Anti-radicalism evaporated when its labor-unrest basis faded

Evidence

Actually the Big Red Scare was nearly over, Post’s personal intervention coinciding with much larger changes. First of all, the seething labor unrest of 1919, which formed the social basis of the anti-radical spirit, faded early in 1920. The great steel strike collapsed in January amid the wreckage of labor’s postwar dreams, and the unions passed to the defensive. The return of industrial peace dissipated the fear of imminent revolution. — John Higham, Strangers in the Land, 1388

Categorization

• DEEPTHINKING: Central to the reader’s research question — the manufactured-enemy thesis: anti-immigrant radical panic had a concrete, shifting social basis (labor unrest) rather than a fixed primordial identity, and dissolved when that basis did. This is evidence that threat-based solidarity tracks material conditions, not deep identity.
• XREF: Complements the Inter-Racial Council passage: the same industrialists who cried alarm reversed course when class peace returned and labor became scarce again — manufactured fear is economically self-interested and reversible. — connects to: Anti-Semitic nativism survived and grew once its anti-radical trigger faded — John Higham, Strangers in the Land: Patterns of…, 1694; Anti-immigrant solidarity collapsed almost instantly when the anarchist threat faded — John Higham, Strangers in the Land: Patterns of…, 660; Antisemitism persisted even after its economic basis vanished — Hannah Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism, 527 (+2 more)

Broader Connections

• Anti-Semitic nativism survived and grew once its anti-radical trigger faded #exemplifies (0.85) — John Higham, Strangers in the Land, 1694
• Anti-immigrant solidarity collapsed almost instantly when the anarchist threat faded #exemplifies (0.85) — John Higham, Strangers in the Land, 660
• Antisemitism persisted even after its economic basis vanished #contradicts (0.80) — Hannah Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism, 527
• Antisemitism persisted as ideology after losing its social grounding #contradicts (0.80)
• Antisemitism detaches from real conditions and becomes free-floating ideology once politically irrelevant #contradicts (0.80) — Hannah Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism, 185