A little over a hundred years ago, radical leftists like Socialist Party of America (SPA) leader Eugene V. Debs and Industrial Workers of the World (IWW) members were prosecuted under the Espionage Act during and after World War I. On June 13, 2023, former president Donald Trump, undoubtedly a right-wing strongman and an authoritarian leader (if not an outright fascist as considered by several experts) was arraigned in a Miami Beach federal court several days after his indictment under the Espionage Act for retaining federal government documents dealing with highly sensitive military information from his 2017 to 2021 presidential term. In his speech to supporters only hours after his arraignment, Trump remarked that his indictment was “a political persecution like something straight out of a fascist or communist nation,” and then referred to President Joseph Biden, who he claimed “will forever be remembered as not only as the most corrupt president in the history of our country . . . but perhaps even more importantly, the president who together with the band of his closest thugs, misfits and Marxists tried to destroy American democracy.” My, how a century makes a difference! A hundred years ago, Marxists and anarcho-syndicalist radicals were persecuted for their political beliefs, while Trump now claims that he is targeted by alleged Marxists for illegally retaining classified and top-secret government documents.

Besides Debs and IWW militants, there has been a long history of repression of the North American trade union movement, dating back to the late nineteenth century. Much of this repression has occurred in response to union militancy during strikes, some of which were connected to political radicals of various stripes, including socialists and anarchists. Examples abound of this repression, which included employer and government violence directed against striking workers, such as the 1877 St. Louis Railroad Strike, the 1886 Haymarket Square Riot, and the 1892 Homestead Strike.

Repression against the US left and left-wing trade unions reached its first apex during the World War I era with a confluence of events confronting the United States at the time. With the Bolsheviks leading the working class, obtaining power, and attempting to build socialism after the 1917 Russian Revolution, communism became a real fear confronting capitalist nations and their governments. Prior to US involvement in World War I, the SPA, which was at its membership peak of approximately 150,000, opposed the country’s participation in the war. However, the craft-union oriented American Federation of Labor (AFL) unions came to support the war effort upon its declaration. The revolutionary syndicalist IWW did not back the war and refused to honor the no-strike pledges to which the AFL unions adhered during World War I. Moreover, the formation of two US communist parties, the immigrant-dominated Communist Party of America as well as the more native-born led Communist Labor Party, emerging from the SPA’s left wing (or Marxist wing) over the 1919 Labor Day weekend, fueled fears that Communism was not just a European threat but also could become an actual risk to the United States.