Is communism viable in the USA?

The First Red Scare proved to be a complete refusal to communism

Question: Is communism viable in the USA?
Position‹2 of 2: No, communism is not viable in the USA
Argument1 of 2›: The First Red Scare proved to be a complete refusal to communism

After the communist takeover in Russia, Americans began to fear the spread of communism in its labor class. Communism went against the patriotism that was present during World War I.

The argument

The First Red Scare occurred in 1919-1920 after the fear of Bolshevik influence when communism took over Russia. Many Americans were afraid that communism could spread to the United States and threaten the democratic values of the nation once the United States no longer had to concentrate its efforts on winning World War I. The mass immigration of Southern and Eastern Europeans to the U.S. and labor unrest in the late 1910s, including the Great Steel Strike of 1919, fueled this fear. Due to the First Red Care, thousands of people were arrested, and hundreds of people were deported and labeled as "communists" during the scare.

Premises

[P1]During the First Red Scare of 1919-1920, Americans broadly feared that Bolshevik-style communism would spread to the United States and undermine its democratic values. [P2] This fear translated into concrete national rejection, with thousands arrested and hundreds deported under the label of 'communists.' [C] Therefore, the First Red Scare demonstrates a deep-rooted American refusal of communism, showing it is not viable in the USA.

Counter-arguments

Irrational paranoia was not rooted in the first Red Scare that started a century ago. There was an unambiguous purpose for the government agencies which carried out the arrests: to kill the radical left in the United States.

Rejecting the premises

[Rejecting P1] The premise generalises a short, intense episode into a settled national disposition. The scare was driven by wartime mobilisation, the 1919 bombings and a wave of strikes, and it subsided within about two years; the same era returned socialist candidates to municipal office and to Congress, which a broad and deep-rooted refusal would not accommodate. [Rejecting P2] Arrests and deportations are state action, not a measure of popular belief. The raids were carried out by federal agencies pursuing the suppression of the radical left, and they drew substantial legal and public criticism at the time, including resistance within the Labor Department to many of the deportation warrants. Suppression by government establishes what officials did, not what the population held — and events of 1919–20 bear on what was possible then rather than on what is viable now.