McCarthyism

During the Red Scare and McCarthyism, Senator Joseph McCarthy initiated a witch hunt for communist spies in the US. McCarthy's rise to power was fueled by the fear of communism and his desire for attention. He accused Alger Hiss of being a Soviet spy, sparking the era of McCarthyism. McCarthy and the House Committee of Un-American Activities aggressively investigated and accused people of being traitors. McCarthy's lack of evidence didn't stop him from ruining lives and careers. However, his downfall eventually came as he targeted government officials and Hollywood, leading to his own hubris and loss of support. Hello, I'm Myles Crane, and this is my podcast, and I am going to be discussing the Red Scare and McCarthyism, and more specifically later in this I'll be getting into the Army McCarthy hearings that takes place in the end of all this. But in order to understand the end, we have to go all the way back to the beginning, just at the end of World War II. So right after World War II ended, the common enemy basically shifted from Adolf Hitler in Germany to the Soviet Union, Soviet Russia, and the fear of communism. And with this threat of the communist regime taking over the world, this was the perfect time for a man by the name of Senator Joseph, Joseph or Joe McCarthy, to plant the seed of McCarthyism into the world. And this started the era known as the Red Scare, but like I just said, to understand more about McCarthyism and McCarthy himself, we have to take a deeper dive into history starting with the Great Depression. So back in the year 1929, the Great Depression sweeps across the world. It leaves millions of people impoverished, they're unemployed, nobody has jobs, it's hard to get, they don't have, they're unable to work, they make money, they have no money to buy food, and with this, very, very few people won during, well I hate to say they won during the Great Depression, it was really just many losers during the Great Depression. And all these losers, like I said, they were left stranded, they had no food, money, jobs for years and years on end. Now one of the biggest changes in the way that Americans functioned at the time was caused by the rise of communism brought by Soviet Russia. Now just before the Great Depression, communism was introduced worldwide, and it was heavily described by Russia and the Soviet Union as this quote-unquote utopia for workers and for the lower class. And because of the Great Depression, and because no one had jobs and no one could work and make money, many American citizens started to attend secret pro-communist meetings in the United States, and if people weren't talking about these meetings or the idea of communism, there were many Russian spies that had made their way into the country, and their jobs as spies were to spread communism to American citizens to get a much greater and greater following. And some Americans even were recruited to become spies. But according to author Victor G. Devinetz, there was an estimated about 65,000 new members of the communist regime from the United States. Now fast forward a couple of years to the 1950s. We are right outside of World War II, we are victorious from the idea of Nazism, the Nazi Party, and Adolf Hitler. And while everyone is celebrating the fall of Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party, a new threat emerges. The valiant switch is from Adolf Hitler to the Soviet Russia and the idea of communism, a Red Scare, these Reds, that's what they've described, communist soldiers. And this leads us away from World War II and shifts us into the Cold War. And like I just said, the Cold War comes, the Red Scare, the fear of communism spreading throughout the country. Now the Russians were very, very scary in general. Like I said, there were many Russian spies in the country. They've been in the country for decades. But there were some who worked on the Manhattan Project. So one of the biggest threats was after we won the war, we dropped the bombs, the two atomic bombs, Russia quickly made their own. And this became the threat of nuclear warfare and bioterrorism. And that basically was the idea behind the Cold War. Now with the Red Scare going on, this introduces one of the most important figures in United States history when it comes to the Red Scare, and that is Senator Joseph McCarthy, who's from Wisconsin. Now before all this, McCarthy wasn't in really great shape. He was a really bad senator, poor behavior, and a heavy set of alcoholism. It sent him on a straight path to failure and not getting re-elected into the Senate. But now with the rise of the Red Scare and the fear of communism taking over, McCarthy wants to come up with an idea so that way he can start, well basically his idea was that, to start this witch hunt and go after people who he suspected or were suspected of being communist spies in the United States. And really for himself, he liked the idea of people talking about him. He wanted to make himself more important to the public and wanted to be more relevant so that way he could keep his job and his high figure and boost his ego so that more people would be talking about him. And basically the spark that set all this off began with a man by the name of Alger Hiss. Now Hiss, according to Professor James Engle, who