Ed Helms

Steelworkers, coal miners, even the Boston police and newspapers are screaming of red plots and foreign agitators.

Senators are thundering about a red menace.

Immigrants from Eastern Europe, Southern Italy and Russia are branded un-American.

And we find ourselves smack east.

in the middle of America's first red scare.

Now, while the communist threat was wildly exaggerated in the press, agitators were still making a lot of noise from the margins.

Mail bombs were sent to some of the most powerful men in America, JP Morgan, John D. Rockefeller, and even Attorney General A. Mitchell Palmer.

Remember that name.

Most were intercepted by postal workers.

But one summer night in 1919, an Italian anarchist named Carlo Valdanochi blew himself up on Palmer's doorstep, badly damaging the house and shattering windows for blocks.

It was part of a coordinated attack bombs in eight cities, each accompanied by a flyer that read in part war class war.

And you were the first to wage it under the cover of the powerful institutions you call order.

This is wild to me.

There was certainly communist sympathy kind of rippling through America, but the actual threat of a full-blown revolution, according to most historians, was greatly exaggerated.

What do you think about this moment we're in?

Because we're hearing a lot of chatter about civil war.

I feel like sometimes I'm seeing the drumbeat in some mainstream conservative news.

Sure.

And they want that.

Is it overblown or is it like does it feel closer?