How did McCarthyism reach such a level? There was a genuine fear of communism in America that McCarthy used to accelerate his rise to power.
McCarthyism is named after Joseph McCarthy, who was a senator from Wisconsin until his death in 1957. McCarthyism started in 1947 and it ended in 1959, two years after McCarthy died. Joseph McCarthy didn’t jump on the bandwagon until 1950, so the era known as McCarthyism didn’t actually have McCarthy’s involvement until 1950.
What was McCarthyism? It was a communist witch hunt in which Senator Joseph McCarthy had carte blanche to summon government officials, academics, actors, and many other people in public positions, before the House Committee on Un-American Activities (HUAC). McCarthy ended up in charge of the Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations and he was responsible for investigating suspected communists. At these hearings, there was often no evidence more than accusations and the accused people were not allowed attorneys or to be able to cross-examine the accuser. They had an impossible task in defending themselves and many were found guilty of being communist. Blacklists sprang up, the Hollywood blacklist is probably the most famous, and people on the list could not find work in that industry.
McCarthyism started before McCarthy, when President Truman issued a law in 1947 that demanded federal employees were checked for “loyalty” and that they would be dismissed if they were found to be disloyal to the United States government. The law didn’t mention communism. This seems strange, but the global situation in 1947 seemed very unstable. The latter part of World War 2 had seen the USSR rise as a global superpower. The USSR had taken over most of eastern Europe and was becoming a huge country with enormous resources. They were working on a nuclear bomb, that they would successfully test in 1949. A war in Korea was looking more likely and it appeared that the USA and the USSR would be on opposite sides of it. There was great fear of the USSR in America and that was felt more generally as a fear of communism.
In 1950, Joseph McCarthy gave a speech in Wheeling, West Virginia. He was talking to the Republican Women’s Club and, amongst other things, he talked about the “Enemies Within”. He held up a piece of paper that he said had the names of 205 communists currently working in the US State Department. A speech like that would probably have disappeared, but, because of the fear of communism, it was picked up by the press and became huge. McCarthy, being a politician, realized he was onto a good thing and doubled down on his claims. A month later, the Washington Post came up with the name McCarthyism, but they meant it as a derogatory term. McCarthy didn’t see it that way and he embraced it.
McCarthy had no actual proof against the people he accused, so he widened his list of targets to include homosexuals. He said that they were at risk of blackmail because they would want to keep their sexual orientation a secret. He was disliked amongst other senators, but his “war” on communism and homosexuals appealed to the public. After a couple of years, it reached the point where people didn’t want to confront him in case they ended up being accused.
In 1952, Eisenhower became president. He was a strong person, but he didn’t appear to want to confront McCarthy either. Probably, McCarthy had too much public opinion behind him and Eisenhower, as a new president, didn’t feel he had the confidence to go up against McCarthy. Unchecked, McCarthyism slowly got worse. However, Eisenhower didn’t agree with McCarthy’s methods and he didn’t particularly like McCarthy. It seems that nobody really liked McCarthy. Eisenhower started to make moves behind the scenes to cut McCarthy off. Finally, in May of 1954, Eisenhower used his executive power to curtail McCarthy. As head of his committee, McCarthy had the power to subpoena people and they had no choice but to appear. Eisenhower used his executive privilege to say that all federal and executive employees could ignore any subpoena from McCarthy. In one foul swoop, McCarthyism was finished. Being unable to call anymore witnesses, there was nothing McCarthy could do. And, no longer being afraid of him, the other senators moved to condemn him in the senate.
After this, McCarthy no longer had any real power and he served out his last two years as a senator without being able to influence anybody and with a ruined public image. He carried on talking about communism, but he started to drink more, and he died 3 years after Eisenhower ended his reign of terror. His name lives on as McCarthyism, but it only has negative connotations. And this is what I learned today.
Image By United States Senate – http://www.senate.gov/artandhistory/history/resources/graphic/xlarge/Welch_McCarthy.jpg, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=27839902
Sources
https://millercenter.org/the-presidency/educational-resources/age-of-eisenhower/mcarthyism-red-scare
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joseph_McCarthy
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/McCarthyism
https://billofrightsinstitute.org/activities/joseph-mccarthy-and-irresponsibility-narrative