McCarthyismThe Red Scare

How did it begin?

At the end of World War II, two powerful nations came into view – the USA and the USSR (Russia).

Both countries were distrustful of each other. Mistrust and hostility between the two grew and the US worked to stop the spread of Communism.

A “Cold War” developed between the two nations. 

Joseph McCarthy begins his “hunt.”

A United States Senator Joseph Mc Carthy stated that government departments were being overrun by Communists, and he waged a campaign against them.

He accused and charged many people of being Communists and sympathetic to the USSR including teachers, entertainers, and civil servants as well as more prominent personalities.

How Arthur Miller (author of The Crucible) fits in?

Arthur Miller was asked to apologize for an interest in Marxism (a communist way of thinking) when he was younger.

He was brought before the House Committee of Un-American Activity but refused to apologize and was sent for trial.

Initially, he was fined and given a suspended prison sentence, but he appealed and was acquitted.

Miller fought to maintain his dignity and his principles refusing to name others as Communists. This was shortly before The Crucible first opened.

Quotes from Miller

“By 1950, when I began to think of writing about the hunt for Reds in America, I was motivated in some great part by the paralysis that had set in among many liberals, who, despite their discomfort with the inquisitors’ violations of civil rights, were fearful, and with good reason, as being identified as covert communists if they should protest too strongly.”

“Naturally, the best proof of the sincerity of your confession was your naming others whom you had seen in the Devil company. This made a kind of lunatic sense to them (authorities of 1600s) as it did in 1952.”

“I am not sure what The Crucible is telling people now, but I know that its paranoid center is still pumping out the same darkly attractive warning that it did in the fifties.”