I actually can't remember how much non-leftist resistance the red scares got while they were going on. But certainly after the fact they have been portrayed as merely irrational, politically motivated witch hunts.

Edit: And there were definitely members and allies of CPUSA who had no idea they were part of or working with a Soviet front and defended the Party because of that belief. CPUSA did whole lot of solid civil rights organizing-- work that no one else (at least no other groups with significant white participation) was doing at the time. When I say the CPUSA was a Soviet front that doesn't mean that it was exclusively a Soviet front.