Joseph Mccarthy Speech Analysis

On February 9, 1950, Joseph McCarthy delivered an impassioned speech before the Ohio County Women's Republican Club in Wheeling, West Virginia. In the speech, chock-full of unfounded claims and comprising anti-communist sentiment, McCarthy claimed to have a list of Russian spies working within the United States government. McCarthy’s speech would have a significant impact on the state of affairs in the United States in the following years and would lead to a quick rise in prominence for the young senator from Wisconsin – along with an equally swift fall from grace. However, the attitudes that came from the Second Red Scare lingered far past McCarty’s death in 1957. The 1984-esque state of distrust and insecurity brought about by McCarthyism in the 1950s was …show more content…
If any one politician vehemently opposed McCarthy’s claims and was vocal about it, McCarthy had enough public support – due to fear – that he could tarnish someone’s reputation indefinitely by simply claiming that the objector lacked patriotism and was a Soviet spy intent on undermining America’s prosperity. As such, McCarthy’s fellow Congressmen were hesitant to object, even if all the evidence pointed toward McCarthy being an equivocator. By consolidating public support on the back of unsubstantiated claims – then using the support to boost his standing in Congress – McCarthy’s political career was a house of cards, ready to collapse at any moment. For almost half a decade, the public – and much of Congress – went along with McCarthy’s witch hunt. Americans were willing to give McCarthy the benefit of the doubt simply because they did not know who else to trust. In 1984 by George Orwell, citizens of Oceania distrust one another to such an extent that they act as subservient to the will of Big Brother. In the same vein, Americans had such little faith in one another that they chose to place faith in the words and lists of