WEBVTT 00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:02.339 Imagine you're tasked with building this massive, 00:00:02.580 --> 00:00:04.620 state -of -the -art fortress to keep out an invading 00:00:04.620 --> 00:00:07.900 army. I mean, you pour absolutely all of your 00:00:07.900 --> 00:00:10.480 resources, your engineering brilliance, all your 00:00:10.480 --> 00:00:12.980 national wealth into constructing the thickest 00:00:12.980 --> 00:00:16.100 stone walls, the heaviest iron gates, and just, 00:00:16.100 --> 00:00:18.359 you know, the most sophisticated perimeter defenses 00:00:18.359 --> 00:00:20.699 money can buy. Right. And you're standing on 00:00:20.699 --> 00:00:22.719 the parapets, you're looking outwards, scanning 00:00:22.719 --> 00:00:24.960 the horizon for this enemy you know is coming. 00:00:25.460 --> 00:00:28.690 But then, um... A rumor starts circulating inside 00:00:28.690 --> 00:00:31.190 the keep. Exactly. You start hearing these whispers 00:00:31.190 --> 00:00:34.530 that the chief architect of your fortress, like 00:00:34.530 --> 00:00:36.350 the person who designed the very walls you're 00:00:36.350 --> 00:00:39.149 standing on, was actually a spy working for the 00:00:39.149 --> 00:00:42.189 enemy. Yes. And suddenly, your entire perspective 00:00:42.189 --> 00:00:44.750 just shifts. You aren't looking out over the 00:00:44.750 --> 00:00:47.049 walls anymore. You're looking down at the masonry 00:00:47.049 --> 00:00:49.670 itself, you know, wondering which brick is hollow, 00:00:50.109 --> 00:00:52.689 which structural support is compromised, which 00:00:52.689 --> 00:00:55.109 corridor is wired to explode. Oh, absolutely. 00:00:55.320 --> 00:00:58.899 You become so utterly consumed by the idea that 00:00:58.899 --> 00:01:01.420 the enemy is already inside the gates that you 00:01:01.420 --> 00:01:03.659 start tearing the fortress down from the inside, 00:01:03.939 --> 00:01:06.799 stone by stone. You are completely convinced 00:01:06.799 --> 00:01:09.420 that the real existential threat isn't on the 00:01:09.420 --> 00:01:11.819 horizon, but it's down in your own basement. 00:01:12.099 --> 00:01:14.900 It's a terrifying scenario because it represents 00:01:14.900 --> 00:01:18.819 that ultimate shift from external vigilance to 00:01:18.819 --> 00:01:21.819 internal paranoia. And as we dig into the source 00:01:21.819 --> 00:01:23.959 material today for our deep dive into the era 00:01:23.959 --> 00:01:26.599 known as McCarthyism, we really have to walk 00:01:26.599 --> 00:01:28.439 an incredibly fine line for you, the listener. 00:01:28.540 --> 00:01:30.920 We really do. Because on one hand, the historical 00:01:30.920 --> 00:01:34.180 record shows heavily documented, genuine Soviet 00:01:34.180 --> 00:01:36.260 espionage infiltrating the United States. That 00:01:36.260 --> 00:01:38.540 wasn't made up. Exactly. But on the other hand, 00:01:38.599 --> 00:01:40.579 you have a U .S. government that utilized that 00:01:40.579 --> 00:01:44.159 real threat to justify severe unconstitutional 00:01:44.159 --> 00:01:46.540 overreach against its own innocent citizens. 00:01:47.120 --> 00:01:49.280 So our goal today isn't to take a political side 00:01:49.280 --> 00:01:51.799 on that divide. We are purely looking at the 00:01:51.799 --> 00:01:54.359 mechanics of how a genuine geopolitical terror 00:01:54.359 --> 00:01:56.799 mutated into a domestic witch hunt that just 00:01:56.799 --> 00:01:59.500 tore through American institutions. OK, let's 00:01:59.500 --> 00:02:02.000 unpack this, because to understand the mechanics 00:02:02.000 --> 00:02:04.459 of that domestic witch hunt, we really have to 00:02:04.459 --> 00:02:07.540 rewind the clock. We cannot start the story with 00:02:07.540 --> 00:02:10.360 Senator Joseph McCarthy just waving a piece of 00:02:10.360 --> 00:02:12.840 paper. No, not at all. We have to start with 00:02:12.840 --> 00:02:15.780 a world that felt like it was suddenly, violently 00:02:15.780 --> 00:02:18.800 spinning out of control. We need to look at the 00:02:18.800 --> 00:02:22.340 geopolitical tinderbox of the late 1940s right 00:02:22.340 --> 00:02:24.500 after the end of the Second World War. I mean, 00:02:24.560 --> 00:02:27.039 think about it. If you're an American in 1945, 00:02:27.539 --> 00:02:30.099 you've just won a global war, you have a monopoly 00:02:30.099 --> 00:02:33.080 on the atomic bomb, and your economy is booming. 00:02:33.319 --> 00:02:35.759 You feel invincible. Right. You feel invincible, 00:02:36.020 --> 00:02:39.099 but within just a few years, that sense of invincibility 00:02:39.099 --> 00:02:42.159 completely evaporates. The psychological whiplash 00:02:42.159 --> 00:02:44.939 of that period, it really cannot be overstated. 00:02:45.020 --> 00:02:47.280 The Wartown Alliance between the Western powers 00:02:47.280 --> 00:02:49.740 and the Soviet Union, the Big Three, it was always 00:02:49.740 --> 00:02:52.099 a marriage of convenience against a common enemy 00:02:52.099 --> 00:02:54.240 in Nazi Germany. Yeah, they weren't exactly best 00:02:54.240 --> 00:02:57.340 friends. Right. Almost the minute the war ended, 00:02:57.780 --> 00:03:00.800 that alliance fractured. The Soviet Union under 00:03:00.800 --> 00:03:03.639 Joseph Stalin began installing communist puppet 00:03:03.639 --> 00:03:06.500 regimes all across Central and Eastern Europe. 00:03:07.280 --> 00:03:09.819 Winston Churchill famously declared that an iron 00:03:09.819 --> 00:03:12.259 curtain had descended across the continent. Wow. 00:03:12.560 --> 00:03:14.580 And this wasn't just viewed as a political disagreement, 00:03:14.759 --> 00:03:17.419 you know. It was viewed as an ideological crusade 00:03:17.419 --> 00:03:20.710 by the Soviets to dominate the globe. So in response 00:03:20.710 --> 00:03:24.090 to this, in March of 1947, President Harry S. 00:03:24.250 --> 00:03:26.930 Truman went before Congress to articulate a brand 00:03:26.930 --> 00:03:29.550 new framework for American foreign policy, which 00:03:29.550 --> 00:03:31.770 became known as the Truman Doctrine. And the 00:03:31.770 --> 00:03:33.930 mechanics of the Truman Doctrine essentially 00:03:33.930 --> 00:03:36.389 committed the United States to a policy of containment, 00:03:36.389 --> 00:03:38.750 right? Like it wasn't about directly invading 00:03:38.750 --> 00:03:41.129 the Soviet Union. Exactly. No direct invasion. 