was a professor at Harvard University, in the year 1950, Alger Hiss, a State Department worker, a government employee, he held many high positions in his life. He was accused of being a Soviet Union spy. Now during his trial, it was calculated that it was presumed that he did lie under oath and it was strongly believed to be a spy for the Soviet Union. So these accusations were correct. So quite shortly after Hiss was sentenced, we moved to Wheeling, West Virginia, where Senator McCarthy gives a very famous speech that sort of sparks the Red Scare McCarthyism. But he took a more offensive point on President Truman's foreign policies, because this was when President Harry Truman was in office. And one of the most famous lines from the speech, he speaks on saying, quote, I have here in my hand a list of 205, a list of names that were made known to the Secretary of State as being members of the Communist Party, and who nevertheless are still working on shaping, are still working and shaping policy in the State Department. The quote from the transcript of his speech, specifically from the speech, is what helped spark the era of McCarthyism. During this time, McCarthy, along with the House, along with the HUAC, it stood for the House Committee of Un-American Activities. And they basically went on this absolute mass spree when it came to investigating people who were rumored to be potential traitors to the United States. Now something to note about the HUAC is that the HUAC already existed. It came together in the late 1930s, I believe around 1938. And this was just about when McCarthy became a senator for the first time. And now that McCarthy sort of sparked the era of McCarthyism, and he rallies all these people after his big speech, the HUAC now steps up their game with Joseph McCarthy. And they take a much more aggressive front when it comes to accusing people who they believe are potential communists and potential traitors to the country. Now one of the things about McCarthy is that he's power-hungry. I said that previously. But according to Simon Whistler, who was an author, he loved, or not an author, but Simon Whistler, a radio host, basically stated that he loved attention. And like I said previously, one of the first reasons why he started this was so that his name would be talked about. He could keep his job, he could stay relevant. He loved the idea of boosting his ego because people were talking about him. And so this power-hungry McCarthy soon begins to shift his targets from people who he believes are spies to using that idea of spies to take out political opponents, political rivals. And he accuses these political rivals of being traitors to his country. Now according to some authors by the name of Sherell Phelps and Jeffrey Lehman, when McCarthy made so many of these accusations, he hardly ever used enough information to back himself up. But the way he presented himself and the way that he spoke convinced the people to back him up. And it really, it just didn't help the accused. Nothing could really help in their favor. And it worked in his favor, and because of this, because of his lack of evidence that could have shown, that could have easily proved for these people to be innocent, it left with a very small percent of the accused and convicted Americans actually being spies. A much larger percentage of the accused weren't actually spies, they were loyal to their country, they had nothing to do with communism. And now basically if you were accused of being a spy, you were most likely thrown in jail. If you weren't going to be thrown in jail, they lost, people lost their jobs, their reputations have been tarnished because of these so-called traitorous accusations. No one wants to have, no one wants to work for someone who is prospected to be a, perceived to be a communist. No one wants to be known as the person who is friends with a communist. So basically if you are thrown into this crucible of, I said, hey, I think this guy's a communist spy, your life is practically over at that point. Now coming up with this, obviously, this sort of, we're taking a shift towards the fall. All things, in a sense, must come to an end. But when you question, you really just question how Joe McCarthy fell off. Now at this point in time, he's at the top of his game. He has all the power he needs, his political rivals don't want to touch him, the people don't want to touch him because they have the fear that if they go and speak up about McCarthy, then they're going to be the next to be accused of being traitorous spies. And they don't want to be thrown in jail, they don't want to lose their reputations. And according to Elizabeth Purdy from the St. James and St. Lucia of Pop Culture Online, McCarthy truly believed that the communists had been taking over the U.S. from the inside out. He was genuinely convinced about this. McCarthy soon targeted government officials, people in Hollywood, and sort of, and he was sending this complete and total wave of career-destroying accusations, like I said, if you were accused of this, your whole reputation was tarnished, it was done. But this sort of came with his power and his hubris, one of his biggest moves and his biggest mistakes, because soon, all his accusations, his next accusations came and pointed at the