Menace of Our Time - by Aaron J Leonard (Hardcover)

About the Book

Menace of Our Time provides a history of the repression against the Communist Party, USA, the longest-lasting, most intensive, domestic repressive campaign ever undertaken against a political organization in the United States. While the magnitude of attacks between the years 1917-1991 varied, there was never a time when U.S. communism was not a high-priority target of the U.S. political, social, and criminal justice apparatus. There has never been anything on this scale, before or since.

Book Synopsis

A survey of the far-reaching measures the U.S. government brought to bear against the CPUSA, from poison-pen letters to the Red Scare and beyond.

Beginning at the turn of the twentieth century and ending only with the Soviet Union's collapse in 1991, the U.S. government and major elements in the wider society waged an unrelenting campaign to suppress and criminalize domestic communism. This long-overdue book details the longest and most extensive repressive operation ever undertaken by U.S. authorities against a domestic political organization that, however problematic, was largely operating within the scope of constitutionally mandated freedoms. Beyond that, this is the story of how systemic measures against U.S. communists--in contrast to the vaunted claims of American political freedom--defined the political landscape of the last century.

Menace of Our Time tracks the suppression efforts aimed at the group, including the state laws of the twenties that imprisoned the fledgling communist leadership; the tactics used by police and local authorities against communists as they fought for unions, racial equality, and the unemployed; the trials and imprisonment of communist leaders mid-century; the extra-legal efforts of the Counterintelligence Program (COINTELPRO) in the sixties; and the ongoing, relentless surveillance by the FBI that followed. In examining the far-reaching measures the government brought to bear against the Communist Party USA, Aaron J. Leonard provides a clearer picture of the mechanics of social and political repression that abound in the society we still inhabit.

Review Quotes

"Leonard [is] the best living historian on the topic of political repression of the US Left in the United States. . . . In today's USA, Leonard's chronicles of political repression become even more important than before. . . . The history told in Menace of Our Time leads to a far different truth about freedoms and their fragility. Indeed, this book could not have come at a better time."

-- "Counterpunch"

"Leonard's study of unparalleled political repression is both comprehensive and engrossing. For over sixty years, mass surveillance, sustained persecution, and frequent imprisonment were all used to silence American communists and, more broadly, cripple left-wing activism. Essential reading for students of American political history."--Phillip Deery "author of Red Apple: Communism and McCarthyism in Cold War New York"

"This comprehensive and sprightly story suggests that the ascendancy of today's right wing is based in no small measure on their obsession of the previous epoch--anticommunism--which savaged progressivism under the guise of fighting Communists. This book is an important contribution."--Gerald Horne "author of Black Liberation/Red Scare: Ben Davis and the Communist Party"

About the Author

AARON J. LEONARD is an author and historian. Among his books are Heavy Radicals: The FBI's Secret War on America's Maoists, The Folk Singers & the Bureau, and Meltdown Expected: Crisis, Disorder and Upheaval at the End of the 1970s (Rutgers University Press, 2024).