McCarthyism. It was basically like the Soviet Union purges but for capitalists (against communists).
My personal view is that the first mass wave of communism and socialism (19th and then 20th century) took the bourgeoisie by surprise. They learned their lesson and now spend a lot of effort on building and maintaining liberal ideology and squashing any real socialist movements quickly. Meanwhile, the proletariat doesn't even know who they are so there's no class consciousness building and they're constantly stuck in the spectacle that is the labor/consume cycle.