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McCarthyism, also known as the Second Red Scare, was the political repression and persecution of left-wing individuals and a campaign spreading fear of communist and Soviet influence on American institutions and of Soviet espionage in the United States during the late 1940s through the 1950s. [1]
The term is most often used to refer to two periods in the history of the United States which are referred to by this name. The First Red Scare , which occurred immediately after World War I , revolved around a perceived threat from the American labor movement , anarchist revolution, and political radicalism that followed revolutionary ...
McCarthyism was a period of intense anti-Communist suspicion in the United States that lasted roughly from the late 1940s to the late 1950s. Although associated with Senator Joseph McCarthy , it was a broad cultural and political phenomenon that also encompassed industry blacklists, the activities of the House Un-American Activities Committee ...
McCarthyism (also called the second Red Scare) Operation Condor; Polar Bear Expedition – American intervention in the Russian Civil War; Political violence in Germany (1918–1933) Red-tagging in the Philippines; Rosa Luxemburg; Sacco and Vanzetti – two suspected anarchists executed for an alleged armed robbery in 1920; Sinophobia; Ten Days ...
Liberal anti-communists like Edward Shils and Daniel Moynihan had a contempt for McCarthyism. As Moynihan put it, "reaction to McCarthy took the form of a modish anti anti-communism that considered impolite any discussion of the very real threat Communism posed to Western values and security."
Before World War II, the events of 1914–1918 were generally known as the Great War or simply the World War. [1] In August 1914, the magazine The Independent wrote "This is the Great War. It names itself". [2] In October 1914, the Canadian magazine Maclean's similarly wrote, "Some wars name themselves. This is the Great War."
The term "McCarthyism", coined in 1950 in reference to McCarthy's practices was soon applied to similar anti-communist activities. Today the term is used more broadly to mean demagogic, reckless, and unsubstantiated accusations, as well as public attacks on the character or patriotism of political opponents. [4] [5]
Though the main vein of McCarthyism ended in the mid-1950s when the 1956 Cole v. Young ruling severely weakened the ability to fire people from the federal government for discriminatory reasons, [ 84 ] the movement that was born from it, the Lavender Scare, lived on.