The Enemy Within - American Times with Tim Barnicle
S E E D E D C O N T E N T
McCarthyism 76 Years Later
Tim Barnicle Feb 13, 20261282640
Inside the Colonnade Room of the McLure Hotel in Wheeling, West Virginia, slatted chairs creaked on wooden floors and lights on the chandeliers buzzed overhead. Waiters worked tables amid the low din of conversation and the intermittent clanging of forks and knives. Those gathered at the McLure that cold night came to celebrate the Ohio County Women's Republican Club's annual dinner honoring Abraham Lincoln's birthday. Few had ever heard of the evening's speaker who had little interest in celebrating the man who had saved the Union. He was much more interested in tearing America apart all over again.
It was February 9, 1950—76 years ago this week—when Senator Joseph McCarthy stepped to the microphone.
That night, McCarthy skipped the pleasantries and told the crowd he had a list of 205 "names that were made known to the Secretary of State as being members of the Communist Party and who nevertheless are still working and shaping policy in the State Department." He warned, "When a great democracy is destroyed, it will not be from enemies from without, but rather because of enemies from within." The next day his story changed. McCarthy now said the list had 57 names, then it was 81, then 10, none of which were ever produced as actual evidence. It didn't seem to matter: McCarthy suddenly had the attention that had escaped him as a first term, junior Senator from Wisconsin. Now America was listening to him.
Three years earlier, in 1947, the journalist Walter Lippmann had labeled the growing stalemate between the United States and the Soviet Union as "The Cold War." But by the night McCarthy spoke in 1950, it had begun to warm. The Soviet Union had just detonated its first atomic bomb and China had fallen to Mao Zedong and Communism. The Korean War was about to erupt. President Truman—who had an 87 percent approval rating when he took office in 1945—had seen his support dwindle to near record lows.
The President, for his part, tried to tamp down the growing fears. In 1947, he announced the Truman Doctrine, which called for the containment of communism worldwide. That same month, he also issued Executive Order 9835 calling for a "Loyalty Program" that pledged all federal employees to "be of complete and unswerving loyalty to the United States." Still, the issue grew. On January 21, 1950—just weeks before McCarthy spoke in Wheeling—Alger Hiss was convicted of perjury in a case related to an investigation by the House Un-American Activities Committee into whether Hiss, as a former U.S. government official, had acted as a spy for the Soviet Union. That investigation was led by a young Congressman from California—Richard Nixon—who had been among the first to raise red-baiting fears.
Then Nixon ran for the Senate with McCarthy's endorsement. McCarthy told California voters to elect Nixon because, he warned, "There is nothing outstanding about washing away with blood the blunders and traitorous acts of the crowd whom the Democrat candidates have pledged to protect if they are elected. The chips are down…Between the American people…And the Commie-crat Party of Betrayal."
Although Margaret Chase Smith, the Republican Senator from Maine, spoke out against McCarthy in her "Declaration of Conscience" on June 1, 1950, only six other Republicans stood by the woman McCarthy termed "Moscow Maggie." Standing in the Senate, she said, "I don't want to see the Republican Party ride to political victory on the Four Horsemen of Calumny, Fear, Ignorance, Bigotry and Smear." But most Republicans did. They were happy with McCarthy's evidence-free witch hunt that the press seemed to cover witlessly. Senator Robert Taft of Ohio—then considered the front runner for the Republican nomination in 1952—told reporters McCarthy should "keep talking and if one case doesn't work out, he should proceed with another one." Taft vehemently opposed the creation of NATO, Civil Rights, and as the party's potential nominee for the presidency he had no intention of failing to further ignite fears about Communism. In 1948 Thomas Dewey had not used the issue against Truman, a decision many Republicans felt cost him the presidency.
As McCarthy continued his booze-fueled tirade against the Truman administration, Democrats began to press party leaders including then Senate Majority Whip, Lyndon Johnson to try and take down McCarthy. Johnson wouldn't go for it. "First of all, in the present atmosphere of the Senate," Johnson said, "we will all lose and he will win. Then he'll be more powerful than ever." As Johnson told a fellow Democrat, "He just eats fellows like you. You're nourishment to him."
McCarthy had created a genuine fear campaign. At one point, McCarthy presented his "evidence" of Communist infiltration at the State Department on the floor of the Senate, standing next to tall stacks of white paper, and said any Senator who wished to see the "cases" was free to do so. One Democratic senator, 73-year-old Herbert Lehman of New York, approached McCarthy afterward holding his right hand out. McCarthy looked at him and laughed, saying, "Go back to your seat, old man." No other senator said a word. They simply lowered their eyes.