00:03:41.229 --> 00:03:44.310 He was rather aggressively opposing Soviet geopolitical 00:03:44.310 --> 00:03:46.780 expansion wherever it popped up. Yeah. They started 00:03:46.780 --> 00:03:49.819 by sending massive financial and military aid 00:03:49.819 --> 00:03:52.659 to support anti -communist forces in Greece and 00:03:52.659 --> 00:03:56.159 Turkey. It was a line drawn in the sand. But 00:03:56.159 --> 00:03:58.120 the problem with drawing a line in the sand is 00:03:58.120 --> 00:04:00.340 that the tide just keeps coming in. It does. 00:04:00.719 --> 00:04:03.759 The sense of an impending, unstoppable global 00:04:03.759 --> 00:04:06.680 shift was accelerating at just a terrifying pace. 00:04:06.819 --> 00:04:09.580 It really felt like a cascade of falling dominoes 00:04:09.580 --> 00:04:13.099 for the people living through it. In 1948, the 00:04:13.099 --> 00:04:17.029 world witnessed The Czechoslovak coup. And this 00:04:17.029 --> 00:04:19.629 was particularly chilling for the West because 00:04:19.629 --> 00:04:22.269 Czechoslovakia was a functioning democracy. Wait, 00:04:22.310 --> 00:04:24.649 really? It was a democracy before that? Yes, 00:04:24.649 --> 00:04:27.329 it was. And the Communist Party there, backed 00:04:27.329 --> 00:04:30.290 by the Soviets, managed to subvert the government 00:04:30.290 --> 00:04:33.850 and seize absolute power from within. This fundamentally 00:04:33.850 --> 00:04:36.129 shifted the anxiety in the United States. Because 00:04:36.129 --> 00:04:38.720 it wasn't an invasion. Right. The fear wasn't 00:04:38.720 --> 00:04:40.699 just that Soviet tanks would roll across the 00:04:40.699 --> 00:04:42.839 border anymore. The fear was that democratic 00:04:42.839 --> 00:04:45.100 institutions could be hollowed out and captured 00:04:45.100 --> 00:04:47.660 internally by communist operatives. Which brings 00:04:47.660 --> 00:04:50.860 us to 1949, a year that essentially shatters 00:04:50.860 --> 00:04:53.899 any remaining American confidence. You have two 00:04:53.899 --> 00:04:56.319 massive geopolitical shocks that happen almost 00:04:56.319 --> 00:05:00.100 simultaneously. First, the Soviet Union successfully 00:05:00.100 --> 00:05:02.720 tests an atomic bomb. Let's really emphasize 00:05:02.720 --> 00:05:04.259 the gravity of this for the listener. That's 00:05:04.259 --> 00:05:06.939 huge. American intelligence and military analysts 00:05:06.939 --> 00:05:09.759 confidently believed they had a 10 to 20 year 00:05:09.759 --> 00:05:12.019 monopoly on nuclear weapons. They thought they 00:05:12.019 --> 00:05:14.860 had this massive buffer. They really did. When 00:05:14.860 --> 00:05:16.920 the Soviets detonated their bomb, which was known 00:05:16.920 --> 00:05:20.899 as Joe 1, in August of 1949, it was a profound 00:05:20.899 --> 00:05:23.139 psychological trauma for the American public. 00:05:23.879 --> 00:05:26.379 Suddenly, the United States was vulnerable to 00:05:26.379 --> 00:05:29.699 total annihilation. The Cold War was no longer 00:05:29.699 --> 00:05:32.639 a conventional standoff. It was a nuclear standoff. 00:05:32.980 --> 00:05:35.000 And the immediate question that arose in Washington 00:05:35.000 --> 00:05:37.720 wasn't just, how did they build it so fast? The 00:05:37.720 --> 00:05:40.519 question was, who gave them the secret? Because 00:05:40.519 --> 00:05:43.339 the prevailing, albeit somewhat arrogant belief, 00:05:43.879 --> 00:05:45.920 was that Soviet science couldn't possibly have 00:05:45.920 --> 00:05:47.480 caught up that quickly on its own. They must 00:05:47.480 --> 00:05:50.019 have stolen it. And as we'll see, that suspicion 00:05:50.019 --> 00:05:52.790 was actually entirely correct. Wow. But right 00:05:52.790 --> 00:05:55.370 on the heels of that nuclear shock, in October 00:05:55.370 --> 00:05:59.110 of 1949, Mao Zedong's communist army finally 00:05:59.110 --> 00:06:02.350 gained complete control of mainland China. After 00:06:02.350 --> 00:06:05.230 decades of civil war, and despite massive amounts 00:06:05.230 --> 00:06:07.310 of American financial and logistical support 00:06:07.310 --> 00:06:10.370 for the opposing nationalist forces led by Chiang 00:06:10.370 --> 00:06:13.170 Kai -shek, the most populous nation on earth 00:06:13.170 --> 00:06:16.089 fell to communism. The political fallout in the 00:06:16.089 --> 00:06:18.509 United States was radioactive. The conservative 00:06:18.509 --> 00:06:21.329 wing of American politics immediately began screaming, 00:06:21.529 --> 00:06:25.069 Who lost China? Right. Framing it not as a complex 00:06:25.069 --> 00:06:27.750 historical inevitability of a massive civil war, 00:06:27.810 --> 00:06:30.709 but as a deliberate betrayal by subversive elements 00:06:30.709 --> 00:06:32.589 within the US State Department. And that framing 00:06:32.589 --> 00:06:35.310 is the crucial pivot point. Geopolitical failures 00:06:35.310 --> 00:06:37.970 were no longer being analyzed as failures of 00:06:37.970 --> 00:06:41.290 strategy or circumstances beyond American control. 00:06:41.589 --> 00:06:43.689 They were being analyzed as evidence of internal 00:06:43.689 --> 00:06:46.810 treason. Which is so dangerous. Extremely. And 00:06:46.810 --> 00:06:49.610 then the very next year, in June of 1950, the 00:06:49.610 --> 00:06:52.199 Korean War breaks out. communist North Korean 00:06:52.199 --> 00:06:54.600 forces, backed by the Soviets and the newly communist 00:06:54.600 --> 00:06:57.850 China, flood across the 38th parallel. Suddenly, 00:06:58.230 --> 00:07:00.110 American soldiers are actively dying on foreign 00:07:00.110 --> 00:07:02.970 soil, fighting a communist advance. The anxiety 00:07:02.970 --> 00:07:04.569 in the American living room was suffocating. 00:07:04.850 --> 00:07:07.730 So you have this massive suffocating cloud of 00:07:07.730 --> 00:07:11.389 global dread. But the true catalyst for the domestic 00:07:11.389 --> 00:07:13.730 panic was the realization that the threat wasn't 00:07:13.730 --> 00:07:16.370 just overseas in Prague or Beijing or Pyongyang. 00:07:16.689 --> 00:07:20.009 It was actively operating inside the United States. 