Joe McCarthy: The Original Conspiracy Theorist

unlock the secrets of your family history with my Heritage the number one family history service in Europe with more than 19 billion records at your fingertips and AI powered tools to enhance and animate your old family photos my Heritage is the perfect way to explore your past more on them in a bit for five years senator Joseph McCarthy was one of the most influential politicians in America based primarily on his Assurance as the public that there was a vast communist conspiracy to undermine the American way of life that spies had infiltrated even the highest levels of government and that only he was brave enough and smart enough to stop them while most people didn't realize at the time however was that this was a reputation built entirely on lies his investigations produced little evidence of Espionage instead accusing people based on past associations family histories or aspects of their private lives thousands lost their jobs or at their names dragged through the mud most of whom were apparently loyal Americans who had done nothing wrong it has become known as McCarthyism a toxic mixture of character assassination accusations made without evidence and Reliance on Gossip to ruin people perceive achieved as a threat for McCarthy this extended to anyone that opposed him on anything his political enemies were subjected to insults ridicule and allegations that they were part of the Communist plot he was a master of utilizing the media obsessed with headlines and attention moving from one fabrication to the next faster than they could be refuted even many members of his own party eventually became fed up with him and worked together with their opposition to bring him down but the legacy of Joe McCarthy has a Long Reach and the country is still feeling its effects today thank you foreign Joseph Raymond McCarthy was born on a farm in Central Wisconsin on November 14 1908. initially dropping out of school at the age of 14 he later re-enrolled at age 20 and eventually graduated from Marquette University with a law degree he first won elected office in 1939 becoming a circuit court judge McCarthy proved to be a masterful campaigner making an effort to visit the homes of every potential voter later sending them personal notes recounting their talks and having a knack for remembering names and faces he practically oozed charm and Charisma though he wasn't above muckraking even back then one of his campaign planks was attacking his incumbent opponent's age and the amount of time it spent on the bench McCarthy never intended to remain a judge for long he had higher political Ambitions when the U.S entered World War II he was exempt from military service but recognized that serving in uniform would help with this future political aspirations he joined the Marine Corps primarily serving as an intelligence briefing officer for a dive bombing Squadron he never saw combat but volunteered to serve as a rear Gunner on several missions on one occasion he delighted in using The Dauntless dive bombers tail Mountain machine gun to riddle the palm trees and empty ocean with bullets earning the nickname tailgunner Joe apparently McCarthy never realized that the nickname was luckily invented as a way to mock him because he embraced it his Marine Corps career would later cause controversy as McCarthy would later embellish his military service while on the campaign Trail he played up his war wound which was actually a broken ankle suffered in a fall that wasn't combat related and he inflated the number of combo missions he'd served in in order to get himself awarded the distinguished flying cross and the air medal McCarthy returned to Wisconsin after leaving the Marine Corps in 1945 and immediately began preparing to challenge for the Republican nomination for Senate in the next year's election his opponent was incumbent Robert LaFollette Jr one of the Elder Statesman of Wisconsin politics so it seemed the little known McCarthy had an uphill battle for the nomination but McCarthy won after a campaign marked by ugly personal attacks made against LaFollette combined with McCarthy's unique brand of retail campaigning that is selling himself as a brand sort of like a company would sell a product McCarthy 38 was now the youngest senator in Washington Senator McCarthy showed little interest in the day-to-day functions that made up the majority of the job of being a member of Congress while McCarthy liked most of all was attention especially political rallies attended by cheering supporters and newspaper headlines what he needed was a winning issue that he could attached his name to something that would cause people to pay attention to him that also suited his unique personality and brand after three mostly undistinguished years in the Senate he eventually settled almost by accident on communism by 1950 fear of Communism was widespread the Soviet Union had quickly established itself as the US's Chief rival for Global influence closing an iron curtain around its eastern European satellite States attempting to force the Western allies out of Berlin through a blockade and successfully exploding their first atomic bomb in 1949. at the same time America was rocked by Mao zedong's Victory and the Chinese Civil War setting up a communist government while the Western nation-backed nationalist government was forced into Exile on Taiwan in June 1950 communist North Korea invaded its Southern neighbor starting a war which would eventually really see a U.S led Alliance fighting the Chinese to a bloody stalemate on the peninsula it seemed like communism which was apparently diametrically opposed to everything Americans stood for it was on the upswing everywhere this fear of Communism abroad was coupled with an even more intense fear of Communism at home fear of the red staging a similar takeover to the one in Russia had already caused a Red Scare in the U.S during the first world war which saw hundreds of people rounded up and deported because of their suspected links to left-win organizations plotting social Revolution now America always poised for a second even bigger red scared this one penetrating every aspect of American political life and Joe McCarthy would soon Place himself at the very center of it in a speech given in February 1950 in Wheeling West Virginia McCarthy claimed that the U.S