Bachelor of Arts

McCarthyism the phenomenon was an extreme anti-communist hysteria that swept the United States in the 1950s. It was apparently staged and manipulated and thus named after one Wisconsin Senator, Joseph R McCarthy who believed and interpretated post war global developments such as the Soviet sweep into the Baltics, the fall of China to the communist and the outbreak of the Korean War as indicators of a lax and flaccid Truman administration and American society which has grown ominously tolerant of communism and undermined the United States at both domestic and international fronts. Therefore, he and his aides launched a scathing witch-hunt on the innocent and guilty alike in America in an attempt to purge the communist sympathizers. This came to be the McCarthyism era in American history.

The term McCarthyism itself has gained a relatively new meaning and place in American vernacular as a phenomenon of oppression, harassment and persecution. However it is the system of the American polity and military that had spawned the man and more so the phenomenon. The system of government (the Presidency, federal agencies and the military) circumvents and denies constitutional rights and even justice in the name of national security interests and more so for the expedience of the said government bodies.

Hence, this paper's fresh look at McCarthyism in relation to the American political military apparatus under Dwight D Eisenhower and its preponderant role, manner and extent in which it contributed to not only the emergence and end of the senator but more significantly, the perpetuation of the phenomenon even after the McCarthy's disgraceful fall well into the 21St century.