00:07:20.709 --> 00:07:23.069 We have to look at the high profile espionage 00:07:23.069 --> 00:07:25.509 cases that dominated the headlines, starting 00:07:25.509 --> 00:07:28.540 with Alger Hiss. Alger Hiss is such a key figure 00:07:28.540 --> 00:07:32.079 here. He was the embodiment of the Eastern Establishment 00:07:32.079 --> 00:07:34.819 elite. He was a highly educated, sophisticated, 00:07:35.459 --> 00:07:37.759 top -level official in the State Department who 00:07:37.759 --> 00:07:39.540 had even been involved in the establishment of 00:07:39.540 --> 00:07:41.620 the United Nations. Oh, wow. So he was really 00:07:41.620 --> 00:07:45.470 up there. Very high up. But in 1948... A former 00:07:45.470 --> 00:07:47.490 communist underground courier named Whitaker 00:07:47.490 --> 00:07:50.110 Chambers testified before the House Un -American 00:07:50.110 --> 00:07:52.910 Activities Committee that Hiss had secretly been 00:07:52.910 --> 00:07:55.449 a communist and had passed highly classified 00:07:55.449 --> 00:07:57.990 government documents to the Soviets in the 1930s. 00:07:58.139 --> 00:08:00.839 And the legal mechanics of the His case are fascinating 00:08:00.839 --> 00:08:03.259 because the statute of limitations had actually 00:08:03.259 --> 00:08:06.300 run out for the specific crime of espionage. 00:08:06.540 --> 00:08:08.779 They couldn't charge him for spying. Instead, 00:08:09.199 --> 00:08:11.360 they charged him with perjury for lying under 00:08:11.360 --> 00:08:14.660 oath when he denied the espionage charges. After 00:08:14.660 --> 00:08:17.980 a deeply sensationalized, highly publicized set 00:08:17.980 --> 00:08:21.470 of trials, he was convicted in early 1950. For 00:08:21.470 --> 00:08:23.250 the American public, the conviction of Alger 00:08:23.250 --> 00:08:26.689 Hiss was proof positive that the absolute highest 00:08:26.689 --> 00:08:28.670 echelons of their government were compromised. 00:08:29.009 --> 00:08:32.610 And the hits just kept coming. Right around the 00:08:32.610 --> 00:08:35.049 time Hiss was convicted, British intelligence 00:08:35.049 --> 00:08:37.909 arrested Klaus Fuchs, a brilliant theoretical 00:08:37.909 --> 00:08:39.850 physicist who had worked at Los Alamos on the 00:08:39.850 --> 00:08:42.460 Manhattan Project. That was the very heart of 00:08:42.460 --> 00:08:44.700 the American atomic bomb program. The ultimate 00:08:44.700 --> 00:08:47.299 secret. Exactly. And Fux confessed to committing 00:08:47.299 --> 00:08:49.559 espionage and funneling crucial nuclear secrets 00:08:49.559 --> 00:08:52.379 directly to the Soviets. His confession eventually 00:08:52.379 --> 00:08:54.539 led investigators to a spy ring in the United 00:08:54.539 --> 00:08:57.039 States, culminating the arrest of Julius and 00:08:57.039 --> 00:08:59.120 Ethel Rosenberg, who were charged with passing 00:08:59.120 --> 00:09:01.740 atomic secrets to the Soviets. A charge that 00:09:01.740 --> 00:09:03.679 eventually led to both of them being executed 00:09:03.679 --> 00:09:06.809 in the electric chair in 1953. So if we look 00:09:06.809 --> 00:09:08.389 at the historical source material we're working 00:09:08.389 --> 00:09:11.169 with today, we have to synthesize this reality. 00:09:11.830 --> 00:09:13.909 If you're an average citizen consuming the news 00:09:13.909 --> 00:09:18.490 in 1950... Your panic is not imaginary. It's 00:09:18.490 --> 00:09:21.110 very real. Right. Decades later, when the Soviet 00:09:21.110 --> 00:09:23.769 Union fell and KGB archives were opened, and 00:09:23.769 --> 00:09:26.029 when the U .S. government declassified the Venona 00:09:26.029 --> 00:09:28.909 Project, which was this massive top -secret program 00:09:28.909 --> 00:09:31.429 that successfully decrypted Soviet diplomatic 00:09:31.429 --> 00:09:34.769 and intelligence radio traffic, it proved definitively 00:09:34.769 --> 00:09:37.409 that substantial Soviet spy activity in the U 00:09:37.409 --> 00:09:40.590 .S. was real. Yes. The Venona intercepts confirmed 00:09:40.590 --> 00:09:42.389 that there were hundreds of Americans who had 00:09:42.389 --> 00:09:44.649 a covert relationship with Soviet intelligence. 00:09:44.840 --> 00:09:48.620 The Communist Party USA, the CPUSA, it wasn't 00:09:48.620 --> 00:09:50.600 just an independent domestic political party 00:09:50.600 --> 00:09:52.940 advocating for labor rights. It was heavily funded 00:09:52.940 --> 00:09:56.299 by Moscow and the Soviet leadership exerted significant 00:09:56.299 --> 00:09:58.740 direct influence over its policies. That completely 00:09:58.740 --> 00:10:02.519 changes the context. It does. As historian Landon 00:10:02.519 --> 00:10:05.460 R. Weiss stores highlights in the sources, this 00:10:05.460 --> 00:10:09.970 created a profound paradox. The CPUSA attracted 00:10:09.970 --> 00:10:13.129 many genuine, well -meaning democratic idealists 00:10:13.129 --> 00:10:15.649 who were fighting for civil rights, labor protections, 00:10:16.070 --> 00:10:17.909 and social justice during the Great Depression. 00:10:17.909 --> 00:10:20.809 Sure. But the party's secretiveness, its authoritarian 00:10:20.809 --> 00:10:23.549 internal structure, and the absolute loyalty 00:10:23.549 --> 00:10:26.610 of its top leaders to Stalin's brutal regime 00:10:26.610 --> 00:10:29.389 meant it was fundamentally compromised. Let me 00:10:29.389 --> 00:10:31.129 introduce an analogy here because I think it 00:10:31.129 --> 00:10:33.210 perfectly captures the structural failure of 00:10:33.210 --> 00:10:34.830 this era. It's like thinking you're playing a 00:10:34.830 --> 00:10:36.990 gentleman's game of chess only to look down and 00:10:36.990 --> 00:10:39.309 realize your opponent has secretly swapped out 00:10:39.309 --> 00:10:41.309 half your pieces. Oh, that's good. But instead 00:10:41.309 --> 00:10:43.470 of just checking the board, you decide to burn 00:10:43.470 --> 00:10:46.370 down the entire house. McCarthyism functioned 00:10:46.370 --> 00:10:48.710 like an autoimmune disease. The human body, or 00:10:48.710 --> 00:10:51.210 in this case, the Democratic Republic, develops 00:10:51.210 --> 00:10:53.809 antibodies to hunt down a legitimate, highly 00:10:53.809 --> 00:10:56.409 dangerous foreign pathogen, which was Soviet 00:10:56.409 --> 00:10:59.830 espionage. But the system becomes hypersensitized 00:10:59.830 --> 00:11:03.009 by fear. It overreacts. Completely. The antibodies 00:11:03.009 --> 00:11:05.149 lose their ability to distinguish between the 00:11:05.149 --> 00:11:07.690 actual foreign pathogen and the body's own healthy 00:11:07.690 --> 00:11:10.769 tissue. So instead of just neutralizing the spies, 00:11:11.370 --> 00:11:13.769 the system starts attacking everything. Teachers, 00:11:14.070 --> 00:11:16.870 postal workers, actors, scientists, completely 00:11:16.870 --> 00:11:18.789 destroying the health of the host in a desperate 00:11:18.789 --> 00:11:21.850 attempt to cure it. How do we get from a valid, 00:11:22.289 --> 00:11:24.789 highly necessary national security concern, like 00:11:24.789 --> 00:11:28.070 catching actual nuclear spies, to a blind, sweeping 