Review: Loyalty and Legislative Action Essay

Margaret Chase Smith, author and speaker of the “Declaration of Conscience,” given on June 1st, 1950, in the senate, addresses and reprimands the flagrant anti-communism occurring prior to and during the 1950s, as well as the poor handling of the public smearing of citizens by the democratic administration. Smith sought to create awareness of the severity of the fear and panic caused by the “Red Scare” of anti-communism and invasion of privacy in the lives of citizens by the government, as well as blatantly erroneous claims of communism made by high-ranking political figures. Smith succeeds in proposing an incredibly influential speech that includes what she believes to be the “Basic

In 1950 the emergence of the Second Red Scare’s driving force, Senator Joseph McCarthy, appeared and gave a speech proclaiming that America will soon be lost to communism if the people do not stand up to combat it. He revealed that night a list of 205 people working for Soviet Russia in the United States’ State Department whose intentions were to mold America from the inside to become a socialist nation. (Fitzgerald, p. 14) It was thanks to this newfound hysteria that began to break out thanks to McCarthy’s claims that the HUAC and other like-minded organizations began to gain momentum during this time period.

At the beginning of 1920, America had just witnessed the rise of communism as a result of the first world war. Many affected nations were in shambles and their citizens looked for refuge within the United States. This tide of immigration carried with it citizens from around the globe who brought with them their families, their culture, and their approach to foreign policy. America recognized this immigration as a threat and labeled many immigrants “communists”. This event was called the “Red Scare” and much controversy arose as a result. One of the most well-known controversies of this time was the trial of Sacco and Vanzetti. Sacco and Vanzetti created a split within the nation of minorities and immigrants versus the frightened and prejudiced homegrown Americans (“Sacco and Vanzetti: Were Nicola Sacco and Bartolomeo Vanzetti Treated Fairly by the American Justice System?”). As a result, Nicola Sacco and Bartolomeo Vanzetti fell victim to an unfair trial based upon the stigma associated with immigrants at that time, their unpopular political views, and a biased judge.

The federal government’s action during the Red and Lavender Scares following World War II would promote the hero-heroine relationship with a large portion of the American people. Joseph McCarthy, the figure head of these two scares, crystalized on the anxieties of the public that communism posed a threat to their freedom and democracy when he boldly declared in 1950 that the State Department was infested with communists. He then spearheaded the Internal Security Act (ITA) which would require member of communist organizations to register with the government and eventually made it illegal to even affiliate with any communist organization (Lecture). In addition, McCarthy connected this fear of communism to the gay community by stating that “homosexuality…was the phycological maladjustment that led people toward communism” Johnson 192). As a way to keep homosexuals, communists, or a mix of the two from “threatening” American freedoms, the federal government used acts such as the ITA and Truman era bans on homosexuals working in the government to ease the fears of the American people (Lecture). By using these tactics, the federal government asserted themselves in the lives of Americans, namely those who differentiated from societal norms, and forced them into submission or silence for fear that they would be punished. This act of

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,

While HUAC’s actions were not laudable, it paradoxically had the best interests of the American public in mind, including protecting American civil rights. Insofar as Communism seemed to threaten the American way of life, HUAC’s attempts to root out Communists reflected a concern for American civil rights. The authoritarian nature of the Communist Party, as described by some, seems to support the idea of a Communist threat to American ideals. As a friendly witness before HUAC, for example, former Communist Party member Elia Kazan confessed that he left the party because “I had enough regimentation, enough of being told what to think and say and do, enough of their habitual violation of the daily practices of democracy to which I was accustomed” (406). In his testimony, Kazan portrays the Communist party as a suppressor of civil rights (“daily practices,” such as the right to “think”

The communist paranoia that occurred in America during the period of 1947-1957 has come to be known as the ‘Second Red Scare’. This was a political and social movement of fear which led to communist witch hunts known as the ‘Red Hunts’, that categorise the period. The

Bentley defected from the communist party in the U.S. in 1945. In 1948, she accused over 80 citizens of being communists. Although there was no evidence behind it, most of the accusations were correct. This accusation caught the media’s attention and ended up having a large effect on the realisticness McCarthyism. The more people accused, the scarier it was for America.

