Trope of McCarthyism

Among the commentariat, the trope of “McCarthyism” alleges overzealous pursuit of communist spies and invokes the conventional image of Sen. Joseph McCarthy as a self-centered demagogue prosecuting the innocent and upright. I found it on two facing pages of the Aug. 16–22 Opinion section, by Wesley Smith reviewing “Oppenheimer” [“‘Oppenheimer’’s Crucial Messages for Today”] to equate it with today’s cancel culture, and by Chris Talgo [“The Chinese Communist Party Has Broadly Infiltrated Influential US Institutions”] to put “unfounded accusations” out of bounds when exploring communist infiltration of our institutions.

Ironically, the trope is so common that it is a prime example of communist distortions explored in “The Media: the Specter’s Mouthpiece” [chapter 13 in “How the Specter of Communism Is Ruling Our World“] in the same issue. In fact, the immediate reaction of communists to being revealed is to denigrate the investigator, and this lie has been thoughtlessly accepted by journalists and historians from the start.

Some of the smears of Sen. McCarthy were retracted by honest journalists at the time. But his full vindication is Stanton Evans’s masterful book of 2007, “Blacklisted by History, The Untold Story of Senator Joe McCarthy and His Fight Against America’s Enemies.” Its 664 pages are rich in context with names and backgrounds of all the actors. But broadly speaking, the pursuit of spies in that era was a reaction by a minority to the prevalent, deliberate laxity of security standards begun in Franklin Roosevelt’s administration and continued under Truman.

One could begin by questioning why Roosevelt was so quick to give diplomatic recognition to the USSR, when it had been denied by four previous presidents and six secretaries of state. I doubt that Roosevelt’s decision in that regard needed any influence by Walter Duranty’s praise of the USSR. Suffice it to say that Roosevelt’s willing cooperation with Stalin has never dimmed the praise he receives from mainstream historians. Please be alert to how these lies are prolonged.

Jim Casey California