00:11:28.070 --> 00:11:30.549 hysteria? To understand that transition from 00:11:30.549 --> 00:11:33.070 targeted vigilance to autoimmune collapse, we 00:11:33.070 --> 00:11:34.990 have to look at the psychological climate. The 00:11:34.990 --> 00:11:37.250 Cold War, the atomic bomb, the Korean War, the 00:11:37.250 --> 00:11:40.149 his conviction, all of that created a locked 00:11:40.149 --> 00:11:43.230 room, completely filled with invisible, highly 00:11:43.230 --> 00:11:45.669 combustible gas. Right. The conditions for an 00:11:45.669 --> 00:11:48.049 explosion were perfect. Senator Joseph McCarthy 00:11:48.049 --> 00:11:50.309 was simply the opportunistic man who walked into 00:11:50.309 --> 00:11:53.409 that room and struck a match. Let's set the scene 00:11:53.409 --> 00:11:56.370 for that match being struck. It's February 9th, 00:11:56.370 --> 00:12:00.769 1950. We are in Wheeling, West Virginia. Senator 00:12:00.769 --> 00:12:04.090 Joseph McCarthy, a relatively obscure, unremarkable 00:12:04.090 --> 00:12:06.490 Republican senator from Wisconsin who is desperately 00:12:06.490 --> 00:12:09.009 looking for a political issue to secure his reelection, 00:12:09.649 --> 00:12:12.190 is giving a Lincoln Day speech to the local Republican 00:12:12.190 --> 00:12:16.029 Women's Club. What exactly does he do? McCarthy 00:12:16.029 --> 00:12:18.250 understands political theater. Yeah. He stands 00:12:18.250 --> 00:12:20.950 up before this crowd and he physically brandishes 00:12:20.950 --> 00:12:24.509 a piece of paper. And he claims, with absolute 00:12:24.509 --> 00:12:27.230 unyielding confidence, that this specific piece 00:12:27.230 --> 00:12:29.490 of paper contains a list of known communists 00:12:29.490 --> 00:12:31.970 currently working in the State Department. The 00:12:31.970 --> 00:12:33.850 quote that went out to the police was, I have 00:12:33.850 --> 00:12:36.649 here in my hand a list of 205, a list of names 00:12:36.649 --> 00:12:38.289 that were made known to the Secretary of State 00:12:38.289 --> 00:12:40.450 as being members of the Communist Party and who 00:12:40.450 --> 00:12:42.649 nevertheless are still working and shaping policy 00:12:42.649 --> 00:12:46.389 in the State Department. 205. That highly specific 00:12:46.389 --> 00:12:49.570 number is the genius of the manipulation. The 00:12:49.570 --> 00:12:52.070 sources detail an analysis by historian Richard 00:12:52.070 --> 00:12:54.529 G. Powers, who dissects this tactic and calls 00:12:54.529 --> 00:12:58.190 it bogus specificity. Let's break down why that 00:12:58.190 --> 00:13:00.730 psychological trick is so devastatingly effective. 00:13:04.779 --> 00:13:07.919 When society is drowning in free -floating generalized 00:13:07.919 --> 00:13:10.980 anxiety, when people are terrified of a vague, 00:13:11.139 --> 00:13:13.960 invisible threat like communist subversion, they 00:13:13.960 --> 00:13:16.159 are desperate for something tangible to hold 00:13:16.159 --> 00:13:18.500 onto. Yeah, they need a face for the fear. Exactly. 00:13:19.000 --> 00:13:20.840 If McCarthy had just stood up and said, I think 00:13:20.840 --> 00:13:22.399 there are spies in Washington, it would have 00:13:22.399 --> 00:13:25.399 been a one -day story. But by waving a physical 00:13:25.399 --> 00:13:28.960 prop and by giving a precise, exact number, 205, 00:13:29.360 --> 00:13:31.960 he anchored that free -floating fear. It gave 00:13:31.960 --> 00:13:34.480 the illusion of absolute authority, rigorous 00:13:34.480 --> 00:13:37.299 investigation, and empirical fact. The listener 00:13:37.299 --> 00:13:39.600 subconsciously thinks, well, if he knows there 00:13:39.600 --> 00:13:42.519 are exactly 205, he must have seen the hard evidence. 00:13:42.940 --> 00:13:46.360 Even though the list was entirely unsubstantiated 00:13:46.360 --> 00:13:49.259 and he constantly changed the number in subsequent 00:13:49.259 --> 00:13:51.519 weeks, sometimes it was 57, sometimes it was 00:13:51.519 --> 00:13:54.549 81, it didn't matter. The press wire services 00:13:54.549 --> 00:13:57.169 picked up the wheeling speech and because of 00:13:57.169 --> 00:13:59.789 the journalistic norms of the time, which favored 00:13:59.789 --> 00:14:02.370 objective reporting of what a senator said rather 00:14:02.370 --> 00:14:04.629 than instantly fact -checking the veracity of 00:14:04.629 --> 00:14:08.990 the claim, the headline Senator claims 205 communists 00:14:08.990 --> 00:14:11.250 and State Department was printed in newspapers 00:14:11.250 --> 00:14:13.990 across the country. It was everywhere. It catapulted 00:14:13.990 --> 00:14:17.049 him to massive national fame instantly. And it's 00:14:17.049 --> 00:14:19.429 fascinating to look at where the term McCarthyism 00:14:19.429 --> 00:14:22.710 actually originates. It wasn't a historical label 00:14:22.710 --> 00:14:24.929 applied decades later. It was coined in real 00:14:24.929 --> 00:14:27.610 time right in the middle of the maelstrom. Yes. 00:14:27.970 --> 00:14:29.870 The term entered the American lexicon almost 00:14:29.870 --> 00:14:32.350 immediately. The first recorded use in print 00:14:32.350 --> 00:14:34.769 was in the Christian Science Monitor in late 00:14:34.769 --> 00:14:37.610 March of 1950, just weeks after the Wheeling 00:14:37.610 --> 00:14:41.210 speech. But the defining visual popularization 00:14:41.210 --> 00:14:44.169 came the very next day from the legendary editorial 00:14:44.169 --> 00:14:46.830 cartoonist Herbert Block, who published under 00:14:46.830 --> 00:14:49.350 the name Herblock in the Washington Post. The 00:14:49.350 --> 00:14:51.610 mechanics of that political cartoon are brilliant. 00:14:51.980 --> 00:14:55.379 Urblach drew a group of leading, prominent Republican 00:14:55.379 --> 00:14:58.580 politicians. They are struggling to push an elephant, 00:14:58.840 --> 00:15:00.580 you know, the massive symbol of the Republican 00:15:00.580 --> 00:15:04.139 Party, forcing it to stand on a completely unstable, 00:15:04.379 --> 00:15:07.779 teetering stack of 10 tar buckets. Right, the 00:15:07.779 --> 00:15:09.940 tar bucket. And the bucket balancing at the very 00:15:09.940 --> 00:15:13.259 top of this precarious, messy tower is boldly 00:15:13.259 --> 00:15:16.440 labeled McCarthyism. Herblock was essentially 00:15:16.440 --> 00:15:18.659 pointing out that the mainstream political establishment 00:15:18.659 --> 00:15:21.460 was dangerously attempting to balance their entire 00:15:21.460 --> 00:15:24.879 electoral platform on the messy, unstable foundation 00:15:24.879 --> 00:15:27.700 of McCarthy's smear tactics. Herblock later wrote 00:15:27.700 --> 00:15:29.820 about that cartoon, stating that there was nothing 00:15:29.820 --> 00:15:31.940 particularly ingenious about the word itself. 