Americans, at the time after WWII, were afraid of communism because it stood against everything that America believed in, capitalism. This was where McCarthyism started to set in. There were less than 1% communists in America but there were spies in America who were communists and helped the Soviets to steal the atomic bomb secrets. After that ordeal, Americans began to blame communists even more, even though they were supposed to be innocent until proven guilty. This was the whole idea of McCarthyism, to put forth blame with opinions and rumors being spread. They started to question anyone who was suspected of being a communist. They questioned those people and those who didn’t reply were put in jail alone while those who answered yes, were put in jail and their relatives and anyone they knew also went along with the person. The government exploited the fear that people had of Communists and used it against their political opponents. Because of this, people started avoiding communists altogether, started suspecting each other, FBI tailed people who they suspected were communists and harassed them, and etc. McCarthy made up the number of those people who he “suspected” of being a communist, which was basically anyone who tried to go against him. But when officials asked for that very list, McCarthy couldn’t provide that list and outright blames them for being communist when they weren’t. He was considered a man of recklessness fueled by alcoholism. He was stripped of his Chairmanship and taken away his Senator position in the government at the time. He died in 1957, in shame as well.
I think that McCarthyism made Americans think twice about things they believed in. Since all of what Joe McCarthy was doing was a lie, Americans felt wronged because they had believed him the whole time. Americans that were accused of sympathizing with Communism and blacklisted never fully regained their lives either.
ReplyDeleteA common quote related to McCarthyism is as follows: "No one can terrorize a whole nation, unless we are all his accomplices." While McCarthy was extreme in his ideals, he is not the root cause for the general American standpoint of communism within the United States during his time. He was simply a politician who was willing to further his viewpoint, and thus is blamed for the entire ideal of the accusation of communist sympathizers. In reality, Senator McCarthy simply took an opportunity to gain political power via the flaw in an entire nation.
ReplyDeleteIn a documentary we watched about McCarthyism, a historian jokingly said that McCarthy "didn't know the difference between Karl Marx and Groucho Marx." Like you describe in your blog post, McCarthy fed his accusations off of fear, not fact.
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