The Second Red Scare - Essay Example

? The Second Red Scare The term Red Scare stands for two different eras of strong Anti-Communism in the United States, namely the First Red Scare (1919 to 1921), and the Second Red Scare (1947 to 1957). The First Red Scare, as often referred to by historians, was a time when the American political society expressed so much disrespect and resentment toward the democratic socialist group. Following the Russian Revolution is the establishment of the Communist Party of the United States of America (CPUSA). During World War II, the United States and the Soviet Union agreed to the Russo-American friendship to create a firm and unified facade against the Axis Powers. After the downfall of Hitler, emerged common terror and opposition that led to the Cold War. The Second Red Scare occurred after the World War II. Hostility mounted as the US government arrested, deported and investigated citizens suspected of being Un-American. Under President Truman’s administration, anyone suspected of membership to the CPUSA was guilty of treason. Suspects were fired from their jobs. However, losing jobs was less of a blow than being socially banished and blacklisted (“The "Second" Red Scare: Fear and Loathing in High Places, 1947-1954”) People from the movie industry — actors, directors, writers, and studio executives — were subpoenaed by the US Congress’s House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC). News and entertainment media people, including those in the television and radio shows were likewise summoned. Soon after, the media began its own Communist manhunt. Every assembly gathered and published the names of media people believed to be un-American in their political principles. There was an air of panic and distrust everywhere. What inflamed more public unease in America was when the Soviet Union had effectively launched its first atomic bomb in 1949.  The US then realized that the country was faced with threats of nuclear warfare. The government immediately commenced the investigation of the probability of the US atomic secrets leaked to the Russians by American Communists. High-status court proceedings concluded the conviction and execution of the Rosenbergs in 1953 (“The "Second" Red Scare: Fear and Loathing in High Places, 1947-1954”). Julius and Ethel Rosenberg, under the Espionage Act, were found guilty of conspiracy to commit espionage for the Soviet Union from 1944 to 1950. The Rosenbergs had been fundamentally involved in a Communist undercover agent circle that leaked US national defense secrets, particularly drawings/sketches of high-explosive lens patterns and the US atomic bomb, to the Soviet Union (Parrish). Senator McCarthy, McCarthyism and the Witch Hunt The fifties era was enveloped with concern over treachery and the "Communist menace." In the middle of this menace was the Senator from Wisconsin, Joseph McCarthy. McCarthy served his first term as an infamous backbench partisan (Unger). To guarantee his political victory in the upcoming election, he took advantage of the country’s panic against Communism. On his most famous speech on February 9, 1950, he made his impact by naming 205 people in the State Department who were allegedly recognized affiliates of the American Communist Party. In his speech, he proclaimed, “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 and shaping policy in the State Department” (McCarthy). This caused national alarm and called for immediate investigations of the subversive activists. McCarthy became the chairman of the Government Committee on Operations of the Senate, all the more extending his power to examine the nonconformists. For two years, he persistently questioned several government departments, the media people, the clergy, and other prominent sections of the US society. The national terror stemming from the witch-hunts and communist threats became branded as McCarthyism (Oh and Latham). This panic made the headlines and made McCarthy an instant sensation and a heroic defender of true Americanism. In 1952, McCarthy won reelection and together with fellow fanatical anti-Communists, turned the rest of the fifties into a decade of fright and oppression (Unger). McCarthyism became a cursed subject to hush people from talking about the Communist infiltration and espionage of the American existence. McCarthy’s reign of terror would be deeply amplified by historians writing subsequent to his downfall and on into the present and future era. Great men of history would use “The Great Fear” to typify every anti-communist activity as a sinister and disparaging campaign that let loose the suspicion and betrayal constantly terrorizing and challenging the American loyalty and democracy (“McCarthyism, Red Scare, and Domestic Subversion”). The Last of McCarthy’s Witch Hunt that Led to His Downfall Becoming the icon of the dishonorable instigator of the “witch hunt,” Senator Joseph McCarthy then pointed the finger at numerous innocent civilians who are in any way connected with communism based on circumstantial evidences. Accusations were not supported by real evidences other than deliberate allegations. McCarthy's witch hunt caused widespread job losses following the government’s suspicion of more than ten thousand alleged subversives who were quickly fired and disintegrated from society (Schrecker). What led to his downfall was when he commenced investigation of supposed communist penetration in the US military in October 1953. In April 1994, he accused The US Secretary of Army Robert T. Stevens of hiding evidences of spying activities. President Eisenhower then realized that McCarthy’s anti-Communism group had to end. The army fired back with allegations on McCarthy for abuse of his congressional and investigative powers. In December 1954, he was taken down by Senatorial votes that denounce him for disrespect of an elections subcommittee probing into his misbehavior in office. When the Democrats reclaimed Congressional control in the 1954 midterm elections, McCarthy was practically stripped of power and office. In 1957, due to excessive alcohol drinking, he was diagnosed with liver cirrhosis and on the same year he died, financially bankrupt and dishonored in the eyes of most Americans (Keach). McCarthyism and its Effect on American Society During the age of McCarthyism, because political actions could attract attention, the more sensible folks eluded them. The average Americans converted