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In a speech in February 1950, McCarthy claimed to have a list of members of the Communist Party USA working in the State Department, which attracted substantial press attention, and the term McCarthyism was published for the first time in late March of that year in The Christian Science Monitor, along with a political cartoon by Herblock in The ...
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.
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.
Senator Joseph McCarthy of Wisconsin held a series of investigations and hearings during the 1950s aimed at exposing supposed communist infiltration of various areas of the U.S. government. McCarthy gained prominence in February 1950 claiming he had a list of communists who had infiltrated the State Department.
Army–McCarthy hearings Joseph McCarthy (left) chats with Roy Cohn at the hearings Event Senate hearing derived from Senator Joseph McCarthy's hunt for communists in the US Time April–June 1954 Place Washington, D.C. Participants The two sides of the hearing: US Army (accusing their opponents of blackmail) Joseph McCarthy, Roy Cohn and G. David Schine (accusing the Army of communism ...
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, and more.
McCarthyism included investigations into academics and teachers as well. [23] McCarthyism became a widespread social and cultural phenomenon that affected all levels of society and was the source of a great deal of debate and conflict in the United States.
Meanwhile, the "shockingly high level" of infiltration by Soviet agents during WWII had largely dissipated by 1950. [22] Liberal anti-communists like Edward Shils and Daniel Moynihan had contempt for McCarthyism, and Moynihan argued that McCarthy's overreaction distracted from the "real (but limited) extent of Soviet espionage in America."