What impact did Joseph McCarthy have on domestic politics in the USA?

Essay by KeirHigh School, 11th gradeA, October 2005

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Joseph Raymond McCarthy was a Republican senator from Wisconsin. He achieved national prominence and power through his sensational and unsubstantiated accusations against high positioned U.S government officials. His actions had a phenomenal impact on domestic politics in the United States during this time.

Since the beginning of the Cold War, there has been restlessness in the United States. Distaste for communism exploded in the USA after the end of the Second World War.

With the USSR creating an atomic bomb, the fall of China in September of 1949 and the Korean War, Americans were beginning can give. While I cannot take the time to name all the men in the State Department to believe they were losing the Cold War. People began to panic and their views towards communism changed drastically. During this time, the US struggled against the Soviet Union. As the US's hostility towards the USSR increased, members of the communist party were viewed as increasingly dangerous enemies.

Anti-communism soon became the ideological center of American Politics. The Cold War turned domestic communism from a matter of political opinion to national security.

His success was party contributed to the large number of spies and espionage within

the government. In 1945, Igor Gouzenko was caught carrying documents detailing a Communist spy ring working in parts of Canada and the United States. The issue of spies became a bigger problem. Republicans accused Democrats of being "soft" on communists and even accused them of harboring spies. Truman reacted to this criticism by investigating all government employees. Countless people were fired because of their personal lives or past associations with communists. Everyone, from members of Hollywood to businessmen was attacked. The fight against communism became a witch-hunt. Neighbors turned on neighbors. The American public was still on a frenzy searching for the...