McCarthy as a Demagogue

LEARNING OBJECTIVES

  • Find evidence to support a claim

Demagogue

Senator Joseph McCarthy led a political crusade that got the attention of both the broad American public and his colleagues in government. An important figure in the Cold War period, the senator successfully tapped into the anxieties of the moment and manipulated circumstances in ways that were ethically dubious and that tested the limits of the Constitution. The consensus among historians is that McCarthy’s work did little to identify actual threats to national security, though it did provide a powerful example of a certain type of political actor that scholars have studied with great interest: the demagogue. But what is a demagogue?

A demagogue is a political figure who gains popularity and power by appealing to common people against allegedly wrong-doing elites. This is achieved through rhetoric, or language that is intended to persuade. The demagogue’s rhetoric appeals to the crowd’s emotions through the scapegoating of enemies, and overstates dangers to stoke fear. The demagogue may also simply lie to make a point, or may shout over or drown out attempts at reasoned deliberation, overturning behavioral political norms in the process. Fanaticism is central to this work, as anybody pursuing a more moderate path can be accused of weakness or complicity with the enemy, both insinuations that tend to build up the demagogue’s power.

Demagogues are unique to democracies, as they require freedoms such as those of speech, assembly, and the press in order to make their case to an audience. Part of what makes the combination of democracy and demagoguery so volatile and dangerous is that a demagogue may convince voters within a democracy to transform their system of government into a totalitarian state. Put differently, a democracy’s freedoms can theoretically be misused to undo those very freedoms through legitimate, rights-based processes.

TRY IT

Watch It

Watch this video to get a better understanding of McCarthy’s demeanor, and others’ responses to it. In this hearing footage, from 1954, McCarthy and attorney Roy Cohn are facing off against U.S. Army lawyer Joseph Welch, who has just challenged Cohn to finally hand over definitive proof to the FBI of saboteurs working in America’s defense plants. McCarthy’s response is telling, in that he effectively answers Welch with an accusatory personal smear. Four years into McCarthy’s largely unsubstantiated campaign, this exchange is considered by many historians to be the beginning of the end for McCarthy, who would soon fade into obscurity and die of complications from alcoholism at age 48.

You can view the transcript for “”Have You No Decency?” | McCarthy | American Experience | PBS” here (opens in new window).

Read McCarthy’s Speech and Locate Evidence of Demagoguery

To better understand the concept of the demagogue, let’s follow these steps:

  1. Imagine that you have been assigned a paper asking you to answer the question: “What qualifies Senator Joseph McCarthy as a demagogue?”
  2. Read the excerpt from a 1950 McCarthy speech below, bearing in mind the definition of a demagogue above.
  3. While reading, try to locate the places in the text where the speaker is working to persuade his audience to see things his way.
  4. Identify evidence from the text that substantiates the scholarly consensus that McCarthy is a strong example of a demagogue.

Joseph McCarthy Speech

In 1950, Senator Joseph McCarthy delivered a speech to the Republican Women’s Club of Wheeling, West Virginia, during which he claimed to have evidence of communists working in the State Department. While there is no audio recording of his remarks, the speech was entered into the Congressional Record and summarized in a memo from McCarthy to President Truman. His remarks proved inflammatory, and the persecutory campaign that would later bear his name quickly gathered momentum. Below is an excerpt from the speech.

 

Five years after a world war has been won, men’s hearts should anticipate a long peace, and men’s minds should be free from the heavy weight that comes with war. But this is not such a period — for this is not a period of peace. This is a time of the Cold War. This is a time when all the world is split into two vast, increasingly hostile armed camps — a time of a great armaments race. Today we can almost physically hear the mutterings and rumblings of an invigorated god of war. You can see it, feel it, and hear it all the way from the hills of Indochina, from the shores of Formosa right over into the very heart of Europe itself. …

Today we are engaged in a final, all-out battle between communistic atheism and Christianity. The modern champions of communism have selected this as the time. And, ladies and gentlemen, the chips are down — they are truly down.

