What is mccarthyism and the red scare

The political practice of publicizing accusations of disloyalty or subversion with insufficient regard to evidence; and 2. The use of methods of investigation and accusation regarded as unfair, in order to suppress opposition. Senate on December 2, and died May 2, Marshall and was removed from the speech to avoid causing bad feelings in McCarthy's home state of Wisconsin. Joeseph R. Daily Notes by C. The Red Scare led to a range of actions that had a profound and enduring effect on U.

Federal employees were analyzed to determine whether they were sufficiently loyal to the government, and the House Un-American Activities Committee, as well as U.

Senator Joseph R. McCarthy, investigated allegations of subversive elements in the government and the Hollywood film industry. The climate of fear and repression linked to the Red Scare finally began to ease by the late s. The Russian Revolution of saw the Bolsheviks, led by Vladimir Lenin , topple the Romanov dynasty, kicking off the rise of the communist party and inspiring international fear of Bolsheviks and anarchists.

In the United States, labor strikes were on the rise, and the press sensationalized them as being caused by immigrants bent on bringing down the American way of life. The Sedition Act of targeted people who criticized the government, monitoring radicals and labor union leaders with the threat of deportation.

The fear turned to violence with the anarchist bombings, a series of bombs targeting law enforcement and government officials. Bombs went off in a wide number of cities including Boston, Cleveland, Philadelphia, D. The first Red Scare climaxed in and , when United States Attorney General Alexander Mitchell Palmer ordered the Palmer raids , a series of violent law-enforcement raids targeting leftist radicals and anarchists.

The intense rivalry between the two superpowers raised concerns in the United States that Communists and leftist sympathizers inside America might actively work as Soviet spies and pose a threat to U. Such ideas were not totally unfounded.

As apprehension about Soviet influence grew as the Cold War heated up, U. On March 21, , President Harry S. Truman issued Executive Order , also known as the Loyalty Order , which mandated that all federal employees be analyzed to determine whether they were sufficiently loyal to the government. Yet it was only one of many questionable activities that occurred during the period of anticommunist hysteria known as the Red Scare.

One of the pioneering efforts to investigate communist activities took place in the U. Chamber of Commerce. After the wartime federal sedition and espionage laws expired, and after the FBI was curbed, state and local officials took primary responsibility for fighting communism. By thirty-five states had passed sedition or criminal syndicalism laws the latter directed chiefly at labor organizations and vaguely defined to prohibit sabotage or other crimes committed in the name of political reform.

The limitations of the American Federation of Labor AFL in organizing mass-production industries led to the emergence of the Congress of Industrial Organizations CIO , which organized workers regardless of craft into industry-wide unions such as the United Automobile Workers.

Encouraged by the National Labor Relations Act of , the CIO pioneered aggressive tactics such as the sit-down strike and further distinguished itself from the AFL with its organizing efforts among women and racial minorities. Charges of communism were especially common in response to labor protests by African Americans in the South and by Mexican Americans in the West. Education was another anticommunist concern during the interwar period.

By , twenty-one states required loyalty oaths for teachers. School boards and state legislatures investigated allegations of subversion among teachers and college professors. Throughout this period, the federal role in fighting communism consisted mainly of using immigration law to keep foreign-born radicals out of the country, but the FBI continued to monitor the activities of Communists and their alleged sympathizers.

The political and legal foundations of the second Red Scare thus were under construction well before the Cold War began. In Congress, a conservative coalition of Republicans and southern Democrats had crystallized by Congressional conservatives disliked many New Deal policies—from public works to consumer protection to, above all, labor rights—and they frequently charged that the administering agencies were influenced by Communists.

For his chief investigator, Dies hired J. Matthews forged a career path for ex-leftists whose perceived expertise was valuable to congressional committees, the FBI, and anti—New Deal media magnates such as William Randolph Hearst. In one early salvo against the Roosevelt administration, Dies Committee members called for the impeachment of Secretary of Labor Frances Perkins because she refused to deport the Communist labor leader Harry Bridges; Perkins claimed correctly that she did not have the legal authority to deport him.

The Smith Act made it illegal to advocate overthrow of the government, effectively criminalizing membership in the Communist Party, and allowed deportation of aliens who ever had belonged to a seditious organization.

To enforce the Hatch Act, the U. FBI agents interviewed government employees who admitted having or were alleged to have associations with any listed group. When most of those employees were retained, the Dies Committee charged that CSC examiners themselves had subversive tendencies. The Roosevelt administration and its supporters dismissed Dies and his ilk as fanatics, but in accusations that Communists had infiltrated government agencies began to get traction.

The second Red Scare derived its momentum from fears that Communist spies in powerful government positions were manipulating U. Millions of federal employees filled out loyalty forms swearing they did not belong to any subversive organization and explaining any association they might have with a designated group. Agency loyalty boards requested name checks and sometimes full field investigations by the FBI, which promptly hired 7, additional agents. Those numbers exclude job applicants who were rejected on loyalty grounds.

More importantly, those numbers exclude the tens of thousands of civil servants who eventually were cleared after one or more rounds of investigation, which could include replying to written interrogatories, hearings, appeals, and months of waiting, sometimes without pay, for a decision. Those grounds usually consisted of a list of individually minor associations that dated back to the s.

