Fascism wasn’t always a bad word in the U.S. In the 1940s and 1950s, one of the charges levied by the House Un-American Activities Committee was “premature antifascism.” Largely directed at people who ...

If we want to understand how we arrived in this authoritarian moment in 2025, we need to understand one of the central pathways that brought us here: McCarthyism. In his firsthand account of the 1949 ...

Clay Risen discusses his new book "Red Scare." The Immigration and Nationality Act of 1952 was passed amid anti-communist fears during the early Cold War. That period of history is the focus of the ...

Journalist Clay Risen is out with a new narrative history of the Red Scare, based in part on newly declassified sources. In Red Scare, Risen depicts McCarthyism as a cultural witch hunt against all ...

Early last month, the White House convened a meeting of right-wing influencers for a livestreamed discussion of antifa and the danger they claim it poses. Over the course of the roundtable, President ...

When, exactly, was America great? For as long as Donald Trump has touted the MAGA slogan, he has been cagey about the answer. But recent weeks have suggested a few possibilities. One is the Gilded Age ...

NPR's Steve Inskeep speaks with author Clay Risen about his new book, "Red Scare," which tells the story of McCarthyism based in part on newly declassified sources. A new book by journalist Clay Risen ...

In “Red Scare,” Clay Risen shows how culture in the United States is still driven by the political paranoia of the 1950s. By Kevin Peraino Kevin Peraino is the author, most recently, of “A Force So ...