Barrick linked it to Lewwer duad üs Slaav ("better dead than a slave"), a phrase used by Prussian poet Detlev von Liliencron in his ballad Pidder Lüng. The phrases may have been invented or inspired by Germans. Some American alt-right groups such as Patriot Front have also used the phrase in their propaganda, in particular against Chinese Americans during the COVID-19 pandemic in the United States. For example, "better dead than red" is sometimes used as a schoolyard taunt aimed at redhaired children or Chinese American children. With the end of the Cold War, the phrases have increasingly been repurposed as their original meanings have waned. The first known use of "better red than dead" came in August 1958, when the Oakland Tribune wrote: "The popular phrase 'better red than dead' has lost what appeal it ever had." As anti-communist fever took hold in mid-century, the version "better dead than red" became popular in the United States, especially during the McCarthy era.
As for those weaklings who may fall by the wayside and starve to death, let the country bury them under the epitaph: Better Dead than Red. It is high time in any case that the workers learned to live by faith, not work. In an editorial criticizing John Edgerton, a Tennessee businessman who had mandated morning prayers in his factories to help keep out "dangerous ideas", The Nation sarcastically wrote: The first known English-language use of either term came in 1930, long before their widespread popularity.
In any event, Russell agreed with the sentiment, having written in 1958 that if "no alternatives remain except Communist domination or extinction of the human race, the former alternative is the lesser of two evils", and the slogan was adopted by the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament, which he helped found. The first phrase, "better red than dead", is often credited to British philosopher Bertrand Russell, but in his 1961 Has Man a Future? he attributes it to "West German friends of peace". " Better red than dead" and " better dead than red" were dueling Cold War slogans which first gained currency in the United States during the late 1950s, amid debates about anti-communism and nuclear disarmament (red being the emblematic color of communism).
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