Because loyalty standards became more restrictive over time, employees who did not change jobs too faced reinvestigation, even in the absence of new allegations against them. Loyalty standards tightened as the political terrain shifted. During the summer of , the ex-Communists Elizabeth Bentley and Whittaker Chambers testified before HUAC that in the s and early s they had managed Washington spy rings that included dozens of government officials, including the former State Department aide Alger Hiss.

A Harvard Law School graduate who had been involved in the formation of the United Nations, Hiss vigorously denied the allegations, and Truman officials defended him. Hiss was convicted of perjury in Meanwhile, the Soviets developed nuclear capability sooner than expected, Communists took control in China, Julius and Ethel Rosenberg were convicted, and North Korea invaded South Korea. Senator McCarthy claimed to explain those events by alleging that Communists had infiltrated the U.

State Department. Congress then in effect broadened the loyalty program by passing Public Law , which empowered heads of sensitive agencies to dismiss an employee on security grounds.

An employee deemed loyal could nonetheless be labeled a security risk because of personal circumstances alcoholism, homosexuality, a Communist relative that were perceived to create vulnerability to coercion. A purge of homosexuals from the State Department and other agencies ensued. That same month the U. It was not unusual for a career civil servant to be investigated under the Hatch Act during World War II and then again after each executive order.

Of the more than 9, employees who were cleared after full investigation under the standard, for example, at least 2, saw their cases reopened under the standard.

Employees who had been cleared never knew when their case might be reopened. Even after the loyalty program was curbed in the late s, the FBI continued to keep tabs on former loyalty defendants.

Unlike dismissals, investigations occurred across the ranks, so all civil servants felt the pressure. Case files declassified in the early 21st century indicate that loyalty investigations truncated or redirected the careers of many high-ranking civil servants, who typically kept secret the fact that they had been investigated. Many of them were noncommunist but left-leaning New Dealers who advocated measures designed to expand democracy by regulating the economy and reducing social inequalities.

Their fields of expertise included labor and civil rights, consumer protection, welfare, national health insurance, public power, and public housing; their marginalization by charges of disloyalty impeded reform in these areas and narrowed the scope of political discourse more generally. Through the federal loyalty program, conservative anticommunists exploited public fears of espionage to block policy initiatives that impinged on private-sector prerogatives.

The loyalty program for federal employees was accompanied by similar programs focused on port security and industrial security.

Private employees on government contracts also faced screening, and state and local governments soon imitated the federal programs. Public universities revived mandatory loyalty oaths. In , Americans employed by international organizations such as the United Nations became subject to Civil Service Commission loyalty screening, over protests that such screening violated the sovereignty of the international organizations.

One researcher estimated in that approximately 20 percent of the U. Beyond the realms of government, industry, and transport, anticommunists trained their sights on those arenas where they deemed the potential for ideological subversion to be high, including education and the media. The entertainment industry was an especially attractive target for congressional investigating committees seeking to generate sensational headlines.

Eventually, after the Supreme Court refused to hear their case, the ten directors and screenwriters spent six months in prison. For more than a decade beyond that, they were blacklisted by Hollywood employers.

As countersubversives issued a steady flow of accusations, the cloud of suspicion expanded. It listed writers, composers, producers, and performers and included a long list of allegedly subversive associations for each person.

The booklet was riddled with factual errors. Some of those listed were or had been Communists, but others had not. In any case, they and those on similar lists found it nearly impossible to get work in their fields; some could get hired only by working under another name. The fear of unemployment produced many ripple effects beyond those felt at the individual level. After a trial in March , the Rosenbergs were found guilty and executed on June 19, The Rosenbergs offered anti-communists such as McCarthy the evidence they needed to allege a vast Soviet conspiracy to infiltrate and subvert the US government, allegations that justified the smearing all left-liberals, even those resolutely anti-communist.

Alger Hiss was another prize for conservatives, who identified him as the highest-ranking government official linked to Soviet espionage. He left the State Department in Hounded by a young congressman named Richard Nixon, public accusations finally won results. Hiss, who always maintained his innocence, stood trial twice. Although later evidence certainly suggested their guilt, the prominent convictions of a few suspected spies fueled a frenzy by many who saw communists everywhere.

Forced to respond, President Truman arranged a partisan congressional investigation designed to discredit McCarthy. Faced with a growing awareness of Soviet espionage, and a tough election on the horizon, in March Truman gave in to pressure and issued Executive Order , establishing loyalty reviews for federal employees.

At the University of California, for example, thirty-one professors were dismissed in after refusing to sign a loyalty oath. The McCarran Act gave the government greater powers to investigate sedition and made it possible to prevent suspected individuals from gaining or keeping their citizenship.

There had been an American communist presence. During its first two years of existence, the CPUSA functioned in secret, hidden from a surge of anti-radical and anti-immigrant hysteria, investigations, deportations, and raids at the end of World War I. Communism remained on the margins of American life until the s, when leftists and liberals began to see the Soviet Union as a symbol of hope amid the Great Depression.

During the Popular Front era communists were integrated into mainstream political institutions through alliances with progressives in the Democratic Party. But even at the height of the global economic crisis, communism never attracted many Americans. Following a series of predecessor committees, the House Un-American Activities Committee HUAC was established in , then reorganized after the war and given the explicit task of investigating communism. The Taft-Hartley Act gave union officials the initiative to purge communists from the labor movement.

Led by its imperious director, J. Edgar Hoover, the FBI took an active role in the domestic battle against communism. A group of writers, directors, and producers who refused to answer questions were held in contempt of Congress.