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30 of 37 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Authoritative Review Of Evidence Concerning McCarthyism!, July 17, 2003
Given the recent spate of controversial conservative tomes claiming Joe McCarthy had been widely vilified and misunderstood, the act of finding this terrific book by former Harvard professor Ellen Schrecker at the Toadstool Bookstore in nearby Peterborough was an incredible coincidence. I was looking for an authoritative source of objective and dispassionate history of the McCarthy era that would comprehensively review the evidence and aid me in determining the relative merit of the conservative claims that Tail Gunner Joe had been right about the "commie menace" all along. I was fortunate indeed, for Professor Schrecker's carefully researched and scrupulously documented work offers the interested reader with an absorbing plethora of substantiated and objective information regarding what has to be considered one of the most inflammatory and controversial periods in 20th century American history. Schrecker takes great pains at fairly and carefully detailing the specifics of the events transpiring in the rise of McCarthyism and its effects in the society, which it literally turned upside down. And while the author meticulously avoids becoming an apologist for the American Communist Party, carefully describing the rather sordid and troubling aspects of their political activities, she also shows how unfairly they were treated at the hands of McCarthy and the congregated conservative and liberal cabal that rose in the midst of the great Red Scare. Details regarding the degree to which individual communists were systematically persecuted are carefully documented and are far from representing mere anecdotal reports. Moreover, she gives the reader a consummate history of the rise of McCarthyism, finding its origins in the communist movement, as it was struggling toward its greatest success amidst the misery and despair of the 1930s Depression. She also gives us some key insights into the inner mechanics of how the House Committee on Un-American Activities, also referred to as HUAC, laid the groundwork for the later hearings in the Senate by Joe McCarthy. She draws a convincing and quite detailed road map as to how the activities by parties to the search for communists within the government, including such desperate and disconnected entities as J. Edgar Hoover and the FBI, members of HUAC, and Joe McCarthy and his staff, independently used extra-legal means to pursue and harass innocent ordinary people who they found inconveniently laying in the path of their investigations. Also extensively examined and criticized is the media, especially the print form by way of newspapers and magazines, so hungry for a never-ending news story that they consistently covered it on page one, providing the "legs" to the continuing story about the hunt for communists, and provided HUAC, McCarthy, and others with the public support they needed to persevere in their efforts. Yet it was in the damage that McCarthyism did both to innocent victims like union activists and other liberal politicians that Schrecker provides the most damning evidence for. Conservatives cynically employed the Taft-Hartley Act and other suffocating political methods both to stifle opposition, on the one hand, and to effectively disarm liberal activism in general. According to Professor Schrecker, this had a devastating effect on the civil rights movement, which Hoover characterized as communist-inspired. Indeed, he continued to pursue activists like martin Luther King for decades, until King's death finally put a close to the surveillance. Perhaps the most chilling conclusions one derives from the book are her observations regarding how damaging the McCarthy era was in terms of its chilling effect in inhibiting free and open debate by ordinary citizens, and in the way it so aptly demonstrated the remarkable ease with which the machinery of government can subvert and repress its citizens through the employment of political propaganda and cynical emotional manipulation. This is a wonderfully written book, and one that is quite thought provoking. Enjoy!
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