McCarthyism: The long shadow of a false narrative

Sen. Joseph McCarthy's anti-communist crusade lasted only four short years. Seven years after the Wheeling speech he was dead. The caricature of the man embedded in the historical narrative has persisted for decades. (Every one knows McCarthy is bad even if they do not know what he actually did.

Long after his fall, McCarthy and his supporters haunted the nightmares of the leading public intellectuals in the U.S. His brief ascendency upended their once rosy view of democracy.

In 1949, Arthur Schlesinger confidently announced that “we are changing from a market society to an administrative society.” For twenty years urban progressivism was in the driver's seat. FDR had won four elections while he expanded the federal government and staffed his alphabet agencies with intellectuals and the graduates of the best universities. Then unsuitable men like McCarthy and Nixon had garnered public support by attacking the competence, honesty, and loyalty of these same progressive avatars.

This demanded an explanation.

One explanation had the now obvious advantage of being true:

There is no mystery about Joe McCarthy. He just doesn't like Communists. What is so peculiar about this point of view that it calls for an explanation.
John T. Flynn

For there is one thing that the American people know about Senator McCarthy: he, like them, is unequivocally anti-Communist. About the spokesmen for American liberalism, they feel they know no such thing. And with some justification.
Irving Kristol

For young, ambitious intellectuals in the 1950s, this viewpoint was a nonstarter. It was an article of faith that the internal communist threat was nonexistent and that McCarthy was a liar. The key question, then, was why did millions of Americans believe his absurd lies?

One influential group of scholars and pundits thought they found the answer in psychology and sociology.

In The New American Right (1955) seven contributors set out to explain the McCarthy phenomenon and the nature of post- New Deal conservatism. It is a classic example of the Left diagnosing conservatives instead of debating them. (Here again we see ostensible liberals adopting the methods of LeninThink.

The editor, future neocon Daniel Bell, found McCarthy puzzling and in need of explanation because he had done the unthinkable: he attacked “intellecuals, Harvard, Anglophiles, internationalists, and the Army”. Bell could only conclude that the movement was not a rational reaction to real issues:
“The theme of conspiracy haunts the mind of the new rightists.”

These “new conservatives” fell victim to conspiracy theories because they were uneducated, close-minded, losing ground economically, or anxious about their social status.

The net message was clear. The new, post-McCarthy right was not a legitimate political movement. It was symptomatic of social and psychological pathologies. There was no reason to engage its arguments or care about its issue. Better to ignore and marginalize them.

As I said, classic Lenintink:

Don't argue with them, Make them stink in the nose of the world. Make people curse and abominate them, Make them shudder with horror.
Willi Munzenberg

This line of thinking also underlies much of Richard Hofstadter's work – especially Anti-intellectualism in American Life and The Paranoid Style in American Politics. Hofstadter took to calling this new right wing “pseudo-conservative” – a term he borrowed from Marxist thinker Theodor Adorno of the Frankfurt School.

James Pierson:

According to liberal writers like Richard Hofstadter and, Daniel Bell, and others, the far right were disconnected from reality, its followers semi-delusional in their belief that communism represented a domestic threat to the United States.

In short, a multi-decade academic industry took root that was based on an egregious fallacy. “Commie subversion” was not a paranoid delusion; it was a central feature of Soviet statecraft and a prime function of the CPUSA. Once again, McCarthy was directionally correct while his critics were wildly wrong.

It is also worth noting that while Bell, Hofstadter, et. al. were sorely vexed by rightwing conspiracy theories, they ignored the popular leftwing conspiracy theories such as those which posited grovernmental frame-ups of Alger Hiss, Judith Coplon, and the Rosenbergs.

McCarthyism: The competence canard (2)

The initial case against Sen. Joseph McCarthy declared that he was engaged in a veritable witchhunt-- a demagogic campaign against an imaginery problem. He confused liberals with Communists and progressive idealists with Stalinist agents. He conjured up fanciful networks of conspirators out of thin air to frighten ignorant and parochial voters.

