American History Too!

On episode nine of American History Too! we turn our attention to a period in American history that has become indelibly linked to one man: the Second Red Scare and Senator Joseph McCarthy. But is McCarthy the be all and end all of anti-communism? What influence did he really have?  And were there other figures in the United States who played more prominent and important roles in creating what the historian David Caute called ‘the great fear’?  Is ‘Hooverism’ – or even ‘Nixonism’ – a better name to understand this period?

We take you through a tour of the interesting, and often distasteful, figures that the Second Red Scare brought to prominence.  We also discuss the parallel rise of the  so-called ‘Lavender Scare’ which saw gay Americans targeted – on some occasions more aggressively – than suspected communists. 

Stay tuned until the very end when you’ll be treated to a Cold War “anthem” from Carson Robison!

We will back in two weeks to discuss Lyndon Johnson and the Great Society.

Cheers,

Mark and Malcolm

Reading

-          Richard Hofstadter, The Paranoid Style in American Politics (first published 1964)

-          Kyle A. Cuordileone, ‘”Politics in an Age of Anxiety”: Cold War Political Culture and the Crisis in American Masculinity, 1949-1960,’ Journal of American History, 87:2 (Sep., 2000), 515-545

-          Jennifer Delton, “Rethinking Post-World War II Anticommunism,” The Journal of the Historical Society (March, 2010), 1-41

-          David K. Johnson, The Lavender Scare: The Cold War Persecution of Gays and Lesbians in the Federal Government (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 2004)-

-          Kathryn Olmsted, Real Enemies: Conspiracy Theories and American Democracy, World War 1 to 9/11 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009)

-          Nelson W. Polsby, “Towards an Explanation of McCarthyism,” Political Studies 8 (1960), 250-271-

-          Ellen Schrecker, “McCarthyism: Political Repression and the Fear of Communism,” Social Research 71. (2004),1041-1086.

-          Gregg Marshall, Tricky Dick and the Pink Lady: Richard Nixon vs. Helen Gahagan Douglas–Sexual Politics and the Red Scare, 1950 (New York: Random House, 1998) Chp.1 - http://www.nytimes.com/books/first/m/mitchell-tricky.html