Joseph McCarthy Was a Junkie
McCarthyism revolves around baseless accusations of subversion and treason, especially as it relates to communism and socialism. It is named after Senator Joseph McCarthy of Wisconsin, a seedy, unscrupulous, and unethical demagogue. In the early 1950s, he alleged that he had discovered a massive plot in which Soviet spies infiltrated the US government, universities, the film industry, and other vital sectors of the American economy. At first he claimed that the communist agents numbered in the dozens, a figure that gradually grew until it reached the hundreds. He said that he knew their identities, and that he had their names in lists that he waved about wherever he went.
In reality, McCarthy’s “lists” were bunk. They were random sheets of paper, sometimes blank ones, and the spies were figments of McCarthy’s imagination. He simply made it all up. However, because a lie travels halfway around the world while the truth is still tying its shoelaces, it worked. He whipped up and rode a wave of anticommunist hysteria to national prominence, before he was finally censured by the US Senate and his career cratered. Later, it turned out that the seedy Senator had been a drug addict. Worse, McCarthy’s drugs were supplied by the DEA’s predecessor.
