Alger Hiss was a spy who worked in the state department.
Joseph McCarthy launched his career by bringing public attention to the infiltration of the state department by spies/double agents.
Why do we treat McCarthy as a paranoid and dismiss the whole thing as the red scare when there is clear historical evidence that his concerns were valid?
What has been done about the issue since and is our state department still compromised?
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>Why do we treat McCarthy as a paranoid and dismiss the whole thing as the red scare when there is clear historical evidence that his concerns were valid?
Are you familiar with the fairy tale "the boy who cried wolf"?
McCarthy did to the fight against communism what BLM has done to race relations.
Yes, very familiar. I'm not sure how that applies.
Do you deny Alger Hiss was a communist who had infiltrated the state department?
>Go around accusing other people without evidence
>People eventually get tired of your bullshit
That's kind of helpful.
Let's run with that analogy. Let's assume that police violence against blacks is a huge problem. It's a problem that you think would be better addressed without all the public attention?
I guess I wonder what benefit is there is misleading the public into thinking that our government and other institutions haven't been compromised to a large extent?
The more research I do, the more it seems like his concerns have largely been proven true.
>Yes, very familiar. I'm not sure how that applies.
In both instances you had a person making alarming but ultimatley false claims about a serious problem until it desensitized people to the real threat.
McCarthy's secret list of 205 communists in the State Department (which was never revealed) was like the phantom wolf attack.
Yes wolves would attack the sheep and the Communists were trying to infiltrate the state department but *No* there was not an immediate wolf attack or 205 communists in the state department.
>Do you deny Alger Hiss was a communist who had infiltrated the state department?
No he was a man uncovered by a communist defector who outed Hiss two whole years before Macathy came onto the scene.
Can you tell me how many Spies in the State Department were discovered by Macarthy?
>uses a fairytale as the backbone of his argument
Nah its more asking the OP to consider alarmism, the fairytale part is a way of introducing a politically neutral and familiar example of it.
Alarmism is making things appear more significant than they actually are. That's not what the fairytale is about.
probably because he didn't do shit about any actual spies.
But it doesn't seem to be a fairytale or much of an exaggeration.
/thread
>That's not what the fairytale is about.
But is close enough to be helpful (which is why the phrase is used to describe false alarms rather than just people who lie) - hence why I went on to explain in more detail in my next post instead of just leaving it at that.
The fairytale is about a kid who wasn't taken seriously because he lied too many times.
And then he got eaten by the wolf, because the wolf truly was a threat and he gave it a leg to stand on.
Which is why I said
>But is close enough to be helpful......hence why I went on to explain in more detail in my next post instead of just leaving it at that.
Perhaps looking at will help clarify the matter for you.
Just to be crystal clear for the third time - I am not saying that its a 1:1 allegory of Macarthyism.
youtube.com
He seems like an American Cassandra figure to me. Even in this thread there seems to be a lot of hostility towards him. History though has vindicated him and proven his naysayers to be fools.
Maybe you can provide me with sources that might help dislodge my misconceptions?
>Maybe you can provide me with sources that might help dislodge my misconceptions?
How many of the 205 communists in the state department did he identify or locate?
* The 205 he claimed to have on his list in 1950
Perhaps he wasn't given the resources and cooperation needed to be successful?
If he did nothing but make others aware of the problem, then that would seem like a net positive no?
Or maybe you're saying that because of him, the 205 (or more?) were able to evade detection? I'm willing to entertain that line of thinking but what evidence do you have to suggest that's the case?
>Perhaps he wasn't given the resources and cooperation needed to be successful
After his speech they made a special senate committee to investigate it with him in it and he was given control of a permanent subcommittee.
Likewise initially he huge support and was even a personal friend of the Kennedy family.
Not only that but he never actually revealed his list to the State Department or FBI or any other investigatory body.
>If he did nothing but make others aware of the problem, then that would seem like a net positive no?
It didn't though see pic related, it made it look like witch hunt and anti communists as paranoid bullies.
>Or maybe you're saying that because of him, the 205 (or more?) were able to evade detection? I'm willing to entertain that line of thinking but what evidence do you have to suggest that's the case?
No, Im saying he claimed to have a list of 205 name of members of the communist party of the USA who were currently working the State Department.
Here are his own words
"“I have here in my hand a list of 205 [State Department employees] that were known to the Secretary of State as being members of the Communist Party and who nevertheless are still working and shaping the policy of the State Department.”"
>Alarmism is making things appear more significant than they actually are.
