McCarthyism and the Conservative Political Climate of Today

6195 Words13 Pages
bulb-icon

Recommended: modern comparisons to mccarthyism

McCarthyism and the Conservative Political Climate of Today

FOR ALMOST fifty years, the words "McCarthy" and "McCarthyism" have stood for a shameful period in American political history. During this period, thousands of people lost their jobs and hundreds were sent to prison. The U.S. government executed Julius and Ethel Rosenberg, two Communist Party (CP) members, as Russian spies. All of these people were victims of McCarthyism, the witch-hunt during the 1940s and 1950s against Communists and other leftists, trade unionists and civil rights activists, intellectuals and artists. Named for the witch-hunt's most zealous prosecutor, Sen. Joseph McCarthy (R-Wis.), McCarthyism was the most widespread and longest lasting wave of political repression in American history. In order to eliminate the alleged threat of domestic Communism, a broad coalition of politicians, bureaucrats, and other anticommunist activists hounded an entire generation of radicals and their associates, destroying lives, careers, and all the institutions that offered a left-wing alternative to mainstream politics and culture. That anticommunist crusade...used all the power of the state to turn dissent into disloyalty and, in the process, drastically narrowed the spectrum of acceptable political debate.[1]

Since the 1950s, most Americans have condemned the McCarthyite witch-hunts and show trials. By large majorities, Americans oppose firing communists from their jobs or banning communist speakers or books.[2] But over the past several years, increasing numbers of historians, writers and intellectuals have sought to minimize, explain away and justify McCarthyism. A spate of books and articles touting new historical evidence has tried to demonstrate that communism posed a real danger to American society in the 1940s and 1950s. They argue that even if some innocent people suffered and McCarthy was reckless, he was responding to a real threat.[3] As a result, Joe McCarthy doesn't look so irresponsible in hindsight.

The tendency to go soft on McCarthyism has been evident in popular culture as well. The presentation of a special Lifetime Achievement Award to director Elia Kazan at the 1999 Oscar ceremony is the most flagrant and controversial example. Another example of the current vogu...

... middle of paper ...

... more important that socialists and others on the left who understand the historical and political significance of McCarthyism condemn it openly, in all its forms. We must stand up against all those who promote it, apologize for it, concede to it in any way.

McCarthyism wasn't just directed at those in the CPUSA prepared to follow Stalin's wishes to the letter. It was directed against rank-and-file CP activists who had fought long and hard in the labor and civil rights struggles of the 1930s and 1940s. It was directed against others on the left, from liberals in the university and the government to Trotskyists and other radicals and revolutionaries. It severely weakened the labor movement and contributed disastrously to a decline in union power and militancy that we are only now beginning, slowly, to recover from.

Socialists make no compromises with McCarthyism or with Stalinism. Not only is there no contradiction between an uncompromising, unrelenting protest against McCarthyism and a rejection of the corrupt, self-defeating politics of Stalinism. These positions go hand in hand. They are both essential in today's fight for workers' self-emancipation and socialism from below.

Show More
Related

  • Arthur Miller's Comparing of Similarities in The McCarthy Era and The Salem Witch Trials Illustrated in The Crucible

    1005 Words  | 3 Pages

    The McCarthy Era was a period of history that began in the late 1949s and ended in the mid late 1950s. This was also called the Second Red Scare in the United States. The McCarthy Era had many innocent victims and many of them were imprisoned. Several authors, actors, civil rights activists, and physicists were among the many victims that were blacklisted. Due to McCarthy’s witch-hunt many victims’ reputations were destroyed and their families ...

    Read More

  • Did Joseph McCarthy create a “red scare” or did the “red scare” create Joseph McCarthy?

    699 Words  | 2 Pages

    ...that people can yet again fear that the communists might attack and send spies within to destroy their beloved country. Take the evidence from the Ohio County Women’s Republican Club when McCarthy stimulated the fear that Communism will spread and their spies will overthrow the democracy through traitorous means. Take the evidence of the Truman’s Response to McCarthy, Truman stated that the Kremlin must have put McCarthy there to cause turmoil and that must be a reason why he must have caused the country to go into a red scare. Take the evidence of the cartoon from Herb Block, which showed McCarthy drive his car into innocent people who had no influence of the communist and were scared by McCarthy’s ways of finding communists. McCarthy wanted to be well known and decided to start the red scare so that everyone else can fear and be aware of the communist everywhere.

    Read More

  • Rhetorical Analysis Of The Red Scare

    531 Words  | 2 Pages

    By the time Joseph McCarthy gave his Lincoln day speech the Red Scare in America was on full blast. Just a year prior to the speech the Soviets had successfully tested a nuclear bomb and China fell to the communists. There were problems both internationally with the Soviet incursion into Eastern Europe and domestically with Soviet spies in the United States. On February 9th 1950 this Senator from Wisconsin took advantage of the opportunity at his speech to the Republicans Women’s Club of Wheeling, West Virginia.

