Senator McCarthy Was Right

According to KGB defectors, Soviet subversion of America has outlasted the Soviet Union itself

Senator Joseph McCarthy makes a point about the Communist infiltration of American institutions.

Most of us were taught that “The Red Scare” of the 1950s and ’60s was an evidence-free witch hunt for Soviet provocateurs led by Senator Joseph McCarthy and a far-right faction of the US government. According to the conventional narrative, the so-called Communists targeted and blacklisted by “McCarthyism” were simply students, labor organizers, screenwriters, and other regular folks who supported free speech and workers’ rights. Eventually (so the story goes), McCarthy’s lies and bullying resulted in widespread disgust and a rightful end to this sordid chapter of American history.

The truth isn’t quite so clear cut. Or, to borrow a Cold War pun about newspapers, one might say that it’s black and white but red all over.

McCarthy and HUAC

Joe McCarthy grew up on a Wisconsin farm, and worked his way through law school. In 1939, he became the youngest circuit judge in Wisconsin history - a position he vacated in 1942, when, at the age of 34, he joined the US Marines to fight in WWII. After the war ended, McCarthy ran for the US Senate, winning the 1946 election. While serving in Washington, he became increasingly concerned about Communist infiltration of the government, universities, and the film industry. This concern turned into a crusade that consumed McCarthy until his death in 1957.

Although schools don’t teach this, the American mainstream strongly supported McCarthy’s bare-knuckled attacks on domestic Communism. While he was vilified by Hollywood and the press, the general public felt as he did: that Soviet sympathizers were using schools and mass media to undermine fundamental American values, and that the extreme measures of McCarthyism were justified to counter this existential threat.

In response to these fears, Congress created the House Un-American Activities Committee. As a Senator, McCarthy had no direct involvement with House committees, but - like McCarthy - HUAC investigated universities, movie studios, and even the government itself, in a heavy-handed but ultimately fruitless attempt to root out the ringleaders behind what was perceived to be Marxist-Leninist infiltration.

Foreshadowing “cancel culture,” protestors demand an end to HUAC’s investigations into Communist subversion of American culture.

The Era of Defectors

Although Congressional anti-Communist investigations had fallen out of fashion years earlier, the 1980s brought renewed legitimacy for McCarthy and his fellow anti-Communists from an unexpected source: Soviet defectors.

Agents who had worked for the KGB - the USSR’s spy agency - had fled to the West with disturbing allegations. According to Yuri Bezmenov - the most outspoken of the Soviet defectors - only about 15% of the KGB’s budget was spent on “James Bond-style” espionage. The other 85% was devoted to ideological subversion: overt activities intended to weaken the USA by brainwashing the next generation with anti-American propaganda and Marxist-Leninist beliefs. In addition to schools and universities, key targets for “demoralization” included the entertainment industry, large corporations, and all levels of government.

In other words, according to people who had been working for the enemy, McCarthy and HUAC were right.

In the mid 1980s, Bezmenov stated that the process of demoralization was already complete in America. The students who were educated and ideologically subverted during the Cold War had grown up and risen to senior leadership positions throughout academia and society. Even during the height of the jingoistic Reagan era, they were espousing opinions openly aligned with Marxist-Leninist philosophy. This was no longer a process of Soviets influencing Americans: it was now one generation of Americans subverting the next.

Bezmenov’s remarks were the subject of skepticism and even derision at the time he made them, but they’ve racked up millions of views on YouTube in recent years. For many people, his description of a society so demoralized that it can’t recognize reality or defend its principles sounds like an uncomfortably accurate description of what we now see around us every day.

The Chain Reaction Continues

The Soviet Union collapsed in 1991, officially ending the Marxist-Leninist experiment into Communism as a national ideology, but the sequence of events set in motion during its heyday lives on. Like the relentless brooms of the Sorcerer’s Apprentice, each generation of professors, entertainers, broadcasters, and politicians pushes the next a little farther towards the self-destructive concepts that turned Eastern Europe into a giant prison for most of the 20th century.

In Walt Disney’s Fantasia, Mickey Mouse demonstrates the folly of setting in motion self-perpetuating systems.

As growing numbers of young people embrace warmed-over Marxist-Leninist propaganda rebranded as Democratic Socialism, there’s plenty of reason to suspect that McCarthy was absolutely correct to warn that America’s major institutions were being subverted. Indeed, it may not be coincidental that those same institutions - universities, media, and the government - have ensured that he is remembered as one of the greatest villains of the 20th century.

During the 1950s, people were afraid that the American traditions of patriotism, individual freedom, and economic opportunity were under attack. In the 1980s, KGB defectors stated that these attacks had taken place, and had been effective. Today, in everything from entertainment to academia, we see evidence that these seemingly far-fetched assertions were painfully accurate.

History has painted Senator Joe McCarthy as a power-hungry demagogue who destroyed the lives and careers of everyday Americans. And maybe he was. Certainly, it would be difficult for anyone who supports civil liberties and due process to condone his brutal, often un-Constitutional methods of investigation. Nevertheless, as we are confronted by policies and social trends that our grandparents would have considered shockingly un-American, it’s easier to understand why he was so obsessed with rooting out domestic Communism. McCarthyism may have been wrong, but McCarthy was right.