History of “McCarthyism”

The Red Scare was nothing new to Americans by the 1950s. It had sporadically popped up here and there ever since the late 1850s. Whenever there was a slight scare of un-American activity or threat of government upheaval, there would be a “witch-hunt” for communist and communist sympathizers.

Joseph McCarthy and anti-Communism

In early 1950, Senator Joseph McCarthy was up for re-election. Although he was late in the game for jumping on the “tough on communism” bandwagon, he decided there was still enough fear in the American people to get their attention with it once more. He did however take a somewhat new approach to the “witch-hunt”. At a luncheon with the Ladies’ Republican Club of Wheeling, West Virginia, on February 9, 1950, McCarthy opened his campaign with a huge anti-communist boom:

I have in my hand a list of 205 names of Communist working at the State Department” (Moss, p54, 2010).

It was the start to McCarthy’s public hurricane of finger pointing and counter-attacks from the Democratic Party. The Tydings committee, which was established as a subcommittee to investigate McCarthy’s accusations, quickly found that McCarthy not only did not have 205 names of suspected Communist infiltrating the State Department, but not even one Communist who was working there. To prove them wrong, McCarthy accused Owen Lattimore, an expert on Eastern affairs, as “being the leader of the espionage ring in the State Department”. Lattimore went on to swear under oath that he wasn’t and never had been a communist or part of any espionage ring. He called McCarthy’s charges a “fraud and hoax” (p54).

McCarty’s accusation caused a revival of scare in an almost calmed America during the early 1950s. Congress overrode Truman’s veto of the McCarran Internal Security Act in September, 1950. This Act made it necessary for all Communist and Communist-front organizations to register with the Attorney Generals office and forbade any Communist from working in defense factories for fear of sabotage or leaked secrets or allowed Communists to travel abroad on American Visas. To set measures up again, in 1952, congress once again overrode Truman’s veto and enacted the McCarran-Walter Act, which made it illegal for any Communist or “undesirables” from entering America (p54).

The newspapers were filled with headlines of McCarthy’s newest accusations and counter-attacks by those who seen through his smokescreen. People who lived through the four year period of McCarthy’s rise to political fame were involved in a whirlwind fantasy world where everyone was paranoid and fearful of each other. A simple accusation would send your life into a frenzy of trying to defend yourself from the Communist ghost. It was also a time of split approval. Only half of Americans believed that McCarthy was right in his accusations.

McCarthy’s Downfall

McCarthy enjoyed four years of climbing the political ladder. If any of his opponents tried to come out against him he would point the finger of Communist blame on them and accuse them for America’s Cold War setbacks. In 1954, McCarthy was at the height of his fame through his continual finger pointing to the State Department and other federal agencies, but finally took his accusations too far. He publicly attacked the U.S. Army for harboring subversives. The nation had had enough. McCarthy ended his own reign with this last accusation. America quickly moved on from his four year span of “McCarthyism”.

McCarthy’s finger-pointing soon earned his tactics a place in the American political lexicon for the “big lie”; a term we now call “McCarthyism”. Today we use the term for any tactic used that is used for less than patriotic motives or is of questionable behavior.

Venona Project

Textbooks and media alike have made Joseph McCarthy the bad guy of the anti-Communist movement during the Cold War. But, how much of what he claimed was really true? In 1995, the Venona translations began to be released to the public so historians could add their findings to the story of the Cold War. What they found has changed what we know about the history of that era (Venona, 2009).

Almost 3,000 “cables between professional intelligence directorates of the KGB in Moscow” (Haynes, Klehr, 1999) were deciphered by the Venona project. One of the cables sent in 1944, showed that the Soviet Union had already infiltrated America’s atomic bomb project. Another cable in 1948, gave evidence that the Soviets had recruited spies in virtually every major American government agency of military and government importance. Through these cables, the Venona project identified 349 citizens, immigrants and permanent residence in America that were had undercover relationships with Soviet intelligence agencies (Haynes).

With all these new details now available for historians to study, it may seem as though McCarthy wasn’t blowing all steam with his finger-pointing. In fact, McCarthy was correct in accusing top American educational establishments, government agencies, and even Hollywood for housing Communist. McCarthy was a bully and a drunk, but he did have some legitimacy to some of his accusations.

Resources:

Haynes, J.E. & Klehr, H. (1999). Venona: Decoding Soviet Espionage in America. Yale University Press.

Moss, G.D. (2010). Moving On: The American people since 1945 (4^th ed.). NJ

Venona. (2009). Public Information: Venona. Retrieved August 6, 2010 from nsa.gov