No, Nixon and Whittaker Chambers got Hiss (justifiably so) before this. It is called McCarthyism since McCarthy, a johnny-come-lately, pioneered the waving around of vague accusations, and using charges of Communism to attack his opponents (which was what the Army hearings were all about.)
A true patriot would have turned the names and evidence over to the FBI, unless he thought Hoover was a Communist spy also. Clearly McCarthy thought being in the limelight was more important than national security.
HUAC continued long after Joe drank himself to death - I remember hearings in the mid-60s. He may never have had hearings about Communism in Hollywood, but the hysteria that he helped stir up encouraged them to happen.
I’ve always been a fan of Buckley’s by the way, but even at most most fannish I thought McCarthy and His Enemies was a piece of crap - by far his worst book ever.
Let them lose their jobs if they’re agents of an enemy power, sure, but not simply because they believe in a different economic philosophy. As soon as you start hunting people down merely for their beliefs and not for any specific actions you’re violating the constitution.
That’s what I’m saying. McCarthy hooked onto the anti-Communist cause for publicity. I don’t know why you’re under the impression that I’m defending McCarthy here.
The HUAC (that’s House Un-American Activities Committee) hearings about Communist infiltration of Hollywood and the studio blacklist happened in 1947, three years before McCarthy gave his Wheeling speech. HUAC existed in one form or another until the 70s, but the hearings, and the hysteria, were in the late 40s.
What I’m saying was that the hysteria was already stirred up when McCarthy came along.
But one of the beliefs of the Communist Party at the time was that the government had to be violently overthrown. So, their loyalty comes into question right there.
I’m not sure of that as a fact, but I’m no expert. Do you have a cite?
I do have a hard time believing that all of the people who attended meetings or were actually “card carrying members” really advocated violent revolution. If I’m wrong them I have to rethink my whole premise…
Calling communists “believers in a different economic philosophy” is sort of like calling John Hinckley Jr. a gun enthusiast. Technically true, I suppose, but hardly the whole story.
In McCarthy’s defense, he was opposed to torture and capital punishment. He lobbied to have death sentences commuted for a group of Nazi SS soldiers that were convicted of killing American POWs because he claimed their confessions were elicited by torture.
Of course, they weren’t Communists or terrorists or something unforgivable like that.
I thought I was agreeing with you. I’ve actually read Chambers’ book, all eight zillion pages of it. But McCarthy gave the witch hunt star power - he was far better at working the media than anyone in the House. However, to answer the OP, perhaps he over-reached so much that he discredited the movement enough to reduce the hysteria - not that the blacklist vanished for another two decades, though.
Remember that the witch hunt was also going after those who were Communists in the '30s. I don’t remember hearing that those who later renounced it after the pact with the Nazis, or even the show trials, believed that. In fact my impression was that the CCNY idealists thought it would happen by the workers exerting power.
I’m not sure about those who were still communists in the '50s. Besides Lillian Hellman, they were harder to identify.
That’s not right. The HUAC predated McCarthy even being a senator by over a decade. And as I think might not be clear to others, McCarthy was looking at communists working for the government only.
Uh, I don’t think so. HUAC was formed 1n 1938. The Senate Internal Security Subcommittee was formed in 1950, with McCarthy presiding over the meeting in '53 and '54. The famous Hollywood hearings took place in the late '40s, with HUAC continuing until 1975. To say McCarthy is responsible for HUAC doesn’t make sense, unless you have a cite for him having a time machine.
I never implied that McCarthy had anything to do with founding HUAC, or even starting the scare. Remember I mentioned Nixon/Hiss which was well before him. However, he started his crusade in 1950 - see Wiki page - even if he didn’t preside over anything.
You are right about the Hollywood 10 being pre-McCarthy. It’s interesting though that Faulk started his lawsuit about the time McCarthy died, though it took years to resolve.
According to George Clooney on a talk show (so I’m not sure how reliable it was) the executives who saw the dailies sent notes to recast McCarthy as the guy playing him was alternately too over the top and too monotonous. They didn’t realize it was newsreels.
I think Stephen Root could pull it off - he’d take the crazy to the edge of believable. Plus he could look enough like the guy with hair color, period clothing and makeup.
That’s a fairly safe bet that McCarthy wasn’t the only anti-Communist in the country. But he deserves the shame of having the era named after him even though it predates him. The House Committee on UnAmerican Activities managed to be active for a good while without a lot of attention being paid to it until the Hollywood Blacklisting. But even then it was happening to someone else.
It was McCarthy that terrorized the whole country and made everyone suspicious of his neighbor. If you were a a Communist, then you were out to overthrown the government. You met in secret groups and plotted and reported to a comrade with more authority and got your orders. All orders came down from the USSR (synonymous with Russia). Everything that was new was a Communist plot including floride in toothpaste and drinking water. (I’m not kidding.)
If you had any liberal ideas at all and expressed them, someone might spread the rumor that you were a Communist. It could ruin your business and close you down or get you fired. It’s the closest thing to the Salem Witch Trials that I can think of.
