Joseph McCarthy Did Nothing Wrong (Or Did He Do Plenty Wrong?)

[Abhorsen]

If you go into a store and randomly spray people with bullets to show how great you are, and one happens to kill a terrorist, have you done good? Most would say no. That's basically what McCarthy did, but with accusations instead of bullets, and gave a great excuse to commies forever after.

 

[Laskar]

The only thing Joe McCarthy did wrong was lose to the communists. He underestimated how powerful they were - and how heavily they influenced culture, media, and the U.S. Government.

He was throwing around accusations at random to build his prestige. He took a legitimate problem and recklessly turned it into a footstool for his own political ambitions. He didn't do anything right to begin with.

 

[The Name of Love]

He was throwing around accusations at random to build his prestige. He took a legitimate problem and recklessly turned it into a footstool for his own political ambitions. He didn't do anything right to begin with.

How do you know that the entire “wrong accusation” thing wasn’t also a media hoax?

 

[Laskar]

How do you know that the entire “wrong accusation” thing wasn’t also a media hoax?

Because out of about 160 accusations he made, only about nine were accurate according to what we've found in the Soviet archives.

 

[Abhorsen]

How do you know that the entire “wrong accusation” thing wasn’t also a media hoax?

He claimed he had a list, then kept changing the number of people on the list.

 

[Aldarion]

 

[Buba]

Not enough of the fuckers were electrocuted!

 

[Abhorsen]

Bwahaha, no. McCarthy did more for communism than any other American through his lies.

The list didn't exist. He basically got caught bragging one time to a Republican Women's Club that he had a list. He knew, like most, that communists existed in the State Department, but he had no idea who, like most people not investigating the matter. So as part of his diatribe to constituents, he goes off scripts slightly and claims he has a list of X number of known Communists in the State department, brandishing a piece of paper.

But this ended up basically going viral, that McCarthy had a list, and people believed him. He wasn't planning on doing anything with this list, this wasn't some great crusade, instead it was like The Big Lie. Once he started lying, he felt the only way out was through, so he tried to find communists, quickly grabbing the Lee report as a starting point, then exaggerating the facts in that.

Why do we know he was a fake? First, the number of people on it kept changing. Second, he was a known liar, having lied and exaggerated about his war exploits. Third, he was shocked that the media picked up on this, and basically acted unprepared at the beginning, while he was scrambling to come up with a believable story, which he compounded with more lies (i.e. the origin of the list wasn't from a state department official, but a 3 year old report by Robert E. Lee, an FBI agent.

But the Lee list wasn't even full of communists! Sure, there were security vulnerabilities in it, and I'm in no way shaming Lee for what he did, as extramarital affairs and drunkeness are definite security vulnerabilities that can be exploited, but they also aren't card carrying communists.

So yeah, I despise McCarthy, his idiocy led to anticommunism being a joke for years.

We also already have a thread about this that I'll merge this into.

 

[Abhorsen]

https://the-sietch.com/index.php?threads/the-problem-with-mccarthy-was-he-failed.3376

Sorry for the delay, I'm trying to figure out how to merge threads, haven't done that before.

 

[Husky_Khan]

Yeah as an Anti-Communist Crusader he seemed pretty effective...

Senator Joseph McCarthy’s Lists and Venona by John Earl Haynes April 2007

9 for 159! That like surpasses 5% or so in accuracy. Great Success!

 

[Aldarion]

McCarthy Was Right About The Left

McCarthy was an american politician, who is today often seen as a lunatic due to his paranoia centered on Communist subversion of the United States. He is known for alleging that numerous communist…

politicalreactionary.wordpress.com

McCarthy was an american politician, who is today often seen as a lunatic due to his paranoia centered on Communist subversion of the United States. He is known for alleging that numerous communists and Soviet spies and sympathizers had infiltrated the United States federal government, universities, film industry, and elsewhere. McCarthy ended up being censured by the US Senate. Today, the term “McCarthysm” is used to mean “demagogic, reckless, and unsubstantiated accusations, as well as public attacks on the character or patriotism of political opponents”.

