The cold war led to many communists to come out and to say what they had to. This led to believe that communists were slowly taking over the government and society. Most of of the communists in the US were referred to as the Red Scare. All these major events did not stop McCarthy to make sure…
The feudal Cold War between the United States and the Soviet Union was all fought based on world dominance and who could control most in their sphere of influence. Once McCarthyism began to truly appeal to the average American citizen, Senator Joseph McCarthy began to go after different high ranking members of the United States government, popular film stars and directors and people within the education industry. The reason behind these calculated attacks were carefully brought out to strike fear into this upper class elite to show that these people are not untouchable. After exposing multiple cases involving film stars and directors, such as the “Hollywood Ten”, McCarthy began to truly build his legacy as the man who incited the Red Scare paranoia in the United…
In the late 40s and early 50s the Chinese Nationalist forces under Chaing Kai-Shek fell to the Communist forces of Mao Zedong. This created a lot of fear in the American people. They witnessed almost all of China and Korea fall into communism. This created the Red Scare in which Americans started to become scared because they didn’t want to fall into communism as well. The Red Scare in which is what led into the creation of McCarthyism.…
Waving a sheet of paper in the air, he proclaimed: ‘I have here in my hand a list of 205…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 [US] policy.’ Since the Wisconsin Republican had no actual list, when pressed, the number changed to fifty-seven, then, later, eighty-one. Finally, he promised to disclose the name of just one communist, the nation’s “top Soviet agent.” The shifting numbers brought ridicule, but it didn’t matter, not really: McCarthy’s claims won him fame and fueled the ongoing “red…
The country was in the middle of the Cold War with the Soviet Union, so people were more prone to be scared of the ideas of Communism. The accusations from McCarthy made him famous (Roberts 16). McCarthy exploited the fear the people of the United States of America had about Communism in order to be elected as a Senator. The ongoing fear was a danger for the rest of the government and McCarthy used the government and the fear of the American people as an advantage for personal gain. The most recent example of questioning loyalty of Americans amid a war, was during the McCarthyism era (Roberts 16).…
McCarthy’s Red Scare Communism is a political theory derived from Karl Marx, advocating class war and leading to a society in which all property is publicly owned and everyone works and is paid according to their abilities and needs. It was a hated thing in America, and most people feared it. That being said, it was the cause of the Red Scare in America. America should not have trusted McCarthy with the issue of the Red Scare.…
Joseph McCarthy Few people in American history have ever plunged the country into panic as Joseph McCarthy did in the 1950s. He single-handedly fabricated a scandal he claimed reached into the highest branches of the US government. Lacking substantial evidence, he accused various senators, representatives, and officials of being communist spies. His infamous “list” of such people was comprised of information that was “either taken from other sources or misremembered or just made up” (Kelley).…
Rallying the American people against a common enemy, the Second Red Scare or McCarthyism was a monumental event and movement in postwar and Cold War era America. It centered around the fear of communism and its influence, viewing it as a threat to democracy and American values. However, during the Red Scare, innocent individuals experienced negative consequences for being accused of being communists or communist sympathizers. So while the Red Scare increased patriotism, it also caused unjust persecution and mass hysteria, which overstepped fundamental Constitutional rights. The baseless accusations and unjust persecution that occurred of supposed communists and liberals during the Red Scare completely undermine our nation's core principles.…
The Second Red Scare, characterized by the threat of global communism during the Cold War, predominated in the mid and early 1900s. The panic was not merely an internal insurrection but an international subversion, as echoed in the rhetoric of elected officials such as Senator McCarthy. The ideology of McCarthyism infiltrated all facets of society, resulting in a social climate comprised of mistrust and the alarmist…
Profile in Courage In the midst of turmoil and chaos, one woman stood and did what she believed was right. It was nineteen-fifty, tension was running high and the fear of communism permeated throughout American society. Joseph McCarthy’s “Enemies from Within” speech furthered paranoia about communism and instigated rapid accusations, many of the accusations had no solid evidence at all. In the span of twenty-four hours from the “Enemies from Within” speech, Joseph McCarthy became a sensation.…
Imagine if you were accused of doing or being apart of something that would give people reason to legally kill you. Well that's what happened in the Salem Witch Trials. There was also an era where people in America would get there lives ruined and there jobs taken away because of accusations. This was called the McCarthy Era. There were a few similarities and differences in the McCartthy Era and the Salem Witch trials.…
During the infamous Age of McCarthyism, Communism was avoided as if it were some strange virus instead of an ideology. Being accused of being a communist, or even a someone who sympathized with the party was not something to be taken lightly. Even today, the word communism has a bit of a negative connotation to it. So why would anyone be a communist? And looking past the mass hysteria and fear, what did it really mean to be a communist in the 1950s?…
During the 1940s and 1950s Communism was an issue that was spreading from Eastern countries causing Americans to be fearful of its encroachment onto US soil. With the Soviet Union gaining more power the possibility of contention, or worse, was a disquieting actuality for many Americans. After China was taken ahold of by a Communist leader and when Western Europe seemed ready to become predominantly Communist, US citizens began to feel that Communism had the potential to envelope them. This internal unrest helped pave the way for Senator Joseph McCarthy to take advantage of the situation and claim that the State Department “was full of treasonous pro-Soviet intellectuals” (1). The subsequent McCarthy trials essentially paralleled the Salem trials that took place nearly two and a half centuries prior.…
McCarthyism comes from the name Sen. Joseph R. McCarthy. During the Red Scare, he expanded and abused his power. Anyone who seemed at all un-American was accused of being a communist; wrongly convicting anyone while creating a blacklist targeting multiple people including celebrities and placed them in jail. According to Storrs (2015), The American Communist Party was a serious threat to national security, government and nongovernment actors at national, state, and local levels developed a range of mechanisms for identifying and punishing Communists and their alleged sympathizers. For few, “espionage charges resulted in execution.…
McCarthyism and The Crucible: How it Changed America Joseph McCarthy was the senator of Wisconsin from 1947-1957. During this time, America and the Soviet Union were involved in the Cold War. All throughout America, the Red Scare was in full swing, and the fear of communism was strong. McCarthy knew this, and used it to his advantage while re-running for his senate position. As part of his anti-communist campaign, McCarthy claimed that the Soviets had high-profile spies in the government.…