I remember the McCarthy hearings. And it wasn’t Eisenhower’s denouncing him or Nixon’s denouncing him that got everyone’s attention. It was Edward R. Morrow. He took a big chance. People who denounced McCarthy usually got into trouble and some were suspected or accused of being Communists. But the people trusted Murrow.
By the way, have you ever thought of the ridiculousness of the loyalty oath? If a person is secretly plotting to overthrow the United States government, is she going to hesitate to lie and take a loyalty oath?
(excerpt)
“No one familiar with the history of this country can deny that congressional committees are useful. It is necessary to investigate before legislating, but the line between investigating and persecuting is a very fine one and the junior Senator from Wisconsin has stepped over it repeatedly. His primary achievement has been in confusing the public mind, as between internal and the external threats of Communism. We must not confuse dissent with disloyalty. We must remember always that accusation is not proof and that conviction depends upon evidence and due process of law. We will not walk in fear, one of another. We will not be driven by fear into an age of unreason, if we dig deep in our history and our doctrine, and remember that we are not descended from fearful men – not from men who feared to write, to speak, to associate and to defend causes that were, for the moment, unpopular.
This is no time for men who oppose Senator McCarthy’s methods to keep silent, or for those who approve. We can deny our heritage and our history, but we cannot escape responsibility for the result. There is no way for a citizen of a republic to abdicate his responsibilities. As a nation we have come into our full inheritance at a tender age. We proclaim ourselves, as indeed we are, the defenders of freedom, wherever it continues to exist in the world, but we cannot defend freedom abroad by deserting it at home.
The actions of the junior Senator from Wisconsin have caused alarm and dismay amongst our allies abroad, and given considerable comfort to our enemies. And whose fault is that? Not really his. He didn’t create this situation of fear; he merely exploited it – and rather successfully. Cassius was right. ‘The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars, but in ourselves.’”
As was mentioned before, McCarthy never was on that committee, so I don’t know where you’re going with this, to prove your point.
Again, though, how much of this was actually being done by McCarthy himself? I pointed out before the McCarran Act - McCarthy didn’t sponsor that, Senator Pat McCarran did. If you’ve ever flown to Vegas you’ve been in an airport named for him. Other measures were put in place by various Truman-era Attorneys General, mostly Tom Clark. Another of Truman’s Attorneys General, James McGranery, revoked Charlie Chaplin’s reentry visa into the States because he was suspected of harboring Communist views. McCarthy had nothing directly to do with any of this.
If you can remember the hearings themselves as you claim, it isn’t because of CBS. That isn’t to say what Murrow did wasn’t admirable - but he wasn’t exactly a lone wolf out there either. Murrow, magnanimous as he always was, gave credit where it was due and it is probably a good idea if we do the same.
I made no comments about the wisdom of the oaths one way or another - I was just asking because it was a common thing for educators to run afoul of in that era. Even this doesn’t help your case, though - I looked up some caselaw on loyalty oaths and found this case challenging the loyalty oath program for employees of the City of Los Angeles. That oath had been put in place in 1941 - in a state McCarthy never lived in and before he became a national political figure. His fingerprints aren’t on that one either, nor the other state loyalty oaths around the country.
So what do we have - multiple examples of anticommunist reaction that have nothing to do with McCarthy, but get called “McCarthyism” as shorthand. And this even as the evidence is clear that had McCarthy never been born, all of this would still have happened.
It’s pinning it all on one man, which I find too convenient by half. Both parties and numberless politicians participated in this crackdown for motives good and ill, and with results both good and bad, frankly. I don’t think this gets examined in depth so long as people can call it “McCarthyism” and dismiss it.
The whole episode was needed to educate people and to keep their minds from turning to mush and not buying into the Utopian delusion of Marxism. Good minds are turning to mush right before our eyes on these IMB’s. Many people have been manipulated by propaganda to ‘hate’ Bush so much that they ignore just what Obama and his most vocal advocates are. Marxist, anti-capitalist, environmentalists thought police.
We are welcome to have Freedom of thought as long as our thoughts are Free of the Marxist intoxicant.
Could we not suppose that Ayers and Farrakhan have placed themselves to become Obama’s generals in the coming revolution. One is a confessed revolutionary and the other openly adulates Hitler. And could we not also suppose that these individuals bring with them a cadre of thugs and bullies. And should we ignore Obama’s record of limiting the right to bear arms which is the one freedom which protects all others. And should we ignore Clinton’s pardons of known terrorists and how they might be beholding to the next democrat POTUS. And I find suspicious the Feinstein and Communist China connection. And of course the wealth, power, and haughty nature of the elitist Democrat party leaders is shocking. And last but not least $300B in new tax and spend programs and a $6.7T Climate change tax gives more than enough additional dollars that could be easily hidden and diverted into an underground revolutionary organization.
See Obama worked with terrorist
See Weatherman - Wikipedia(organization )
See Louis Farrakhan - Wikipedia
See Bill Clinton pardon controversy - Wikipedia
See Papillons Art Palace – My WordPress Blog
A representative democracy is the most fragile form of government that exists. There is nothing to prevent the electorate to legislate “bread and circuses” so we must be ever vigilant.
Where are McCarthy and Heinlein in 2008 when we need them?