Bias in History: Analogies of Witch Hunts and McCarthyism Going through high school in my small hometown, I would always hear about McCarthyism, or the Second Red Scare, in a poor context. One common analogy I heard was connecting McCarthyism to the witch hunts that I would hear about from the medieval period. This shows a bias has been developed against the topic and is now ingrained into society. To examine this topic I looked at sources involving both McCarthyism and the witch hunts. While the witch hunt sources are used mostly for background information, I decided to choose mostly biased sources for McCarthyism to compare the two sides of the argument. While I also have some other information pulled from different sources to make several
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But, this step did not really help many people because many of the accused witches did not have the money to hire a lawyer, but some of the courts gave the assigned the accused witches a lawyer. A witch’s lawyer had a difficult job because the court could declare the lawyer was a leader of heretic for defending a witch. On the other hand, some lawyers helped protect their clients from torture and forced confessions by sueing the courts (Gibbons, Stage #5). Similarly, Mccarthy would accuse people of communism if they disagreed with him during trials. This is portrayed in the Mccarthy Army hearings, where Senator Mccarthy declared that a lawyer from the opposing side had communist ties. The opposition, Joseph Welch, responded with the quote, “Let us not assassinate this lad further, senator. You have done enough. Have you no sense of decency?.” This quote is then attributed to the downfall of Mccarthy. As the trial was televised the American people saw the results and grew to dislike McCarthyism. This has grown to the current state of Mccarthy’s reputation (Have You No Sense of Decency?). Although Mccarthy would also make attacks against the opponents, his attacks backfired on him after the American people saw them get refuted, but the people during the the witch hunts were not connected enough widespreadly refute the …show more content…
It was an important step because the courts did not get enough evidence against many of the witches.Originally, the torture was implemented by the inquisition with some rules that they were supposed to follow, and when they followed the set rules, Jenny Gibbons said that “approximately 50% of accused men and "almost all" accused women withstood torture without confessing. I 'm not sure why the marked sex difference occurs; I haven 't found any evidence that the Inquisition used different forms of torture on the different sexes.” But, those numbers were not good enough to stop the paranoia, and as the fear of witches increased many of the courts would remove these limitations because they needed more convictions to appease the people. An example of this stems from Sweden, where torture was initially illegal, but the courts decided that they would make an exception for the witch trials (Gibbons, Stage #6). On the other hand, the United States has made torture illegal, so torture should not have occurred during McCarthyism (Amendment VIII: Cruel and Unusual Punishment). Laws like this would help keep the order and protect people, even when society is in a state of
But, this step did not really help many people because many of the accused witches did not have the money to hire a lawyer, but some of the courts gave the assigned the accused witches a lawyer. A witch’s lawyer had a difficult job because the court could declare the lawyer was a leader of heretic for defending a witch. On the other hand, some lawyers helped protect their clients from torture and forced confessions by sueing the courts (Gibbons, Stage #5). Similarly, Mccarthy would accuse people of communism if they disagreed with him during trials. This is portrayed in the Mccarthy Army hearings, where Senator Mccarthy declared that a lawyer from the opposing side had communist ties. The opposition, Joseph Welch, responded with the quote, “Let us not assassinate this lad further, senator. You have done enough. Have you no sense of decency?.” This quote is then attributed to the downfall of Mccarthy. As the trial was televised the American people saw the results and grew to dislike McCarthyism. This has grown to the current state of Mccarthy’s reputation (Have You No Sense of Decency?). Although Mccarthy would also make attacks against the opponents, his attacks backfired on him after the American people saw them get refuted, but the people during the the witch hunts were not connected enough widespreadly refute the …show more content…
It was an important step because the courts did not get enough evidence against many of the witches.Originally, the torture was implemented by the inquisition with some rules that they were supposed to follow, and when they followed the set rules, Jenny Gibbons said that “approximately 50% of accused men and "almost all" accused women withstood torture without confessing. I 'm not sure why the marked sex difference occurs; I haven 't found any evidence that the Inquisition used different forms of torture on the different sexes.” But, those numbers were not good enough to stop the paranoia, and as the fear of witches increased many of the courts would remove these limitations because they needed more convictions to appease the people. An example of this stems from Sweden, where torture was initially illegal, but the courts decided that they would make an exception for the witch trials (Gibbons, Stage #6). On the other hand, the United States has made torture illegal, so torture should not have occurred during McCarthyism (Amendment VIII: Cruel and Unusual Punishment). Laws like this would help keep the order and protect people, even when society is in a state of