‘McCarthyism’ — the most vicious kind of mud-slinging

Press, 26 March 1980, Page 17

‘McCarthyism’ — the most vicious kind of mud-slinging

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GARRY ARTHUR

“McCarthysim” shouted outraged opponents when the Prime Minister (Mr Muldoon) produced his list of trade union officials whom the Security Intelligence Service told him were members of a Communist group, the Socialist Unity Party. What did they mean? In a word, mud-slinging. Senator Joseph McCarthy was a demagogue who shouted his way to power and incredible influence in the America of the . early 1950 s by exploiting the public fear of communism.

The communists had taken over in China, and American troops were fighing communists in Korea. So any hint of communist sympathies, especially in a Government employee, was an accusation of treason.

“McCarthysim” was coined by the Washington “Post” cartoonist Herblock. He . lettered the word on a drawing of a barrel of mud teetering on top of a tower of 10 more buckets of the stuff. It rapidly became a synonym for mud-slinging. Senator McCarthy had an almost unbelievably short career in the public eye.' He was a nonentity until he happened to make a speech on February 9, 1950 in which he claimed:

“I have here in my hands a list of 205 — a list of names that w’ere made known to the Secretary of State (Dean Acheson) as being members of the Communist Party and who nevertheless are still , working and shaping policy in the State Department.” He later denied that he had said “205,” merely that he had said “a lot”; and much later it turned out that the paper in his hand was a letter that made no mention of communists at all.

The State Department denied his claims, but the speech caused an enormous sensation. Later that month a Senate subcommitttee was set up to investigate the charges. Senator McCarthy refused to appear before the sub-committee “I don’t answer charges,” he said. “I make them.”

In July, 1950, the Senate sub-committee reported, clearing all persons named

by McCarthy as having communist sympathies and rebuking him for “irresponsible” and “untruthful accusations.”

But in January, 1951, McCarthy was appointed to a powerful investigations sub-committee of the Appropriations Committee, . which had jurisdiction over the State as well as the

Departments of Justice and Commerce. McCarthy drew’ support from several influential Republican senators and newspapers. He managed to create an atmosphere in which to seek evidence of his charges was equated with opposing him — and that w r as equated with

sympathising with communism. He made a 60,000 w'ord speech charging General George C. Marshall, the former Secretary of State, with being involved in a conspiracy to weaken the United States for its conquest by the Soviet Union — “a conspiracy so immense, an infamy so black, as 1 to dwarf any in

the previous history of mankind.”' McCarthy kept hammering at his charges. He named individuals; he secured the removal from the foreign service of important officers; and he fostered a sentiment of “guilt by association” which secured the removal from their posts of manypeople in any w r alk of life in which they could have any influence on the public. As chairman of the investigations subcommittee, McCarthy was a symbol of witch-hunting frenzy. He kept the spotlight for four tubulent years with investigations that ranged from alleged pro-communist books in

United States libraries overseas to the fate of Americans held prisoner by the Chinese Communists. “He usurped executive and judicial authority whenever the fancy struck him,” says his unsympathetic biographer, Richard Rovere. “It struck him often. “McCarthyism rampant

managed for a time to make politics in America seem almost entirely a matter of idiotic chatter about ‘loyalty risk’ and ‘security risks’,” Rovere adds. The investigations subcommittee had pow’er to investigate the functioning of every part of the executive branch, and McCarthy built up a secret network of Government servants and members of the armed services, who reported direct to him. These included people in the State Department and the F. 8.1. A man of powerful pers o n a 1 i t y , McCarthy’s stance in public was that of the common man who talk was laced with obscenity, and . he took delight in belching and was “for America.” His burping in public. He tended to exaggerate his weakness for boozing, wenching and gambling. When an attractive woman appeared as- a witness. McCarthy, leering, would instruct counsel to “get her telephone number for me.” “For all the black arts that he practised, his natural endowments and his

cultivated skills were of the very highest order.” Richard Rovere writes. "His tongue was loose and always wagging; he would say anything that came into his head and worry later, if at all, about defending what he had said.”

Joseph and Stewart Alsop called McCarthy “the only major politician in the country who can be labelled ‘liar’- without fear of libel.”

The Republicans under President Eisenhower won the 1952 election, but 1953 saw a widening breach between McCarthy and the Eisenhower administration. He accused them, too, of “appeasement, retreat and surrender before communism.”

McCarthy used pressure and threats to secure a commission for a private who had formerly served on his staff, and this scandal was not helped by McCarthy’s abusive treatment of General Ralph Zwicker at hearings which involved the Army. Many people, including the President’s brother, Arthur Eisenhower, and Eleanor Roosevelt, likened Senator McCarthy to Hit--1 e r . “Like Hitler, McCarthy was a screamer, a. political thug, a master .of the . mob, an . exploiter of popular, fears,” his biographer says. In March, 1954, when charges between Senator McCarthy and the Army were going on in public, the Senate decided that they should be investigated. Next month began 36 days of televised hearings of alleged communism in the Army, which did nothing to improve McCarthy’s image. His ignominious political end came about in November, 1954, when the Senate voted to censure him for conduct that “tended to bring the Senate into dishonour and disrepute.” He died less l than three years later .after contracting, hepatitis, ’ “His career,” noted ‘The Times’ “indicates ' the fluence which can be ob=> tained in the life of a democratic country by the loud and persistent repitition of the big lie.” I

McCarthyism, according to the Dictionary of Modern Thought, is “the practice of accusing individuals, with little or no evidence, of membership of a group already rejected by society, thereby creating prejudice against the accused by the association of himself, his family, and his friends icith such an ostracised group, and seeking to deny employment, civil rights, etc., to the individual on prejudicial grounds.”