When the VENONA files and Soviet archives came to light, this leftwing dogma was shattered. It turned out that the New Deal was penetrated from top to bottom by conspiratorial networks working for the benefit and at the direction of Stalin's spy organs.

It was (and is) an article of faith among the Left that McCarthy was, is, and must ever be “unredeemable”. So the revelations created a big problem.

What to do? What to do?

The “solution” united far Left academics, New Republic liberals, and neocons like Ron Radosh. The new narrative seemed to address the most troubliing facts while still condemning McCarthy: There had been spies in the 1930s and during WWII, BUT Harry Truman and J. Edgar Hoover had cleared them all out by 1950. So McCarthy was still whipping up public hysteria over a nonexistent problem.

While it is true that Truman instituted procedures to remove security risks he was hardly a determined redhunter. He took action only after his party suffered a landslide defeat in the 1946 elections and lost both the House and Senate.

To critics, the Truman security program looked like a political fig leaf rather than a dedicated effort to identify and root out the “Red webs” which stretched throughout the whole of the federal government.

That is what the “never caught a spy” canard attempts to hide. McCarthy and other critics were not hunting spies: they were warning that our spy hunting bureaucracy was failing to carry out its mission.

On this question McCarthy and his allies were right. His critics were wrong then and are wrong today.

Truman himself never owned up to the unprecedented scope of the Soviet apparatus that had penetrated FDR's alphabet agencies. At every turn he was prone to minimize the evidence when it was presented to him, to dismiss credible charges as red herrings, and to attack whistle blowers. For fifty years after the Katyn massacre only one government organization published the truth about the Soviets's guilt: The Madden committe in the House of Representatives. Truman opposed this inquiry and his State Department lobbied against its formation.

Truman wanted to abolish the House Committee on Unamerican Activities-- a committee which actually did “catch a real spy”. It also identified Russian assets who went on to service the atomic spies and the Britain's Cambridge Ring. Neither Truman nor Hoover cared to follow up.

The Truman administration also had an odd penchant for defending Soviet agents when thay came under public scrutiny. Alger Hiss, Harry Dexter White, Lauchlin Currie, and Laurence Duggan wee all defended by Truman or members of his cabinet.

This is hard to reconcile with the modern image of Truman as a more effective spy hunter than McCarthy.

The Truman security program was more political theater than anything else. HST's closest political aide admitted as much to Carl Bernstein decades later.

"There was no substantive problem. It was a political problem. We did not believe there was a real problem. A problem was being manufactured. There was a certain element of hysteria."
Clark Clifford

As was the case with the Tydings Committee, Truman and his allies were vexed by the political embarrassment the communists presented to his party; the risk they presented to the country was of lesser concern.

As a consequence the Truman security program was half-hearted and insincere. Its primary purposes was to show that the executive branch was doing something about the problem of Stalinist infiltration of the executive branch without embarrassing the Democrats or the administrative state.

McCarthy was slipshod in his methods and sometimes exaggerated the danger. The Truman administration was consciously dishonest in addressing the problem. Yet, the anti-McCarthy narrative is so locked in place that even some conservatives and most neocons praise Truman in order to condemn McCarthy.

McCarthy must remain unredeemable no matter what new revelations come from the archives.

Rejoice! He is risen!

Now upon the first day of the week, very early in the morning, they came unto the sepulchre, bringing the spices which they had prepared, and certain others with them.

And they found the stone rolled away from the sepulchre.

And they entered in, and found not the body of the Lord Jesus.

And it came to pass, as they were much perplexed thereabout, behold, two men stood by them in shining garments:

And as they were afraid, and bowed down their faces to the earth, they said unto them, Why seek ye the living among the dead?

He is not here, but is risen: remember how he spake unto you when he was yet in Galilee,

Saying, The Son of man must be delivered into the hands of sinful men, and be crucified, and the third day rise again.

