Jesse Lemisch wrote:
>
> Nobody disputes
> that McCarthyism took on the character of a mass movement.
Actually, I think it could be debated. A mass movement implies, at a minimum, it seems to me, some sort of formal _local_ organizations which interact with a center. McCarthy stirred up a lot of people, but I think it would be hard to locate _any_ evidence of groups of people coming together in even the loosest way to support or follow him. He certainly never asked anyone to do anything _actively_. Even in a clearly fascist movement (e.g., in Italy or Germany in the'20s/'30s there was organization at the base which required more, actually much more, than simple support in public opinion polls, which is all McCarthy ever got from any popular base. At least one poll at the time, if I remember correctly, reported that only 1/3 of respondents in Iowa even recognized McCarthy's name.
Carrol