Senator Joseph McCarthy was one of the most relentless, ambitious, and strongest anti-Communist Americans America has ever seen. America in the state of panic it was in formed the House Un-American Activities Committee, which was overshadowed by McCarthy alone. His Allegations cost people their job, families, lively hood, and anything that mean anything to them. Joseph loved his country and the people in it. He viewed communism as a serious threat to Federalism and Capitalism. He used his power in congress to make sure that his way of life did not evaporate over night. His strengths in the political mainstream were unbelievable. For instance McCarthy had the most of the support of both houses that gave him the means and the power to attack and expose the Communist Americans in the country. His list of 200 communists put America in a state of panic. This gave him the power to gain the trust of Americans. They feared him, he could destroy them, because America was scared and he showed them leadership, strength and determination. He was disgusted at the fact that Americans would allow the thought of a communist take over. McCarthy altered the way people thought and showed extreme patriotism. People would think twice of who they could trust and who not to. He really got the ball rolling and got HUAC to really start looking for communist activities. They would check out the people he claimed to be a communist and report their findings. It did not matter if he was right or wrong that person he claimed to have been a communist life was completely ruined for ever. One of the many ways McCarthy changed America is he told you which citizens were communist or had wanted to have communism in America. Joseph considered citizens disloyal and traitors if they had any affiliation with a communist, communist party, or somebody that has already been labeled as one. In America he's taught me that you can do anything if you can change the way the public feels about it and gain their support. There were a lot of the top officials who were communist and may have been on a communist take over for the US. He did not stand just to take the little guy down he went for the people that would had power in America to actually get something done.
McCarthy had a way of carrying himself that radiated confidence, and had the ability to convince a whole crowd of something he had pulled out of his hat just moments prior. McCarthy had an elegant way about him, and this aided him in convincing thousands of people that an anti-communism speech was truly what was appropriate for Honest Abe’s birthday. McCarthy’s mentioning of Christianity can be found throughout his speech, such as his comment of, “…that this is the time for the show-down between the democrat Christian world and the communistic atheistic world.” McCarthy introduced the idea of communism being synonymous with Atheism by
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.
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 of the nation, young Senator Joseph McCarthy made an open charge that hundreds of "card-carrying" communists had penetrate in 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 era in 20th-century American politics. While the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAA) had been made 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. By 1954, the zeal had subsided. These short trials remain one of the most disgraceful times in modern U.S. history (McCarthyism, pbs.org). There are researchers and critics who still find the shadow of McCarthyism looming on the present history of the Unites States. About two years ago, in a Presidential Address George Bush, pleaded the Congress to ratify legislation that would prolong the time-bound terms of the notorious anti-terror law, originally planned to end on December 31st, 2005 and later extended. Advocated by Attorney General John Ashcroft and accepted by the Congress in the scared upshot of the 9/11 fanatic assaults, the Patriot Act has been depicted by its critics as the utmost warning to U.S human rights since the Alien and Sedition Acts or the postponement of habeas corpus during the Civil War. The Alien Registrat...
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...
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
Senator Joseph McCarthy used many tactics to persuade Americans to oppose communism and indict those who supported it. Communism had tangible shape, and Americans were worried that people in the U.S. would start leaning to the far left like several other countries such as the USSR and China (Schrecker). In order to prevent this, the Congressional House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC) was founded. The Committee's purpose was to investigate those organizations and individuals it deemed "un-American." They first went to Hollywood because the movie industry was considered "corrupted". Ten individuals, called the Hollywood Ten, were asked to testify against other Hollywood residents who were questionable com...
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.
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...
Joseph Raymond McCarthy was a Republican Senator from the state of Wisconsin between 1947 and 1957. Between 1950 and 1954, McCarthy became noted for unsubstantiated claims that there were Communist and Soviet spies and sympathizers inside the federal government.
...it was. Fear makes people do things they normally would not. Because of fear people overlook things they normally would notice imediately, especially in the case of something being moral or immoral. McCarthy was described as "paranoid" and for whom "...life was a sereis of conspiracies, the most fiendish of which were directed at him..."(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.
...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
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
... of his suspicions. Back then it was considered taboo to have any relation or alliance with a Communism source. In this case McCarthy is correct in suspecting that Radulovich could quite possibly be affiliated with Communism. Though his motives may have been correct, his tactics were unjust and rash. It is part of Murrow’s career as a Journalist to seek out the facts, and confirm them with credible sources and evidence, therefore Murrow has a greater foundation on which to rest his defending statements. McCarthy’s claims however provide no valid grounds and lack the stance necessary to create a solid and logical argument. The way Murrow defends Radulovich may lead to a conclusion that Murrow could quite possibly be a Communist.