    Read More

  • Red Scare Dbq Analysis

    829 Words  | 2 Pages

    Although the Red Scare made McCarthy who he was he did not make it any better. Document 6 shows us a cartoon of 2 men driving in a car saying “It’s okay--- we’re hunting communists” This cartoon shows us the fact that people who thought they were doing the right thing ,such as McCarthy, were running their own people over in the process and still thinking that everything they were doing was justified because they were so scared. People running over others just made those people get up and wonder why they weren’t doing as much or why they weren’t as scared as those guys were, so naturally they tried harder. McCarthy was intensified by the Red Scare but his actions only made it worse. He was a state senator. A government official working for the good of our country. Citizens tend to have respect for people of his position and they also tend to listen. Document 4 states “While McCarthy is the worst sort of demagogue, many people listen when he yells, screams and sputters, because they are afraid.” This statement says it all. He may be wrong in his doings but people still look to him out of fear because he is a leader, a respected man, and also an excuse. Document 4 says “In addition to the persecution of many innocent people by this man, the greater danger lies, as you point out, in that those who should be eliminated from public life as being unfit or subversive, can now defend themselves by stating that it is merely

    Read More

  • Comparing the Salem Witch Trials and McCarthyism in America

    615 Words  | 2 Pages

    The Salem witch trials and the story of Joseph McCarthy are very similar; they both accused innocent people of doing things that were “bad” at the time. The Salem Witch trials were persecutions of men and woman on account of performing witchcraft. Two girls accused a woman of doing witchcraft and then the accusations continued, people accused other people to relieve their own punishment in a last ditch effort to save their lives, but it was in vein. After the witch trials were over “19 had been killed and an elderly man pressed to death under heavy stones”(Linder). “Some accused of witch craft were burned at the stake all in the name of justice”(Brown). Others were finally let out of jail after being in imprisonment for months at a time. Joseph McCarthy was the U.S senator for the state of Wyoming from 1947-1957, the year that he died. McCarthy became the most visible face in public during the time of the cold war in America. “McCarthy pursued unnecessary investigations, imprisonments and unprovoked acts to those who were being accused of being a communist”(Glitterrich). The term McC...

    Read More

  • The Crucible and Modern Day McCarthyism

    720 Words  | 2 Pages

    What is McCarthyism? It is the public onslaught of an individual or an individual’s character by means of baseless and uncorroborated charges, basically the repudiation of a person’s reputation. Joe McCarthy was the Wisconsin senator that evoked this era of fear and paranoia by inflaming the current fear of world domination by the Communist party that enveloped the Nation. He did this by announcing that he had discovered “57 cases of individuals who would appear to be either card carrying members or certainly loyal to the Communist Party, but who nevertheless are still helping to shape our foreign policy.” (McCarthy, 1950, p. 2), later the amount of implicated individuals rose to 205. These accusations launched McCarthy into the national spotlight where he then began his smear campaign against many well-known Americans, which was commonly referred to as “witch-hunts”. Because of McCarthy’s actions, up to 12, people lots their jobs hundreds were incarcerated. He then turned his sights to book banning because he claimed there were 30,000 books written by all shades of Communists. After his lists were made public all were removed from the Overseas Library Program. But he was not finished yet, he then assailed members of the entertainment business. He had writers and actors brought to trial. Many of these people were blacklisted and worse, all without a single shred of evidence. When people spoke out against McCarthy they were thrown onto the communist train, until enough people came forward to rebuke McCarthy’s unprecedented tactics. At this point he fell from political power into dishonor on December 2, 1954. This ended the McCarthy era, but not the atmosphere of paranoia that lingers in the nation today.

    Read More

  • The Crucible: The Rise Of Mccarthyism And American Culture

    800 Words  | 2 Pages

    during the Cold War era that led to the rise of McCarthyism. He discusses the effects of

    Read More

  • McCarthyism: The Manipulation of Fear in America During the Red Scare

    608 Words  | 2 Pages

    Joseph McCarthy’s negative influence first manifested itself through his ambition to gain political power. He used his senatorial position to litigate persons who were thought to be part of the Communist Party. Examples this would be the targeting of the Hollywood Ten. These were citizens in the film industry who were cited for contempt of Congress after refusing to answer the questions of McCarthy. The author of The Crucible, Arthur Miller, was even cited for contempt of Congress when he refused to identify writers that attended communist meetings. He went on to explain how the House Un-American Activities Committee, or HUAC, was deceitfully informing citizens that the Soviet way of controlling culture could be successfully exported to America. According to professor and historian Regin Schmidt, when McCarthyism was at its height, only 1% of the public was worried about the internal threat of Communism. This fact shows how manipulative and cynical the government was when fueling the fire of the anti-communist movement.

    Read More

  • Joseph McCarthy and Communism

    1037 Words  | 3 Pages

    From 1949 to 1954, the citizens of the United States were overcome with terror of the possibility of being accused of Communism. Joseph McCarthy was an anti-communist zealot obsessed with rooting out perceived Communist spies and activities in the United States. Common opinion showed that McCarthy was a bully and a liar. The Senate condemned him for it because at the time, there was no evidence to support him. However, in recent years, evidence has come out that confirms the basis of what McCarthy said. There were Communists infiltrating America, and it seemed McCarthy was the only one who actively trying to find it. McCarthy governed the U.S. people with fear for three year, was censored, and now is being proven correct, despite people trying to hide the truth.