00:15:32.240 --> 00:15:34.240 He just desperately needed a term to represent 00:15:34.240 --> 00:15:36.340 a specific national affliction that couldn't 00:15:36.340 --> 00:15:38.500 be accurately described any other way. Yeah. 00:15:38.779 --> 00:15:40.980 The word immediately came to define the practice 00:15:40.980 --> 00:15:43.879 of making serious, career destroying accusations 00:15:43.879 --> 00:15:46.879 of subversion or treason without proper regard 00:15:46.879 --> 00:15:49.419 for evidence. But I actually want to push back 00:15:49.419 --> 00:15:51.659 on the naming of this entire era for a moment 00:15:51.659 --> 00:15:54.820 based on what the source material reveals. The 00:15:54.820 --> 00:15:57.919 sources explicitly mention that historians beginning 00:15:57.919 --> 00:16:00.919 in the 1980s have fiercely argued that Joseph 00:16:00.919 --> 00:16:03.580 McCarthy's actual structural involvement in the 00:16:03.580 --> 00:16:06.139 terror was far less central than the name implies. 00:16:06.240 --> 00:16:08.279 That's a very fair point. If we are looking at 00:16:08.279 --> 00:16:10.679 who actually built the Fortress of Paranoia, 00:16:11.139 --> 00:16:13.600 the sources suggest historian Ellen Schrecker's 00:16:13.600 --> 00:16:17.720 argument that Hooverism is actually a vastly 00:16:17.720 --> 00:16:21.120 more accurate historical label. Let's dive deep 00:16:21.120 --> 00:16:23.940 into why the director of the FBI, J. Edgar Hoover, 00:16:24.340 --> 00:16:26.519 might be the real architect of this domestic 00:16:26.519 --> 00:16:29.080 purge. It is a vital, fundamental distinction 00:16:29.080 --> 00:16:31.500 to make if you truly want to understand how power 00:16:31.500 --> 00:16:34.259 functioned in this era. Joseph McCarthy was the 00:16:34.259 --> 00:16:36.720 demodoc. He was the headline grabber, the loud 00:16:36.720 --> 00:16:39.779 voice sweating under the television lights. McCarthy 00:16:39.779 --> 00:16:42.659 did not have the bureaucratic power to wiretap 00:16:42.659 --> 00:16:45.879 your phone or interrogate your neighbors or officially 00:16:45.879 --> 00:16:47.740 terminate your employment. He was just a senator. 00:16:48.080 --> 00:16:51.460 Exactly. The actual machinery of ruin, the permanent 00:16:51.460 --> 00:16:54.620 sprawling bureaucratic apparatus that investigated, 00:16:54.879 --> 00:16:56.919 fired and systematically destroyed the lives 00:16:56.919 --> 00:16:59.940 of thousands of citizens was largely designed. 00:17:00.700 --> 00:17:03.340 institutionalized, and ruthlessly executed by 00:17:03.340 --> 00:17:06.460 the executive branch under the direct orchestration 00:17:06.460 --> 00:17:09.700 of J. Edgar Hoover's FBI. Hoover was the man 00:17:09.700 --> 00:17:12.380 who essentially designed President Truman's entire 00:17:12.380 --> 00:17:15.480 loyalty security program behind the scenes. And 00:17:15.480 --> 00:17:17.859 the FBI was tasked with carrying out the millions 00:17:17.859 --> 00:17:20.759 of background investigations. Under Hoover's 00:17:20.759 --> 00:17:23.480 command during this era, the FBI underwent a 00:17:23.480 --> 00:17:26.839 massive, unprecedented expansion. They grew from 00:17:26.839 --> 00:17:31.279 about 3 ,500 agents in 1946 to over 7 ,000 agents 00:17:31.279 --> 00:17:34.660 by 1952. They doubled in size. And the investigative 00:17:34.660 --> 00:17:37.279 tactics Hoover authorized were chillingly devoid 00:17:37.279 --> 00:17:39.599 of constitutional protections. The central horror 00:17:39.599 --> 00:17:41.700 of the Hoover apparatus was the total erosion 00:17:41.700 --> 00:17:44.200 of due process. Hoover fundamentally insisted 00:17:44.200 --> 00:17:46.539 on keeping the identity of his FBI informers 00:17:46.539 --> 00:17:49.180 completely secret, arguing that revealing them 00:17:49.180 --> 00:17:51.500 would compromise ongoing intelligence gathering. 00:17:51.640 --> 00:17:53.740 Of course he'd argue that. Right. So therefore, 00:17:54.279 --> 00:17:56.339 the vast majority of people subjected to these 00:17:56.339 --> 00:17:59.519 government loyalty reviews were entirely denied 00:17:59.519 --> 00:18:02.359 the right to cross -examine their accusers. Often 00:18:02.359 --> 00:18:04.500 they weren't even permitted to know the identities 00:18:04.500 --> 00:18:06.559 of the people who had leveled the accusations 00:18:06.559 --> 00:18:09.940 against them. Imagine the Kafka -esque nightmare 00:18:09.940 --> 00:18:12.359 of that reality for you as a citizen. You're 00:18:12.359 --> 00:18:15.259 pulled into a small windowless room in a federal 00:18:15.259 --> 00:18:18.740 building. A panel of bureaucrats tells you that 00:18:18.740 --> 00:18:21.819 an unnamed source, perhaps a jealous coworker, 00:18:22.000 --> 00:18:24.359 a bitter ex -spouse, or a neighbor holding a 00:18:24.359 --> 00:18:27.240 grudge, has accused you of sympathetic association 00:18:27.240 --> 00:18:29.740 with subversive elements. Terrifying. In many 00:18:29.740 --> 00:18:32.039 documented cases, the accused weren't even told 00:18:32.039 --> 00:18:34.619 what the specific dates or nature of the accusations 00:18:34.619 --> 00:18:37.029 were. You were essentially asked to prove negative 00:18:37.029 --> 00:18:39.890 to prove your absolute pure loyalty against a 00:18:39.890 --> 00:18:42.329 phantom accusation you can't even see. And we 00:18:42.329 --> 00:18:44.990 must recognize that Hoover's reach extended far 00:18:44.990 --> 00:18:47.309 far beyond just policing federal employees in 00:18:47.309 --> 00:18:52.329 Washington. Between 1951 and 1955 the FBI operated 00:18:52.329 --> 00:18:56.240 a highly secret profoundly unconstitutional initiative 00:18:56.240 --> 00:18:59.759 known as the Responsibilities Program. The Responsibilities 00:18:59.759 --> 00:19:03.519 Program. Yes. Under this program, the FBI essentially 00:19:03.519 --> 00:19:05.960 acted as a shadow arbiter of employment for the 00:19:05.960 --> 00:19:08.539 private sector and local governments. They would 00:19:08.539 --> 00:19:11.740 distribute anonymous documents, blind memoranda 00:19:11.740 --> 00:19:14.160 containing unverified evidence gathered from 00:19:14.160 --> 00:19:17.799 FBI files regarding the supposed political affiliations 00:19:17.799 --> 00:19:20.339 or communist sympathies of public school teachers 00:19:20.619 --> 00:19:23.240 private lawyers, and various other professionals. 