The HUAC wasn’t McCarthy, of course; they are just sort of bound up in the same Red Scare history. It is routine for people outside the USA to conflate these things because of how they are presented in dramatisations; as a Brit I didn’t realise until recently.
McCarthy might have been a pivotal figure in McCarthyism (obviously ;-) but he had nothing directly to do with the HUAC because he was a senator.
He sat on what is now the Senate committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs. It was the Senate Committee on Government Operations then, which had an enormously broad remit and gave him his ability to harass and persecute anyone who worked for the US federal government. He was also more able to resist pressure because of it.
McCarthy was fiercely anti-communist, but so were most other people at that time. He became famous for alleging large scale infiltration of the US government by communist agents. He couldn't prove it, there are some historians who believe McCarthy was largely correct about the scale of the Soviet activity in the US government. They argue he was effectively 'cancelled' as a consequence of being dangerously correct, and that declassified decrypts released by the NSA decades later prove it. An example of this argument is:
"Cancel culture" is what right-wingers complain about when they've realized left-wingers have rifled through their rhetorical toolbox
Can you give some examples. At least from the perspective of a British person, I cannot recall right wing people ever engaging in "cancel culture" during my life time. Are you thinking of religious people in the USA?
McCarthyism wasn’t so much about the senator, it was about the media and hollywood not hiring anyone they thought had leftist opinions to not give them a platform and spread their toxic ideas. I think it is like for like what is happening now.
McCarthy is a pretty unique figure in US history in that he was infamous for propagating the second "red scare" in the US. That's not to discredit these reports by any means, but it's not like he was do-gooder either. He was a vicious politician that didn't hesitate to accuse his enemies of being communist, which sometimes resulted in arrest and prosecution. [0]"McCarthyist" anti-communist (i.e. opposition political organization) laws were passed that were later struck down by the Supreme Court.
His ability to accumulate power this way made him a major political target, which isn't quite the same as someone just trying to reel in the 3 letter agencies.
The committee McCarthy chaired at the time of his notorious anti-Communist crusade was the Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations, which still exists.
You may be thinking of the House Un-American Activities Committee, which also spent some time doing similar anti-Communist witch hunts, which existed until being renamed as the House Internal Security Committee in 1969, and was abolished with it's functions transferred to the House Judiciary Committee in 1975.
The term probably shouldn't mean that since there actually was a wealth of communist spies, sympathizers, etc. Ie, it was not a witch hunt. McCarthy's problem was using the Congress in an executive role.
I think it's extremely significant that the agent in McCarthyism was the Federal government, and that is what made it such a dangerous phenomenon. Not just for the people directly affected, but indirectly due to purges in the State Department, chilling effects on the civil service, and encouragement to demagogues for decades thereafter.
I understand the analogies in principle, but they leave out this key distinction.
It's true that McCarthy had a solid basis of support for his program, especially at the beginning before people saw where it was going. There were, in fact, a wide variety of leftist groups operating in America and no doubt some had a long-term vision of imposing a communist system here with the assistance of foreign powers. This was not pure fantasy - it was actually happening at a surprising rate in the late 40's and 50's.
But McCarthy & co. did more than simple fear-mongering and "making political hay". They were using the considerable power of the US Federal Govt against individuals for their politics and for not-justifiably-illegal actions. They were destroying livelihoods and putting people in jail.
It's easy to see in retrospect that the US was not at risk of the Red Tide because the economic fundamentals were absurdly better than what was needed for the leftist revolution.
McCarthy & co. degraded America and damaged our principles out of stupid hysteria and demagoguery. This only went on as long as it did because there weren't enough level-headed people who were willing to pay the price of questioning it openly.
Wikileaks/Manning/ioerror are not an existential threat to America, but this path of systematically abandoning principles of protecting individuals from the abuses of government power absolutely is.
> McCarthyism is the practice of making accusations of subversion and treason, especially when related to communism and socialism.[1] The term originally referred to the controversial practices and policies of U.S. Senator Joseph McCarthy (R-Wisconsin), and has its origins in the period in the United States known as the Second Red Scare, lasting from the late 1940s through the 1950s.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/McCarthyism
If we're going to discuss McCarthyism, we need to remember that the US government was riddled with soviet spies during the Roosevelt administration[1][2][3][4]. Communist spies outside of government were also instrumental to soviet espionage efforts, including the theft of nuclear technology[5][6]. McCarthy was responding to real threats, although my high school history class didn't talk much about them. Members of the Communist Party USA were instrumental in the Soviets obtaining weapons to destroy life as we know it and the lesson we take from the period is that McCarthy was a bad guy.
McCarthy wrote a book arguing that the Soviet Union was the real winner of WWII[7], thanks to the help of willing US accomplices. Looking at the map of Europe before and after the war you have to admit the guy has a case. But who would read a book by Joseph McCarthy?
The FBI chief is and has always been highly political. J Edgar Hoover was a extreme anti-communist and was investigating suspected communists, infiltrating CPUSA and creating blacklists at the exact same time that McCarthy was conducting his hearings.
In fact the McCarthyism acticle on Wikipedia has a whole section about the FBI. The FBI was deeply involved in McCarthyism.
So... it's a good thing to model "spy hunting" on the Salem Witch Trials? How is "a communist-spy around every corner" that much different than "report your neighbors for subversive/not-approved ideas, comrade?"
Edit: Just think about pairing up McCarthy-ism and HUAC/SACB[1] with NSA-levels of data gathering today. Would it make the world a better place, or would it have a chilling effect on free speech / free exchange of ideas?
McCarthy might have been a pivotal figure in McCarthyism (obviously ;-) but he had nothing directly to do with the HUAC because he was a senator.
He sat on what is now the Senate committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs. It was the Senate Committee on Government Operations then, which had an enormously broad remit and gave him his ability to harass and persecute anyone who worked for the US federal government. He was also more able to resist pressure because of it.
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