On episode nine of American
History Too! we turn our attention to a period in American history that has
become indelibly linked to one man: the Second Red Scare and Senator Joseph
McCarthy. But is McCarthy the be all and end all of anti-communism? What
influence did he really have? And were
there other figures in the United States who played more prominent and
important roles in creating what the historian David Caute called ‘the great
fear’? Is ‘Hooverism’ – or even ‘Nixonism’
– a better name to understand this period?
We take you through a tour of the interesting, and often distasteful,
figures that the Second Red Scare brought to prominence. We also discuss the parallel rise of the so-called ‘Lavender Scare’ which saw gay
Americans targeted – on some occasions more aggressively – than suspected
communists.
Stay tuned until the very end when you’ll be treated to a
Cold War “anthem” from Carson Robison!
We will back in two weeks to discuss Lyndon Johnson and the
Great Society.
Cheers,
Mark and Malcolm
Reading
-
Richard Hofstadter, The Paranoid Style in American Politics (first published 1964)
-
Kyle A. Cuordileone, ‘"Politics in an Age
of Anxiety": Cold War Political Culture and the Crisis in American
Masculinity, 1949-1960,’ Journal of American History, 87:2 (Sep., 2000),
515-545
-
Jennifer Delton, “Rethinking Post-World War II
Anticommunism,” The Journal of the Historical Society (March, 2010),
1-41
-
David K. Johnson, The Lavender Scare: The
Cold War Persecution of Gays and Lesbians in the Federal Government (Chicago,
IL: University of Chicago Press, 2004)-
-
Kathryn Olmsted, Real Enemies: Conspiracy
Theories and American Democracy, World War 1 to 9/11 (Oxford: Oxford
University Press, 2009)
-
Nelson W. Polsby, “Towards an Explanation of
McCarthyism,” Political Studies 8 (1960), 250-271-
-
Ellen Schrecker, “McCarthyism: Political
Repression and the Fear of Communism,” Social Research 71.
(2004),1041-1086.
-
Gregg Marshall, Tricky Dick and the Pink
Lady: Richard Nixon vs. Helen Gahagan Douglas--Sexual Politics and the Red
Scare, 1950 (New York: Random House, 1998) Chp.1 -
tricky.html">http://www.nytimes.com/books/first/m/mitchell-
tricky.html
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