As the presidential election in 1952 approached, even General Dwight D. Eisenhower, the leader of the greatest land invasion in history at Normandy, backed down. McCarthy accused Eisenhower's close friend and mentor, George C. Marshall, the former Chief of Staff of the Army during World War II, former Secretary of State and former Secretary of Defense, of being involved in "a conspiracy on a scale so immense as to dwarf any previous such venture in the history of man." Other Republicans, like Senator William Jenner even called Marshall a "traitor." But when given the opportunity to defend his friend, Eisenhower demurred. At a campaign speech in Green Bay Ike even edited out a passage that praised Marshall fearing backlash in the heart of McCarthy country. In office, Eisenhower—who had picked Nixon as his Vice President because of his youth and anti-Communist zeal—failed to rein in McCarthy, reasoning that he didn't want to "get down in the gutter with that guy." Eisenhower didn't seem to mind that Nixon lived in the gutter: during the 1952 campaign Nixon had called the Democratic opponent, Adlai Stevenson, "Adlai the Appeaser," who had a Ph.D. from the "College of Cowardly Communist Containment."
McCarthy seemed invincible. In 1951, McCarthy who had once labeled himself "Tail-Gunner Joe" asked for and received a Distinguished Flying Cross for the 25 combat missions during World War II he claimed to have flown. But, of course, McCarthy was not a tail gunner. He had been an intelligence officer who debriefed the real tail gunners after their missions. But like his claims, that too didn't seem to matter to reporters or, crucially, to his fellow Republicans. No lie could cause him to sputter.
By 1954, McCarthy—along with his chief counsel and future mentor to President Trump, Roy Cohn—began an investigation of the U.S. Army's alleged ties to Communism. In the run-up to the hearings, CBS journalist Edward R. Murrow and his producer Fred Friendly developed a See It Now investigation of McCarthy, at the end of which Murrow warned, "This is no time for men who oppose Senator McCarthy's methods to keep silent…We cannot defend freedom abroad by deserting it at home." Then on June 9, with television cameras rolling, as McCarthy berated the Army's counsel, Joseph Welch, America seemed to see right through the man who had held their attention captive for nearly five years. As McCarthy continued his tirade, Welch said, "Until this moment, Senator, I think I never really gauged your cruelty or your recklessness." Then, as McCarthy continued to spout his nonsensical, anti-American lies, Welch cut in: "Senator; you've done enough. Have you no sense of decency, sir? At long last, have you left no sense of decency?"
McCarthy's popularity began to sink. By the end of the hearings, it was at 30 percent. That fall, Republicans lost control of the Senate. McCarthy—no longer useful to his party or the President—was censured on December 2, 1954. Less than three years later he would be dead.
In 2026, however, the ghost of Joseph McCarthy is still very much alive.
His impact has not only continued, it has compounded. President Trump and the Republican Party are the embodiment of McCarthyism run roughshod. They have created a kingdom of fear that is fueled by lies, deceit, and doublespeak. In their arena, murdered protestors are not victims, they are "terrorists" and would be "assassins" who are inspired by "left-wing ideology." Republicans proudly wear their lack of dignity on the inside of their flag-draped suit jackets as they praise the detainment of children by masked men, the militarization of American cities, and the destruction of the very Constitution they took an oath to uphold.
Americans are witnessing McCarthyism in the age of the fact-free, five-second attention span economy. There is no Edward R. Murrow or Joseph Welch coming to wake the nation into reason. There will be no TikTok that shakes America to its core. President Trump has free rein to spout his lies that only grow more pervasive with each swipe of the index finger. His "enemy from within," as McCarthy termed it, is anyone who dares cross him, as Republicans remain spinelessly silent and as Democrats remain weak and ineffective. As Republican Senator Lisa Murkowski said last April, "We are all afraid." Still, the equation remains the same. America is in the vice grip of a president who has awarded himself the right to continue where McCarthy was once stopped. How this story ends, nobody knows, but it appears nearly certain that America will lose more than just its decency along the way.
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At long last, have the MAGA no decency at all?
seems as tho maga republicans are now the largest terrorist cult in the world.
Roy Cohn, Olde Joe McCarthy's #1 Henchman and The Worst Person in the World, had four special protégés he taught all of his political dirty tricks. Those were Lee Atwater, Paul Manafort, Roger Stone and Donald Trump. Atwater is dead. Trump pardoned Manafort and Stone! MAGA is McCarthyism 2.0!
I would say it seems to be worse, but I didn't live through it so I cannot be positive.
Swap "President Trump" for "Senator McCarthy" and you would get no argument from me.
MAGA + McCarthyism = Trumpism
McCarthy still has his followers, who have inherited fear itself.
Why would people follow McCarthy?
For various reasons: irrational fear, jealousy, racism, political points, concern of being surpassed nationally, being some of them.
people who see communists around every corner
MAGA would make Alfred R Murrow puke.
Do you think it was any of those things that influenced Americans in 1949 when the Soviet Union stole the Atom Bomb from the US?
