Ellen Schrenker, The Age of McCarthyism: A Brief History with Documents, Bedford, (1994).
In Schrenker's concluding paragraph she tells the story from the late 1950s where a group of graduate students from the Physics department at the University of Chicago wanted to have a coffee machine installed for those working late into the night. In order to further this request the students started a petition to be presented to the Buildings and Grounds Department of the University but the petition failed to gain momentum as people refused to sign. The reason for the reticence? Some allegedly radical students had already signed the document and they did not want to be associated with such figures for fear of criminal or, more likely economic consequences from State or employer. The reason of course is the legacy of what has become known as McCarthyism, named after the particularly vile Republican Senator Joseph McCarthy. Although at its height McCarthy was an invaluable tool to stir up public antipathy to communism, particularly the alleged communists in Government employment, McCarthy is afforded relatively little treatment in the text itself. The reason, as Schrenker shows, is because McCarthy is given more significance in posterity than he did at the time. The Age of McCarthyism is a short book, divided into two sections.
Part one offers a very good historical background and overview of the anticommunist movement in the 1920s through the late 1950s including some brief introductions to the US Communist Party and the evidence of the (little) direct, as opposed to ideological, links with the Soviet Union that was the main accusation against those affected. In the course of which Schrenker also provides an interesting summary of federal disagreements as to how to pursue such cases. For example, it is interesting to note the limited role the judiciary (including DAs) played in the proceedings which necessitated the anticommunist crusade to move from the courtroom to the congressional hearings such as thous of HUAC (House Un-American Commission). Likewise, this had the somewhat perverse result that the Postal Service had a more draconian internal discipline than the relatively liberal State Department (relative as in relative to Hitler the KKK are a peace-loving and compassionate organisation).
The spectre of McCarthyism obviously still has much cultural resonance and not just in terms of shame over the violence done to so many; through the skillful cultivation of fear and paranoia the federal government managed to gain access and control over areas of the life previously considered out of bounds, the same trends even if not to the same degree can be seen in the responses to the terrorist threat which whether true or manufactured / exaggerated as seen contemporary administrations extend the purview of the State apparatus into what was once considered private life.
Another thought that crossed my mind as reading which i am not sure if anyone has ever linked before is how Robert Putman's Bowling Alone thesis first advanced in 1995, namely that modern for lack of a better word "society" has witnessed a decline in social capital so that people no longer belong to anything. But that is a digression. The Age of McCarthyism is an accessible and enjoyable introduction to a dark yet historically significant period of American history and part two which provides excerpts from historical sources is an invaluable insight into the mindset of the period.
Recent Comments