Donald Trump’s return to the White House has plunged Washington into upheaval and anxiety, bringing loyalty tests and other efforts to purge government employees. This climate of fear recalls the anticommunist paranoia of the 1950s and its crucial turning point exactly 75 years ago—when a famous speech, based on a lie, catapulted a little-known politician to prominence and added a new word to the American lexicon: McCarthyism.
With that speech, Wisconsin Senator Joseph McCarthy seized the nation’s attention and would hold it for four years. Yet his words probably would have faded into obscurity if reporters hadn’t amplified and reinforced them — despite knowing they were false. The story of the speech offers a dire warning for the present, because it demonstrates how elevating the false claims of elected officials can distort American politics to catastrophic effect.
No one will ever know exactly what McCarthy said in Wheeling, W.Va., on Feb. 9, 1950. No recording of his speech survives, and the exact words he used became the subject of investigation and controversy. But news reports and McCarthy’s prepared text suggest that he painted a dark picture of the Cold War.
The senator asserted that five years after winning World War II, the U.S. was losing around the globe, locked in a struggle with communism that seemed destined to end in nuclear conflict. The blame for this terrifying scenario, McCarthy declared, rested with traitorous federal employees, who had sold their country out and had to be purged from its service. Near the end of his remarks, the senator made a more specific claim about the enemy within.
“I have here in my hand a list of 205…,” McCarthy (probably) said, “a list of names that were made known to the Secretary of State as being members of the Communist Party and are still working and shaping policy in the State Department….”
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