Joseph McCarthy is alive and kicking in today's society. He has been for many centuries, bringing fear, doubt, and uncertainty with him. Those ideals have been the unspoken anthem for many political movements throughout America's history. However, it wasn't until the 1950s that the movement claimed the iconic name and face that we associate with it now. Even though it can show fruitfulness in the long run, McCarthyism remains a dangerous political tactic that completely bypasses the individuals' constitutional rights. It is dangerous considering it ignores the individuals' right to privacy, while also providing a powerful political weapon for politicians to generate a wary and uncertain view of a particular group of people. This helps them successfully rally the public behind them. Not only that, McCarthyism also goes against the major …show more content…
American belief of 'Innocent until proven guilty', and replaces it with 'Guilty until proven guilty'.
McCarthyism did not die in the fifties along with the 'Red Scare', and it has begun to pick up speed again in modern times. On April 22, 1954, a trial aired on television that captured the attention on the American population. Joseph McCarthy, senator of Wisconsin, a jury, and multiple defendants spent the next three months on national television, investigating whether or not the Army was being 'soft' on communist. The trials were so popular, because McCarthy had been gaining public support for four years prior to the trials, by claiming in 1950 that he had a list of 205 communists who worked for the state department. This was a successful political move, since America was in the Cold War with Russia, and the fear, referred to as the ‘Red Scare’, was very high at this time. During this time, the public began to realize McCarthy’s bully tactics that he used when addressing the people on the stand, and this eventually lead to his censure by the Senate in 1954. His political career declined rapidly from that point, and he died in
1957 due to his extreme alcoholism. The term ‘McCarthyism’ was coined by a man named Herbert Block, who used the term in a political cartoon in 1950. It is synonymous with making accusations of treason or threat with little to no evidence. In McCarthy’s efforts to uncover communists within the government, he heavily damaged the lives and reputations of the people put on trial, and their families. Not only that, but it managed to get millions of Americans scared enough to shun these people and their loved ones, while also putting a muzzle on the debate about Cold War issues, and pulling the majority of the population behind him in getting rid of communists. (History) This affected not only the people involved with the trials, but also the entire country in a way that made people stop and think about how passionately they followed a man with no evidence to back up his plan. McCarthy is infamous for his popular tactic of using fear, doubt, and uncertainty to rally people behind him. However, he was not the first person to do this, and he was certainly not the last. In 1895, a man named Benjamin Tillman was elected to the U.S Senate for South Carolina, after years of running on a platform based on White Supremacy. He was more commonly known as ‘Pitchfork Ben’, because of his demands to ‘make the South white again’. He spent many years arguing against African Americans rights, saying that ‘by giving them an education, it will ruin a perfectly good field hand’. He was successful because at the time, there were very high tensions between whites and African Americans, and taking away the rights of African Americans was a popular opinion. (Journal of Blacks in Higher Education) At the same time, there was another man running on the same ideas, named Thomas E. Watson. He had many unsuccessful national campaigns from 1906-1922, but he was dominating Georgia politics. Like Tillman, he was riding on the popular opinion and idea of ‘anti-black’, and that gave him immense power over the populations, specifically in making and breaking governors. (Dickson) Being able to rally people behind a single idea is important in politics, and there have been many people throughout history that have caught on to this. The trend of demagogism is not only dangerous, but it is a threat to democracy. Radical ideas in desperate times are a common trend in American society. However, sometimes these ideas, while rallying the people, trample the individual rights of the people being diminished. When McCarthy opened up investigations on the alleged communists in the government, the right to privacy was completely disregarded, and due process was also tossed aside. This disregard for individual rights can be symbolized by many things, but one sticks outs in particular, and a man named Christopher Pyke, who was teaching law in the Army Intelligence, found a piece of McCarthyism in their library. The book had a label in it, and it essentially read that nothing in this book was affiliated with the beliefs of the Army Intelligence. The book was the Constitution of the United States. (Pyke) To many, that is an outrage, as this is America, and the constitution is the law of the land. However, how many times have certain groups of people, who were and are American citizens, disregarded and not given proper rights under the law because the general population disagrees with who they are, how they live, or their religious beliefs? The public only sees the problem after the fact, when everything cools down, and that is the most dangerous part of using demagogic tactics to pull support; no matter how much support you get on allegations against certain groups of people, when it all calms down, and it always does, radical solutions never fix the real issue. Looking back at these times in our history where fear and hatred were used to boost politicians up, it is hard to turn that eye and look at how it is unfolding in our current society. After people like Tillman, Watson, and McCarthy, we all like to say that we will not let it happen again, yet it stares at you when you turn on the news; it runs on short clips and sound bites and talking heads. We are in a time of great unrest in America, and every time a politician has come in with these ideas that ‘those people are the problem’, we listen. Everyone is looking for a solution. We have let another one of these people into our political system. On June 16, 2016, Donald J. Trump announced his candidacy for president on the Republican ticket, and he did not waste time in making his populist