The state of Vermont, which now has the reputation of being a liberal haven, was taken over by anti-communist paranoia in the mid-twentieth century. What happened? And what connections might this have to our current political landscape? On today’s episode, Allen interviews Rick Winston about McCarthyism and his book Red Scare in the Green Mountains. “You don’t have to look very far to see a parallel between then and now,” he says.
Rick Winston is a New York native who attended both Columbia University and the University of California, Berkeley before settling in Vermont in 1970. He founded the Lightning Ridge Film Society in Montpelier in 1972, which became the Savoy Theater in 1981. Winston currently teaches film history at several institutions, including the Community College of Vermont. He is the author of Red Scare in the Green Mountains: Vermont in the McCarthy Era, 1946–1960 (Rootstock Publishing, 2018).
