McCarthyism

A detailed Summary of McCarthyism


To talk about McCarthyism we must first look at what was going on in the United States at the time. WW II had just ended a few years prior, and the cold war was in full swing. Following WW II, for the US Government to be able to spend so much of the taxpayers money on the cold war, the Government had to get the US citizens behind them. To do this the US government started a propaganda campaign to scare the public into thinking the communists were bad and very dangerous people. That the communist people, their way of thinking, and their type of government had to be contained. There were several things that happened to help in-force what the government was saying. First Czechoslovakia and China fell to communism. Then the Russians had a successful explosion of an atomic bomb. There was also the arrest and conviction of the Rosenbergs as spies who were giving our atomic secrets to the Soviet Union. The Korean War was also starting up, Russia was supplying the North Korean Communists with military equipment to invade the non communist South Korea (Reeves 1). With all of this going on in the world and in the United States, the stage was set for McCarthy.

In 1950 after 5 years of the cold war, a relatively unknown Senator


The real impact of McCarthyism may be that people just fell in line. Everyone seemed to become the "perfect Citizen" supporting the government, or at least not speaking out against it. For during this time it would have been suicide to speak out against the government or any of its policies. The fear was that you might be labeled a Communist or a Communist sympathizer. You could also end up on one of the many "Black Lists" that were in effect. If this happened it would be impossible to get a job in your industry of expertise. This fear was widespread, from top government officials and large corporations, right down to professors and students in universities who were afraid to do anything out of the "norm".

With this kind of environment to work in you have to wonder how many things were not done. For example we know that National Health Insurance was one of the policies that got dropped (Chafe 65). You have to wonder how many other things went undone, books unwritten, movies never made, voices not heard, all because of the fear of being labeled a communist. We will never know how McCarthyism really affected the US economy, because we don't know how many ideas were not pursued. I wonder how Bill Gates would have been perceived in this environment.



Some common words found in the essay are:
Russians McCarthy, WW II, Liberals Democrats, Republican Club, II Government, Party Chafe, White House, Health Insurance, Black Lists, Czechoslovakia China, chafe 50, cold war, ww ii, lower class americans, loose job, middle lower, lower class, class americans, joseph mccarthy, major corporations, middle lower class, fear labeled communist, impact mccarthyism,

Approximate Word count = 1668
Approximate Pages = 7 (250 words per page double spaced)

Category: History

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