McCarthyism – No Longer a Dirty Word
"McCarthyism" might no longer be a dirty word.
word that has been used in the pejorative sense ever since U.S.
Senator Joe McCarthy waged his "witch-hunt" on suspected Communist
sympathizers and spies in the 1950s. It took on a negative
connotation because McCarthy was seen as a red-baiter who engaged in
fear-mongering and making baseless accusations.
turns out, however, that McCarthy did not engage in any "witch-hunt"
at all. The evidence now demonstrates that the communist threat was
actually far greater than even McCarthy himself anticipated.
Moreover, recent disclosures reveal that most of McCarthy’s
accusations were far from "baseless" – they were dead-on.
McCarthy has been rehabilitated.
wonder what my former left-wing colleagues in academia have to say.
I’ll never forget how they reveled in demonizing McCarthyism. They
always referred to it as if it was this great dark force – and as if
they had been its primary victims. Their outrage over their supposed
victimization always implied that McCarthyism was somehow just
lurking around the corner. Everyone was supposed to fill up with
total dread. Thank goodness, therefore, that the world had the
left-wing academics to fight the oppressive right-wing oligarchy.
Without them, McCarthyism would surely return.
always couldn’t help wondering whether my left-wing colleagues were
suffering from a serious form of brain damage – or whether they were
schizoid or delusional. The discrepancy between the energy they put
into denouncing, and fearing, McCarthyism and what McCarthyism
actually entailed, was pretty profound. In the context of the
communist witch-hunts that liquidated millions of people in the 20th
century, what was McCarthyism? But my colleagues never stopped
prostituting their favourite line: "Yes, there was Stalin, but hey,
we had McCarthy." Right.
McCarthy had never existed, my Marxist colleagues would have had to
Venona Project files have now made things a little uncomfortable for
the radical academics who built their professional careers on
agonizing over the dark ghost of McCarthyism.
Venona transcripts are thousands of Soviet intelligence messages
that were intercepted and decoded over four decades by the FBI and
the NSA (National Security Agency). Released over the past few
years, these files prove that there was a large-scale Communist
penetration of the U.S. government, and that Communist spies passed
on valuable information to the KGB.
deciphered Venona cables confirm that the American Communist Party
successfully established secret caucuses in government agencies
throughout the 1930’s and 1940’s. They prove that 349 Americans had
covert ties to Soviet intelligence – much as McCarthy had charged.
They also indicate that Alger Hiss, who was accused in 1949 of
spying for the Soviets, did leak material – even though he denied
his guilt. On top of this, the number 349 is clearly a low estimate,
because out of 25,000 intercepted telegrams, only 2,900 were
of the spies detected in Venona were investigated for espionage in
the early 1950s, and were brought before the House Un-American
Activities Committee. Although the U.S. government had accumulated
enough evidence through Venona to charge these spies, many of them
were never prosecuted, because the government could not expose its
success in cracking the Soviet codes. The names of the spies
therefore remained a secret until now. Thus, while McCarthy’s
critics attacked him for his "baseless" accusations, we now know
that the U.S. Senator was right in making most of them - but he was
hung out to dry.
McCarthy, therefore, had every legitimate reason to ask the
famous question: "Are you or have you ever been a member of the
Communist Party?" That’s because the American Communist Party was
doing severe damage to U.S. security interests, and it was financed
and run entirely by Moscow – something that McCarthy’s critics
denied for decades.
wonder: what do the left-wing academics have to say now? We don’t
know, because their silence about the Venona files is deafening. But
a serious question remains: if they so vehemently disapproved, and
were so scared, of McCarthyism, then what exactly were the
ingredients of their lives that led them to this disposition?
bottom line is that, if McCarthy had engaged in the same behaviour
against the Nazis, and their sympathizers, statues of him would be
prominent in many of our cities today. Because of political
correctness, however, there will be no statues of McCarthy in the
near future. But at least we now know that accusing someone of
"McCarthyism" is no longer necessarily a putdown.
might even be a compliment.
Jamie Glazov [send him
mail] is a columnist for Frontpage