For decades, Leftists held the high ground in the debate on Communist infiltration of the United States, and the West in general. During the Cold War and afterwards, leftists at universities and elsewhere sneered at anyone who even mentioned the possibility of such infiltration, and domestic anti-communism was treated as popular irrationality. Thanks largely to the Vietnam war, by the end of 1960s demonization of anti-Communists had gained traction, and anyone warning of the threat of Communism was dismissed as essentially next Hitler. This applied even to moderate politicians who warned that Communist sympathizers might have influenced the US foreign policy.

There is only one problem with this narrative – McCarthy was completely correct in his allegations.

Read more

 

[Cherico]

History will remember him more kindly 80-100 years from now.

As the results of bad policies become more apparent people who are currently villafied will be remembered foundly and quite a few people who were celibrated today will be seen as people who paved the way for something horrible. Most of us will be forgotten but that is not an uncommon fate or a bad one.

 

[Aldarion]

History will remember him more kindly 80-100 years from now.

I hope so.

 

[ShieldWife]

Reading about how McCarthy was attacked, smeared, and demonized even at his height of power goes to how the radical left controlled America’s powerful institutions even in the 1950’s and likely before.

 

[Aldarion]

Reading about how McCarthy was attacked, smeared, and demonized even at his height of power goes to how how the radical left controlled America’s powerful institutions even in the 1950’s and likely before.

They took over the education and the media first - that, I think, is something the Right has failed to understand for a long time. The importance of soft power.

 

[Buba]

Reading about how McCarthy was attacked, smeared, and demonized even at his height of power goes to how how the radical left controlled America’s powerful institutions even in the 1950’s and likely before.

Yup - look no further than that commie paedophile Charlie Chaplin undermining him in A King in New York.

 

[Jormungandr]

"He's a right-wing extremist! SCREEEE!"

Just over sixty-four years later, after his death...

Yeah, it's not paranoia if it's all true.

 

[Abhorsen]

History will remember him more kindly 80-100 years from now.

As the results of bad policies become more apparent people who are currently villafied will be remembered foundly and quite a few people who were celibrated today will be seen as people who paved the way for something horrible. Most of us will be forgotten but that is not an uncommon fate or a bad one.

No, it won't. Again, he was a scumbag and a liar who ruined anticommunism for generations. Calling him correct was also wrong. He just accused a lot of people, and some of those many were guilty because the State Department was so infested.

Why do you @Aldarion keep starting new threads about this anyways?

The list didn't exist. He basically got caught bragging one time to a Republican Women's Club that he had a list. He knew, like most, that communists existed in the State Department, but he had no idea who, like most people not investigating the matter. So as part of his diatribe to constituents, he goes off scripts slightly and claims he has a list of X number of known Communists in the State department, brandishing a piece of paper.

But this ended up basically going viral, that McCarthy had a list, and people believed him. He wasn't planning on doing anything with this list, this wasn't some great crusade, instead it was like The Big Lie. Once he started lying, he felt the only way out was through, so he tried to find communists, quickly grabbing the Lee report as a starting point, then exaggerating the facts in that.

Why do we know he was a fake? First, the number of people on it kept changing. Second, he was a known liar, having lied and exaggerated about his war exploits. Third, he was shocked that the media picked up on this, and basically acted unprepared at the beginning, while he was scrambling to come up with a believable story, which he compounded with more lies (i.e. the origin of the list wasn't from a state department official, but a 3 year old report by Robert E. Lee, an FBI agent.

But the Lee list wasn't even full of communists! Sure, there were security vulnerabilities in it, and I'm in no way shaming Lee for what he did, as extramarital affairs and drunkeness are definite security vulnerabilities that can be exploited, but they also aren't card carrying communists.

So yeah, I despise McCarthy, his idiocy led to anticommunism being a joke for years.

 

[Aldarion]

Why do you @Aldarion keep starting new threads about this anyways?

I start threads when I either find or write something I think could be interesting that doesn't obviously fit into one of other threads. I wrote the article, and so here it is.

 

[Abhorsen]

I start threads when I either find or write something I think could be interesting that doesn't obviously fit into one of other threads. I wrote the article, and so here it is.

All the McCarthy stuff can go into the same thread, because it's the same topic every time, and people who subscribed to one thread won't know the other stuff. Now I am going to have to move the posts again, and probably ask a super mod to do the actual merge. Please just stay in the same thread.