But thats what he did though. He treated all "communists" as spies and trumpeted a witch-hunt that resulted in the blacklisting of hundreds of innocent people.
McCarthy was fed information by J Edgar Hoover. He stopped receiving this information - obtained without warrants from the American Communist Party in the 30's and 40's - when he proved to be an untrustworthy asset to the Bureau. He was a stooge.
I see your point. It did allow the enemy to paint a narrative where the good guys seemed like "paranoid bullies". As the book I cited shows, the enemy was embedded in the mainstream media, so controlling public opinion around McCarthy, given our lack of state controlled media, was a simple matter. At least until the truth came out. But now that it's out, why are seemingly educated people still clinging to their useful idiocy? He was right wasn't he?
>"I have here in my hand a list of 205 [State Department employees] that were known to the Secretary of State as being "
I'm not sure what you're suggesting. Do you think he should have outed the people on his list and let them fend for themselves in the court of public opinion?
Perhaps it was a ploy to smoke them out or make them halt their activities for fear of being detected?
In any case, I feel like educated people should better understand that he was generally right and his failure was largely, as you have it, one of personal relations/optics and perhaps, if you assume that he really did think he could
>I have a list of OP's on Veeky Forums who are faggots
>But now that it's out, why are seemingly educated people still clinging to their useful idiocy? He was right wasn't he?
Take a look at the Verona Papers which is where the US government cracked Soviet Codes and intercepted their espionage communications. It revealed that the extent of the espionage efforts and take a look at how many people on that list were discovered by McCarthy.
>Do you think he should have outed the people on his list and let them fend for themselves in the court of public opinion?
No he should have either revealed it during or two either of the special subcommittees designed to literally investigate this or passed it on to the FBI. There was no better opportunity to do so as effectively but he did not.
>Perhaps it was a ploy to smoke them out or make them halt their activities for fear of being detected?
Or you know he did not have any such list or knowledge of communist party members but was upset with communism in general and didnt want to admit he made it up.
>In any case...
No, the educated response is that the USSR and progressive elements in the US had a serious and pervasive influence in cultural institutions, however that Mccarthy was a liar and a sensationalist.
Now lets take a step back had Maccarthy just said Hollywood and Academia have Communists and Communist sympathizers in them you would be 100% correct and justified in making the claim that he was right but with bad optics.
However he did not he literally claimed that there were members of the communist party in the US State Department a key public institutions when there were none.
He built the entire red scare and his influence on the idea that communists were infesting key government bodies and that he knew who they were but government was doing nothing about it - which is demonstrated to be false.
Dont conflate the truth of subversion with Maccarthy's lies.
>members of the communist party in the US State Department a key public institutions when there were none.
This is where I disagree about the facts. I think there were. Alger Hiss was one and there are others that have since been uncovered. It's very likely that even now we don't know about a lot of them.
But let's assume he was given a list of possible communists based on their involvement with communist activities. He knows that some of those people may actually be spies and subversives, that many spies and subversives are not on that list because they're smart enough to conceal their politics, and that many of the people on the list are normal state department workers who just happened to have had an interest in leftist politics and attended some rallies.
It seems like the most ethical way to proceed, maybe the only ethical way to proceed, is to call public attention to the issue, have very public trials to look into some of these people and see if anything shakes out. It would a) keep other normal citizens from going to communist rallies and getting radicalized, b) make the public aware of a real but dramatically underestimated threat (in no small part because the commies were embedded in the mainstream media at that point), and c) prevent secret trials and investigations of possibly innocent people.
But, I'm open to what you think would have been the right thing to do. Assume you're handed a list and told, hey we know of at least a few cases of people high up in the state department who are soviet spies, and there's all of these state department guys attending these rallies and possibly getting radicalized. What's the right thing to do? Just ignore that and pretend it's not a threat? Keep the whole thing private and out of view like Bush and Obama have with gitmo?
>Why do we treat McCarthy as a paranoid and dismiss the whole thing as the red scare when there is clear historical evidence that his concerns were valid?
There's little historical evidence that McCarthy's "205 members of the communist party working in the State Department" was anything more than his invention, or that he had ANY idea that there were spies in the US government.
McCarthy didn't actually give a shit. He was just using the wave of demagogy for his own glorification. Hence why he also consistently accused people of being homosexual or sexual deviants as part of his campaign. He took a legitimate concern and turned it into a fearmongering witch hunt.
There are (((those))) who continue to slander McArthy because their co-ethnics were Soviet spies.
Not at all user.