I read "The Crucible" in a high school English class and it significantly affected my political outlook, but having learned more of the history of that era (much of it not public knowledge when I first read it and certainly not when it was written) it's no longer clear to me that it still works as allegory.
From the article: "McCarthy—brash and ill-mannered but to many authentic and true—boiled it all down to what anyone could understand: we had “lost China” and would soon lose Europe as well, because the State Department—staffed, of course, under Democratic Presidents—was full of treasonous pro-Soviet intellectuals. It was as simple as that."
Well, as the Venona project cables declassified in 1995 show, the State Department didn't just contain intellectuals that were pro-Soviet: it contained actual Soviet agents in contact with the USSR. This was by no means restricted to the State Department, but also included the Treasury, OSS (pre-CIA), and even the White House. See here: https://web.archive.org/web/20110514040131/http://www.access....
In addition, it is now known that the CIA ran an operation, at the request of Allen Dulles, to feed McCarthy false information about who in the government were Soviet spies with the deliberate purpose of discrediting him: https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/48603/did-the-c....
Maybe this calls for a remake of "The Crucible", not as tragedy, but as supernatural horror.
For years, on the infrequent occasions when the subject of "The Crucible" would come up I would tell people, "But there were no witches in Salem."
That's the difference.
Undoubtedly, McCarthy was an odious individual in many ways. That has nothing to do with there being communists in Hollywood, the State Department, and wherever else.
Stay tuned. History doesn't repeat itself, but it does rhyme.
The issue is that being a communist isn't - and shouldn't be - a crime.
Collaborating with a hostile foreign power is - and should be - a crime.
McCarthy made no distinction between these two ends of the spectrum. Collaboration requires intent, which McCarthy often failed to provide evidence of. In those failures, he discredited himself and his enterprise.
In the past I've thought that the trouble with "McCarthyism" was its lack of respect for freedom of expression and freedom of conscience, as well as some of the dynamics of "moral panic". That doesn't mean that McCarthy was literally personally wrong about all of his claims, and as you point out, some of them have subsequently been vindicated. It also doesn't mean that the anti-Communist or anti-Soviet cause was unimportant.
I guess this raises a big question for me: what does liberalism look like in a cold war (or a hot war)? The illiberalism of the cold war as well as other things that were done to prosecute it (including the exaltation of espionage and the seemingly irreversible boom in spy agencies and the classified world) are deeply upsetting to me even though they responded to a real and, I would agree, grave threat.
Freedom has a fundamental asymmetry: it's much easier to give it up than to get it back. Imagine a society where it's possible to sell yourself into slavery -- you start out free, but in a moment of desperation you lose it forever.
Enemies of a free state use the state's freedom against it by exploiting this asymmetry. A moment of naivety by a voter or someone in power, or a traitor/spy, can dramatically undermine freedom.
The only solution is vigilence, which is hard to keep up forever. The Bill of Rights helps, but at some point we need to reject the politicians that are too naive to defend freedom.
EDIT: The socialist movement in the U.S. is of grave concern. Especially the Bernie Sanders brand, where he's a nice guy but somehow can't even recognize a failing socialist state a few years before it fails (Venezuela).
> Well, as the Venona project cables declassified in 1995 show, the State Department didn't just contain intellectuals that were pro-Soviet: it contained actual Soviet agents in contact with the USSR.
A stopped clock is correct twice a day.
1) Communist didn't automatically mean spy. And spy didn't automatically mean communist. In fact, most of our worst breaches weren't "communists".
2) The problem isn't just saying: "We have spies." It's finding real evidence on them.
The primary problem is finding real spies--and McCarthy had absolutely zero useful evidence to that end. If anything, he made it easier for the spies by kicking up so much cover.
So, McCarthy destroyed a lot of people ... destroyed civil liberties across the board ... and provided nothing useful to actually root out the real threats.
And this assumes that McCarthy was doing this to find actual spies and not for political gain. An assumption which I do not at all credit McCarthy with.
The threat of communism is different than environmental destruction, but for those looking for historical precedent to illuminate today's problems, I recommend Bury The Chains by Adam Hochschild. It's on British abolitionism, especially Thomas Clarkson, also William Wilberforce and Granville Sharp, in the late 1700s and early 1800s.
It seems from some of the comments that some of HN thinks it's ok for the federal or state government to treat Americans who are communists or socialists differently from those who are not. I hope this is a minority view.
Readit News
From the article: "McCarthy—brash and ill-mannered but to many authentic and true—boiled it all down to what anyone could understand: we had “lost China” and would soon lose Europe as well, because the State Department—staffed, of course, under Democratic Presidents—was full of treasonous pro-Soviet intellectuals. It was as simple as that."
Well, as the Venona project cables declassified in 1995 show, the State Department didn't just contain intellectuals that were pro-Soviet: it contained actual Soviet agents in contact with the USSR. This was by no means restricted to the State Department, but also included the Treasury, OSS (pre-CIA), and even the White House. See here: https://web.archive.org/web/20110514040131/http://www.access....
In addition, it is now known that the CIA ran an operation, at the request of Allen Dulles, to feed McCarthy false information about who in the government were Soviet spies with the deliberate purpose of discrediting him: https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/48603/did-the-c....
Maybe this calls for a remake of "The Crucible", not as tragedy, but as supernatural horror.
That's the difference.
Undoubtedly, McCarthy was an odious individual in many ways. That has nothing to do with there being communists in Hollywood, the State Department, and wherever else.
Stay tuned. History doesn't repeat itself, but it does rhyme.
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Collaborating with a hostile foreign power is - and should be - a crime.
McCarthy made no distinction between these two ends of the spectrum. Collaboration requires intent, which McCarthy often failed to provide evidence of. In those failures, he discredited himself and his enterprise.
I guess this raises a big question for me: what does liberalism look like in a cold war (or a hot war)? The illiberalism of the cold war as well as other things that were done to prosecute it (including the exaltation of espionage and the seemingly irreversible boom in spy agencies and the classified world) are deeply upsetting to me even though they responded to a real and, I would agree, grave threat.
Enemies of a free state use the state's freedom against it by exploiting this asymmetry. A moment of naivety by a voter or someone in power, or a traitor/spy, can dramatically undermine freedom.
The only solution is vigilence, which is hard to keep up forever. The Bill of Rights helps, but at some point we need to reject the politicians that are too naive to defend freedom.
EDIT: The socialist movement in the U.S. is of grave concern. Especially the Bernie Sanders brand, where he's a nice guy but somehow can't even recognize a failing socialist state a few years before it fails (Venezuela).
A stopped clock is correct twice a day.
1) Communist didn't automatically mean spy. And spy didn't automatically mean communist. In fact, most of our worst breaches weren't "communists".
2) The problem isn't just saying: "We have spies." It's finding real evidence on them.
The primary problem is finding real spies--and McCarthy had absolutely zero useful evidence to that end. If anything, he made it easier for the spies by kicking up so much cover.
So, McCarthy destroyed a lot of people ... destroyed civil liberties across the board ... and provided nothing useful to actually root out the real threats.
And this assumes that McCarthy was doing this to find actual spies and not for political gain. An assumption which I do not at all credit McCarthy with.
My father worked for the CIA in the "red scare" days. It was an...interesting...time.
Their actions and success seem inspiringly relevant to our times. Here's a podcast on the connections: https://shows.acast.com/leadership-and-the-environment/episo....
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