beliefs on hot-button issues known. Much like McCarthy, Trump began to attract a lot of media attention on his allegations against a group of people. Trump has focused on Hispanics, and Muslims. In his announcement speech, he stated that ‘when Mexico sends its people… they’re not sending their best…’ (Trump) After that, he proceeded to call them ‘rapists’. Many were outraged, but there were also a very large group that stood behind him from the start. However, when confronted with this comparison of McCarthy and Trump, many deny it. But looking at the facts, and his political moves and ideals, he is in all essence a modern day Joseph McCarthy. He plays on the public’s fear of the economy collapsing, and pushes that blame onto the immigrants seeking a better opportunity in America. He is a ‘demagogue who's turning white people's anxieties into anger for political advantage’, and not only is it true, but it is dangerous. (Heer) People, like how they approached McCarthy, are supporting him because he has solutions and we need solutions, but he cannot put the things he is promising into action. He is advocating for things that disregard due process, and things a president simply cannot do, and because of this, the population is voting a man with empty promises into political office. The continuing chant of ‘we will not let McCarthy happen again’ is now an ironic anthem of a generation that lived through it, and is now advocating for it. When we look at everything that has happened and is happening, it becomes very clear that we, as Americans, are prone to political demagogues that use our fear in times of national crisis or upset to get national attention, and political office. After every time, we swear it will never happen again, or we see other countries go through leaders with the same ideals and tell ourselves that it will never be us, but it has been us; it is us. McCarthy-like ideals have become our default beliefs when we are upset with how our country is being handled, yet we always get burnt in the end. So why do we keep letting it happen? There will never be a point when these beliefs will not exist, but there does come a time when people have to take a step back and think for themselves instead of letting the media guide them like cows to the slaughter; national slaughter. This reoccurring theme will always exist, because McCarthy never died. He was immortalized by his beliefs, and he will continue to breathe the political air of America unless we as Americans become more aware to what we are advocating for.
McCarthy laments the “swiftness of the tempo of communist victories and American defeats” (McCarthy, 2) in the progression of war. By contrasting the victories of the communists and defeats of the Americans, McCarthy presents the American audience with knowledge of an aggressor challenging traditional American superiority and thus far succeeding, thereby eliciting feelings of shared scorn for the perceived lower-class belligerents, the communists, and generating unified sympathy and nationalism behind their own countrymen. Further juxtaposition is used by McCarthy to express the nature of the internal communist infiltrators in America. He describes the “ones who have been the worst [traitors]” (2) as being “bright young men who are born with silver spoons in their mouths” (2). McCarthy appeals to the everyman in America, instilling feelings of disdain for the elite bourgeoisie who have seemed to leech their nation of resources and then turned on a whim to become communist traitors to their own great nation. Further juxtaposition of this bourgeoisie element to its unexpected downfall to communism
...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.
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.
A Documentary History (Paperback). Oxford University Press, USA, 1996. Scott, Peter Dale, Deep Politics, University of California Press; Reprint edition (June 22, 1996). Mitgang, Herbert Lillian Hellman's FBI File, Dangerous dossiers: exposing the secret war against America's greatest authors, New York: D.I. Fine, 1988, retrieved from a href="http://www.writing.upenn.edu/afilreis/50s/hellman-per-fbi.html">http://www.writing.upenn.edu/afilreis/50s/hellman-per-fbi.html/a>. Ted Morgan, Reds: McCarthyism in Twentieth-Century America, New York: Random House, 1st edition, 2003.
...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
Both The Crucible and “Talkin’ John Birch Paranoid Blues” agree with the hypocrisy and lack of sense that the time called the Red Scare or McCarthyism began, fed and ended. The Crucible uses the Salem Witch Trials as an allegory to show this side of the Red Scare while Bob Dylan uses an obvious sarcasm to show his point of view. Both Bob Dylan and Arthur Miller expose the irony of the time period called McCarthyism.
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...
McCarthy conducted “witch hunts” in an effort to seek out and eliminate suspected Communists. Congressional hearings were in effect, not hearings, but trials for crimes that were not really crimes, with congressmen serving as prosecutor, judge, and jury. Unable to deprive a person of their life and liberty, they deprived him of his livelihood. If the person refused to give the names of other Communists, he or she would automatically be considered guilty. Witnesses at the trials were immediately classified as either friendly or unfriendly.
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.
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.
experiencing a modern “witch hunt” of its own. Senator Joseph McCarthy, provoked by the Cold War, became fearfully convinced that Communists, or “Reds,” were polluting American
Times change and people come and go, but fear is a constant, and in “The Great Fear” by J. Ronald Oakley, he describes the wave of fear that occurred in the 1950s. In 1692, the townspeople of Salem were scared into believing that they were among witches, and in 1950’s the “Red” Scare destroyed thousands of peoples lives that were accused of being Communists. Those accused in both witch hunts were put on trial, and while many were killed in Salem, the Red Scare had blacklisted those persecuted.
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...
"(Cook p77). Fear was the greatest underlying cause of the McCarthy movement; fear of communism, fear of the loss of freedom, fear of being accused or fear of what would happen if someone challenged the movement. Works Cited Rogin, Paul. The 'Standard'. The Intellectuals and McCarthy: the Radical.