McCarthyism and Its Downfall

McCarthyism and its Downfall

In the early 1950s, the United States experienced the second Red Scare: an immediate post-World War II emergence of enlarged contempt for Communism that was swiftly utilized by Joseph R. McCarthy, a junior Senator from Wisconsin, to instigate a great ideological pacification of America. In February 1950, McCarthy made a "bombshell speech," claiming he had proof that 205 members of the Communist Party worked for the State Department, despite efforts of the Truman administration to abolish this 'disloyalty' inside government in preceding years. In the previous two years, China had become a communist country and the Soviet Union successfully tested an atomic bomb. America felt its dominating title slipping away (The Rise and Fall of Joseph McCarthy). The Cold War frustrated the American population with its convolution and overwhelming cost, and McCarthy provided a tangible and seemingly simplistic answer. He promulgated attacking the issue emotionally, and targeted conspirators within America (Theoharis vii).

The House of Representatives instituted the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC) in 1938. Its purpose was to investigate alleged disloyalty and subversive activities on the part of private citizens, public employees, and those organizations suspected of having Communist ties (House Un-American Activities Committee). The committee exercised its subpoena power as a weapon with heavy force. They called citizens to testify in high-profile hearings before Congress. This "intimidating atmosphere" created from controversial tactics in the committee was fomented by the "the fear, distrust and repression" present during the anticommunist hysteria (HUAC, House Un-American Activities Committee). Joseph McCarthy adopted much of HUAC's procedure for his investigative hearings to persecute heretics (House Un-American Activities Committee). The sobersided omnipotence of these aggressive committees assumed unstandardized criteria "to distinguish between Americans and Un-Americans, between the loyal and the disloyal." Guilt was determined and based off one's preconceptions of "circumstantial evidence selected from the suspect's entire lifetime of activism, association, writings, readings, or political judgments" (Belfrage xvii). The hearings often pressured witnesses to attest names and information of Communists and Communist sympathizers, threatening to brand the witness "red" if they declined or even faltered to respond (House Un-American Activities Committee).

Many Democrats and a select number of Republicans were accused and convicted of being Communist sympathizers. The ruin of a majority of Democrats influenced Republican dominance in Congress the following term, and the definite presidential victory for Eisenhower's in the election. For a short time, McCarthy was given the prestige of chair of the Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations, the position that gave him the power to subpoena government employees and run hearings similar to HUAC's (The Rise and Fall of Joseph McCarthy).

McCarthy had two major issues which unmistakably brought an end to his persuasive supremacy in American politics - faulty vices and the fateful trial in 1954. Before elected Senator of