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Communism during the cold war
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After World War II, many Americans believed that Communism was a threat to the United States. I believe Joseph McCarthy provides the best case on how the United States is threatened by Communism. After the war ended, the United States was the most powerful nation, but unfortunately threatened by Communism. McCarthy believes that the most powerful people like the government, and wealthy have intentionally created a system that permits the enemy to guide and shape our policies. The enemy (government) is continuously covering up traitorous actions, treason, and the betrayals of the nation. Presidents Truman at one time orders all government to refuse to turnover any information in regards to Communist activities of any government employee
Critical occurrences in1949 brought American communist fears to an extreme level. The Berlin Blockade and the Berlin Airlift, followed by Mao Zedong's triumph over Chiang Kai-Shek's Chinese Nationalist forces, and the successful atomic bomb tests of the USSR all contributed to the hysteria. America was gripped by paranoia, embodied by Wisconsin Senator Joseph McCarthy Communist witch hunts.
With the onset of the Cold War, a growing Red Scare would cripple American society – effectively plunging the nation into mass hysteria and unrest over the fallacious threat of communist infiltration. This reaction was precipitated by Republican senator, Joseph McCarthy, in his speech, “Enemies from Within”, delivered in Wheeling, West Virginia, on 9 February 1950. McCarthy paints communists in a particularly harsh light to generate anti-Soviet sentiment within the American public. He uses juxtaposition to engender both indignation and fear in the audience to achieve this effect.
Joseph McCarthy was a United States senator in the mid twentieth century who believed that the communists were taking over the State Department and were shaping the foreign policy of America, those same communist that were their foes. Joseph McCarthy’s great fear of the rising of the communist party, in both the Soviet Union and in America, was reflected by a great deal of the country. “The fall of China to communism were the results of the infiltration of communism in to the American government, specially the state department” (The Annals of America).
One of the biggest fears of the American people is that the concept of communism contrasts drastically from the concept of capitalism, which the United States was essentially founded upon. The United States, as the public believed, was not a land of perfect communal equality, but rather a land of equal opportunity. However, what made communism so dangerous can be succinctly described by Eisenhower who compared the spread of communism as the domino effect. As his secretary of state, Dulles, put it, the propagation of communism “would constitute a threat to the sovereignty and independence” of America (Doc B). In addition, the Cold War also planted the seeds of rational fear of a global nuclear war. As Russia caught up to the United States in terms of technological advancements, they successfully developed the atomic bomb as well as the hydrogen bomb, which caused Americans to believe that the USSR would use these weapons of mass destruction to forcefully extend their ideologies to the USA. In fact, Americans were so frantic about a potential nuclear disaster that it...
In the beginning of McCarthy’s political career, he was already walking on thin ice. He launched a series of charges against the government. The first charge was against the communist global apparatus. McCarthy said that the organization had made a sustained attempt to penetrate the United States government and attempt to subvert its foreign policy decisions. The second charge was against the United States government itself. McCarthy said that the official defenses against foreign penetration ranged from weak to nonexistent. The third and final charge was against the government of America, ...
“Despite American affluence, the spread of communism and the threat of global atomic war plagued Americans with a sense of constant threat both from within and without” (Prono). Many Americans were being taught that communists were the enemy from when they were young, so it created a generation that had so much hate and were so scared of the communist influence.
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.
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.
While Karl Marx didn’t invent communism, his creation of the Communist Manifesto and other pro communist works as well as his philosophies helped popularize communist governments. To this day Communism is still popularized by these works, and many conflicts America faces are caused by our relations with Communist countries. The Russian government had two separate revolutions that lead to a communist government and a country called the USSR. Mao Zedong following Marxist principles created the People's Republic of China under a Communist government. The struggle between communist countries and capitalist countries have caused economic social political and military conflict.
The American government, who believes in capitalism, is a strong opponent of Communism. Their perception of Communism is negative; and this is often shown through different medias, such as television shows, movies, and literatures. One example is The Ugly American by William J. Lederer and Eugene Burdick. In The Ugly American, Lederer and Burdick portray Communism as a force of evil that is slowly spreading in undeveloped Asian countries like a virus, with many of the citizens of these Asian countries becoming Communists. As well, the authors depict many of their American characters as anti-communists who try different approaches to prevent the spread of it. Though the authors' views on Communism is a reflection of the American government, the question that emerges is whether this portrayal is accurate.
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.
The attitude of the citizens of the United States was a tremendous influence on the development of McCarthyism. The people living in the post World War II United States felt fear and anger because communism was related with Germany, Italy, and Russia who had all at one point been enemies of the United States during the war. If the enemies were communists then, communists were enemies and any communists or even communist sympathizers were a threat to the American way of life. "From the Bolshevik Revolution on, radicals were seen as foreign agents or as those ...
The United States is a democratic nation that allows its citizens to vote for their representative leaders. However, not every U.S. citizen has always been able to vote. For example, women and African-Americans had to work their way up to be able to vote through protests. Despite the United States being democratic, different beliefs of other forms of government have come along because of different practices throughout the world and immigrants. An example of this is communism, which is a practice that the U.S. does not want for its nation. The U.S. has experienced two periods in which it was highly afraid of communism rising in the U.S. The two periods were from 1917 to 1929 and 1939 to 1959 where the U.S. had anti-communist feelings. The reasons that led to anti-communism during these periods were significantly similar, but the impacts
There is a long-running debate about whether communism or capitalism is preferable and shows more of beneficial aspects. Capitalism is defined as an economic system in which investment in and ownership of the means of production, distribution, and exchange of wealth is made and maintained chiefly by private individuals or corporations. While communism is a system of social organization in which all economic and social activity is controlled by the state. The principle of capitalism is if one is successful and hardworking will keep improve and progress in life. While the principle of communism is to keep all the people the same, a lot of people may say that this is a good thing but when talking about real life this would add laziness and demotivation because hardworking people would gain the same credit as lazy people. Capitalism and communism are the two main economic systems that are used by governments nowadays. Obviously capitalism is a much better economic system to be used by a state; practical uses and statistical facts qualify capitalism as much more successful. Also, capitalism is more beneficial to the state, common citizens, and business owners. It would be very useful to test the two systems according to practical uses of the two systems on states and monitor which states succeeded and which states failed.
Communism, by definition, is described to be a theory to have all land publicly owned and each person is paid according to their ability to work and needs.”Communism, which is also described as Revolutionary Proletarian Socialism or Marxism, is both a political and economic philosophy.” (allaboutphilosophy.org).Communism also includes: Abolition of Private Property, Heavy Progressive Income Tax, Abolition of Rights of Inheritance, Confiscation of Property Rights, Central Bank, Government Ownership of Communication and Transportation, Government Ownership of Factories and Agriculture, Government Control of Labor, Corporate Farms and Regional Planning, and Government Control of Education. A Constitutional Republic by definition is a form of government