History

2. During the New Deal and World War II eras, which featured growing tolerance of socialistic economic theory and then overt alliance with the Soviet Union, many Americans came to assume that communism might not be the existential threat it had been regarded as in previous decades. With the breakdown in U.S.-Soviet relations and the start of the Cold War, Americans could be forgiven for being confused as to the new political realities. As the Second Red Scare began in the late 1940s, this confusion intensified. In 1954, a television commentator said of Senator Joseph R. McCarthy that “his primary achievement has been in confusing the public mind as between internal and external threats of communism.” Keeping in mind the context of the textbook and McCarthy’s “Enemies from Within” speech, how did McCarthy achieve—or play on the sociopolitical conditions of the late 1940s and early 1950s—the state of confusion that the commentator noted in 1954? Why do you think McCarthy’s message was so appealing to the American public?