00:19:23.519 --> 00:19:26.680 Wait, wait. So the FBI is secretly mailing packets 00:19:26.680 --> 00:19:29.980 of unverified dirt to local school boards and 00:19:29.980 --> 00:19:31.940 private law firms. Exactly. And because these 00:19:31.940 --> 00:19:34.400 were blind memoranda, meaning they didn't have 00:19:34.400 --> 00:19:37.279 an official FBI letterhead or signature, but 00:19:37.279 --> 00:19:39.420 the recipients knew exactly who they were from, 00:19:39.779 --> 00:19:42.039 the employers could just quietly fire the targeted 00:19:42.039 --> 00:19:45.359 individual. Thousands of people lost their livelihoods, 00:19:45.480 --> 00:19:47.200 their pensions, and their reputations without 00:19:47.200 --> 00:19:49.079 ever stepping foot inside a courtroom, without 00:19:49.079 --> 00:19:51.579 ever seeing a judge, and without any due process 00:19:51.579 --> 00:19:54.500 whatsoever. The sources also detail the extent 00:19:54.500 --> 00:19:57.440 to which the FBI engaged in blatantly illegal 00:19:57.440 --> 00:20:01.170 practices to feed this machinery. We are talking 00:20:01.170 --> 00:20:05.690 about black bag jobs, illegal burglaries, unauthorized 00:20:05.690 --> 00:20:08.549 opening of private mail, and widespread illegal 00:20:08.549 --> 00:20:11.269 wiretaps. One of the most glaring examples of 00:20:11.269 --> 00:20:13.809 this overreach was Hoover's targeted campaign 00:20:13.809 --> 00:20:16.490 against the National Lawyers Guild. Yes, let's 00:20:16.490 --> 00:20:18.009 look at the mechanics of that because it goes 00:20:18.009 --> 00:20:20.950 right to the heart of the legal system. The National 00:20:20.950 --> 00:20:23.089 Lawyers Guild was targeted specifically because 00:20:23.089 --> 00:20:25.109 its members were among the few attorneys in the 00:20:25.109 --> 00:20:27.549 entire country who were still willing to fulfill 00:20:27.549 --> 00:20:30.690 their ethical duty and defend clients' in communist 00:20:30.690 --> 00:20:33.069 -related cases. Exactly. Hoover viewed anyone 00:20:33.069 --> 00:20:35.369 defending a suspected communist as a subversive 00:20:35.369 --> 00:20:38.650 themselves. So the FBI burglarized the private 00:20:38.650 --> 00:20:41.150 offices of the National Lawyers Guild at least 00:20:41.150 --> 00:20:45.829 14 separate times between 1947 and 1951. 14 times. 00:20:46.210 --> 00:20:48.430 And their primary goal wasn't just finding communist 00:20:48.430 --> 00:20:51.250 membership cards. They were illegally photographing 00:20:51.250 --> 00:20:53.329 and copying the defense attorney's confidential 00:20:53.329 --> 00:20:56.369 legal strategies and case files, which the FBI 00:20:56.369 --> 00:20:58.789 would then secretly pass along to the prosecuting 00:20:58.789 --> 00:21:01.839 government attorneys to ensure convictions. It's 00:21:01.839 --> 00:21:04.039 a complete short -circuiting of the adversarial 00:21:04.039 --> 00:21:06.480 justice system, and all of these tactics eventually 00:21:06.480 --> 00:21:10.279 evolved, formalized, and expanded into the infamous 00:21:10.279 --> 00:21:15.309 COINTELPRO operations starting in 1956. COINTELPRO 00:21:15.309 --> 00:21:18.509 was a covert, deeply illegal, dirty tricks program 00:21:18.509 --> 00:21:21.069 designed not just to monitor, but to actively 00:21:21.069 --> 00:21:24.430 disrupt, discredit, and neutralize domestic dissident 00:21:24.430 --> 00:21:26.730 groups. It was incredibly destructive. The FBI 00:21:26.730 --> 00:21:29.450 would plant forged documents to make innocent 00:21:29.450 --> 00:21:32.170 people look like FBI informers just to sow paranoia 00:21:32.170 --> 00:21:34.710 within groups. They would spread vicious rumors, 00:21:34.809 --> 00:21:36.670 and they would strategically leak classified 00:21:36.670 --> 00:21:39.509 information to friendly journalists to ruin reputations. 00:21:40.170 --> 00:21:43.230 As historian Ellen Schrecker so astutely puts 00:21:43.230 --> 00:21:46.180 it in the source material, If historical observers 00:21:46.180 --> 00:21:49.359 living in the 1950s had known the sheer scale 00:21:49.359 --> 00:21:51.539 and illegality of what the Freedom of Information 00:21:51.539 --> 00:21:54.940 Act would later reveal in the 1970s, there is 00:21:54.940 --> 00:21:57.240 no doubt we would look back and unequivocally 00:21:57.240 --> 00:22:00.980 call this entire era Hooverism. Which brings 00:22:00.980 --> 00:22:03.859 us to the bureaucratic purge itself. We've talked 00:22:03.859 --> 00:22:06.019 about the architects, but now we need to look 00:22:06.019 --> 00:22:08.759 at how this machinery was turned inward, transforming 00:22:08.759 --> 00:22:11.359 the vast United States government into an instrument 00:22:11.359 --> 00:22:13.900 of absolute suspicion against its own workforce. 00:22:14.720 --> 00:22:16.380 And the irony that we really need to highlight 00:22:16.380 --> 00:22:19.000 is that this systemic purge didn't start with 00:22:19.000 --> 00:22:21.240 a right -wing demagogue. No, it didn't. It started 00:22:21.240 --> 00:22:23.680 with a moderate Democrat. President Harry S. 00:22:23.819 --> 00:22:27.839 Truman, who issued Executive Order 9835 in March 00:22:27.839 --> 00:22:31.799 of 1947. Executive Order 9835 established the 00:22:31.799 --> 00:22:34.519 first comprehensive loyalty review program for 00:22:34.519 --> 00:22:37.380 federal employees in U .S. history. It mandated 00:22:37.380 --> 00:22:40.440 that every single federal civil service employee, 00:22:40.900 --> 00:22:42.900 from high level diplomats down to janitors and 00:22:42.900 --> 00:22:45.559 postal clerks, be subjected to a background screening 00:22:45.559 --> 00:22:48.319 for loyalty. Every single one. every single one. 00:22:48.720 --> 00:22:51.220 And the criteria for what constituted disloyalty 00:22:51.220 --> 00:22:54.000 were breathtakingly vague. It included membership 00:22:54.000 --> 00:22:57.319 in, affiliation with, or even sympathetic association 00:22:57.319 --> 00:23:00.420 with any foreign or domestic organization, movement 00:23:00.420 --> 00:23:03.500 or group that the U .S. Attorney General unilaterally 00:23:03.500 --> 00:23:06.900 designated as totalitarian, fascist, communist 00:23:06.900 --> 00:23:09.599 or subversive. I have to pause and ask about 00:23:09.599 --> 00:23:12.799 the political calculus here. Why on earth did 00:23:12.799 --> 00:23:15.460 Truman a Democrat who is actively implementing 00:23:15.460 --> 00:23:18.279 the liberal policies of the fair deal, initiate 00:23:18.279 --> 00:23:21.380 this massive civil liberties crushing apparatus. 