How Do Nativism and Anti-radicalism Turn Into Racism?
The Attorney General A. Mitchell Palmer conducted extensive police and MID raids, later know as the Palmer Raids, in search of radicals in January 2, 1920.7 The raids lacked search warrants and were often targeted towards immigrant neighbor-hoods. John B. Trevor who created an “Ethnic Map of New York” where “unassimilated or partly assimilated” immigrants resided identified these targets. His analysis of “Conditions and Agencies” identified that “among the most radical were the Russian Jews …permeated with Marxian socialism of German provenance.”7 There are two interesting points here. First, like what has been discussed extensively previously, anti-communism was again racialized against certain “ethnicities” and much of the radical identification is based on their immigrant origin and race. Anti-Semitism once more performed in the structures of anti-communist movements. The matter of interest here is that not only the alleged radicals were Jews but also Germans in America. By contrast
