they badly overreached. How is it that the modern Republican Party does not see that they have fallen into the very trap they warned of for 100 years, with Putin as the modern-day Stalin?
I'm Reed Scherer and that's my Perspective.
