McCarthyism Research Articles

Criminalizing Librarianship: State Legislatures Creating Legal Jeopardies for Librarians

US history has featured many periods of greatly enhanced efforts to ban books, such as during the Comstock era, World War I, and the McCarthy era of the 1950s. Similar to previous periods, the book banning movement that has arisen during the novel coronavirus pandemic of the 2020s has featured widespread efforts to ban many books, particularly those representing certain marginalized experiences, from schools and libraries. However, this current tidal wave of ban booking has added the new and disturbing dimension of laws being considered in state legislatures that would actually create civil and criminal penalties for librarians if banned books were available in the library. These proposed laws are part of much broader legislative efforts at the state and national levels to limit the ability of libraries to construct collections and provide services that meet the needs of their communities. Though there have been some lingering, but unfounded, concerns that librarians might be criminally liable for incorrect information in the library collection and some national security laws have created potential legal jeopardy for librarians in extremely specific circumstances, these new proposed laws are the first that would create widespread legal liabilities for librarians. This article considers the nature of these proposed laws, the larger context that has generated them, and the implications if passed into law, including the Missouri law that has gone into effect.

Why what happened to Oppenheimer then is relevant now

ABSTRACT A renewable energy scientist who resigned from his position during the Trump Administration contemplates the similarities—and differences—between his situation and what happened to Oppenheimer in the 1950s during the McCarthy era.

Incident at Vichy

Incident at Vichy

It’s Life as I See It: Black Cartoonists in Chicago, 1940–1980

It’s Life as I See It: Black Cartoonists in Chicago, 1940–1980

Review: Elaine Black Yoneda: Jewish Immigration, Labor Activism, and Japanese American Exclusion and Incarceration, by Rachel Schreiber

Review: <i>Elaine Black Yoneda: Jewish Immigration, Labor Activism, and Japanese American Exclusion and Incarceration</i>, by Rachel Schreiber

‘I started seeing shadows everywhere’: The diverse chilling effects of surveillance in Zimbabwe

Recent years have witnessed growing ubiquity and potency of state surveillance measures with heightened implications for human rights and social justice. While impacts of surveillance are routinely framed through ‘privacy’ narratives, emphasising ‘chilling effects’ surfaces a more complex range of harms and rights implications for those who are, or believe they are, subjected to surveillance. Although first emphasised during the McCarthy era, surveillance ‘chilling effects’ remain under-researched, particularly in Africa. Drawing on rare interview data from participants subjected to state-sponsored surveillance in Zimbabwe, the paper reveals complex assemblages of state and non-state actors involved in diverse and expansive hybrid online–offline monitoring. While scholarship has recently emphasised the importance of large-scale digital mass surveillance, the Zimbabwean context reveals complex assemblages of ‘big data’, social media and other digital monitoring combining with more traditional human surveillance practices. Such inseparable online–offline imbrications compound the scale, scope and impact of surveillance and invite analyses as an integrated ensemble. The paper evidences how these surveillance activities exert chilling effects that vary in form, scope and intensity, and implicate rights essential to the development of personal identity and effective functioning of participatory democracy. Moreover, the data reveals impacts beyond the individual to the vicarious and collective. These include gendered dimensions, eroded interpersonal trust and the depleted ability of human rights defenders to organise and particulate in democratic processes. Overall, surveillance chilling effects exert a wide spectrum of outcomes which consequently interfere with enjoyment of multiple rights and hold both short- and long-term implications for democratic participation.

The Witch-Hunting Committees: Never Again!

In this prescient chapter from 1982, author and activist Anne Braden draws a direct line from the anti-Communist witch hunts of the McCarthy Era to state repression of mass movements from the civil rights era to the rapid expansion of the racist police state that continues to this day. This chapter is reprinted from Anne Braden Speaks (Monthly Review Press, 2022).

Historically Informed HCI: Reflecting on Contemporary Technology through Anachronistic Fiction

As computing technology comes to dominate every aspect of social and political life, HCI must take greater account of History. The article considers four different historical periods impacted by division and denunciation: the European Witch Hunts, the Soviet Purges, the McCarthy Era, and the Chinese Cultural Revolution. Historians have identified patterns common to such periods including: the unity of accusation and action; condemnation as a show of virtue, and defense of the accused as collusion with enemies. These patterns are mapped to findings from social media research such as: impulsive shares are easy to make but difficult to retract; angry posts travel fastest and furthest; likes and retweets express group identity and solidarity. Anachronistic memes, tweets and selfies explore what previous eras might have looked like if contemporary technology had existed in the past. It is argued that such anachronistic fiction may be a useful method for exploring the potential impact of particular design choices.

The Fierce Life of Grace Holmes Carlson: Catholic, Socialist, Feminist

The Fierce Life of Grace Holmes Carlson: Catholic, Socialist, Feminist

W.E.B. Du Bois’s In Battle for Peace: Historical and Political Perspectives

In August 1952 W.E.B. Du Bois published In Battle for Peace. Part memoir and part polemic, the book is a testament to Du Bois's later, and arguably most radical years in the Black Freedom Struggle. He wrote about being caught up in the anticommunist hysteria of the mid-20th century because of his growing devotion to the peace movement. But it is also an anti-capitalist, anti-imperialist text that links war to capitalism and imperialism and argues that American policy was an extension of corporate greed. While In Battle for Peace is an account of Du Bois's 1951 arrest for his involvement in the Peace Information Center, trial, and eventual exoneration, it reveals the increased radicalization of a man that would eventually join the Communist Party out of protest to the growing militarization of the United States. It is a Cold War narrative that humanizes the McCarthy era witch hunts through the eyes of a loved and admired historical figure. It is a chapter of Du Bois's life too few know and still too few care to know. This special issue of American Communist History brings together scholars of peace, anti-communism, the Communist Party, gender, and Africana Studies to explore the legacy of Du Bois's book and his devotion to the peace movement. Together these authors offer insight into Du Bois's late in life radicalism and commitment to global liberation; they conclude that this book is an important part of the Du Bois canon that deserves greater attention and study.