Joe McCarthy enjoyed a short reign in the spotlight of American politics in the early 1950s. His tactics, the baseless accusations of Communist ties, would come to be called McCarthyism and they set the tone of the American crusade against the ‘threat’ of Communism for years to come. The era in which the heavily anti-Communist McCarthyism reigned in America was one marked by fear, suspicion, and tightly geld ideals. Many found themselves under fire from the political witch hunts and more than one life was destroyed by the accusations brought upon it. The illegalization of the Communist movement and the misfortune that a Communist branding would cause were all unfortunate products of a fallacy filled mindset what stripped Americans of their

Modern interest in the Red Scare and the long standing efforts to balance liberty and safety in American history has brought some attention back to the topic of the Palmer Raids. The infamous nature of American anti-communist efforts may have died out but the language and ideology persists in many ways, particularly in the post 9/11 and Patriot Act era. Historians have long evaluated the Red Scare and the influence of the Palmer Raids on America’s understanding of ideological regulation. While some historians look at the influence of certain personalities like J. Edgar Hoover and A. Mitchell Palmer, others chose to write about the more abstract nature of civil rights and the controlling influence of the government. They also draw direct parallels

During the Salem Witch Trials, Francis Nurse started a petition to prove the innocence of his wife and other women. In court, Procter handed the paper to the judge and said, “Will you read this first, sir? It’s a sort of testament. The people signing it declare their good opinion of Rebecca, and my wife, and Martha Corey” (Act 3). After viewing the paper, Parris said, “These people should be summoned. For questioning” (Act 3). Even though the people signing the petition meant well, they were brought into court and questioned. During the era of McCarthyism, some graduate students at the University of Chicago started a petition for a vending machine that they felt was needed. Their colleagues refused to sign the petition because “they did not want to be associated with the allegedly radical students whose names were already on the document” (Schrecker, 92). The colleagues did not want to be

Joseph McCarthy is a desperate and unlikeable U.S senator who uses fear against others, which leads to the use of the horrific use of McCarthyism. Mccarthy is not a supporter of communists, “Thus he spread terror among his peers. His Republican colleagues were torn between fear of his prowess and willingness to use his attacks on President Harry Truman” (“Joseph”). McCarthy claims that people working within the U.S government are communists and that they should be exposed. Mccarthy blames others so people see him as a hero for saving the country from communist. His desperateness causes him to accuse his peers of being communists. For that reason people do not want to be around him because of the “terror” he causes and “spreads”. Mccarthy wants to do everything to address the problem of communism. Therefore, to prove that there is a problem going on, “McCarthy claimed to have in hand a list of 205 people in the U.S. State Department

By the 1930’s, the anticommunist network had expanded, and begun to strengthen. The struggles brought on by the Great Depression and the political partisanship from the creation of the New Deal; Communist Party involvement in unions became a political issue. Instead of Liberals and Conservatives blaming each other for the country’s woes, they could instead turn their blame on to the Communists, just like the businesses. The opposition to the New Deal and the American Communist Party’s adaptation of Stalin’s “Popular Front”

I spent several days observing the small village of Yellow Springs, Ohio. Founded in 1825 and incorporated in 1856, Yellow Springs has a long history of advocating for civil rights. During the Civil War, Yellow Springs became a safe haven for over thirty freed and escaped slaves. Yellow Springs has also come under government and media scrutiny multiple times over the years for the local support of the political left-wing. This became especially true during the Red Scare of the Cold War, where they supported the right of academic freedom, which included Russia and Communism (Chiddister). In the following decades the village continued its trend of civil rights advocacy, becoming the smallest town to pass ordinances that protected sexual orientation as a status, which prohibited discrimination around it.

In the midst of the political and economic discord, tensions were rising in America over the spread of communism at home. This sparked the creation of the House of Un-American Activities Committee, whose duty was to investigate communist influence in labor unions and New Deal organizations. During the “Great Fear,” all