McCarthyism
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Named for the US Senator Joseph McCarthy, a Republican of Wisconsin, McCarthyism was a period of intense anti-communism in the United States primarily from 1950 to 1954, when the U.S. government was actively engaged in countering American Communist Party subversion, its leadership, and others suspected of being Communists or Communist sympathizers. During this period people from all walks of life became the subject of aggressive "witch-hunts," often based on inconclusive or questionable evidence. It grew out of the Second Red Scare that began in the late 1940s.
Background
In June of 1947, members of the Senate Appropriations Committee sent a confidential report to Secretary of State George Marshall, in which they stated:
It is evident that there is a deliberate calculated program being carried out not only to protect Communist personnel in high places, but to reduce security and intelligence protection to a nullity. . . . On file in the Department is a copy of a preliminary report of the FBI on Soviet espionage activities in the United States, which involves large numbers of State Department employees. . . this report has been challenged and ignored by those charged with the responsibility of administering the department...
In a six hour speech on the Senate floor on February 20, 1950, McCarthy raised the issue of some eighty individuals who had worked in the State Department, or wartime agencies such as the Office of War Information (OWI) and the Board of Economic Warfare (BEW). McCarthy began with a half truth, that a large foreign espionage ring existed within the government and the Truman administration was doing nothing about it; the other half truth was the Truman administration was doing nothing about it because it did not know of the existence of the Venona project. This created several ironies.
Although McCarthy went on a crusade against leaks of government information, it appears his knowledge of 205 known Communists came itself from a partial leak of classified information. While innocent persons may have been persecuted, some who may have been guilty walked away free under the cloak of being McCarthy victims.
Tensions of the times
On 16 August 1948, Harry Dexter White, the first head of the International Monetary Fund, a keystone post war institution, died of a heart attack three days after denying involvement with Soviet espionage during World War II before the House Unamerican Activities Committee (HUAC).
In late summer of 1949, on 29 August the Soviet atomic bomb project was revealed when it exploded a replica of Fat Man; the Soviet Union had gained nuclear technology by espionage from the United States, which spent $4 billion dollars (about $48 billion in today's dollars) to develop during World War II.
Later that fall, on 1 October Maoist forces were victorious after the effective subversion of President Roosevelt’s support for the Chinese Nationalist government during World War II.
On 21 January 1950, Alger Hiss, the General Secretary of the United Nations Charter meeting, was convicted of perjury for testimony before HUAC regarding espionage on behalf of the Soviet Union. That same month, physicist Klaus Fuchs confessed in Great Britain to espionage on behalf of the Soviet Union while working on the Manhattan Project at Los Alamos National Laboratory during the War.
On 25 June, the Korean War began when North Korea invaded South Korea; President Truman authorized deployment of American troops while the Allies of World War II provided little or no assistance. The United States essentially stood alone in a confrontation that had the prospect of nuclear weapons being used — nuclear weapons technology that had been given to the enemy by US citizens, some within the government. Three weeks later, on 17 July Julius Rosenberg was arrested on charges of espionage regarding the transfer of technology to the Soviet Union to build the atomic weapon.
In May 1951, two members of the Cambridge Five — Donald MacLean, Second Secretary of the British Embassy in Washington, D.C., and Guy Burgess — defected to Moscow after it was discovered MacLean transmitted information on the atom bomb from the British Embassy to the Soviet Union during World War II.
In this atmosphere, McCarthyism flourished.
Origin of the term
The term originates from March 29, 1950 political cartoon by Washington Post editorial cartoonist Herbert Block. The cartoon depicted four leading Republicans trying to push an elephant (the traditional symbol of the Republican Party) to stand on a teetering stack of ten tar buckets, the topmost of which was labeled "McCarthyism". The reluctant elephant was quoted in the caption as saying "You mean I'm supposed to stand on that?".
The Moynihan Commission on Government Secrecy reported in 1997, "The first fact is that a significant Communist conspiracy was in place in Washington, New York, and Los Angeles, but in the main those involved systematically denied their involvement". [1] Declassified Soviet-era documents confirm Soviet spies infiltrated the U.S. State Department in the 1930s and 1940s. [2] However, based on his perceptions that the administration was not investigating Communists, McCarthy began investigations himself, and as he attacked more prominent figures within the government and military, his strength faltered.
McCarthy faltered in 1954 as his hearings were televised live for the first time on the new American Broadcasting Company. ABC needed to fill its afternoon slots, which allowed the public and press to view first-hand McCarthy's interrogation of individuals and controversial tactics. During the trials, he was famously asked "Have you no sense of decency?" The press also started to publish stories about how McCarthyism was ruining the reputations and lives of many people with accusations that often lacked credible evidence.
Alleged victims of McCarthyism
Persons who were alleged to have been victims of McCarthyism were either denied employment in the private sector or failed government security checks.
Some of those alleged to have been blacklisted were:
David Bohm, Physicist
Charlie Chaplin, Actor
Aaron Copland, Composer of modern tonal music
Dashiell Hammett, Author
Lillian Hellman, Playwright and left-wing activist
Arthur Miller, Playwright and essayist
Paul Robeson, Actor, athlete, singer, writer and political and civil rights activist and winner of Stalin Peace Prize
Waldo Salt, Screenwriter, government employee & CPUSA member.
Paul Sweezy, Marxian economist and founder-editor of Monthly Review
The nature of some of these people's involvements in the Communist Party has changed in light of the opening of Comintern Archives, KGB Archives and NSA Archives.
Critique
From the viewpoint of some conservatives and McCarthy supporters at the time, the identification of foreign agents and the suppression of "radical organizations" was necessary. Senator McCarthy and his followers felt there was a dangerous subversive element that posed a danger to the security of the country, thereby justifying extreme measures—the embodiment of realpolitik.
For many others it was seen as class warfare and a massive violation of civil and Constitutional rights. Today McCarthyism is often seen as a blight on the history of US civil rights and liberties.
The Arthur Miller play The Crucible, written during the McCarthy era, used the Salem witch trials as a metaphor for the McCarthyism of the 1950s, suggesting that the process of McCarthyism-style persecution can occur at any time and place.
Though McCarthy's specific charges were unsubstantiated, material unearthed in Russian archives after the fall of the Soviet Union has proven that his general charge (that Communist spies had infiltrated the federal government) was true. The American Communist Party (CPUSA) was in the pay of the Soviet Union. Communist spies included Julius Rosenberg and Theodore Hall, who gave nuclear secrets to the Soviets, Alger Hiss, who became Secretary General to the founding charter conference of the United Nations, and Harry Dexter White, who was the founding head of the International Monetary Fund.
Contemporary use of the term
Since the time of the red scare led by Joe McCarthy, the term McCarthyism has entered American speech as a general term for the phenomenon of mass pressure, harassment, or blacklisting used to pressure people to follow popular political beliefs. The act of making insufficiently supported accusations or engaging in unfair investigations against a person as an attempt to unfairly silence or discredit them is often referred to as McCarthyism.
The term has since become synonymous with any government activity, which seeks to suppress unfavorable, political, or social views, often by limiting or suspending civil rights under the pretext of maintaining national security.
Notes
On May 31, 1957 Miller was found guilty of contempt of Congress for refusing to reveal the names of members of a literary circle suspected of Communist affiliation to the House Unamerican Activities Committee, although his conviction was reversed by the US court of appeals on August 8, 1958.
See also
House Committee on Un-American Activities
Senate Internal Security Subcommittee
External links
"Have You No Sense of Decency": The Army-McCarthy Hearings Transcript
Retrieved from "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/McCarthyism"
Department of Communication, Seton Hall University