…

Ladies and gentlemen, can there be anyone here tonight who is so blind as to say that the war is not on? Can there be anyone who fails to realize that the communist world has said, “The time is now” — that this is the time for the showdown between the democratic Christian world and the communist atheistic world? Unless we face this fact, we shall pay the price that must be paid by those who wait too long.

… As one of our outstanding historical figures once said, “When a great democracy is destroyed, it will not be because of enemies from without but rather because of enemies from within.” The truth of this statement is becoming terrifyingly clear as we see this country each day losing on every front.

At war’s end we were physically the strongest nation on Earth and, at least potentially, the most powerful intellectually and morally. Ours could have been the honor of being a beacon in the desert of destruction, a shining, living proof that civilization was not yet ready to destroy itself. Unfortunately, we have failed miserably and tragically to arise to the opportunity.

The reason why we find ourselves in a position of impotency is not because our only powerful, potential enemy has sent men to invade our shores, but rather because of the traitorous actions of those who have been treated so well by this nation. It has not been the less fortunate or members of minority groups who have been selling this nation out, but rather those who have had all the benefits that the wealthiest nation on earth has had to offer — the finest homes, the finest college education, and the finest jobs in government we can give.

This is glaringly true in the State Department. There the bright young men who are born with silver spoons in their mouths are the ones who have been worst.

… In my opinion the State Department, which is one of the most important government departments, is thoroughly infested with communists.

I have in my hand 57 cases of individuals who would appear to be either card-carrying members or certainly loyal to the Communist Party, but who nevertheless are still helping to shape our foreign policy.

…

This brings us down to the case of one Alger Hiss ….

As you hear this story of high treason, I know that you are saying to yourself, “Well, why doesn’t the Congress do something about it?” Actually, ladies and gentlemen, one of the important reasons for the graft, the corruption, the dishonesty, the disloyalty, the treason in high government positions — one of the most important reasons why this continues — is a lack of moral uprising on the part of the 140 million American people. In the light of history, however, this is not hard to explain.

It is the result of an emotional hangover and a temporary moral lapse which follows every war. It is the apathy to evil which people who have been subjected to the tremendous evils of war feel. As the people of the world see mass murder, the destruction of defenseless and innocent people, and all of the crime and lack of morals which go with war, they become numb and apathetic. It has always been thus after war. However, the morals of our people have not been destroyed. They still exist. This cloak of numbness and apathy has only needed a spark to rekindle them. Happily, this spark has finally been supplied.

…

He has lighted the spark which is resulting in a moral uprising and will end only when the whole sorry mess of twisted warped thinkers are swept from the national scene so that we may have a new birth of national honesty and decency in government.

Try It

Practice Gathering Evidence

Now that we’ve analyzed the document, we can think back to the initial prompt, which asked, “What qualifies Senator Joseph McCarthy as a demagogue?”

What evidence would you draw from the speech excerpt to support the claim that McCarthy was a demagogue?

ACTIVITY #1

Now that you have carefully analyzed the speech, breaking it down to the details that are relevant to our hypothetical essay question above, find at least three examples in McCarthy’s rhetoric that either (a) exaggerate a point, or (b) appeal to a particular fear.

For example, referring to America’s position at the conclusion of World War II, McCarthy asserts that we could have been “a beacon in the desert of destruction, a shining, living proof that civilization was not yet ready to destroy itself,” but instead failed to fulfill this role. Will “civilization destroy itself” if an individual who was a member of the American Communist Party in the late 1930s continues to be employed as a lawyer in the State Department? Are the stakes that high, or is McCarthy exaggerating for rhetorical effect?

How do you think the audiences of the day would have interpreted those statements? Would they have been convinced? How credible do they seem to you?

Jot down a few tentative answers to these questions.

GLOSSARY

demagogue: a political figure who gains power through scapegoating, lying, exaggerating, stoking fear, and violating norms