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Define and Discuss on McCarthyism
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The term McCarthyism defined a period of U.S. history during the 1950s when there was
intense concern about Communist infiltration of American society. It took its name from
U.S. Senator Joseph McCarthy, a Republican from Wisconsin, who was involved in
accusing many people of being Communist or having Communist sympathies. These
people were then often subjected to aggressive investigations, questioning by
congressional committees. In many cases they faced harassment and, in some cases, what
became known as "selective prosecution."
After World War II, the U.S. government became increasingly worried about the
establishment of Communist or pro-Communist governments throughout all of eastern
Europe. Many people in the United States started to feel threatened by the Soviet Union.
This certainly increased in 1949, when the Soviet Union exploded its first atomic bomb
and the Communists were victorions in the Chinese civil war in the same year. With the
start of the Korean War the following year, the idea of communism seeking to expand
over the whole world was seen in many circles in the United States as a very real
possibility.
In January 1950 Alger Hiss, a high-level official in the State Department, was convicted
of perjury. He would have been charged with espionage, but the statute of limitations had
run out. Instead, he was charged with lying when he testified before the House
Committee on Un-American Activities, the major group involved in questioning
suspected Communists.
On February 9, 1950, Senator Joe McCarthy produced a piece of paper that he claimed
contained a list of 205 people working in the State Department who were known to the
secretary of state as having been members of the Communist Party. McCarthy received
much press coverage, and the term McCarthyism has been traced to a Washington Post
cartoon by Herblock, published on March 29, 1950, showing a tottering pillar on which
an elephant—the symbol of the Republican Party—is being asked to stand.
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In July 17, 1950, Julius and Ethel Rosenberg were arrested. Both were members of the
Communist Party, and the couple both worked on the Manhattan Project at the Los
Alamos National Laboratory during the war. With the American government eager to
find out how the Soviet Union had managed to explode their atomic bomb so quickly,
investigations led to the Rosenbergs, who were charged with stealing atomic bomb
secrets for the Soviet Union. The Rosenbergs were found guilty, although doubts were
cast on the constitutionality and the applicability of the Espionage Act of 1917, under
which they were tried, as well as the perceived bias of the trial judge, Irving R. Kaufman.
The Rosenbergs were executed on June 19, 1953, being the first U.S. civilians to be
executed for espionage, and the first Americans ever to be executed for espionage in
peacetime.
With many high-profile cases like those of Alger Hiss and the Rosenbergs, it was not
long before the FBI director, J. Edgar Hoover, started assigning increasingly large
numbers of his agents to investigating Communists and suspected Communists. In this,
the FBI were subsequently found to have broken laws, being involved in burglaries,
opening mail, and installing illegal wiretaps.
From 1947 on, the House Un-American Activities Committee had started to question
people connected with Hollywood, serving subpoenas on film actors, directors, and some
screenwriters. The first 10, known as the "Hollywood Ten," refused to cooperate and
pleaded the First Amendment's guarantee of free speech and free assembly. The defense
was rejected, and eight of the 10 were jailed for a year, and two for six months.
Thereafter, witnesses tended to plead the protection of the Fifth Amendment, refusing to
give any evidence that might incriminate them. Those questioned could either use this as
a defense or name other Communists.
Senator McCarthy came to head the Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations.
He then started searching through the card catalogs of the overseas library program of the
State Department, finally getting them to remove books which were deemed to be
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communist or pro-communist. The blacklists then started, although in many ways these
had been operating since November 1947, when Eric Johnston, president of the Motion
Picture Association of America, issued a press release that came to be known as the
Waldorf Statement.
Several hundred people were jailed during the McCarthy period, as it became known,
with between 10,000 and 12,000 losing their jobs. A few scholars, such as John D'Emilio,
have managed to show that more people were targeted for homosexuality than
communism. In the film industry more than 300 actors, actresses, writers, and directors
were not able to find work because of the blacklists.
In 1952 the U.S. Supreme Court voted to uphold the decision made in lower courts in
Alder v. Board of Education of New York that state-based loyalty review panels could
fire any teachers deemed subversive. As tensions mounted, Arthur Miller launched his
attack on McCarthyism in his play The Crucible, using the Salem witch trials of 1692 as
a metaphor in which the accusation was tantamount, in the public mind, to guilt.
It was Edward R. Murrow, the CBS broadcast journalist, who criticized McCarthy on
March 9, 1954, on his "Report on Joseph R. McCarthy," stating that the senator had been
abusive toward witnesses. Soon afterward, when McCarthy attacked the U.S. Army's
chief counsel, Joseph Welch, Welch replied, "Have you no sense of decency, sir? At long
last, have you left no sense of decency?" It was a rebuke that slowly led to a move away
from McCarthyism.
Gradually, even President Dwight D. Eisenhower began to see McCarthy as extremely
distasteful. In November 1954, when the Republicans lost control of the Senate,
McCarthy was dumped from the Government Committee on Operations of the Senate.
Soon afterward he was formally censured by a vote of 67 to 22 for conduct "contrary to
Senate traditions." McCarthy remained as a senator for another two years. He had always
been a heavy drinker and died on May 2, 1957, from cirrhosis of the liver.
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