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Book Synopsis
Between the Great War and Pearl Harbor, conservative labor leaders declared themselves America's first line of defense against Communism. In this surprising account, Jennifer Luff shows how the American Federation of Labor fanned popular anticommunism but defended Communists' civil liberties in the aftermath of the 1919 Red Scare. The AFL's commonsense anticommunism, she argues, steered a middle course between the American Legion and the ACLU, helping to check campaigns for federal sedition laws. But in the 1930s, frustration with the New Dealorder led labor conservatives to redbait the Roosevelt administration and liberal unionists and abandon their reluctant civil libertarianism for red scare politics. That frustration contributed to the legal architecture of federal anticommunism that culminated with the McCarthyist fervor of the 1950s. Relying on untapped archival sources, Luff reveals how labor conservatives and the emerging civil liberties movement debated the proper role of th

Commonsense Anticommunism

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    A Paperback by Jennifer Luff

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      Book details

      Publisher The University of North Carolina Press
      Published 1/30/2014 12:12:00 AM
      ISBN-13 9781469622125
      978-1469622125
      ISBN-10 1469622122
      Also in:
      Industrial relations, occupational health Far-left political ideologies and movements

      Description

      Book Synopsis
      Between the Great War and Pearl Harbor, conservative labor leaders declared themselves America's first line of defense against Communism. In this surprising account, Jennifer Luff shows how the American Federation of Labor fanned popular anticommunism but defended Communists' civil liberties in the aftermath of the 1919 Red Scare. The AFL's commonsense anticommunism, she argues, steered a middle course between the American Legion and the ACLU, helping to check campaigns for federal sedition laws. But in the 1930s, frustration with the New Dealorder led labor conservatives to redbait the Roosevelt administration and liberal unionists and abandon their reluctant civil libertarianism for red scare politics. That frustration contributed to the legal architecture of federal anticommunism that culminated with the McCarthyist fervor of the 1950s. Relying on untapped archival sources, Luff reveals how labor conservatives and the emerging civil liberties movement debated the proper role of th

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