state Department was infested with Communists waving around a piece of paper that he said was a list of 205 members of the Communist Party currently working there the news reverberated around the country like a Thunderclap confirming the Public's worst fears that there were communist agents in the government either spying for the Soviets or plotting the downfall of U.S democracy Now supplied with the headlines and attention he craved McCarthy or went on to expand upon his allegations despite privately admitting to not knowing anything about communism beforehand this was his ticket to the big time and he knew it he ended up never publicly showing his list of 205 Communists at State changing the number repeatedly down to 57 a few days later and up to 81 a few days after that nor would he say where the list had come from historians believed that he pruned his list from an earlier list compiled for a House of Representatives committee by a former FBI agent that was tasked with finding flaws in the state Department's security screenings of employees most of those flagged as security risks were not associated with Communism they were labeled such because of other so-called weaknesses of character like engaging in extramarital Affairs or public drunkenness others had been members of communist organizations back in the 1930s but had since renounced or they were related to someone who had previously been a member but this didn't stop McCarthy from not only claiming that the whole lot of them were card-carrying Communists but that they were also disloyal agents working against America if you're curious to explore your family's history and uncover hidden stories then you should definitely check out today's sponsor myheritage myheritage is the number one family history service in Europe and it's an incredible genealogy platform to build your family tree and discover your Origins they've got more than 19 billion records that you can search for for your old family records that you probably thought were lost to time I've already made some amazing discoveries about my own family I've gone back and found like military records from the first world war immigration records from like the 1850s I found a census report that like my great Grandad had signed like talking about his family and what they did and stuff it's in his handwriting like a scan of it it's been pretty amazing and not only is the information easily accessible but my Heritage provides a platform for restoring colorizing enhancing and even animating your old photos plus with 90 million users around the world actively building their family trees you can connect with people who share your ancestry my Heritage also offers an incredible AI time machine allowing you to see yourself as a historical figure you just have to upload a few recent photos of yourself and wow they have it you in history look at these b-rolls on the screen now of uh some that I did to myself you could get a 14 day free trial to experience all the amazing features that my Heritage has to offer plus if you decide to continue your subscription after your trial ends you can use the special link in the description below for a 50 discount and now back to today's video because his accusations resulted in the creation of a senate investigatory panel chaired by Millard Tidings of Maryland the tidings committee provided a public forum for McCarthy to flesh out his charges publicly naming nine people he claimed were Soviet agents the Senator's accusations were thought by others to be poorly prepared and presented and the committee ended up ruling that he hadn't substantiated any of them but McCarthy wasn't really trying his case in the Senate he was doing it in the court of public opinion and out in the countryside he was finding great success what McCarthy was doing was spraying his accusatory machine gun in all directions hoping to hit upon a major case like arga hiss a diplomat who had been accused of Espionage the year before helping to make the career of then Congressman Richard Nixon in the process it didn't really matter to him if he hit innocent people caught in the crossfire he would privately justify by claiming it was in the interest of National Security all nine of those he publicly accused in the tidings committee hearings would have their careers negatively impacted some never working in government again McCarthy lied a lot he lied about where it gotten information from what one of his targets said or did his office would alter documents or photographs to make them more inflammatory and he was able to get away with it for years without anyone successfully being able to call him out on it there were several reasons for this and the biggest being that McCarthy was able to skillfully manipulate the dominant media of the period newspapers to his Advantage he timed press conferences to coincide with timed that newspapers printed afternoon or evening editions meaning editors would have to rush to put his latest Outburst in print without being able to fact check it or put it in context when someone owed refute his accusations it usually came a few days later and ended up on page 14. meanwhile the front page was covering another McCarthy headline as he smoothly moved on from one target to the next never publicly admitting that he was wrong about anything the sheer amount of copy devoted to McCarthy gained him support from the public the oh where there's smoke there must be fire fallacy this was also in the pre Vietnam premium Watergate era when the American public had a hard time believing that someone in a responsible position of power like a member of Congress would knowingly deceive them what made things worse is that most of McCarthy's victims were unable to sue him for defamation or libel since speeches given on the senate floor are protected by the Constitution almost from the moment he got there Joe McCarthy was disliked by many of his Senate colleagues the man was Brash and rude and public and in private especially when someone wouldn't give him his way he had little respect but the Senate as an institution and bureaucrats had no patience to wait for his turn for committee assignments or for debate on legislation refused to take advice from anybody but they largely put up with him in the first few years of his notoriety because they were afraid of what he could do to them in regardless