Joseph McCarthy

House GOP Invokes Church Committee, but Echoes Earlier McCarthy

While they claim to be fighting abusive government agencies, promised investigations have uncomfortable parallels to McCarthy and HUAC, warns historian Beverly Gage. 

McCarthy was anti-Communist. Was he also anti-Semitic?

by Larry Tye

McCarthy’s reckless accusations and trampling of witnesses’ rights were offensive to age-old Jewish values, with or without overt anti-Semitism. That’s easy to say in hindsight, but was also the verdict of Jewish Americans at the time. 

Has Trump’s Popularity Reached a Tipping Point? Joe McCarthy's Fall May Give Clues

by Robert Brent Toplin

McCarthy rode a wave of bullying and bluster until it broke back on him. Trump has advantages as president that McCarthy didn't, but faces the same problem: his tactics will work until they don't. 

Trump Keeps Taking Pages From Joe McCarthy’s Playbook

by Larry Tye

Anyone hoping the recency of Trump's conversion to Republicanism and conservatism might allow him to govern productively with Democrats should heed the example of Joseph McCarthy, who similary rebranded himself a conservative. Neither moderated because their political survival depended on extremism.

How Eisenhower Secretly Pushed Back Against McCarthyism

To the end of his life, David A. Nichols says, “Eisenhower never admitted that the White House was behind this.” Yet he couldn’t help but gloat a bit in private. On at least one occasion, he reportedly repeated a joke that “it’s no longer McCarthyism, it’s McCarthywasm.” 

The Deep State Conspiracy Is About to Go Into Overdrive

by Ronald Radosh

The American right has advanced nutty conspiracy theories for decades. But the one we’re about to see play out will make Joe McCarthy look like an amateur.

Max Boot: Congress should censure Nunes. Just like McCarthy.

by Max Boot

"It is up to House leaders — that means you, Speaker Paul D. Ryan (R-Wis.) — to stop Nunes before he smears again.”

Steve Bannon in 2013: Joseph McCarthy was right in crusade against Communist infiltration

"The place was infested with either traitors that were on the direct payroll of Soviet military intelligence or fellow-travelers who were kind of compliant in helping these guys get along." – Steve Bannon, in an interview with Diane West, rightwing author of ""American Betrayal."

How Margaret Chase Smith stood up to Joseph McCarthy — and won

by Ted Widmer

When the Republican senator from Maine stood up to Joseph McCarthy in 1950, attacking him for his shameful reliance on "the Four Horsemen of Calumny — Fear, Ignorance, Bigotry, and Smear," it caused a sensation.

Philip Jenkins: Joe McCarthy Was No Witch Hunter

Philip Jenkins is a Distinguished Professor of History at Baylor University and a columnist for RealClearReligion. His latest book is Laying Down the Sword.Language speaks us. Much as I hate quoting that post-modern cliché, it captures the truth that certain words and phrases become so deeply inlaid in our everyday conversation that we are scarcely able to realize their ideological slant.As a prime example, I offer the wave of investigations that the United States and other countries undertook into Communist subversion and espionage in the Cold War years. Well, that description is a little wordy, so let's just use the convenient short-hand that has become so standard: the McCarthy witch hunts....Real witches, by definition, did not exist....