McCarthyism: How effective was it?

[Questionable]

A common right-wing excuse I hear for the McCarthy trials goes something like, "Yeah, the McCarthy trials were bad, but people don't realize that they actually captured a lot of spies!" and I'm wondering how much water this excuse holds.

How effective was McCarthyism at preventing communist activities? If there were any "spies" captured, then how many innocents were persecuted along the way?

[Ostrinski]

I think the antics of Joseph McCarthy are overstated in significance next to the repressive measures taken by Woodrow Wilson and J. Edgar Hoover.

[Brosa Luxemburg]

I think the antics of Joseph McCarthy are overstated in significance next to the repressive measures taken by Woodrow Wilson and J. Edgar Hoover.

Absolutely! This times 1,000!

[Drosophila]

Ostrinski is right. McCarthyism was the pinning of one nationalist ideology against another. The "first" Red Scare, on the other hand, was damaging to actual internationalist communism.

[Ostrinski]

The labor movement never really recovered after the first Red Scare. Because the first Red Scare was about crushing the workers in their very real political struggle when they were in a class conscious state.

The second Red Scare, on the other hand, was about cracking down on those with political allegiances to the Soviet Union when tensions between the States and the Soviet Union reached a critical level, and unfortunately when Soviet political influence had dominated many of the larger communist parties in Europe and America.

So in a word, I'd say Wilson and Hoover were the real McCarthyists.

[Prometeo liberado]

I think the antics of Joseph McCarthy are overstated in significance next to the repressive measures taken by Woodrow Wilson and J. Edgar Hoover.

The McCarthy debacle represented the frustration of the more rightist elements coming out of the House UnAmerican Activities Committee(HUAC), IMO. McCarthy, with much backing from these various rightist, eagerly tested the waters so to speak of the legality of his committee,Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Senate_Homeland_Security_Permanent_S ubcommittee_on_Investigations) of the Government Operations Committee of the U.S. Senate, as far as investigative and interrogation procedures. Setting new precedent from its predecessors, the U.S. Senate Special Committee to Investigate the National Defense Program (http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=U.S._Senate_Special_Committee_to_I nvestigate_the_National_Defense_Program&action=edit&redlink=1) and HUAC, McCarthy may have been let loose as a sacrificial lamb to see where and how far such activities could take the national psyche and/or debate. Nowhere in the history of these committees has such levels of manufactured evidence and violation of individual rights and/or due process been so blatantly and publicly violated. And under the very judiciary empowered to stop it. Only when public opinion began to turn against him did he rapidly see his position as tenuous at best. Not long after the Senate voted to censure McCarthy. Effectively ending any sway he may have still held within the government or the public.
I would definitely argue that these events show that McCarthy was no more than a pawn by those who wished to wage all out war on individual rights. Like the Oswald character in JFK, he too has enemies all about him, only they wore suites, just like him. Effective in so far as showing those who would profit from it how far they could go, at that particular moment in history. McCarthy was a patsy. We got The Dept. of Homeland Security to worry about now.

[Ostrinski]

Toward the end of his campaign, he was also arbitrarily throwing the red bait just around just about everywhere. I think his allies turned on him when he started accusing military (sacred cow of the right) officials of being communists.

[ComradeOm]

The point of witch-hunts is that witches don't exist. McCarthy was raging against a largely imaginary threat: within the US, 'International Communism' was never the spectre that he and others made it out to be. The US never witnessed government-driven anti-Communist purges on the scale of France, Italy or Germany because the US movement was simply never that big or visible

I'd suggest that the more important impact of McCarthy's witch-hunts was McCarthyism. That is, he provided a convenient ideological framework in which conservatives and reactionaries could define muscular 'American values'. Despite the reaction of the following decade, it's probably safe to say that this had a lasting impact on the American cultural and political landscape

[Blake's Baby]

America won the Cold war. so, McCarthyism was super-effective, as one of the stragies of that offensive (ideological, military, economic...).

As to 'how many spies did it catch'... I dunno. Maybe none? It wasn't really to catch spies though, was it? Wan't the point to whip up popular hysteria around notions of what it means to be a 'good' American? It's a good point that ComradeOm makes that there were bigger anti-communist crusades in Europe because in other places there were more communists.

[Jimmie Higgins]

While the Palmer Raids era definately had more overt repression, I think it's apples and oranges to compare it to McCarthyism in that way.

Both had significant effects impacting both revolutionaries themselves (specifically the IWW and then the CP) but also in broader society.

While people already spoke about the effects of the first red scare well, I think McCarthyism has been downplayed here. I don't think it was mearly cold war politics, but was actually the state trying to reinforce hegemony after appealing to populism in order to mobilize people for the war. It went hand in hand with increased repression on women after the US no longer needed women in industry, and increased repression on gays and lesibians. Although the CP did a lot to put themselves in this position, McCarthyism had a broader impact in that any union militant could be accused of communism and pressured to leave positions in unions or even leave the job. It had a politically chilling effect across the country that I think we can thank for the infamous 1950s conformity.

[Psy]

America won the Cold war. so, McCarthyism was super-effective, as one of the stragies of that offensive (ideological, military, economic...).

As to 'how many spies did it catch'... I dunno. Maybe none? It wasn't really to catch spies though, was it? Wan't the point to whip up popular hysteria around notions of what it means to be a 'good' American? It's a good point that ComradeOm makes that there were bigger anti-communist crusades in Europe because in other places there were more communists.
McCarthyism ended when McCarthy tried to do which which hunt against bureaucracy of the US Army and the US Army Psy Ops ended his career ruthlessly as the US Army used its Psy Ops resources to turn the US media against McCarthy as soon McCarthy attacked the reputation of the US Army.

I'd say McCarthy was a failure because McCarthy was proven to be rank armature against the propaganda machine of the US Army, in the end the US ruling class continued to make deals with the Warsaw Pact and China whenever it suited the US ruling class. McCarthy wanted a unrelenting ideological war against the USSR and China while the US bourgeoisie state wanted none of that, it wanted to deal with the USSR and China how ever it saw fit.

[Mr. Natural]

McCarthyism is alive and well in the US and has advanced and evolved into the Tea Party/Republican Party, and the Democratic Party, as always, is doing its best to catch up.

Capitalism is a systemic process now in its mature/senile stage, and it needs and manufactures "McCarthyism" as it goes. Thus as an American I currently exist in the belly of an all-digesting McCarthyism. Politics in the US are inexpressibly absymal, although I just tried to express them.