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McCarthyism mean making unfair accusations of disloyalty without evidence. The term is named after Senator Joseph McCarthy who in the 1950s accused thousands of Americans of being communists or communist sympathizers.
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∙ 9y ago
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Could mccarthysim be considered a witch hunt?
Yes. In fact, the "Crucible" by Henry Miller was an allegory for the McCarthy trials.
How did mccarthysim affedt the lives and political thinking of people in the us?
The Soviet Union was a terrible institution, but not because it was communist. It was appropriate of the United States to oppose the murder and torture of dissidents, imperialism, and suppression of human rights enacted by the Soviet Union. However, McCarthyism was focused on criticizing and ostracizing the ideology behind the Soviet Union (communism) and not the actions (which were evil and totalitarian). The communists McCarthy and his followers attacked were not, in most cases, advocates for the Soviet Union. Instead they were advocates of an ideology that seeks to achieve equality.
When did McCarthysim occur?
In 1950, Joseph McCarthy told a Republican audience at Wheeling, West Virginia, that he had a list of 205 known Communists who were working in the State Department. He also said that the Secretary of State, Dean Acheson, knew about the Communist influence in his department. McCarthy had no such list and the next day he could not even remember if he said 205 or 57. During the McCarthy witch hunt, he never released a single name and never fingered a single Communist in the government. McCarthy reached his peak of influence in 1952. Even the Republican candidate for President, Eisenhower, refused to publically denounce McCarthy, even though he detested the man. McCarthy's influence came to an end in 1954, when he took on the U.S. Army, accusing them of having known Communists in leadership. The Senate finally censured him in December, 1954 by a vote of 72 to 22.
