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The thing people today may not know about McCarthyism is that there WERE a lot of Soviet spies in the State Department. It desperately needed to be addressed.
by fennecfoxen 5y ago
The thing people today may not know about McCarthyism is that there WERE a lot of Soviet spies in the State Department. It desperately needed to be addressed.
The reason people forget this is because McCarthyism itself was not actually a very good remedy. It was great for the self-aggrandizement of Senator McCarthy (until he went too far, and his target Mr. Welch called him out while being interrogated before the Senate for making a national show of a very weak question of Welch’s colleague, a question could have been raised far more timely without the spectacle). It was great for building an atmosphere of fear, too. But in the end it was a pretty bad spy eradication program.
- wolverine876 5y ago> there WERE a lot of Soviet spies in the State Department. It desperately needed to be addressed. Where can I find some serious research on that?
- mdavis6890 5y agoI'm sure there were spies - but this is not what McCarthyism was about. Primarily it was about communism. Spying for a foreign govt is bad, and we don't want them in our govt, regardless of their ideology. Communist beliefs, tendencies and association are protected by our (US) constitution. Targeting spies is good, but McCarty was targeting communists (or alleged communists).
- wolverine876 5y agoMcCarthy was targeting people whose ideology he didn't like, and using communism as a justification.