Cracking the AP U.S. History Exam, 2013 Edition by Princeton Review

Author:Princeton Review [Review, The Princeton]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 978-0-307-94447-4
Publisher: Random House Information Group
Published: 2012-09-18T00:00:00+00:00

MCCARTHYISM

All this conflict with communists resurrected anti-communist paranoia at home, just as anti-communism had swept America during the Red Scare after WWI. In 1947 Truman ordered investigations of 3 million federal employees in a search for “security risks.” Those found to have a potential Achilles’ heel—either previous association with “known communists” or a “moral” weakness such as alcoholism or homosexuality (which, the government reasoned, made them easy targets for blackmail)—were dismissed without a hearing. In 1949 former State Department official Alger Hiss was found guilty of consorting with a communist spy (Richard Nixon was the congressman mostly responsible for Hiss’s downfall). Americans began to passionately fear the “enemy within.” Even the Screen Actors Guild, then headed by Ronald Reagan, attempted to discover and purge its own communists.

It was this atmosphere that allowed a demagogic senator named Joseph McCarthy to rise from near anonymity to national fame. In 1950 McCarthy claimed to have a list of more than 200 known communists working for the State Department. He subsequently changed that number several times, which should have clued people in to the fact that he was not entirely truthful. Unchallenged, McCarthy went on to lead a campaign of innuendo that ruined the lives of thousands of innocent people. Without ever uncovering a single communist, McCarthy held years of hearings with regard to subversion, not just in the government, but in education and the entertainment industry as well. Those subpoenaed were often forced to confess to previous associations with communists and name others with similar associations. Industries created lists of those tainted by these charges, called blacklists, which prevented the accused from working, just as blacklists had been used against union organizers at the turn of the last century. McCarthy’s downfall came in 1954, during the Eisenhower administration, when he accused the Army of harboring communists. He had finally chosen too powerful a target. The Army fought back hard, and with help from Edward R. Murrow’s television show, in the Army–McCarthy hearings, McCarthy was made to look foolish. The public turned its back on him, and the era of McCarthyism ended, but public distrust and fear of communism remained.

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