A. Mitchell Palmer
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Attorney General of the United States (1919-1921); earlier Alien Property Custodian (1917-1919) · United States
On the regime page: Wilson administration
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“Like a prairie-fire, the blaze of revolution was sweeping over every American institution of law and order a year ago. It was eating its way into the homes of the American workman, its sharp tongues of revolutionary heat were licking the altars of the churches, leaping into the belfry of the school bell, crawling into the sacred corners of American homes, seeking to replace marriage vows with libertine laws, burning up the foundations of society.”
Palmer wrote the article at the request of The Forum, in the weeks after the Justice Department's raids on suspected radicals in November 1919 and January 1920, to explain the arrests and deportations of aliens. The sentence describes the conditions he says prevailed in 1919.
A. Mitchell Palmer, "The Case Against the 'Reds'", The Forum, vol. 63, no. 2 (February 1920), p. 174 Source
Content note: Derogatory language about aliens and a named individual. The words are shown as they were said or written. Why
“A small clique of outcasts from the East Side of New York has attempted this, with what success we all know. Because a disreputable alien—Leon Bronstein, the man who now calls himself Trotzky—can inaugurate a reign of terror from his throne room in the Kremlin; because this lowest of all types known to New York can sleep in the Czar’s bed, while hundreds of thousands in Russia are without food or shelter, should Americans be swayed by such doctrines?”
Palmer wrote the article at the request of The Forum, in the weeks after the Justice Department's raids on suspected radicals in November 1919 and January 1920, to explain the arrests and deportations of aliens.
A. Mitchell Palmer, "The Case Against the 'Reds'", The Forum, vol. 63, no. 2 (February 1920), p. 175 Source
Content note: Derogatory language about aliens. The words are shown as they were said or written. Why
“My information showed that communism in this country was an organization of thousands of aliens, who were direct allies of Trotzky. Aliens of the same misshapen caste of mind and indecencies of character, and it showed that they were making the same glittering promises of lawlessness, of criminal autocracy to Americans, that they had made to the Russian peasants. How the Department of Justice discovered upwards of 60,000 of these organized agitators of the Trotzky doctrine in the United States, is the confidential information upon which the Government is now sweeping the nation clean of such alien filth.”
Palmer wrote the article at the request of The Forum, in the weeks after the Justice Department's raids on suspected radicals in November 1919 and January 1920, to explain the arrests and deportations of aliens.
A. Mitchell Palmer, "The Case Against the 'Reds'", The Forum, vol. 63, no. 2 (February 1920), ppp. 175-176 Source
“The whole purpose of communism appears to be a mass formation of the criminals of the world to overthrow the decencies of private life, to usurp property that they have not earned, to disrupt the present order of life regardless of health, sex or religious rights.”
Palmer wrote the article at the request of The Forum, in the weeks after the Justice Department's raids on suspected radicals in November 1919 and January 1920, to explain the arrests and deportations of aliens.
A. Mitchell Palmer, "The Case Against the 'Reds'", The Forum, vol. 63, no. 2 (February 1920), p. 182 Source
Content note: Derogatory language about groups of people, including women. The words are shown as they were said or written. Why
“These include the I. W. W.’s, the most radical socialists, the misguided anarchists, the agitators who oppose the limitations of unionism, the moral perverts and the hysterical neurasthenic women who abound in communism.”
Palmer wrote the article at the request of The Forum, in the weeks after the Justice Department's raids on suspected radicals in November 1919 and January 1920, to explain the arrests and deportations of aliens. The sentence follows his quotation of the Communist Party of America's manifesto and lists the organisations and kinds of people he says it draws in.
A. Mitchell Palmer, "The Case Against the 'Reds'", The Forum, vol. 63, no. 2 (February 1920), p. 183 Source
“There is no legislation at present which can reach an American citizen who is discontented with our system of American Government, nor is it necessary.”
Palmer wrote the article at the request of The Forum, in the weeks after the Justice Department's raids on suspected radicals in November 1919 and January 1920, to explain the arrests and deportations of aliens. He distinguishes between aliens, who could be deported under the Immigration Act of 1918, and citizens.
A. Mitchell Palmer, "The Case Against the 'Reds'", The Forum, vol. 63, no. 2 (February 1920), p. 184 Source
“When we realize that each member of the Communist Party of America pledges himself to the principles above, set forth, deportation of men and women bound to such a theory is a very mild reformatory sentence.”
Palmer wrote the article at the request of The Forum, in the weeks after the Justice Department's raids on suspected radicals in November 1919 and January 1920, to explain the arrests and deportations of aliens.
A. Mitchell Palmer, "The Case Against the 'Reds'", The Forum, vol. 63, no. 2 (February 1920), p. 184 Source
“The Department of Justice will pursue the attack of these ‘‘Reds’’ upon the Government of the United States with vigilance, and no alien, advocating the overthrow of existing law and order in this country, shall escape arrest and prompt deportation.”
Palmer wrote the article at the request of The Forum, in the weeks after the Justice Department's raids on suspected radicals in November 1919 and January 1920, to explain the arrests and deportations of aliens.
A. Mitchell Palmer, "The Case Against the 'Reds'", The Forum, vol. 63, no. 2 (February 1920), p. 185 Source