Kevin Robert Dean wrote:
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> Who said it: Joe McCarthy or John Ashcroft?
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It is very important _not_ to see the McCarthy Era as in fact the "McCarthy Era." The Senator from Wi8consin was a very minor player in the Red Hunt of 1947 on -- and in fact he probably did more to end that era than any other man by raising it to a high level of buffoonery. It is important to recognize this fact because a focus on McCarthy (or even on HUAC, though that was far more important) can blind one to the workings of repression in a bourgeois democracy. The primary villains were Harry Truman, Dwight Eisenhower and the entire u.s. leadership (Hubert Humphrey, for example, contributed far more to the red scare than Tailgunner Joe ever did.) Really -- forget him. He's a distraction.
Carrol