McCarthyism gone wild - Jack Lessenberry, Metro Times
McCarthyism gone wild
Joe McCarthy is outdone! Allen West tallies 78-81 Communist Party members in Congress!
By Jack Lessenberry
PUBLISHED: APRIL 18, 2012
Last week something happened so unbelievably vile it shocked even me. Allen West, a Florida congressman, told a town hall meeting: "I believe there is about 78 to 81 members of the Democrat Party [in Congress] who are members of the Communist Party."
Ungrammatical, but a smear nevertheless. Not even the demagogue Joe McCarthy ever went that far. Sixty years ago, McCarthy, a junior senator from Wisconsin, terrorized the nation by claiming the government was full of secret Communist agents. He hauled people up before his committee and interrogated them.
Innocent people's lives were destroyed. Men and women were ordered to give the committee names of any people they suspected of being Communists. If they refused, they were blacklisted, denied the right to work, hounded by federal agents. Some committed suicide or left the country. This went on for several years. The country was enveloped in a form of hysteria today known as the "Red Scare."
People were scared into paranoia. Some saw Stalin's spies everywhere. Ironically, McCarthy never uncovered a single Communist. He probably wouldn't have known one if he saw one. He was merely a drunken demagogue looking for a cause on which to rise to power and fame. Eventually, the courageous journalist Edward R. Murrow managed to do a TV show exposing his lies.
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http://metrotimes.com/columns/mccarthyism-gone-wild-1.1301290
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