And, though I haven't followed this thread completely, I'm not sure that the point has been made that "McCarthyism" is in some sense a misnomer. given the general anti-Communist hysteria going back to Harry Truman and others. The term "McCarthyism" lets lots of Democrats and liberals off the hook. A Whitney Griswold at Yale, McGeorge Bundy at Harvard, Hutchins at the University of Chicago -- many such contributed to what has been called McCarthyism.
Jesse Lemisch ----- Original Message ----- From: "Carrol Cox" <cbcox at ilstu.edu> To: <lbo-talk at lbo-talk.org> Sent: Tuesday, October 17, 2006 5:50 PM Subject: Re: [lbo-talk] Why Richard Hofstadter Is StillWorthReadingbutNotforthe Reasons the Critics Have in Mind
>
>
> 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
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