Some people claimed to have joined the Air Force because of Communism.
So, we shouldn't worry about Xi or that military they built with the money from the manufacturing base they inherited or all the technology they stole from us being used against us?
Good to know.
It wasn't Democrats subjecting America to McCarthyism in the 1950s and it is not Democrats subjecting America to a repeat of it right now. Stay on topic. This article isn't about Democrats in the 50s!
It was the Republicans that took him down. Republican senator Ralph E. Flanders was the one who introduced a resolution to censure McCarthy, saying that, “Were the Junior Senator from Wisconsin in the pay of the Communists he could not have done a better job for them.”
The Rise and Fall of Senator Joseph McCarthy
Did I say that? Talk about a fucking strawman!
You bet your ass we should worry about all of that. And don't mock my time in service. At least I had the guts to sign my name on the dotted line
Communism is not the threat it was even 40 years ago. Imperialism is the threat now and that's what China and Russia have in mind. They won't be happy until they split the world between the two of them and then snarl over their respective territories
they didn't steal it. Traitors gave them the plans. Julius and Ethel Rosenberg ring a bell?
Well, Vic, up until now you may have a point, but NOW, with a narcissist megalomaniac leading your nation I'm thankful that the possibility that M.A.D is a defensive reason for it to be safer for the world.
But Buzz, he wasn't the one calling half the country clingers or deplorables. He wasn't the one that launched hoaxes & lawfare against his political opponent. He wasn't the one who had his FBI spy on Catholics & parents.
I think there is a bit of confusion on who is the second coming of Joe McCarthy.
Trump has called out about "the enemy within." That sounds a lot like McCarthy to me.
Nearly half of voters apparently contracted the brain eating M.A.D. Cow Disease... MAGA Arrogant Dicks who worship a gold painted dildo.
Not sure if there is a cure. Sad times for America.
@!@
Democrats voted 44-0
Republicans voted 22-22
Sounds more like Franco. And he rid Spain of the Communists.
Makes sense. The dems endured most of the charges.
So you admire fascist dictators, then.
Franco was without a doubt a dictator
He represented 4 specific groups, one happened to be fascist.
I don't admire either fascists or dictators. All I can say is that he defeated Communism in his country, kept Spain out of WWII, introduced land reforms, got Spain through a terrible drought despite being ostracized by the west in the post war period and was finally recognized as an ally by the US once the Soviet Union acquired the bomb.
heee-heee
Are we to believe that you do seek out for whom the bell tolls?
Robert Jordan fought with the Republicans who were COMMUNISTS.
I do seek them
The problem we've got here, Buzz, is multi-layered.
First, we have both sides seeking to increase their own power by vilifying each other, and about half of us are stupid enough to believe it.
Second, very few of the people old enough to have actually seen and understood McCarthyism at the time are still alive, and we don't listen to them if they are.
Third, and most significantly, the vast majority of Americans alive today have never experienced any real threat to our basic freedoms. We don't know what that actually looks like, so we convince ourselves every little thing is a crisis. Our frame of reference is wildly skewed.
Yes, he JOINED the Republicans in fight the fascists.
Then why were students told to hide under their desks?
Tornado drill.
LOL. I'm one of those and I'm not the least bit afraid.
Just as Hitler rid Germany of the Communists!
Buzz: This is on YouTube. I'm pretty sure if you use your search engine you can find this song and more (Look for "Songs of the Spanish Civil War" and/or "Spain Lincoln Brigade")
There's A Valley In Spain Called Jarama . .
When I was in Madrid, in a bistro where there was a small band on stage, they asked me if there was a song I would like them to play. I asked them to play "Si Mi Queres Escribir". They looked surprised, hesitated (maybe because Franco was in power at the time), and then they DID play it. It was a famous war song of the Republicans.
I do have the song Jarama Valley on bilibili, a few versions of it including Woody Guthrie.
The Nationalists were comprised of 4 factions. I wouldn't trust the American university when it comes to the war in Spain.
I don't need to rely on any medium to tell me about the International Brigade. My uncle (my mother's brother) joined the International Brigade and fought the faciasts before joining the Canadian Army to fight the Nazis. As he was not married I was his favourite nephew, telling me stories about the wars, and bringing me back souvenirs like a German officer's bayonet and Dutch wartime aluminum coins.
Were Trump in the pay of Putin he could not have done a better job of destroying the USofA.
The straight line from McCarthyism to Trumpism!
Are you now or have you ever been a MAGA Hat?
You know what's ironic about Roy Cohn....he went after gays, also, while keeping his own homosexuality in the closet
Gay and MAGA is akin to Jewish and Nazi.
Pretty much like being MAGA while Black...
They just don't square except as deviation!
America lost its decency the day Kevin McCarthy went down to Maralgo in February of 2021 and kissed Trump's ring.