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McCarthy was right and he did not lead the house committeee everyone ascribes to him. He did not go after the Hollywood set as everyone ascribes to him. His committee was in the senate and went after those in government AND it was no witchhunt like the house version.
It's wrong that some nob reporter labelled the whole thing as "McCarthyism", he got a bum rap. Turns out we've since discovered, McCarthy himself was right on the money.
McCarthy was 9 for 159. While the HUAC was definitely worse than he was, McCarthy was still a miserable failure who has a reputation he richly deserves.
Sorry, you're wrong. The Russians did a reveal a few years back and it proved just how right Mccarthy was. The false conflation of the HUAC and McCarthy in the press was exactly what got him the reputation, a lie from the start.
Many people have repeated that nonsense on the hope that a lie said enough time will be become truth. Unfortunately for you, I have actual facts with sources proving the opposite.
Return to Responses, Reflections and Occasional Papers // Return to Historical Writings
All told, some 350 Americans turn out to have worked for Soviet intelligence during World War II — a
time when we were allies. American counter-intelligence eventually identified more than 125 of these
agents — but were never able to nail down who the other 200 plus were. Virtually every one of the people
accused of being a Soviet agent by Elizabeth Bentley and Whittaker Chambers — both reviled and
denounced for making false charges not only by political partisans in the 1940s but by historians ever since
— turns out to have been a Soviet spy.
No Federal agency was immune to Soviet penetration. There were at least 16 Soviet agents in the OSS,
predecessor to the CIA, including Duncan Lee, chief counsel to General William Donovan. The Office of
war Information, the Board of Economic Warfare, United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation
Administration, War Production Board, War Department, Signal Corps, Censorship office, the Justice
Department were all penetrated. In the State Department Alger Hiss was not the only Soviet spy. Larry
Duggan, in charge of Latin American affairs, was an agent. Lauchlin Currie, one of six presidential
assistants, provided information. The most highly placed spy was Harry Dexter White, the number two man
the Treasury Department and one of the architects of the post-war international financial order — he
designed the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund and the Bretton Woods agreement. The KGB so
valued White’s information — including meetings at the founding UN conference where he revealed the
American negotiating strategy — that when he hinted at leaving government service because of financial
pressures, the KGB offered to pay his daughter’s college tuition.
Source
Old info reheated without taking into consideration all available information. Venona wasn't the only source, yet your doc seems to only consider it. We now have access to old Russian KGB files. Again, you're wrong about McCarthy.
But if McCarthy was right about some of the large issues, he was wildly wrong on virtually all of the
details.
There is no indication that he had even a hint of the Venona decryptions, so he did not base his
accusations on the information in them. Indeed, virtually none of the people that McCarthy claimed or
alleged were Soviet agents turn up in Venona
You didn't even read your own source.
Oh I did. Your position seems to be that even though he was later proven correct about the problem, he was wrong on the details. I'd agree with that, but that's not the consistent with the "McCarthyism" slur which intimates he was wrong about the problem. The list was never released back then. In fact, the authors of your doc are inferring that is actually McCarthy's list.
Btw, the whole list thing comes from a claim made in a private political stump speech McCarthy made twice, each time catered to a certain audience.
The fact that there were spies in the state department has never been dispute. The problem with McCarthy is that he had no idea who the actual spies were and he instead targeted innocent people violating the basic principles of freedom of association and innocent until proven guilty. The fact that his abuse of innocent was people rationalized with a real problem doesn't make McCarthy right, it makes him doubly wrong by diverting attention away from legitimate investigation of spies to his spiteful self-promotion.
That only proves how full of crap McCarthy was. You can hardly blame the author for not using a definitive list when no such list actually existed.
Really?The problem with McCarthy is that he had no idea who the actual spies were and he instead targeted innocent people violating the basic principles of freedom of association and innocent until proven guilty. The fact that his abuse of innocent was people rationalized with a real problem doesn't make McCarthy right, it makes him doubly wrong by diverting attention away from legitimate investigation of spies to his spiteful self-promotion.
That only proves how full of crap McCarthy was. You can hardly blame the author for not using a definitive list when no such list actually existed.
Hitler wasn't put in prison because he was a social pariah, he was put in prison because he committed treason.
The nation was undergoing a massive increase in economic prosperity coming off a victory in WW2. Its literally the exact opposite of the conditions in Russia or Germany.
Even if they were not active spies, many of the individuals questioned by the House Committee on Un-American Activities did have ties to Communist organizations that were connected with Moscow. Outing them from positions of high power and influence arguably was for the greater good, because it denied actual spies the ability to potentially use these individuals' positions to their advantage.
That being said, however; McCarthyism did ultimately go far beyond that. Targeting homosexuals and so called "deviants" in general on that basis alone was completely unjustifiable.
It was hysteria for the most part.
Records from the KGB archives declassfied since the end of the COld War have shown that the Russians actually did have fairly massive spy networks operating in the US, and that these networks were closely affiliated with groups like CPUSA.
McCarthy initially may have had more of a point than most people realize.
Really?
I suggest you cross reference this list of innocent people named by McCarthy, with the declassified Venona Project.
Again, you're conflating McCarthy with the HUAC which he had nothing to do with. The senate hearings which McCarthy presided over were for government employees in positions that could compromise the security of the nation. They were all under contract and oath that made their political associations matters of state inquiry.
Far different standard than going after the Hollywood set.
If no such definitive list ever existed how can you use this one to prove he was wrong?
Neither communists in Russia nor communist sympathizers in America were "social pariahs' either. Typically, they were upper or middle class, and 'differences' were entirely political.
Things change. Russia had economic and social conditions rapidly improving before the WWI. Then the war derailed the whole country. In the case of 1950s, the wars were underway - both the Cold War, and the really hot one, in Korea. The USSR was ascendant, just having installed puppet regimes in half of Eurasia. The economy was doing well in the Ike's USA, but they also faced an existential threat we hardly can imagine now.
the whole reds under the bed stuff was hysteria. many people who were not at all involved or a risk were blacklisted and victimised.
Being a government employee does not mean you can be accused with evidence, nor were all the people that McCarthy accused government employees, most notably Fred Fisher.
McCarthy's alcoholism would have made him a potential security risk under federal guidelines, funny how he never applied those standards to himself.
I have demonstrated that the overwhelming majority of people actually named by McCarthy were innocent. The idea that the burden of proof lies upon me to discredit a list that does not even exist is ridiculous. I have been more than generous considering that the accuser is required to prove their case according the standards of this nation.
I don't know about Pre-war Russia, but communists in post war America were the very definition of social pariahs. Being upper class and the fact that the difference were political didn't save them from social ostracization.
There is simply now way you can honestly claim that pre WW1 Russia was anywhere near the stability of post WW2 America. Russia had been crushed by Japan on the battlefield, had a revolt that forced an unwilling monarch to share power and revolutionary socialists winning a large quantity of seats in Parliament. Even without WW1, the situation was clearly a power keg. The biggest political upheaval in post war America was a peaceful movement to promote racial equality.
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