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crucible effective mccarthyism
crucible effective mccarthyism
reflection about McCarthyism
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Fear can be a fuel for fires of concern and worry in the hearts of many people. Hitler used this tactic in WWII to convince many that the Jewish were abominations to the world. In this sense, this is one way that Soviet Union profited from the population of the US. During the Cold War, the silent threat of a nuclear attack raged on between the Soviet Union and America. Eastern Europe was slowly being consumed with Communism during WWII and was spreading quickly. After the Cold War had continued to darken America, the fear of Communism encroached upon the citizens; the American Communist party became more of the worry every day. McCarthyism was there to remove the Communist threat from America before it overthrew the government. Many people argue for its helpful or hurtful benefits to America. In Schrecker’s book, “The Age of McCarthyism”, she discusses the Communist party’s goals, polices, and practices as well as gives a variety of documents like court cases, letters, and interviews that give perspective. Most of the documents show that the higher officials in the Communist party and how McCarthyism can be seen useful for finding the Communist’s true intents. McCarthyism is justified as Schrecker states because the policies and practices of Communist party developed the naïve mind set in American followers, enticement of Americans with their stances, and the party’s plans were malicious and violent in America that they would have grown to be powerful and unstoppable.
Through the perspective of followers of the Communist party (or ex-communists), the interviews show a sense of cluelessness to what morals and practices they were following while participating in the Communist party’s agenda. Although most followers didn’t know too...
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...mmunist in America to help steer people away from the corrupt power.
Each one of McCarthyism tactics, by taking a stand against the followers or the Communist Officials, kept American society and government under the rule of the people. The plans that McCarthyism followed through on were found justified because the lack of knowledge of the American people and followers, the greatness of their stances, and their hidden plans. Schrecker’s statement on the policies and practices of the communist party justifying McCarthyism is true. Given the Communist party’s ways, McCarthyism was ultimately protecting the American way. Some people considered it an overreaction, but it was just a way of preserving the peace in defense of the American people. Without this protection, the party would have been grow to strong and been an unstoppable power in to the American government.
“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
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).
...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.
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, ...
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.
the rise and fall of Senator Joe McCarthy, as well as the roots of the anti-communist attitude
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.
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.
President Eisenhower implemented policies in order to keep Communism and Communist threats of war out of the United States, but these policies caused much fear in the American people concerning Soviet bombings and Communist spies. One such fear-inducing policy was McCarthyism, which was began by U.S. Senator Joseph McCarthy, and involved blaming innocent people for Communist activity in America, and President Eisenhower did not stop this incrimination of guiltless U.S. citizens. Eisenhower states in Document A that investigators either implementing McCarthyism or working for groups such as HUAC (House Un-American Activities Committee) were spreading hysteria among Americans, as they feared spies and deceit, as well as being accused as such by people who implemented McCarthyism. Paranoia of being thought of as, or blamed for being a Communist caused much conformity among Americans in order to seem “normal”, as well as a return to religion and traditional family values. Desp...
McCarthyism, became a term that referred to Senator Joseph McCarthy from Wisconsin and the ruthless tactics he employed and institutionalized while seeking to destroy the threat of Communism to the United States government and society between 1950 and 1954. Fears of communism and self-promotion were utilized by McCarthy to promote himself as a politician end protector of the American way of life. Generally, McCarthyism became synonymous with the Medieval Witch Hunts and trials in that unfair prosecutions were based on fears and rumors. Both, McCarthyism and witch hunts were products of generally unfavorable times. Similarly, testimony and confessions were often forced by threat and coercion. Seemingly plausible accusations containing innuendo
Joseph R. McCarthy was a Republican Senator from Wisconsin with an enormous political agenda. With the fear of communism ignited by the Cold war, McCarthy and his supporters began to instill in the American people the fear that communism was taking root in the United States. In February 1950, McCarthy announced at a speech in Wheeling, West Virginia that he had obtained a list of card-carrying American Communists in the State Department (Davidson et al., 2002). For the next several months, often referred to as the Red Scare, McCarthy led a committee that investigated various government agencies and questioned a large number of people about their political associations. It was later found that the McCarthy’s charges were unsubstantiated, but the effects of this “witch hunt” would impact the United States even after the charges had settled. One the first impacts of McCarthyism was the win of Republican candidate Dwight Eisenhower in the 1952 presidential election. The McCarthy campaign, which has accused many democrats including Harry S. Truman of taking a liberal stance on communism, hurt many democrats in the election. The infringement of civil right on the American People was yet another impact of McCarthyism. By 1952, 32 states had laws requiring teachers to take oaths of loyalty and government loyalty boards were wanted to now personal details of their employees such as what newspaper they subscribed to and what music they owned (Davidson et al. 2002). It was not until hearings against those thought to have communist association were aired on ABC and the public had the opportunity to see the badgering and mockery of these proceedings that the McCarthy’s popularity fell quickly and the Red Scare receded as well.
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.
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 ...
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.