As a result, this began a series of showy and well-publicised raids against radicals. Striking without warning and without warrants, Palmer's men smashed union offices and the headquarters' of communist and socialist organizations. They concentrated whenever possible on aliens rather than citizens, because they thought that aliens had fewer rights. The Red Scare reflected the same anxiety about free speech and obsession with consensus that had characterized the war years. The Red Scare suggested how quickly legal rights could succumb to hysterical rhetoric and public fear. Focus however will be placed on the 1940s and 1950s when America became more and more aware of the threat communism posed upon the American Way of Life and ways the countered and dealt with it.
The Red Scare and bomb anxiety stifled dissent in Cold War America through the politics of film. Communism crept into facets of culture such as entertainment and quickly spread its message, of demonising communism. The American cinema was never associated with "Red" propaganda but this was questioned when three pro-Russian movies were released. "The most political of these films was Michael Curtis's "Mission to Moscow (1943)" (Whitfield 1991:127). Based on the memoirs of Joseph E Davies, Roosevelt's ambassador to the Soviet Union in 1936-1941, this film was quite diplomatic about Stalin's tyranny during this reign. Lillian Hellman argued against this and insisted that there had never been a single line or word of communism in any American picture at any time. Despite this, her stance was compromised, seeing her own script for the North Star, when shown on television in 1957, "contained Pro-Russian sentiments" (Whitfield 1991:132). The North Star was renamed, Armored Attack. During its time on air, Armored Attack had a voice over prologue that apologised for any pro Soviet sentiments that may of inadvertedly remained after the film.