And they remembered his words,

And returned from the sepulchre, and told all these things unto the eleven, and to all the rest.

It was Mary Magdalene, and Joanna, and Mary the mother of James, and other women that were with them, which told these things unto the apostles.

And their words seemed to them as idle tales, and they believed them not.

Then arose Peter, and ran unto the sepulchre; and stooping down, he beheld the linen clothes laid by themselves, and departed, wondering in himself at that which was come to pass.

Luke 24: 1-12

McCarthyism: The competence canard

McCarthy's most effective enemies went to great pains to paint themselves as committed anti-communists. They claimed that McCarthy was an unserious, perhaps dishonest, crusader, while they were serious, competent opponents of Stalin and his machinations.

In his famous CBS News program “See It Now” Edward R. Murrow put it this way:

When the record is finally written, as it will be one day, it will answer the question, Who has helped the Communist cause and who has served his country better, Senator McCarthy or I? I would like to be remembered by the answer to that question.

Murrow and Co. won that battle. The were the smart anti-communists and could be trusted while McCarthy was a menace and a useful idiot for Stalin.

But was he right? Were he and his allies more competent and dedicated to the American cause than the senator? Were they really more effective adversaries of the communists?

The evidence suggests that they were not. The critics, like almost all later historians obfuscated about the issue at hand and asked us to judge McCarthy by the wrong standard (“he never found a spy”). If the senator often was too quick to lump fellow travelers with actual spies, his most famous opponents were stubbornly blind to the evidence against actual spies and potential mSoviet assets.

II

We can easily dismiss McCarthy's most persistent critic – Drew Pearson. His anti-communist stance was purely for show. Any man who employes two Soviet assets as reporters is hardly an astute investigator of Soviet subversion.

Pearson was also consistently wrong about the public spy cases. He defended Harry Dexter White, Lauchlin Currie, and Laurence Duggan when they were named by ex-operatives like Elizabeth Bently and Whittaker Chambers as Soviet agents.

The VENONA files confirm the guilt of all three.

Murrows record is not much better. He denounced the accusers of Laurence Duggan – a friend and former colleague – "A dead man's character is being destroyed." At CBS he hired Stephen E. Fleischman to work on the award-winning "CBS Reports". Fleischman was a member of CPUSA throughout the 1950s.

Murrow promoted the Democrat canard that Annie Lee Moss was a victim of mistaken identity. She wasn't: she was a CPUSA member which made her a risky emplyee for the Army's code office. If Murrow had admitted that then he would have had to concede that McCarthy had a point in questioning the existing security procedures.

Murrow's campaign was not just against McCarthy. He was also an intense critic of most internal security procedures in the federal bureasucracy. Take the case of Milo Radulovich. As Murrow framed the issue, the Army's security program was so irrational that they were punishing Radulovich because his sister and immigrant father subscribed to some publications from their home country of Ukraine, According to Murrow this was anti-communist paranoia in which unfounded suspicions merged with guilt by association to deny a man his dream of becoming a meteorologist.

Years later, Radulovich's brother-in-law admitted that he was a member of the CPUSA as was his wife (Radulovich's sister.) They remained loyal party members even after Khrushchev's speech and the brutal occupation of Eastern Europe.

The case of Milo Radulovich, then, is much more complex than Murrow and other enemies of McCarthy led us to believe.

Elmer Davis was anti-McCarthy long before Murrow took up his cudgels. During WWII he headed up the Office of War Information. Based on VENONA decrypts, the OWI may rank as the #1 agency for spies per capita. Under Davis the OWI worked to suppress the truth about the Katyn massacre and the Soviet's plan to Stalinize Poland. After the war he defended Alger Hiss and denounced witnesses like Whittaker Chambers as “fake patriots” and “professional anti-communists.”

At a minimum Davies's counterintelligence skills are somewhat suspect. Moreover, when he attacked McCarthy and other congressional investigators, he was, in essence, working to suppress the truth about his own failings at OWI.