00:23:21.880 --> 00:23:24.000 Was he genuinely terrified of a postal worker 00:23:24.000 --> 00:23:25.640 bringing down the republic or was he just trying 00:23:25.640 --> 00:23:27.579 to beat his conservative critics to the punch? 00:23:27.880 --> 00:23:29.480 Because it really feels like that autoimmune 00:23:29.480 --> 00:23:31.299 response we talked about, where the government's 00:23:31.299 --> 00:23:33.240 defenses start attacking healthy cells out of 00:23:33.240 --> 00:23:35.420 sheer political self -preservation. The political 00:23:35.420 --> 00:23:38.759 context provides the key. The sources strongly 00:23:38.759 --> 00:23:41.579 suggest that Truman was reacting defensively 00:23:41.579 --> 00:23:45.220 to the massive Republican sweep in the 1946 congressional 00:23:45.220 --> 00:23:47.940 midterm elections. The Republicans had campaigned 00:23:47.940 --> 00:23:50.220 heavily on the accusation that the Democratic 00:23:50.220 --> 00:23:53.319 administration was soft on communism and had 00:23:53.319 --> 00:23:55.740 allowed Soviet sympathizers to infiltrate the 00:23:55.740 --> 00:23:58.319 New Deal bureaucracy. So he was feeling the pressure. 00:23:58.759 --> 00:24:02.400 Immense pressure. Truman felt a desperate pragmatic 00:24:02.400 --> 00:24:04.900 need to neutralize that attack vector heading 00:24:04.900 --> 00:24:08.059 into the 1948 presidential election. He believed 00:24:08.059 --> 00:24:10.700 that by creating his own loyalty program, he 00:24:10.700 --> 00:24:12.740 could control the process and keep it out of 00:24:12.740 --> 00:24:14.640 the hands of congressional zealots. But that 00:24:14.640 --> 00:24:17.539 didn't work. Not at all. He drastically miscalculated 00:24:17.539 --> 00:24:20.140 the beast he was creating. Once that bureaucratic 00:24:20.140 --> 00:24:21.940 machinery of suspicion was built and funded, 00:24:22.200 --> 00:24:24.880 it took on a life of its own. It became an institution. 00:24:25.079 --> 00:24:28.680 And it only expanded. When President Dwight D. 00:24:28.799 --> 00:24:31.960 Eisenhower, a Republican, took office in 1953, 00:24:32.160 --> 00:24:34.420 he didn't dismantle the apparatus, he strengthened 00:24:34.420 --> 00:24:37.059 it. He issued his own executive order that actually 00:24:37.059 --> 00:24:39.119 decreased the avenues of appeal for dismissed 00:24:39.119 --> 00:24:43.059 employees. The net of suspicion was thrown incredibly 00:24:43.059 --> 00:24:46.500 wide, very wide. By 1958, historians estimate 00:24:46.500 --> 00:24:48.920 that one out of every five employed persons in 00:24:48.920 --> 00:24:51.279 the entire United States. We aren't just talking 00:24:51.279 --> 00:24:53.440 about federal bureaucrats anymore. We're talking 00:24:53.440 --> 00:24:56.279 about state employees, local municipal workers, 00:24:56.519 --> 00:24:58.880 public school teachers and massive swaths of 00:24:58.880 --> 00:25:01.119 private industries tied to government contracts 00:25:01.119 --> 00:25:03.799 was required to pass some form of loyalty review. 00:25:04.079 --> 00:25:07.640 one in five workers. And the consequences of 00:25:07.640 --> 00:25:10.740 failing that review were absolute permanent professional 00:25:10.740 --> 00:25:13.539 death. The chairman of Truman's own loyalty review 00:25:13.539 --> 00:25:16.019 board bluntly stated the reality of the situation. 00:25:16.359 --> 00:25:19.240 He said, a man is ruined everywhere and forever. 00:25:19.799 --> 00:25:22.119 No responsible employer would be likely to take 00:25:22.119 --> 00:25:24.940 a chance in giving him a job. Wow. Ruined everywhere 00:25:24.940 --> 00:25:27.660 and forever. Yes. We aren't just talking about 00:25:27.660 --> 00:25:29.299 losing a paycheck. We're talking about being 00:25:29.559 --> 00:25:31.920 permanently locked out of your chosen profession 00:25:31.920 --> 00:25:34.759 and branded a traitor in your community. And 00:25:34.759 --> 00:25:38.230 nobody was immune. The highest profile casualty 00:25:38.230 --> 00:25:42.089 of the security apparatus was J. Robert Oppenheimer, 00:25:42.650 --> 00:25:45.150 the brilliant theoretical physicist who had been 00:25:45.150 --> 00:25:47.230 the scientific director of the Manhattan Project. 00:25:47.710 --> 00:25:49.990 This was the man who practically handed the United 00:25:49.990 --> 00:25:53.109 States the atomic bomb, a national hero. Absolutely. 00:25:53.849 --> 00:25:58.170 Yet, in 1954, after a grueling, deeply humiliating 00:25:58.170 --> 00:26:01.750 four -week secret hearing, his top -secret security 00:26:01.750 --> 00:26:03.809 clearance was completely revoked, effectively 00:26:03.809 --> 00:26:06.849 ending his career in government science. If they 00:26:06.849 --> 00:26:09.170 could take down Oppenheimer based on his past 00:26:09.170 --> 00:26:11.809 associations with left -leaning academics, they 00:26:11.809 --> 00:26:14.390 could take down anyone. And they did. because 00:26:14.390 --> 00:26:17.089 the definition of what constituted a subversive 00:26:17.089 --> 00:26:19.990 organization was incredibly broad and constantly 00:26:19.990 --> 00:26:22.329 shifting. The Justice Department maintained a 00:26:22.329 --> 00:26:24.769 master list of subversive groups that eventually 00:26:24.769 --> 00:26:27.549 swelled to 154 different organizations. It was 00:26:27.549 --> 00:26:30.569 a huge list. You could be investigated and fired 00:26:30.569 --> 00:26:33.390 simply for having attended a meeting of an organization 00:26:33.390 --> 00:26:36.150 a decade earlier before it was ever even on the 00:26:36.150 --> 00:26:38.839 list. One of the most frequently cited causes 00:26:38.839 --> 00:26:41.059 of suspicion in Washington was simply having 00:26:41.059 --> 00:26:43.460 a membership to the Washington Bookshop Association. 00:26:43.720 --> 00:26:46.819 Wait, a bookstore? A bookstore. It was a cooperative 00:26:46.819 --> 00:26:49.099 that offered lectures on literature, classical 00:26:49.099 --> 00:26:51.859 music concerts, and discounts on books. But because 00:26:51.859 --> 00:26:54.319 it leaned left politically and occasionally hosted 00:26:54.319 --> 00:26:56.759 speakers who were critical of U .S. policy, it 00:26:56.759 --> 00:26:59.720 was placed on the attorney general's list. Buying 00:26:59.720 --> 00:27:02.099 discounted novels was treated as evidence of 00:27:02.099 --> 00:27:04.220 a potential willingness to betray your country. 