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. In 1950 Joseph McCarthy, a U.S. Senator from Wisconsin, began a crusade of anti-communism (Bartlett). In this period of time “the widespread accusations and investigations of suspected Communist activities in the U.S.” became known as ‘McCarthyism’ (Reeves). Many events happened during the McCarthyism era to justify his suspicions; Communism was spreading throughout Czechoslovakia and China, and North Korea invaded the South –which started the Korean War (Reeves). The accusations of Communism spread to all branches of public works; entertainment, clergy, teachers, and journalists were all investigated (Reeves). Blacklisting first appears at this time. Many people had to take oaths, swearing that they were not Communist, just to keep their jobs (Reeves). When McCarthy first began, he said that Communists made up the majority of the State Department, but when the Senate looked into it they reported no sings of Communism (Reeves). In 1949 McCarthy said to have gotten his inf... ... middle of paper ... ... had already long since cleared out. Perhaps that is why he became an alcoholic; no one believed him when he repeatedly told them the house was on fire, only to watch it burn down. Works Cited Bartlett, Charles. “McCarthy, Joseph Raymond.” World Book Advanced. World Book, 2014. Web. 31 Jan. 2014. Benson, Sonia, Daniel E. Brannen Jr., and Rebecca Valentine. “Joseph McCarthy.” UXL Encyclopedia of U.S. History. Eds. Lawrence W. Baker and Sarah Hermson. Vol. 5: K-M. Detroit: Cengage Learning, 2009. Print. 8 vols. Bronner, Ethan. “Witching Hour; Rethinking McCarthyism, if Not McCarthy.” New York Times. New York Times, 18 Oct. 1998. Web. 31 Jan. 2014. Reeves, Thomas C. “McCarthyism.” World Book Advanced. World Book, 2014. Web. 31 Jan. 2014.
McCarthy was a virtually unknown politician until February 1950, where in a speech at Wheeling, West Virginia, he proclaimed “have here in my hand a list of 205 . . . a list of names that were made known to the Secretary of State as being members of the Communist Party and who nevertheless are still working and shaping policy in the State Department” (History Matters). This speech coined the “Enemies from Within” propelled McCarthy to the political spotlight and gave him huge power along with the support of the American public. McCarthy, realizing he had a great political opportunity, and continued his “anti-communist” tirade accusing powerful people in hollywood and members of the armed forces as being communists or communist sympathizers. As his skeptics grew, so did his blacklist, with McCarthy accusing every single one of his critics as communists destroying their lives and careers in the process (Victims of McCarthyism). McCarthy used this tactic to discourage any opposition, with many potential critics seeing the potential implications of their skepticism, they simply redacted their statements or never spoke
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 ...
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).
Through the 1940s and 1950s, America was beleaguered with anxieties about the menace of communism arising in Eastern Europe and China. Profiting out of such worries for the nation, young Senator Joseph McCarthy made an open charge that hundreds of "card-carrying" communists had penetrated the United States government. Although his allegations were found ultimately to be false and the Senate reproached him for improper ways, his ardent shakeup heralded as one of the most tyrannical eras in 20th-century American politics. While the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAA) had been formed in 1938 as a body to resist communists, McCarthy's charges enhanced the political nervousness of the epoch. The suspicious chase for moles, scandalously known as McCarthyism, made the life and work of a number of important cultural names in the U.S difficult, being branded as champions and supporters to leftist causes.
...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
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
“The great difference between our western Christian world and the atheistic Communist world is not political, gentlemen, it is moral,” is one of the many examples throughout McCarthy’s speech of him assuming an overconfident or superior tone. His claim to own a list of 205 names in the State Department of communist sympathizers gave support for this arrogant tone, but when asked McCarthy refused to provide anyone with the aforementioned list. McCarthy also used this tone when he said, “The reason why we find ourselves in a position of impotency is not because our only powerful potential enemy has sent men to invade our shores . . . but rather because of the traitorous actions of those who have been treated so well by this Nation,” expressing the idea that no one but the United States’ own countrymen had the strength to defeat their homeland. McCarthy’s tone throughout the article is one of absolute certainty, and gave his audience the incentive to trust
Throughout McCarthy’s political journey, panic that arose from the witch hunt and fear of communism became very well known. That feeling became known as McCarthyism (Senator Joseph McCarthy 2). Communism wouldn’t be what it is today if it weren’t for Joseph McCarthy.
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.
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.
Similarly, McCarthy accused innocent people of being communists in order to get what he wanted: popularity in the political race for reelection as senator of Wisconsin (“Persecution” 1). McCarthy gained his credibility through Whittaker Chambers’ admittance of being a communist and Chambers’ revelation of other communists (“Whittaker Chambers” 1).
When the Tydings Committee issued a majority report dismissing all of McCarthy’s allegations and condemning them as “a fraud and a hoax perpetrated on the Senate of the United States and the American people.” Republican members of the American sub-committee condemned the majority report and the Democrats who signed it and McCarthy turned his defeat into a victory through the great publicity he received. Soon after Tydings report was considered pro-Communist. Like the Salem Witch Trials lack of substantial proof, many people were willing to believe McCarthy’s charges without any evidence. Soon world events seemed to be playing into McCarthy’s hands and he could use it all against the Truman administration. McCarthy’s fame grew and he because more careless, and instead of hinting nameless lists, he started naming names.
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...
being a Communist, with the only source being a report on how his father reads a Serbian newspaper. (Clooney) Without genuine evidence from a credible source, an argument is as good as a blatant claim. McCarthy’s “evidence” is in fact unsubstantiated in itself. Therefore, his accusations contain no basis, and lack the foundation needed to provide solid and subs...
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 ...