Histories of this era never acknowledge this last point. Like the Tydings committee, the motivations of McCarthy's critics are always treated as pure.

Coaching and Cowpens

At the beginning of the American Revolution, the Continental armies lost more battles than they won.

No surprise. The British army was one of the best in the world. Washington's army was in the process of creation. On the day of battle colonial militia often made up a large portion of his forces. These men frequently broke ranks and fled when faced with British bayonets.

Nonetheless, colonial officers still treated these poorly trained and equipped troops as if they were well-drilled professionals. Then, when their line broke and the battle was lost, they filled their reports and letters with complaints about the militia and their cowardice and refusal to stand and fight.

The Revolution was won when Americans found generals who were willing to adjust their tactics and strategy instead of insisting that their soldiers carry out conventional orders that were beyond their training and ability.

II

Daniel Morgan was such a leader. At Saratoga he understood that his company of Virginia riflemen could have a decisive role. The key was to take advantage of their long range accuracy to disrupt and destroy British command and control. At Bemis Heights and Freeman's Farm his tactics denied Gen. John Burgoyne the decisive victory he needed to save his army.

In the Southern Campaign he first wore down British forces by avoiding battle. (His commander, Nathaniel Greene, understood as Mao did, “that there is in guerrilla warfare no such thing as a decisive battle.”

At Cowpens (17 January 1781) Morgan chose to stand and fight against the pursuing forces led by Banastre Tarleton. The ground was favorable (with the Broad river at their backs, retreat was not an option for the militia) and British troops were tired and frustrated after chasing Morgan across South Carolina.

What sets Morgan's battle plan apart is his handling of the militia which made up half or more of his army. He did not include them in his main battle line nor did he expect them to stand up to a British bayonet charge. Instead, he placed them forward of his regulars and asked them to fire two volleys. Then, they would withdraw behind his regulars.

Historian Robert Wright notes that part of Morgan's tactical genius was that he did not “ask a man to do more than he was physically capable of doing." He did not pretend that militia could stand up to the experienced troops at close quarters. At the same time he did not ignore what capabilities they did possess nor did he treat them with contempt.

The other key to the victory was that Morgan made sure that his Continentals understood that the militia's withdrawal was planned rather than evidence of an impending rout. He went from campfire to campfire the night before the battle – encouraging the men and explaining his plans.

Morgan's leadership and insight won a signal victory. In less than an hour he had routed Tarleton (over 80% casualties) and sent the remnants racing back to Cornwallis. He had shaped his tactics to fit the forces he had at hand in a rare feat of flexibility combined with insight.

It is remarkable that it was the poorly educated backwoodsman, not the better educated generals who had the insight and intelligence to get the most out of the militia.

III

When it comes to football coaches, there are few men with that capacity and courage. Instead, the prevailing ethos is “losses are acceptable if they can be blamed on injuries or a weak roster or dumb players.

From Ron Jaworski, Games That Changed the Game:

With some teams, the difference between their first-string and back-up quarterback isn't that much, but if your number one guy is a superstar, its an entirely different story. One time, Jon Gruden and I were attending a Colts practice before one of our ESPN games, and we were standing next to their offensive coordinator, Tom Moore. Tom is 'old school' in every sense of the word. He's been in the NFL for over thirty years and has signaled in every play call of Peyton Manning's career. As we watched, we were surprised to see Manning taking virtually all the reps in the session. Jon asked Tom why he wasn't giving some snaps to Peyton's backups. Moore is a man of few words, but when he talks, those words carry weight. He looked us both in the eye, paused for a moment, then said in that gravelly voice of his, 'Fellas, if "18" goes down, we're fucked. And we don't practice fucked.'

Old school coaches like Don Shula built their teams for resilience when things went badly. Shula twice took teams to the Super Bowl when forced to play most of the season with his back-up quarterback. In his undefeated 1972 season, Earl Morrall, not Bob Griese, started a majority of Miami's 17 victories.

