The Age Of Mccarthyism By Joseph Mccarthy

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.

Senator Joseph McCarthy is notorious for his speech where he claimed to have a list of two hundred five communists. He became partially responsible for the communist witch hunts, which cost many people their jobs and their reputations. In his speech “Enemies From Within,” he uses metaphors and appeals to ethos and pathos in order to convince his audience that communism is a major threat to the US, and many powerful people are communist. The United States and USSR were allies during World War II, and only after the war did tensions arise. McCarthy uses metaphors to explain why communism was not treated as such a threat until after the war. He states that the apathy towards communism was due to an “emotional hangover” caused by the war, and “this

Hundreds of years later, the United States entered the time of the “Red Scare”. In this time, Americans were still very apprehensive of Communists. On April 22, 1954, Army hearings began. Senator Joseph McCarthy accused the United States Army of being too “soft” on communism. This really began in 1950, however, when McCarthy claimed that there were over 200 known communists in the Department of State (“Army-McCarthy” History.com). As Abigail did with the Witch trials, McCarthy began accusing innocents of crime to benefit his own personal agenda.

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,

On February 9, 1950, Joe McCarthy began interrogating suspected Communists in the United States. McCarthy stated, “I hold in my hand a list of people named by the secretary of state as members of the communist party still serving in Government ”(McCarthy). What McCarthy was trying to accomplish in doing this, was to emit fear into the eyes of the people so that they would be more impressionable, and by showing them the “list” of people who were rumored to be communists, he ensured their fear and made his point. For a few years, this method worked only in limited ways, although many people were deported back to Russia, and as stated in the article, “McCarthy and the Red scare”, President

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

On February 9th of 1950, an obscure Junior Senator named Joseph McCarthy delivered a speech to the Republican Women’s club of Ohio county in Wheeling, West Virginia. In this speech, McCarthy claimed to have in his possession a list containing the names of 205 employees of the US State Department who he claimed were active members of the Communist party. Although only one reporter was present at the event, McCarthy’s allegations soon became the focus of national attention, and rapidly devolved into a campaign of political persecution that McCarthy, as its chief partisan, manipulated for his own political advantage. While this campaign only lasted four years, at its height even the president, Dwight Eisenhower, was afraid of the political power

Even though McCarthy was a man of noble status, he still possessed a tragic flaw, which stemmed from his fear of losing his reelection. After an unimpressive and uneventful first term in the Senate, McCarthy was willing to take extreme measures to remain in power, so he quickly absorbed himself in false claims against those he suspected to be communists, causing nationwide hysteria and putting him directly in the spotlight. To begin his rise to fame, “On February 9, 1950, McCarthy addressed the Ohio County Women’s Republican Club in Wheeling, West Virginia. In the Wheeling speech, McCarthy played on the Cold War and Red Scare fears (fear of a communist takeover) by asserting that the communist world, particularly the Soviet Union, was in a showdown with the democratic nations led by the United States. McCarthy dramatically held up a list that he claimed contained names of U.S. State Department employees who supposedly were known members of or influenced by the Communist Party” (McCarthy, Joseph R.).

McCarthyism shook up the United States during the 1950’s. The Man all behind it was Senator McCarthy.McCarthy was a senator which lots of great achievements! He was the youngest member of the Senate. For the most part McCarthy flew under the radar and did not really make his presence known, “He helped pass a bill to end sugar rationing.” Majorly all he did was under the radar until that one day when he gave that speech in West Virginia on February 9,1950.As McCarthy gave that speech he held up this paper and said “I have here in my hand a list of 205 . . . a list of names that were made known to the Secretary of State as being members of the Communist Party and who nevertheless are still working and shaping policy in the State

McCarthy’s anti-communist propaganda achieved the opposite of its goals. Rather than strengthening democracy, it weakened democracy; rather than promoting the freedom of speech of which the United States was founded, it limited freedom of speech so greatly individuals were afraid to speak out; and rather than creating a sense of peace and security in the country, it created complete and utter chaos and anarchy. The Red Scare, created by Joseph McCarthy, threatened the rights every American citizen and damaged the names, lives, and reputations of many, many innocent

Also during this time from the late 1940s to the late 1950s began McCarthyism and the scare of Communism being the United States. Senator Joseph McCarthy of Wisconsin would be pushed into the public spotlight by the issue of anti-Communism. It was discovered later that the FBI had helped give McCarthy the information to help him start his campaign against Communism. For several years, McCarthy operated to seek out and destroy the lives of people whom he or others had declared as being a Communist. Lytle mentions that McCarthy charged that Communists had penetrated the United States by becoming involved in churches, the army, the CIA, and the hydrogen bomb program. Even after McCarthy’s eventual political death, McCarthyism still went on and took longer to fade away. McCarthyism was the lasting legacy of McCarthy that put the nation in a frenzy. It was characterized by false accusations of neighbors, family members, and friends and being part of the Communist party. These accusations meant that these peoples’ lives were over. They had no more authority, respect, or even career opportunities after being accused, albeit falsely.

The main secondary source used in this investigation is a book titled The Age of Anxiety: McCarthyism to Terrorism by Haynes Johnson, a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist and historian. Written in 2005, this book analyzes the era of McCarthyism, including McCarthy’s rise to power, his witch hunts, his eventual downfall, and the lasting effects of McCarthyism on American

McCarthyism was practiced during the Cold War. People would report someone who was allegedly a communist and they would be put on trial in front of a court. In the United States, communism was feared and many people grew wary of neighbors due to this fear, as they didn’t know who was a communist. Panic was widespread across America because of this. However, most of the time, whenever someone was accused of being a communist it was to get back at that person for one reason or another. Victims of McCarthyism included government employees, famous actors and directors, homosexuals, voices behind radio talk shows, union activists, teachers, and people with relations to a “communist.” Even in the event that the trial ended up concluding that the

“Sensational propaganda and politicized reporting developed a societal fear of imminent destruction and severe paranoia” . There were many different mediums of propaganda, all applicable sources contained propagandist images . The hysteria generated from these mediums was a fear of attack and of the spread of communism. Senator Joseph R. McCarthy was a huge crusader against communism. In the early 1950s, he conducted hundreds of hearings that aimed to expose communist subversion .

On February 9, 1950, Senator Joseph McCarthy delivered a speech to the Republican Women’s Club of Wheeling in West Virginia where he accused the Secretary of State of knowing that members of the Communist party infiltrated the US government. McCarthy’s accusation of the supposed Communist influence spread rapidly due to the beliefs during the Cold War. McCarthy’s claims created internal investigations to uncover Communist infiltration in the US. In 1947, President Truman responded to the belief that the government was not doing enough to contain Communism by establishing more investigations of executive branch employees and the entertainment industry in Hollywood. The fear of Communism spreading intensified in