# Joe McCarthy - Demagogue or Misunderstood? **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [June 20, 2003, 2:20am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/joe-mccarthy-demagogue-or-misunderstood/183063 "2003-06-20T02:20:31Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 4\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![BrainGlutton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/82dd89/32.png) [@BrainGlutton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrainGlutton)\ **Post date:** [June 21, 2003, 5:51pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/joe-mccarthy-demagogue-or-misunderstood/183063/21 "2003-06-21T17:51:55Z")
The OP was about Ann Coulter’s assertion that McCarthy was a victim of a “vast left-wing conspiracy.” Perhaps the left-wing conspiracy, vast and directed by Moscow, was real enough. But is it fair to characterize McCarthy as a “victim” of it? I think he just destroyed his own political career through his own hubris, arrogance and stupidity, with help from nobody. Nothing posted on this thread so far leads me to think otherwise. ---
**Author:** ![Duckster](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/duckster/32/1244_2.png) [@Duckster](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Duckster)\ **Post date:** [June 21, 2003, 5:57pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/joe-mccarthy-demagogue-or-misunderstood/183063/22 "2003-06-21T17:57:10Z")
This thread might inspire a GD thread as to how much influence will Colter’s book have with others? Will it solidify selected opinions even more? Will it turn fence-sitters to the Dark Side? It’s one thing to address the book on its merits as the posters are doing here. What remains to be seen is whether her lies will believed by the ignorant, spawning even more crap. ---
**Author:** ![Linty\_Fresh](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/c5a1d2/32.png) [@Linty\_Fresh](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Linty_Fresh)\ **Post date:** [June 27, 2003, 1:20am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/joe-mccarthy-demagogue-or-misunderstood/183063/23 "2003-06-27T01:20:15Z")
## quote: ## The fact that the Venona documents indicate that at least 250 soviet agents were employed at the State Department during the years in question does show that McCarthy was essentially correct. > [@](#): > > No. They had spies and we had spies. (They had done a slightly better job of recruiting than we had.) McCarthy went around (on the tails of numerous preceding witch hunts) looking for “sympathizers” that basically amounted to anyone who had flirted with Marxism in college at the height os the Great Depression. People’s lives were destroyed for actions and associations they had tried out in college and while they were unable to get work after college. > > The approach was wrong. The intent was dishonest. The result was farce (or tragedy for those he “caught”). > > 30 years ago, long before the more recent access to the KGB files, I presumed that there were, indeed, Soviet spies in the U.S. However, the whole tenor of the period was to go looking for spooks everywhere and condemn any person for beliefs that they might or might not have held twenty years earlier. McCarthy was not even the one who perfected that approach; HUAC was operating long before he came along. He was just so ham-handed and stupid about it that he got his name associated with the phenomenon. (In fact, some right wing apologists go so far as to claim that he ruined what had been a “good” practice by getting the country to begin shying away from witch hunts.) I’m bringing this thread back from the dead, because I’m looking for clarification on a point. Did Joe _really_ “discover” these agents? I’m trying to check out online sources, but can’t find anything remotely unbiased. If what Joe did directly led to the unmasking of Soviet agents within the government, this would indeed put him in a new light. I have my doubts, however, and McCarthy strikes me as a right-wing blowhard. I’m asking this question, because I’m honestly torn as to any practical results from this witchhunt (and btw, whether or not he was effective, I’m no fan of his. I felt that his means were fundamentally undemocratic, regardless of the ends.). ---
**Author:** ![zigaretten](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/z/91b2a8/32.png) [@zigaretten](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/zigaretten)\ **Post date:** [June 27, 2003, 2:42am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/joe-mccarthy-demagogue-or-misunderstood/183063/24 "2003-06-27T02:42:54Z")
> [@](#): > > \*Originally posted by Linty Fresh \* > Did Joe _really_ “discover” these agents? No. As I said before, McCarthy didn’t “discover” any agents but he didn’t claim to have discovered any agents. Take the case of Lauchlin Currie. Currie was FDR’s White House economist and also acted as an envoy to China, meeting with Chiang Kai-shek and Chou En-lai and advising FDR on policy toward China. In 1945 Elizabeth Bentley first told the FBI, secretly, that Currie was a Soviet agent. Then in 1948 she testified publicly before the HCUA and named him again. So everyone in the country knew that Elizabeth Bentley had named Currie as an agent. Although her testimony caused quite a stir at first, she gradually came to be dismissed as what we might call a “kook.” (Not entirely surprising since she was naming some fairly important people.) McCarthy didn’t denounce Currie until 1950, by which time Currie had left his government job (eased out; perhaps?) But McCarthy’s reason for denouncing Currie wasn’t that he had “discovered” an agent. It was that he believed that government security was too lax, he believed Elizabeth Bentley (and Whittaker Chambers and others) when they claimed that various people in the government were agents, and he felt that this was evidence which proved his position. The Venona documents have verified almost every charge that Bentley, Chambers and others have made. **But** , they haven’t verified every charge that McCarthy made because **Tomndebb** is right about his tossing charges around irresponsibly. Look up his speech where he practically accuses General George Marshall of treason and you’ll see that McCarthy didn’t have the strongest grip on reality. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/joe-mccarthy-demagogue-or-misunderstood/183063.md?page=1)