Thread by @King_Alcibiades

🇺🇸☭ Joe McCarthy is one of the most demonized men in American mythology. He is painted as an "anti-democratic" demagogue who led a "witch hunt" against communists in the 1950s.

Why was McCarthyism so reviled by our ruling class? Was it really just about communism?

1/25🧵

2/25 Born in Wisconsin to an Irish-German devout Catholic family, Joseph McCarthy was a decorated veteran of WW2, where he was an intelligence officer for a Marine dive bomber squadron in the Pacific theater and received the nickname "Tail Gunner Joe".

3/25 Who were the Subversives?

In 1947, Harry Truman signed EO 9835, which screened all federal employees for their loyalty to the US.

Disloyalty included "membership in, affiliation with or sympathetic association" in "totalitarian, fascist, communist or subversive" groups.

4/25 Later in 1947, 10 prominent Hollywood writers & directors ("Hollywood Ten") were cited for contempt of Congress for refusing to testify before the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC) for communist sympathies. 6 of the 10 individuals were from Jewish backgrounds.

5/25 In 1948, Elizabeth Bentley (a self-admitted Soviet agent) testified before HUAC that Harry Dexter White, a senior U.S. Treasury official and child of Lithuanian-Jewish parents, was also a Soviet spy.

6/25 Harry Dexter White had worked closely with Henry Morgenthau Jr. (FDR's Jewish Secretary of the U.S. Treasury) to financially support the Allies in WW2, the Lend-Lease program, and Jewish war refugees, and to deindustrialize Germany post-war.

7/25 In 1948, Whittaker Chambers, another confirmed Soviet spy, testified before HUAC that the Ware group was actively working to undermine the U.S. government on behalf of the Soviet Union. The Ware Group included a number of prominent jews.

8/25 In 1950, Julius and Ethel Rosenberg, a married jewish couple, were arrested on charges of stealing atomic-bomb secrets for the Soviet Union. The couple was later executed in 1953.

9/25 Enemies Within

In February of 1950, Joe McCarthy's rise to national prominence began when he gave a speech to the Republican Women's Club of Wheeling, WV that he had a list of communist subversives working for the American Government. The list is provided below.

10/25 McCarthy's list resulted in the Senate authorizing a subcommittee known as the Tydings Committee to investigate communists working in the State Dept. Millard Tydings, a Democratic anti-fascist, headed the committee. Democrats won the proceedings on a party line vote.

11/25 The Committee turned the investigation into a character assassination. Even McCarthy opponent Margaret Chase Smith said the committee "made the fatal error of subjectively attempting to discredit McCarthy rather than objectively investigating and evaluating his charges."

12/25 Lavender Infiltration

After the Tydings Committee, McCarthy began investigating homosexuals working in the foreign policy bureacracy, as they were prime targets for Soviet blackmail. These efforts vastly increased his popularity.

13/25 The director of the CIA Roscoe Hillenkoetter testified to Congress that: "The use of homosexuals as a control mechanism over individuals recruited for espionage is a generally accepted technique which has been used at least on a limited basis for many years."

14/25 According to William N. Eskridge Jr., the lesser-known anti-homosexual govt dismissals were larger than the anti-communist ones: an average of five homosexuals were dismissed per month from 1947 - 1950, shooting up to 60 per month and remaining at double digits until 1955.

15/25 While McCarthy's efforts were broadly popular and seen as logical and effective, he had many enemies in the press, including Herbert Block from WaPo. Block, who came from a Jewish family, coined "McCarthyism" as a synonym for "demagoguery, defamation, & mudslinging."

16/25 Anna Rosenberg

McCarthy teamed up with Fulton Lewis Jr., Gerald L.K. Smith & Benjamin Freedman to oppose Truman's pick for Assistant Secretary of Defense: alleged communist Anna Rosenberg. She was a Hungarian Jew, thus the media labeled McCarthy's opposition "antisemitism"

17/25 According to Freedman, an ethnic Jew himself, the campaign to stop her nomination failed because of "control of Zionists" over the New York media. Anna Rosenberg is best known for racially integrating the military and "safeguarding the rights of minorities in the military"

18/25 McCarthy's 2nd Term & The Army Trials

After winning re-election in 1952, McCarthy was made chairman of the Senate Committee on Govt Operations. He began identifying subversive media, which culminated in State Dept libraries overseas burning books deemed unloyal.

19/25 McCarthy began investigating the Army in 1953. The most notable case was that of Irving Peress, a Jewish dentist from New York drafted into the Army. Peress was a member of the American Labor Party and had refused to answer his political affiliation on his loyalty form.

20/25 Peress had been promoted to the rank of Major, despite communist suspicions. He was honorably discharged but still brought before McCarthy's committee. Peress pleased the fifth, and McCarthy called him a "Fifth Amendment Communist" and the Army "soft on communism."

21/25 Forty-one of 45 civilians accused of espionage by McCarthy at Fort Monmouth were Jews according to the Anti-Defamation League (ADL). The ADL went on to urge the Army to do a study of "possible prejudice" on the part of McCarthy.

22/25 The Army then attempted to strike back at McCarthy after he had investigated them, and put him on trial in 1954 for allegedly pressuring the Army to give favorable treatment to a friend of his, G. David Schine. McCarthy was totally exonerated of any wrongdoing.

23/25 McCarthy's Downfall

See It Now was a TV documentary series created by Edward R. Murrow and Fred Friendly (a New York Jew). The show ran a series of hitpieces on McCarthy following the Army trial in 1954 which did irreparable damage to McCarthy's reputation.

24/25 Following the media attacks on his credibility, in December 1954, the Senate voted to "condemn" McCarthy by a vote of 67 - 22. This was not officially a "censure" but McCarthy's political career was effectively over. He died three years later.

25/25 Following the 2nd World War, there was a clear subversive element in American government. Joe McCarthy was one of the few Americans bold enough to fight back against it. Despite having broad popularity, one group consistenly rejected him: Jews. In the end, they won.