One actor was even blacklisted just because she looked like a girl that had been blacklisted for being communist. Also in 1950 there was a Wisconsin republican senator named Joseph McCarthy. He Made quite a stir in the hysteria of the red scare when he made a speech in wheeling West Virginia. During the speech he had held up a piece of paper and said here is a list of 205 members of the department of state that are communists. His “list” of people changed inconstantly and his refusal to provide anyone names of the so called communists set up a horrifyingly awesome spike in hysteria and fear of communists infiltrating the government.
During his office as a Senator, McCarthy claimed that there were numerous communist subversives and Soviet (Russian) spies in the federal government and elsewhere in the nation. McCarthyism is a political movement inspired by Joseph McCarthy himself to accuse many people of being communist subversives or Soviet spies without concrete evidences. Determined to root out the communist parties in America, McCarthy started to track down numerous people that he thought to be communists or belonged to the American Communist Party. The reason why McCarthy started to track communists is because he thought that communism was an ominous threat to the nation. McCarthyism closely resembles the witch-hunting era of the 1600s portrayed by Arthur Miller through his piece of literature, The Crucible.
During the Scare, thousands of innocent citizens were accused of holding Communist sympathies, accusations which had little or no evidence to support them. Arthur Miller, appalled by the wide approval with which McCarthy’s actions were received, set about trying to convince the public of the spuriousness of the charges and attempted to reveal the greed and fear which motivated them. Realizing that any overt criticism would be rationalized by the public, he sought to describe another more removed event that would serve as a parallel to the Red Scare. Due to the striking similarities between the two events, Miller chose the Salem witch trials to represent the Red Scare in his play The Crucible. The impetus behind both the Red Scare and the Salem trials came from the innate
Committees were formed to find communists and people not loyal to the United States. The Loyalty Review Board was created in 1947 and designed to find government employees that were un-loyal. The board dismissed 212 employees. The House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC) was also created to find un-American activities, and made headlines when it started to investigate alleged communist influence in the movie industry. The Hollywood Ten was a group of ten men who, because they would not cooperate with the HUAC were jailed.
The number imprisoned is in the hundreds, and some ten or twelve thousand lost their jobs. In many cases simply being subpoenaed by HUAC was sufficient cause to be fired. Many of those who were imprisoned lost their jobs or were questioned by committees did in fact have a past or present connection of some kind with the Communist Party. But for the majority, both the potential for them to do harm to the nation and the nature of their communist affiliation were tenuous. Suspected homosexuality was also common cause for being targeted by McCarthyism: The hunt for “sexual perverts”, who were presumed to be subversive by nature, resulted in thousands being harassed and denied
McCarthy emerged out of relative obscurity in 1950 when he announced that he could name at least 205 people in the State Department who were not loyal to the United States and who were known communists. He rose into national prominence upon these accusations, which he used and exaggerated for several years. Hysteria swept not only through the state department but also in various other departments of the government. He called dozens of people into subcommittee hearings where he badgered and accused them. Dozens of people were blacklisted and prohibited from government work and many other jobs even in private sectors.
The committee included pressuring witnesses to name former associates, vague, and sweeping accusations against individuals. Also the assumptions of an individuals guilt because of the association with a suspect organization. Witnesses who wouldn't answer were cited for contempt Congress. In October of 1947 chairman J. Parrell Thomas started an investigation in Hollywood Motion Picture Industry. He interviewed 41 people but only 10 people
* 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
What went on inside the church shows that Jones was was thoroughly corrupt. From beatings to blackmail, his adherents experienced Jones’ worst. Throughout the 1970s the media seemed to be very concerned about reports of abuse and financial fraud. Following these rumors and due to Jones’ own faltering mental state, the Peoples Temple moved to Guyana with nearly 1000 members; in Guyana, believers were subject to working long hours without rest as the abuse claims continued (History.com). Richard Cavendish, a British occult historian, writes that “members who wanted to leave were being kept at the settlement against their will” (13).
False Accusations Was McCarthyism real or false? McCarthyism was real at one point. Whether all the people they accused were communist is yet to be determined. McCarthyism was carried out under Senator Joseph McCarthy in 1950-1954.”Many people were accused and blacklisted, some lost their jobs, although most did not in fact belong to the communist party” (New Oxford Dictionary). There were 200 people accused ;however, the number would always change.