Owners and fans now accept the idea that without a healthy franchise QB a team is doomed to mediocrity or worse. No one remembers that Joe Gibbs won three Super Bowls with 3 different Qbs (two of them castoffs from other teams).

Bill Walsh created the West Coast Offense out of necessity when he coached in Cinncinnati. Lacking both a strong-armed QB and a powerful running game, he developed his offensive system which revolutionized the pro passing game.

Now coaches and coordinators are often given a pass of a year or more because “it takes time for players to learn a new system”. In a league with a salary cap, free agency, and short playing careers, why do journalists accept that a coach should insist that players adapt to his system instead of adapting the system to the players he has? To accept this excuse we have to admit that coaches are calling plays that they know their players are unlikely to execute.

McCarthyism: No sauce for the gander (part 2)

One McCarthy opponent deserves special consideration. Sen. Millward Tydings (D-MD) tried to put an end to McCarthy's career right at the beginning of his crusade. He chaired the committee which investigated the Wheeling speech and the veracity of Joe's charges (Subcommittee on the Investigation of Loyalty of State Department Employees ). Its report is still routinely cited as proof that McCarthy lied and had no basis for accusing the Truman administration of being soft on subversion.

Tydings was a segregationist Democrat who voted with the Southern bloc that obstructed civil rights legislation for decades. In defense of the fillibuster Tydings declared that “It was cloture that crucified Christ on the cross.” All this is rarely mentioned by those who portray his campaign against McCarthy as a battle for civil liberties.

The Tydings committee also set the template for many of the “McCarthy hearings”. The Senator was the one called to face accusations, not the one making them. Far from having unchallenged power, he was challenged at every turn.

Tydings is specifically interesting for his peronal connections to the pro-Stalin elements in the FDR administration.

Tydings married the daughter of Joseph E. Davies, who FDR appointed ambassador to Moscow. While there he vouched for the fairness of the purge trials during Stalin's Great Terror.

After he returned he wrote a memoir, Mission to Moscow that even Soviet propagandists thought overdid it in its praise of Stalin. He was part of the clique which tried to purge long-time Russia experts like Loy Henderson and George Kennan from the State Department because they were insufficiently pro-Stalin. He also sought to deny asylum to Soviets agents who defected to the US.

Davies and his wife (Marjorie Merriweather Post) became great collectors of Russian art. They were able to acquire plenty of first rate pieces thanks to their friends in the Kremlin who had looted Russia (and Russians) on behalf of the Revolution and the Party.

After the Wheeling speech Tydings saw the danger that the “soft on communism” charge represented to the Democratic party in the upcoming election. He wrote Truman to warn him:

I strongly recommend for your own welfare, for the welfare of the country and lastly for the Welfare of the Democratic party that the present Communist inquiry not be allowed to worsen, but that you take bold, forthright and courageous action which I presume to say will do as much as anything I can think of to give you and your administration and party a tremendous advantage in the coming elections.

As Klehr and Radosh noted:

Senator McCarthy cynically used the Amerasia affair even though he was indifferent to the facts of the case. But so too did Senator Tydings, who preferred to find convenient scapegoats rather than be embarrassed by the truth.

Tydings, as chairman of the committee tasked with investigating communist infiltration of the State Department, instead used the committee to attack and discredit McCarthy. Its report was nakedly partisan. Tydings himself had strong personal and political reasons to see that the anti-communist issue was dead and buried before the 1950 election.

Yet the Tydings committee report is still used as conclusive evidence that McCarthy never had evidence for his charges. Hence, he was just a drunken demagogue stoking populst paranoia.

Note the legerdemain at work to maintain the narrative. McCarthy's crusade must be viewed through the lense of his political opportunism, personal faults, and tactical missteps. The political motives, personal interests, and repellant beliefs of his opponents are carefully excluded from the analysis.