Why/When did "Socialism" become a taboo in American Society?

I find this an interesting subject. When center left politicians in the US propose policy options, we have all heard calls of "Socialism" before. I am curious when the word/term itself became a taboo in general.

You had Eugene Debs at one point who managed to gain 4-7% of the US vote at one point in the 1910s. There were local state assemblies and local races across the country in the early 1900s that were competitive for Socialist candidates. I have been reading the origin of the distrust comes from this period of time and the association of violence and with anarchists that some socialists had during this period, leading to the first red scare. I read somewhere else the assassinations of McKinley, the Empress of Austria, the Prime minister of France, the Prime minister of Spain, the tsar of Russia, and the king of Italy were all connected together by the press - painting socialists and anarchists in a light, not unlike modern day terrorists. Was it the associations with anarchists like Most and Goldmann that sank the political feasibility of socialism and indirectly populism in the US? If these anarchists hadn't manage to incite a scare - would more leftist parties still be politically feasible options in certain regions today?

I suppose you could blame the Soviet Union for that. They were a legitimate threat to US power on the world stage, so the US did everything it could do to demonize them, including turning the Cold War into a Socialism/Communism versus Free Market battle of ideology.

I would say the process really took hold after WW2 and before that socialism was dying a slow death, strangled by the political machine that was in place.

A large part of it, I think, had to do with the systemic racism toward African Americans and immigrants in general. It kept the poorest sections of society from uniting, or even considering uniting (outside of an idealistic few). Also, the spectre of African Americans, Irish, Poles, Chinese, et al being used as scabs or cheap labour kept the labour movement from becoming anything substantial. In Sweden, Britain, France, Germany, Russia, etc. these were not significantly large concerns.

it was the first world war, when the US employed massive state propaganda, that broke the socialists movements.

if you look for the origin of phrase "don't yell fire in a crowded theater" you'll get the basic point (= either support the war or go to prison).
incidentally our modern advertisement industry came out of that propaganda system (many people simply switched to private companies)

edit:

i just stumbled (unrelated) over a speech by chris hedges that deals with this question in first minutes of his speech:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CUwNr20Epsw

That explains how it was gutted by the government, but not what prevented a large-scale movement in the first place. France, Germany, Italy, Hungary, all went through periods of radicalism and repression, and the socialists emerged and rose again each time. American socialism never recovered from the death blow of the World War and the First Red Scare. Labour unions, the ever-present traditional base of the radical left, were pioneered by socialists (Debs and the Pullman railway workers founded the first industrial union in 1894), but after the Espionage Act of 1917 and subsequent USSC rulings they were disinclined to associate with socialists and communists, especially after witnessing the literal gutting of unions within the IWW orbit during the Palmer Raids. The Pinkertons did their job well.

And there was the whole McCarthy business. Even if he turned to be a tad bit unAmerican in the end, and by which I mean "he blamed innocent Americans of being commies".

McCarthy didn't come along until the 1950s (although the era of anti-communist scares and blacklists began in the mid-late 1940s), and while it destroyed the Communist Party, it was by then already on the decline for other reasons (repeals of Depression-era legislation that empowered labour unions, etc). With the US industrializing so heavily and as early as it did, McCarthy doesn't explain the lack of 19th and early 20th century socialist movements of considerable strength. Racism does.

You might be underestimating another factor. Economic systems develop as a means to allocate scarce resources. At the time that those strong socialist movements were forming in the countries you mentioned, the honest truth is that American 'scarcity' was relatively non-existent. The poorest sections of society in America had, and to be honest still have, less imperative to unite. It is a fact that you can live better as a panhandler in America than the middle class live in much of the world.

This isn't a statement on racism or oppression in any way, just an acknowledgement that there has been so much wealth concentration into the US that even the poor aren't so seriously downtrodden as to make them highly motivated.

The America where even hobos dine from silver plates is just nationalist myth-making, but you're driving at a legitimate point, that the American ruling class allowed-slash-was forced to allow enough of its wealth to trickle down to enough of its working class to inhibit serious and generalised ferment. Most Americans for most of their history have seen their material condition improve across their lifetime, even if that material condition was not all that enviable in itself.

Cheezy the Wiz said:

That explains how it was gutted by the government, but not what prevented a large-scale movement in the first place. France, Germany, Italy, Hungary, all went through periods of radicalism and repression, and the socialists emerged and rose again each time. American socialism never recovered from the death blow of the World War and the First Red Scare. Labour unions, the ever-present traditional base of the radical left, were pioneered by socialists (Debs and the Pullman railway workers founded the first industrial union in 1894), but after the Espionage Act of 1917 and subsequent USSC rulings they were disinclined to associate with socialists and communists, especially after witnessing the literal gutting of unions within the IWW orbit during the Palmer Raids. The Pinkertons did their job well.