of the 1950 election McCarthy campaigned widely on behalf of candidates that he supported giving speeches to adoring crowds about the evils of Communism and the shortcomings of various elected officials opposed to him he was even more prominent in the 1952 campaign giving the keynote speech at the Republican National Convention modern analysis shows that it is unlikely that McCarthy gave Republican candidates much of a bump in either of these elections that they would have likely won without him but there was a perception at the time that he had a vast Grassroots support network across the country that he was unleashing on people who crossed him based on the poor electoral showings of outspoken McCarthy opponents like Senator Tidings who lost his re-election bid in 1950. McCarthy himself believed he had the power to play kingmaker in Congress and wasn't afraid to use threats of electoral ruin on his opponent to get them to yield McCarthy's threats extended beyond the halls of Congress he waged war against anyone who said anything negative about him at all he made up insulting nicknames he used in public for people or organizations that opposed him calling the anti-mccarthy Milwaukee Journal the Milwaukee urinal he attempted to exert influence on the FCC to silence his critics who gave as good as they got labeling the senator a dime store Rose Pierre and a mediocre lawyer with an easy conscience the culture of fear that McCarthy helped to create caused a dangerous reaction the ratcheting up of the so-called Security State multiple Congressional panels as well as investigative bodies at the state and local level and within government organizations now saw communist infiltrators everywhere thousands of people were investigated and had their careers tarnished by the merest hint of an association with any group perceived as being too left-leaning many oh were dismissed from government service based merely on the threat that they might be communist sympathizers using the most spurious of evidence to justify it people were being purged not because of their actions but because of their beliefs their suspected beliefs or the suspected beliefs of someone they were related to The Purge was extended to include homosexual men working in government the so-called lavender scare the official reason for this purge was that closeted gay men were vulnerable to be being blackmailed but whether or not that was true they were still an easy target that was sure to have public appeal McCarthy who faced accusations of homosexuality himself because of his status as a lifelong bachelor until his marriage in 1953 seemed to take vindictive pleasure in rooting out what he called nests of sex perverts with the Republicans gaining the Senate majority in the 1952 election McCarthy now at his own committee that he could use to continue investigations of suspected Communists the permanent subcommittee on investigations or PSI he hired a 26 year old lawyer from New York named Roy Cohn to serve as psi's Chief counsel and over the next year the two would form a close working relationship McCarthy growing to rely more and more on Cohn to the point that it eventually destroyed him McCarthy's next Target was the voice of America the state-owned radio station that broadcast into foreign countries particularly behind the Iron Curtain McCarthy claimed that two broadcast Towers recently opened were deficient and he suspected to be the result of deliberate Sabotage by communist agents inside VOA when that's accomplished nothing except the destruction of morale within the agency McCarthy moved on to the overseas libraries program maintained by the International Information agency Roy Cohn went on a much published Whirlwind tour of Europe examining the card catalogs of the libraries looking for books written by supposedly pro-con authors McCarthy presented a list of titles he said should be removed and the state department complied some libraries actually burned the books in question prompting a quick back hurdle by the administration though not by McCarthy lest America find itself compared to Nazi Germany on the subject of censorship but McCarthy's biggest target soon became the United States Army McCarthy had always held a grudge against the Army going back to his days in the Marine Corps he was also a growing critic of President Dwight D Eisenhower who had been the top Army General in Europe during World War II and many wondered if his sudden Zeal for finding Communists in the Army had anything to do with trying to tweak Eisenhower's nose in the fall of 1953 McCarthy's committee investigated Fort Monmouth home of the signal Corps claiming that the sensitive Communications laboratory there had a communist spy ring within it when that didn't pan out McCarthy then turned his attention to the case of Irving Paris a dentist that had been drafted into the army and had refused to answer questions on an army loyalty questionnaire resulting in some of his superiors questioning whether he was a communist McCarthy said personally thought so and dragged Perez and his commanding officer Brigadier General Ralph's Wicker in front of his committee to grill them his treatment of his wicker was particularly bad at one point yelling that he had the intelligence of a five-year-old and wasn't fit to wear the army uniform this grave insult to a man who'd received the Silver Star for his heroism on the beaches of Normandy was the last straw of her Army secretary Robert T Stevens who decided to strike back with a little dirt of his own G David shine shine a wealthy heir to her hotel Fortune was on McCarthy's investigatory staff as an unpaid consultant he and Roy Cohn were close friends traveling around Europe together and frequently going out drinking in the fall of 1953 shine was drafted into the army Cohn immediately attempted to use his influence to attempt to get special treatment for his friend from pressing for a commission as an officer to trying to get him light duties and extra Liberty passes Cohn reportedly stated that he would wreck the Army and destroy the career of Stevens if his demands weren't met Stevens surely would tat it backing from the Y White House made a public accusation that McCarthy and Cohen attempted to improperly influence the Army to gain special treatment for shine and the war was on the Army McCarthy hearings which lasted from April to