    Read More

  • Mass Hysteria

    1218 Words  | 3 Pages

    McCarthy was elected senate after becoming a lawyer in his sate of Wisconsin. During the first few years of his term nothing major really happened until 1950. In a speech to the Women’s club of wheeling in West Virginia he stated that he had a list in his hand of about 205 known members of the communist party working for the United States department. President Harry Truman had signed an executive order that said that all communists or fascists could not obtain a United States government job. The FBI played a big role in the investigation of this list McCarthy contained. McCarthy’s friend j. Edgar Hoover, which was a violent ant-communist in the federal government, could not wait to expose the people McCarthy accused of being communists. McCarthy’s list created a nationwide scar among the people of the United States. Everything McCarthy said was a lie and he had no evidence to show that the people he accused were really communist but, because of the start of the Korean War and the arrest of two American soldiers accused of spying on the Soviet Union American citizen...

    Read More

  • Communism In America

    1557 Words  | 4 Pages

    Beginning in the late 1940s, as the Cold War escalated between the United States, the Soviet Union and the Peoples Republic of China, the United States went through a period of intense anti-communist tensions and suspicion. Many thousands of individuals were suspected of being Soviet spies, Communists, or communist sympathizers. Although the American Communist Party was never illegal under Federal law, membership in the party or support of its goals were regarded by many as tantamount to treason. Beginning in 1950, McCarthy became the most visible public face of this era of anti-communism. The term McCarthyism was coined that same year to describe and condemn the senator's methods, which were widely seen as demagogic and based on reckless, unsubstantiated accusations. Later the term was applied more generally to the anti-communism of the late 1940s through the late 1950s; today, it is often used even more broadly, to describe public attacks made on persons' character and/or patriotism that involve the sort of tactics associated with McCarthy.

    Read More

  • The Causes of McCarthyism

    1138 Words  | 3 Pages

    As an individual in the middle of Twentieth century Joseph McCarthy had a rather intense effect on society. He started the movement that bears his name. McCarthyism was the movement that caused many changes in the lives of the people of the 1950's. McCarthy headed the charge against communism in the United States after the second World War. Through his actions many people were accused of being communists and hastilly judged to be so because of the general feeling toward communism. What causes such an incredible uprising. What caused so many people to rally behind, in many cases, unfounded accusations that would ruin other peoples lives unjustly? What caused not just a movement but the movement known as McCarthyism? It is historically proven that a simple action can have many complex causes, while a movement can have immeasurable causes underlying its begining and the momentum that keeps it alive. Leaving the little, but not insignificant causes alone, the major causes of McCarthyism were the attitude of the United States toward communism, the sense of superiority within the United States, and McCarthy's own position.

    Read More

  • Essay On The Red Scare Dbq

    481 Words  | 1 Pages

    McCarthy made many outrageous, false accusations. “In addition to the persecution of many innocent people by this man, the greater danger lies, as you point out, in that those who should be eliminated from public life as being unfit or subversive, can now defend themselves by stating that it is merely another McCarthy smear…”(Document 4). People who were actually guilty could now defend themselves against any accusations by just saying its another one of McCarthy’s false accusations. “And that is what I mean when I say that McCarthy’s antics are the best asset that the Kremlin can have.”(Document 5). Not even the president himself sided with McCarthy’s crazy accusations. If we were too busy making false accusations in our country instead of worrying about how to defend against the Soviets, then we would eventually fall to them.

    Read More

  • The Red Menace Film Analysis

    1222 Words  | 3 Pages

    Edgar Hoover eludes to these same themes in his 26 March 1947 testimony before the House Un-American Activities Committee. “The Communists have developed one of the greatest propaganda machines the world has ever known. The… propaganda technique is designed to promote emotional response with the hope that the victim will be attracted by what he is told the Communist way of life holds in store for him.” Linking these channels of propaganda are the themes of psychological, physical, technological and social dangers of political establishments more similar to Communism than

    Read More

  • The Venona Project

    1044 Words  | 3 Pages

    ...y Wheeling speech created nationwide hysteria, and with its impeccable timing just days after the conviction of the State Official Alga Hiss for lying under oath about his association with the communist Soviet as a spy, fueled the fight on communism. (citation) McCarthy war on communism during the “Second Red Scare” did not leave any individual safe from accusations. He attacked government agents, entertainment industry workers, educators, union members, and alienated the left-wing Democrats. McCarthy helped to create the atmosphere of suspicion and panic with his growth in media coverage. McCarthy’s words made for big headlines and the media was quick to cover his stories. This exposure helped facilitate American approval of McCarthy and empowered him to make more accusations on those suspected of subversion. In 1953, McCarthy headed the Government Operations Commit

    Read More

More about McCarthyism and the Conservative Political Climate of Today

Open Document