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I think the First World War/Roaring Twenties era is a pretty repressive point for the American socialist movement and labor in general (Debs was running a presidential campaign from prison, Victor Berger was refused a seat in Congress basically because he was a pacifist), but there appears to be a brief revival of labor-oriented politics in the New Deal era.

Do you feel the repression was particularly worse during the early years (pre-20th century) compared to the 1920s? Was the high-water mark during the pre-WW1 era or during the New Deal era?

EDIT: There was no particular reason to quote Cheezy in this response, it's an open question to Traitorfish or any other specialist there.

Tolni said:

And there was the whole McCarthy business. Even if he turned to be a tad bit unAmerican in the end, and by which I mean "he blamed innocent Americans of being commies".

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Phrases like "McCarthy blamed innocent Americans of being commies", even when said by antimcarthist, democrats, "lefties" and such show how deep anticomunism is in america's subconscious. Basically it means that being socialist or communist make you culprit of a crime automatically, by definition, so you can only be innocent not being commie.

You see, the thing is, in their eyes, these people were communist. But in their eyes, being a communist is a crime. Since they weren't, they were blamed for a nonexistent crime. Which all makes it worse.

How so? None of these people were actually convicted of any criminal charge, so there's no miscarriage of justice to compound the basic injustice of the suppression of political dissent, so it's not clear why a false accusation should be seen as a greater injustice than a truthful one. More aggravating for the accused individual, to be sure, but not actually more unjust.

Surely, the greater sympathy should be extend to the genuine Communists who actually were convicted under these unjust laws?

To be fair, in the McCarthy affair, much of the spotlight was taken by the blacklisted actors and less for the actual commies, as due to the fact that they weren't liked at all during that time in America.

Traitorfish said:

The America where even hobos dine from silver plates is just nationalist myth-making, but you're driving at a legitimate point, that the American ruling class allowed-slash-was forced to allow enough of its wealth to trickle down to enough of its working class to inhibit serious and generalised ferment. Most Americans for most of their history have seen their material condition improve across their lifetime, even if that material condition was not all that enviable in itself.

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Only the upper crust of hobos dine from silver plates, even in America.

Antilogic said:

I think the First World War/Roaring Twenties era is a pretty repressive point for the American socialist movement and labor in general (Debs was running a presidential campaign from prison, Victor Berger was refused a seat in Congress basically because he was a pacifist), but there appears to be a brief revival of labor-oriented politics in the New Deal era.

Do you feel the repression was particularly worse during the early years (pre-20th century) compared to the 1920s? Was the high-water mark during the pre-WW1 era or during the New Deal era?

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I'm not sure which is "worse." Repression was harsh throughout both periods; labor leaders were lynched, strikers were fired upon by the national guard and hired guns, Pinkertons penetrated all levels of workers' organizations all before the War. After, things took on a more "national security" flavor rather than the old "keep the lower-class upstarts away from mah munnehs/ maintain law and order" attitude; this is almost entirely due to the Bolshevik Revolution. In Britain, Germany, and other countries as well, repression became harsher and used more violent and state-based tactics to crush anything that smelled like "Bolshevism."

Tolni said:

To be fair, in the McCarthy affair, much of the spotlight was taken by the blacklisted actors and less for the actual commies, as due to the fact that they weren't liked at all during that time in America.

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To be fair, too, many of the actors indicted and blacklisted were communists or communist sympathizers/fellow travelers. We shouldn't presume they were wholly unjustified accusations simply because McCarthy & Co. were fanatically militant in their purges.

In many cases, at that time advocacy of armed revolution was a crime of sorts, so the word "unjustly" kind of takes on a different tone. But in my opinion, if it were just to do so, then one bears all the more responsibility to disobey and combat that system.

The actual point is that this is exactly the sort of political repression that Western liberals pride themselves on never having engaged in.

Anarchism was the cause célebre after the assassination of McKinley, and before that there were all sorts of scares about Catholics, slavers, abolitionists and whoever you cared to mention. Perhaps there's something in the way Americans see themselves that leads them to panic about those with strong political differences. I wonder whether it's the fact that American society is so diverse - it's hard to be really scared of somebody with different views in a country where everyone is fundamentally similar, but it's quite easy to demonise and exaggerate the otherness of somebody from a very different background.

Isn't it being a country with vast "virgin land" has a better way to get rid of "political undesirables" (socialists and commies)? Russian communists only gained momentum after devastation in WWI and downfall of Czar in February revolution.

The US overthrew the king over 200 years ago. The two wars changed us, but also helped out the economy. The US had to overcome the stigma of slavery and unfair work practices, so technically it may be further ahead of Russia....

From the very beginning. The business class was violently hostile to socialist movements since before the civil war. The business class also meant most of the media, and the police.