June 1954. had America riveted from the start it was one of the first major government hearings covered by the new medium of television with ABC covering what turned out to be a three-ring circus gavel to gavel this was the first time most people had seen McCarthy work and by and large they weren't impressed his Bluster his bullying tactics his name-calling were all on full display he had a particularly acrimonious relationship with the Army's lead Council Boston attorney Joseph Welch the decisive moment came on day 30 of the hearings when McCarthy attempted to discredit Welch by revealing that one of the attorneys at his Law Firm had once belonged to the National lawyers Guild which oh was at the time labeled by the FBI as being a Communist front organization Welch replied that he already knew about this which is why he asked the man to recuse himself from the case when McCarthy continued to attempt to smear the man Welch lost his temper assassinate this lad further senator look look you have done enough when his rebuke of McCarthy was finished the gallery burst into Applause when the hearings finished the committee assigns no blame to McCarthy blaming Karen alone for improper influence he was forced to resign rather than be fired but the public relations hit the McCarthy took from the hearings as well as an investigative piece done around the same time by celebrated journalist Edward R M Morrow was severe then the shocking news the popular Wyoming Senator Lester hunt had shot himself in his office came out it would be revealed later than McCarthy and his Senate allies had attempted a black male hunt by threatening to reveal details of his son's recent arrest during a homosexuality sting in Washington if he didn't resign his office this wasn't even the first suicide that could be attributed to McCarthy an engineer at Voice of America to spawned and that he would be publicly smeared in front of McCarthy's committee threw himself in front of a truck his Senate colleagues had finally had enough of Joe McCarthy in December 1954 they voted 67-22 to censor him one of only nine senators in history to be handed the harsh just rebuke that body can give to one of its members short of expulsion his influence evaporated almost overnight journalists no longer paid attention to him refusing to cover his speeches or print them on the front page his Senate colleagues shunned him when he gave a speech in Congress it was to an almost empty chamber and those who were there made it a point to not pay attention to him he was no longer welcome at the white house or at the homes of most of Washington's power Brokers his speaking invitations all dried up the few he did give oh was sparsely attended certainly the Republicans wanted him nowhere near the campaign Trail in 1954 and 1956 he was persona non grata as barra's endorsements went McCarthy became despondent rarely attending Senate sessions and blaming everyone but himself for the loss of his reputation he had always been a drinker during his time in the Senate but as alcohol consumption got really bad after his censure he also had a worsening dependency on morphine few people felt badgering had after all brought it upon himself even a right up until the end if he simply apologized toned down his rhetoric or admitted to making some Stakes it's unlikely he would have been censored instead ah one of the things he ended up getting Centered for was verbally abusing the committee put together to decide whether or not he should be censored there's no telling whether or not McCarthy would have won re-election to a third term in 1958 because he died before the election on May the 2nd 1957. he was only 48 years old and while the official cause of death according to Bethesda naval hospital was hepatitis pretty much everyone including his closest friends believed that he drank himself to death after the fall of McCarthy the United States began reevaluating its Security State realizing too late how badly they'd reacted between ten thousand and twelve thousand people lost their jobs because of suspected dies to subversive elements and hundreds were imprisoned at least 5 000 federal workers lost their jobs after being suspected of or being outed as homosexual and thousands more suffered persecution or blackmail by their co-workers even once the Red Scare died down the lavender scare continued the state department admitted during its official apology in 2017 that they were investigating their employees sexual orientations as late as the 1990s McCarthyism is still used today to refer to public figures who engage in character assassination and unsubstantiated accusations in order to smear their opponents celebrated pieces of media including the novel Fahrenheit 451 and the play and later movie The Crucible were clear references to the excesses of McCarthyism however Americans for the most part have elected to forget about the MacArthur era instead remembering the 1950s as a time of economic Prosperity the rise of car culture and the childhood of the Baby Boomers however the legacy of Joe McCarthy extends well past that sad period of history and on into today most notably Roy Cohn the ill-fated McCarthy associate went on to have a long controversial legal career in New York City including serving as the personal attorney to Donald Trump who considered him a mentor nor was McCarthyism simply an isolated case of Hysteria as historians can cite similar cases going back to the Salem Witch Trials of the 17th century all the way up to the satanic daycare Panic of the 1980s and even Beyond comparison to McCarthyism have been drawn to the early years of the war on terror after 9 11 when a scared public allowed its government to do things that it would later regret Joe McCarthy wasn't the first of his kind and he certainly wasn't the last but what etches his unfortunate place in history was that he was one of the first to win Mass Appeal by suggesting that there were elements within the American government that couldn't be trusted that they were plotting to destroy the nation from within a scene that has existed within extremist elements of American politics ever

Channel: Biographics

Views: 120,548

Keywords: biographics, biography, biographies, people, famous people, simon whistler, conspiracy theory, t:original

Id: 56GWPcazLsU

Length: 22min 26sec (1346 seconds)

Published: Mon Feb 27 2023