U.S. government and the army. And in order to get a deeper understanding of this, it starts with a false letter. It starts with a very close ally of his by the name of David Schein. And now, so basically, it was in regards to the treatment of David Schein, it was a false letter that was sent out. And once again, according to Elizabeth Purdy, Schein, who was a close ally, a very wealthy member of McCarthy's staff, and McCarthy sort of took this misinformation on the way that he was treated, so basically they lied in the way that they were treating Schein while he was active in duty. And McCarthy took this information, turned it into a complete 180, and used this in a direct assault on the military and the U.S. government. They were failing to give treatment to Schein, but McCarthy tried to give this special treatment to Schein since he was a close ally, but ultimately denied by the army. And as soon as Schein and McCarthy were denied by the U.S. government, McCarthy immediately accused the army of harboring communists and being traitors to their own country. And one other similar instance, it came from an army dentist by the name of Irving Peres. Now Peres, he was drafted into the military around the 1950s, and his controversy with McCarthy sort of came around when he was filling out the loyalty oath, which is something that is required for military soldiers and workers to fill out if they want to be voluntarily discharged. Now, Peres wanted to be voluntarily discharged because he wanted to be able to see his wife and daughter who had fallen ill. And when he was filling out these questions, it was noted that Peres had to answer the simple yes or no question on the oath. And Peres responded by saying, quote, federal constitutional privilege. Though it's not really talked about what he meant in specifics or what the question was about, but when McCarthy heard about this, this was his chance to turn on someone. McCarthy sort of took this answer and completely flipped around on Peres, claiming that he was acting as a communist spy and that's why he's filling this out incorrectly. And they implicated that, he also implicated into saying that the U.S. Army was involved in this and they were supporting, they were supporting Peres throughout this. And when McCarthy accused the military, the military, they completely discredited McCarthy. And now what is revoked and what is seen as one of like the most fatal mistakes that was made in McCarthy's career, he sort of took, he took this on to live television. So soon the McCarthy Army hearings, the Army McCarthy hearings, it's said both ways, they went live on television in 1954, where basically McCarthy and the U.S. Army went at it while McCarthy was trying to convince people that the Army was traitorous to the country, that they were harboring communists, they were supporting the idea of communism. And the Army was trying to call out McCarthy for his BS, trying to say how his arrogance and all this stuff is negative towards the country and it's caused many people to be imprisoned and lose their jobs. Now one of the key turning points during these hearings came from the chief counsel for the Army at the time, a man by the name of Joseph Welch, and he stood up in front of everyone and he confronted McCarthy and his attacks on the people. Now when I say that he stood up in front of everyone, you have to note that people are scared to call out McCarthy because they sit in fear of being the next person accused of being a communist. And Welch sort of, he called out McCarthy for his arrogance, he called out for his vindictive behaviors and one of the most famous quotes from his rant, he calls out McCarthy and he asks him, quote, have you no sense of decency sir, at long last. And this sort of was like the high point, this, and everything collapsed underneath McCarthy, when they saw someone calling McCarthy out, it completely and negatively affected his career. Now, even though, after all of this and the ending, McCarthy never loses, he never loses his spot in the Senate, but it's important to know that because of after him being called out for all of his crazy accusations, and how he sort of went out of control of power, he was sort of, he lost his political power, his actions were, quote, contrary to the sanctorial traditions of life, and then sort of that kind of just marked the end of his career, no one believes him, no one trusted him, because of all these accusations, and soon after, so three years later after this, he dies, the cause of his death was, I am not aware of the cause of his death, but soon after, he was laid to rest. So in the end, to all of this, it's important to know that, it's important to know the aftermath of McCarthyism, and how the idea of like communists, or anti-communists, they sort of haunt Americans, how like accusations can sort of spread through fear, but it's important to know about McCarthyism, the Red Scarce, and it's important to know about Joseph McCarthy, because of the way how fear can be used as a weapon, the way that Joseph McCarthy turns people's words against him, and if you sound convincing enough, you can convince and have an entire, the majority of a country backing you up through the fearful ways that you lead, and that basically ends my podcast, and thank you for listening.