themselves into social conformists, much to the dismay of the scholars. University people were divided into two classes: a repressed group of students and a team of self-suppressed professors fearful of teaching what might be wrongly interpreted as Un-American. "The Black Silence of Fear" apparently covered the land, and momentous political opposition became stronger. Noticeably the congressional investigations, allegiance plans, and blacklists influenced the life of every American. Anti-Communist campaign affected American culture and politics. However, McCarthyism's major blow could be in what did not ensue instead of what did happen when social restructures were unaccepted, when political programs were not implemented, when workers were not unionized, when books were left unwritten, and when movies were not filmed (Schrecker). Along with McCarthy’s defeat, the Communist group, already dented by internal dilemmas, became unimportant and every party connected with it vanished. The obliteration of the Communist group and the leftists’ unions had affected American political affairs more than the collapse of the party itself. With their termination, the nation misplaced the institutional system that had formed an open space where serious options to the status quo were accessible and fair reform societies were more exposed and unprotected from the Republican’s harassments and thus became useless (Schrecker). McCarthyism may have ended social reforms that were considered necessary. While the US politics swayed to the right following the Second World War, the national government discarded the New Deal’s uncompleted schema, such as the national health insurance. The leftists’ open-minded political union that could sustain health reforms and parallel programs was ruined by the campaign against Communism. The middle-class American dreaded identification with the radical group and the left extremists were either not recognized or besieged. Moreover, McCarthyism contributed more to the reduction of the restructuring inclination through facilitation of redirecting the focus of the labor group, the most powerful body in the old New Deal alliance, from exterior organization to internal politics (Schrecker). The effect of the McCarthy age was similarly obvious in global concerns. Resistance to the Cold War had been so methodically classified with communism that a challenge to the fundamental theories of the US foreign policy without earning distrust of treachery was impossible. Consequently, from the defeat of third-party presidential aspirant Henry Wallace in 1948 until the 1960s, effectual public condemnation of America's global position was basically unreal. Inside the government, the McCarthyism anxieties imposed on the State Department remained for years, particularly regarding East Asia. For instance, the crusade against China’s collapse created a lifelong mark that American legislators dreaded to recognize the official subsistence of the People's Republic of China until Richard Nixon came into office in 1971. Nixon was believed to be remarkably solid to accusations of being flexible on communism (Schrecker). The American world of intellects likewise suffered. The free-thinkers of the Cold War eluded the chaos. They commemorated the "end of ideology," asserting that the US’ distinctively realistic approach to politics made the crisis that had formerly alarmed left- wing philosophists immaterial. Historians pressed on that formulation into the history and depicted a homeland that had apparently in no way suffered grave inner disagreement. It took the civil rights movement and the Vietnam War to stop this gratification and bring realism back in. Furthermore, the entertainment world experienced the leash of McCarthyism. The blacklisted movie industry people were disinclined to fight controversial societal or political matters. Paradoxically, while the television and radio reporters were praising the flexibility of the US democratic state, the anti-Communist movement was demoralizing it (Schrecker). The political oppression of the McCarthy period promoted the development of the US security state and aided its growth into the national civilization. On the ploy of guarding the nation from Communist penetration, federal agents harassed individual rights and widened state control over film studios, education institutions, labor unions, and several other presumably self-governing organizations. The common respect to the national government's formulation of the Communist menace assisted the progression and silenced resistance (Schrecker). Furthermore, even after the anti-Communist uproar faded, the anti-democratic practices connected with it persisted, as the nation can still trace the McCarthyism legacy in the FBI's secret agenda of pursuing political nonconformists in the 1960s and 1970s, the Watergate-linked crimes of the Nixon White House in the seventies, and the Iran-Contra outrages in the eighties The occurrence of such unlawful activity exposes how gravely the nation's protections against executive irregularities had corroded in the face of declarations that national security took priority over ordinary law. McCarthyism may not be the sole reason for these indignations; however the attack on American democracy that started during the 1940s and 1950s with the alliance of private institutions and public agencies in restraining the alleged menace of domestic communism was a significant early involvement (Schrecker). Works Cited Keach, William. “Rehabilitating McCarthyism.” International Socialist Review. Issue 12, June-July 2000. McCarthy, Joseph. Congressional Record, Senate, 81st Congress, 2nd session, 20 February 1950. Speech. “McCarthyism, Red Scare, and Domestic Subversion.” Discover the Network. 2005. 24 March 2012. Oh, Joyce and Amanda Latham. “Senator Joseph McCarthy, McCarthyism and the Witch Hunt.” The Cold War Museum. n.d. 24 March 2012. Parrish, Michael T. “Cold War Justice: The Supreme Court and the Rosenbergs.” The American Historical Review, Vol. 82, No. 4 (Oct., 1977), pp. 805-842. Schrecker, Ellen. The Age of McCarthyism: A Brief History with Documents. Boston: St. Martin's Press, 1994. “The Second Red Scare: Fear and Loathing in High Places. 1947 – 1954.” Late Twentieth Century America and the World, 1945-1990s. n.d. 24 March 2012. Unger, Irwin. American Issues: A Primary Source Reader in United States History. Prentice Hall. 1994. 2: 208-219. ISBN-10: 0130319643 Read More