* 212 staff were said to be security risks (communist sympathisers) and were forced out of their jobs. | House of Un-American Activicties | * HUAC had been around since 1930s. It became big news in 1947. * In 1947 Hollywood writers, producers, actors and directors were called to the HUAC and questioned on whether they were communists or not. * The ‘Hollywood
On February 9, 1950, Senator Joseph McCarthy launched his crusade against "communism" as he saw it. The speech delivered in Wheeling, WV was infamous for its reference to members of Congress who McCarthy accused of being members of the Communist Party. The insinuation was that these men were silent enemies working in favor of the Soviet Union for the downfall of the American government and way of life. In the Wheeling speech, McCarthy played on the Cold War and Red Scare fears (fear of a communist takeover) by asserting that the communist world, particularly the Soviet Union, was in a showdown with the democratic nations led by the United States. He charged that there were 205 communist spies in the state department who were selling out the United States.
On many occasions, this mistrust was born from a lack of communication, and what one nation perceived as a defensive and reactionary move, the other saw as an aggressive and expansionist show of intent. For the United States, it could be argued that the famous fear and hysteria over Communism was born in 1953. On June 19 1953, Julius and Ethel Rosenberg were executed, after being convicted of being American Communists, and conspiring to pass information about the American Atomic Bomb to the Soviet Union. This execution was extremely important, not only because it was the first execution of civilians for espionage in United States history, but it also confirmed to all American citizens that communist spies could be anywhere in the country. This was supported by the work of Senator Joseph McCarthy, whose extensive and often criticized work in searching out Communists in the US Administration and more general society created a hysterical fear of Communism throughout America.
Institutions Over the past few years, the nation has been temporarily outraged by many different government scandals such as the leak of a CIA agent’s cover by their own government; the firing of United States Attorneys who weren’t blindly loyal to the administration; the suspension of habeas corpus rights, the friendly-fire death and subsequent cover-up of soldier Pat Tillman; the warrantless wiretapping of American citizens. That last scandal is in the news again, because the President managed to have the laws changed retroactively, so his once-illegal surveillance program is now the law of the land. The military has covered up many things that have happened in the past to prevent from ruining their reputation and to discourage people from
Overall, “McCarthyism” did nothing but hurt the United States. It made the government act like a paranoid schizophrenic for years to come, and ended up wasting time, energy, and effort by the American people that could have been used in some other area of war. McCarthy wasted time with “—the social reforms that were never adopted, the diplomatic initiatives that were not pursued, the workers who were not organized into unions, the books that were not written, and the movies that were never filmed (Schrecker,
The 2005 film Good Night, and Good Luck took place during the beginning of the Cold War, specifically around the time when Senator Joseph McCarthy was rising to power. During his reign as the chairman for the Committee on Government Operations of the Senate, he accused several public figures of being Communists. His speeches were frequently reported on in the media, and the determined factor for censorship during the Red Scare was based on ideology, rather than actual content. Many people unjustly accused of being Communists were persecuted and discriminated, and the Republican Party began advocating the rise of ideological conformity. A great deal of the American public became extremely paranoid, and the general atmosphere of the era was nihilistic due to fear of Communist infiltration.
For example, when the USA dropped the atomic bomb on Japan the Russians were particularly frightened of what this meant for them. Arguments for this factor often were the fact that now USA were now in a completely different league to Russia as it meant with this power they could quite easily defeat their communist enemies without any real casualties. This also meant that the USA had no other rival superpower and thus could control the world’s affairs. Stalin and the rest of the Russians were not oblivious to this fact but yet they were particularly fearful and suspicious and had to predict the worst possible outcome which was that America would drop an atomic bomb on Russia. As a result in reaction to this Stalin placed part of his red army in each of the eastern European countries which would then become communist and be part of the USSR.
America was taking part of what was called the “Red Scare” resulting from the Palmer Raids in 1919 in which 6000 communists were wound up in America. This sense of anti-foreignism was mainly for the fact that communists were nothing but different and Americans were tired of dealing with different nations and at this time Americanism was trying to be found in everyone. One of the ways that this anti-foreignism was manifested was the radical arise of the 1920’s Klu Klux Klan. Unlike the KKK of the 19th century, this Klan wasn’t only anti-African American, but it was anti immigrants, anti-Catholic, and anti-communist and basically anti anything that wasn’t American. Hiram Wesly Evans describes in Document D that the Klan speaks for the
By 1947 Europe was still dragging itself out of the Second World War and the two superpowers were already having severe disagreements concerning the next step for the continent. With both sides accusing the other of aggressive tactics it is small wonder as to what eventually became the norm in Europe. The Soviet Union had indeed used aggression in its own conquest of Eastern Europe especially Poland because of Stalin’s basic paranoia of the West. The Americans however, did not always play by the rules they set out either, which were outlined by the death of Franklin Roosevelt and his successor Harry Truman’s hard-line tactics towards the Soviet state. The Soviet Union emerged from the war with 27,000,000 million civilian and military causalities something which Stalin was keen to use as a bargaining tool in the talk at Tehran, Yalta and Potsdam.
Fear of the other country laying influence of their ideology, as a means to gain power, tensions rose. These tensions were fueled by the truman doctrine, which requested 400 million from congress to help combat communism in greece and turkey. The purpose of the Truman doctrine was to provide American economic and military assistance to any nation threatened by communism. The US feared the encroaching soviet strength, which perpetually launched them into an arms race with the U.S.S.R. The Soviets broke the US nuclear monopoly, and that struck fear into all americans, there is now someone just as dangerous as you are.