Red Scare Dbq Analysis

The Red Scare was given its name because everyone feared the idea of communism (“Red”) in America. Fear, especially spread out among a group, is a dangerous and chaotic thing that can cause people to do things that they would not normally do. It can cause people to betray others close to them or not trust some people they would normally trust.
The Red Scare created a fear among American citizens that made them point fingers at everyone, including people who they considered close to them or on their side before all of the chaos. Senator Joe McCarthy accused 205 people of being of the communist party but did not reveal most names on his list. Document 3 says “… first he had said there were 205 disloyal employees in State, then 57, before settling

on 80.” So in being a government official he accused 205 people that he worked with ,for his country, of being a part of the communist party. If this strong of a fear was spreading would he have done something like this? This scare was built up by citizens and world events and that is what created this chaos. Document 3 also says that “… 80 of them were employed in the State Department”. If someone of such high standard in the country being a senator says that people he works with are communists then chaos will continue to grow no matter what.
At this point in time communism is growing rapidly throughout the world and this contributes to the chaos and commotion of the US. This also contributes to creating people such as McCarthy, people that want to point fingers and hope they are right because they are so scared of what might happen if they don’t do anything. Document 1 says “Six years ago there was within the Soviet orbit 180,000,000 people. Lined up on the antitotalitarian side there were in the world at that time roughly 1,625,000,000 people. Today, only 6 years later, there are 800,000,000 people under the absolute domination of Soviet Russa, an increase of over 400 percent.” Communism increased an incredible amount over 6 years, surpassing the U.S.’s numbers greatly. That is enough to scare a person ,with all of their rights and a lot to lose, into going crazy. Communism is simply defined as , a government having control over all citizen actions and governmental policies. Citizens living in a country that was founded on liberty and the achievement of one’s dreams are bound to do crazy things when faced with such a threat and therefor people such as McCarthy are created.
The Red Scare and McCarthyism only intensified each other.

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

another McCarthy smear…” People can now just point more fingers and blame McCarthy’s actions for their reasoning. This simply creates more of a chaotic untrusting environment which can create another McCarthy equivalent which could have resulted in a very vicious endless cycle.
McCarthy was created by the Red Scare.

As a counter product of this McCarthy intensified the Red Scare more and more. His ideals got through to the citizens creating more accusers and accusations. This only of course led to more and more fingers being pointed. The Red Scare was alive and well before McCarthyism but in the creation of McCarthy’s over the top actions he made it worse for the country as a whole, creating more and more fear inside the American

citizens.