The Political Is Personal: Roscoe Hillenkoetter, George Kennan, and the “Strange Case of John Paton Davies”

The American Foreign Service officer John Paton Davies was fired by Secretary of State John Foster Dulles at the height of the McCarthy era. The traditional explanation is that Davies lost his job because he was one of the so-called China Hands. However, this article argues that a central factor in his firing was the deteriorating personal relationship between Roscoe Hillenkoetter and George Kennan over the command and control of America’s first covert operations. In this case, the political was personal.

Michael Gold: The People’s Writer

Michael Gold: The People’s Writer

Jeremiah Stamler, MD (1919-2022).

Jeremiah Stamler, MD (1919-2022).

Shedding Light on the “Eclipse” Narrative: Some Notes on Pragmatism in the Twentieth Century

Shedding Light on the “Eclipse” Narrative: Some Notes on Pragmatism in the Twentieth Century

“The blacklist was a time of evil...”. The Blacklisting in the McCarthy Era and the Hollywood Ten

After World War II, the Second Red Scare planted the seeds of uncertainty and hatred throughout the U.S. Before the fall of McCarthyism, ten screenwriters from Hollywood faced prosecutions due to their past allegiances. They were all members of the Communist Party of the United States of America (CPUSA). President Harry S. Truman (1884–1972) and his associates were committed to exposing anyone with even the slightest connection to the CPUSA although the President was himself a liberal. This research sheds light on the Hollywood Ten’s unfortunate fate (henceforth: Ten) while discussing its contemporary politics. The Ten refused to confess and talk during their prosecutions, which led to their careers’ destruction despite their blacklisting being lifted during the sixties by individuals in the industry including Dalton Trumbo (1905–1976) and Kirk Douglas (1916–2020). In the present study, relevant historical evidence, materials, and sources were consulted. It is argued here that the Hollywood Ten story retains an enormous influence on the current U.S. political climate and proposes that the recent #MeToo movement would have failed without the sacrifice of the Hollywood Ten.

The Sinews of War: McCarthyism Crosses the Atlantic

At the height of the US Red Scare, Joseph McCarthy directed his attacks towards the United Kingdom. Tapping into deep‐seated Anglophobia in the American collective psyche, McCarthy infused it with his own brand of anti‐communism. He declared a personal war on the United Kingdom seeking to disrupt Anglo‐American relations. McCarthy's “paranoid style” and anti‐British sentiment manifested from a longer tradition of Midwestern resentment. Although the British government regarded his efforts as a significant threat to the “special relationship”, it refused to directly denounce or engage with the Wisconsin senator. This paper examines this little‐known episode of the McCarthy era.

Political Detentions, Political Deportations: Repressive Immigration Enforcement in Times of Trump

During the presidency of Donald Trump, US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) targeted migrant justice activists, journalists, and advocates with deportation proceedings. The recent political repression has a revanchist character that appears to be a new pattern introduced by Trump but is part of a longer project of securing the smooth functioning of economic and racial social control in the US. I read the recent political repression of activists in relation to texts produced by radical intellectuals who endured political repression in two prior historical moments: the detention and deportation of radicals in the McCarthy era through the words of C.L.R. James; the policing and imprisonment of Black radicals in the early 1970s through the words of Angela Davis. In a third moment, I situate the recent pattern of Trump-era political repression in a context of ongoing contestation over interior immigration enforcement. The struggle over immigration enforcement is not only about legality, but also about the politics of race and class marginalization in the US.

Considerations of Truth and Fact in Narrative Analysis

A central understanding of narrative scholarship is that stories are ever in process, taking shape in each recounting according to the needs, purposes, and understandings of the teller. Sometimes participants share accounts that are incomplete or inaccurate, shrink from voicing their feelings, or silence their accounting altogether. In this study, I draw on difficult stories, shared by military bandswomen who endured a traumatic government investigation into their personal lives during the McCarthy era, to examine the distinctions between empirical facts and interpretive truth, trouble the linkage between objective and subjective ways of knowing, and consider the researcher’s ethical responsibility when a participant hides the facts or refuses to voice their truths.

Conspiracy Theories and the Crisis of the Public Sphere: COVID-19 in Slovenia

This paper examines the rise of conspiracy theories amidst the 2020 global COVID-19 pandemic. Conspiracy theories have been a historic sojourner in Western modern societies, stretching from witch hunts in early modern Europe to the 1950s anti-communist witch hunt of the McCarthy era in the U.S. During the COVID-19 health crisis, however, the conspiracy theories have gained a fresh impetus, travelling globally and forming diverse communities of believers. Moreover, once a predominantly fringe phenomenon, at present, they have moved to the centre of the public debate, deliberating on the reliability of scientific evidence as well as the legitimacy of lockdowns and other public health measures. This makes the COVID-19 conspiracy believers an integral part of the public sphere where, in open conflict with expert knowledge and science, they act as a “pandemic counter-public.” I observe the rise of this pandemic counter-public in the context of the current political crisis in Slovenia, arguing that post-socialist legacies of democratic protest bear a vital role in contesting the conspiracy groups, as well as maintaining the resilience of the liberal democratic ideals of responsible citizenship and common good.

McCarthyism vs. Clinton Jencks

McCarthyism vs. Clinton Jencks