00:27:04.349 --> 00:27:08.069 Here is where the history gets profoundly tragic 00:27:08.069 --> 00:27:11.009 and where we see how deeply this paranoia infected 00:27:11.009 --> 00:27:14.109 the societal DNA. The source material details 00:27:14.109 --> 00:27:17.369 a specific, massive subset of this bureaucratic 00:27:17.369 --> 00:27:19.789 purge that is incredibly important, known as 00:27:19.789 --> 00:27:22.309 the Lavender Scare. It wasn't just suspected 00:27:22.309 --> 00:27:24.849 communists who were losing their jobs and their 00:27:24.849 --> 00:27:28.200 lives. It was suspected homosexuals. This is 00:27:28.200 --> 00:27:31.000 one of the most devastating and until recently 00:27:31.000 --> 00:27:33.299 frequently overlooked aspects of the McCarthy 00:27:33.299 --> 00:27:36.480 era. The lavender scare ran parallel to the red 00:27:36.480 --> 00:27:38.700 scare, but in many ways it was even more ruthless. 00:27:39.279 --> 00:27:41.640 Yeah. Following the incredibly damaging Cambridge 00:27:41.640 --> 00:27:44.319 Five spy scandal in the United Kingdom, which 00:27:44.319 --> 00:27:46.619 involved high level British intelligence officers 00:27:46.619 --> 00:27:48.859 who were secretly passing information to the 00:27:48.859 --> 00:27:51.380 Soviets and several of whom were homosexual men, 00:27:52.059 --> 00:27:54.980 suspected homosexuality became a primary explicit 00:27:54.980 --> 00:27:57.710 target for U .S. investigators. The government 00:27:57.710 --> 00:28:00.769 actively hunted for what they termed sexual perverts, 00:28:01.289 --> 00:28:02.609 operating under the presumption that they were 00:28:02.609 --> 00:28:05.289 inherently subversive by nature. This dragnet 00:28:05.289 --> 00:28:08.410 resulted in over 5 ,000 federal workers being 00:28:08.410 --> 00:28:11.109 explicitly fired because of their sexual orientation 00:28:11.109 --> 00:28:14.029 and thousands more who were harassed, intimidated, 00:28:14.250 --> 00:28:16.589 and preemptively denied employment. But I want 00:28:16.589 --> 00:28:18.190 to break down the mechanics of the conflation. 00:28:18.920 --> 00:28:21.279 How logically did the United States government 00:28:21.279 --> 00:28:24.279 connect homosexuality to Soviet espionage? What 00:28:24.279 --> 00:28:26.359 was the actual argument being made in these committee 00:28:26.359 --> 00:28:28.599 rooms? To understand that, you have to look at 00:28:28.599 --> 00:28:30.980 the deeply conservative sociological framing 00:28:30.980 --> 00:28:35.250 of the 1950s. At that time, homosexuality was 00:28:35.250 --> 00:28:37.509 officially classified by the medical establishment 00:28:37.509 --> 00:28:40.529 as a psychiatric disorder. Right. The DSM listed 00:28:40.529 --> 00:28:43.849 it as such. Exactly. And in the highly politicized, 00:28:44.049 --> 00:28:46.450 fear -drenched environment of the Cold War, it 00:28:46.450 --> 00:28:49.849 was rhetorically framed by politicians as a dangerous, 00:28:50.049 --> 00:28:52.509 contagious social disease that threatened the 00:28:52.509 --> 00:28:55.960 moral fiber of the state. The traditional nuclear 00:28:55.960 --> 00:28:58.920 heterosexual family was heavily promoted as the 00:28:58.920 --> 00:29:01.000 absolute cornerstone of American strength and 00:29:01.000 --> 00:29:03.839 resilience against the godless threat of communism. 00:29:04.779 --> 00:29:06.940 So they were seen as an ideological threat just 00:29:06.940 --> 00:29:09.480 by existing. Yes, the twisted logic of the era 00:29:09.480 --> 00:29:12.160 dictated that homosexuals who existed outside 00:29:12.160 --> 00:29:14.420 that traditional family structure were inherently 00:29:14.420 --> 00:29:17.420 unstable, lacking in moral character, and posed 00:29:17.420 --> 00:29:19.710 a fundamental threat to the social body. And 00:29:19.710 --> 00:29:22.150 beyond the moral panic, there was a very specific 00:29:22.150 --> 00:29:25.549 operational security argument that the FBI and 00:29:25.549 --> 00:29:28.809 politicians relied heavily upon. They argued 00:29:28.809 --> 00:29:31.630 that because homosexuality was highly stigmatized 00:29:31.630 --> 00:29:34.529 socially and because homosexual acts were criminalized 00:29:34.529 --> 00:29:36.869 and illegal in nearly every jurisdiction in the 00:29:36.869 --> 00:29:39.430 country, it meant these individuals lived in 00:29:39.430 --> 00:29:41.910 secrecy. Right. And that secrecy made them uniquely 00:29:41.910 --> 00:29:44.650 vulnerable to extortion and blackmail by Soviet 00:29:44.650 --> 00:29:47.170 intelligence agents. The argument was that a 00:29:47.170 --> 00:29:50.250 Soviet spy could discover a federal worker's 00:29:50.250 --> 00:29:52.869 secret life and threaten to expose them to their 00:29:52.869 --> 00:29:55.869 family and employer unless they handed over classified 00:29:55.869 --> 00:29:59.250 documents. Therefore, they were deemed unacceptable 00:29:59.250 --> 00:30:01.809 security risks. But fundamentally, if you strip 00:30:01.809 --> 00:30:04.130 away the national security rhetoric, it was about 00:30:04.130 --> 00:30:07.009 conflating any form of social nonconformity with 00:30:07.009 --> 00:30:09.349 political treason. And McCarthy leaned into that. 00:30:09.369 --> 00:30:12.490 Heavily. Joseph McCarthy explicitly drew upon 00:30:12.490 --> 00:30:15.150 this deep -seated prejudice to position himself 00:30:15.150 --> 00:30:17.450 not just as a defender of state secrets, but 00:30:17.450 --> 00:30:19.910 as the vanguard of traditional American social 00:30:19.910 --> 00:30:22.910 morality. And the investigative tactics used 00:30:22.910 --> 00:30:26.140 in the lavender scare were brutal. The FBI didn't 00:30:26.140 --> 00:30:29.160 just passively wait for reports. They set up 00:30:29.160 --> 00:30:32.420 widespread proactive surveillance networks specifically 00:30:32.420 --> 00:30:35.599 designed to identify homosexual government employees. 00:30:36.039 --> 00:30:38.519 They tracked people at bars, monitored public 00:30:38.519 --> 00:30:40.980 parks, pressured local police vice squads to 00:30:40.980 --> 00:30:44.299 hand over arrest records, and used intense interrogation 00:30:44.299 --> 00:30:46.039 techniques to force those they caught to out 00:30:46.039 --> 00:30:48.339 their friends and colleagues. It was devastating. 00:30:48.460 --> 00:30:51.099 It was a massive, life -destroying dragnet that 00:30:51.099 --> 00:30:53.380 ruined thousands of careers and led to numerous 00:30:53.380 --> 00:30:57.099 documented suicides. So we see the government 00:30:57.099 --> 00:31:00.400 ruthlessly and systematically purging its own 00:31:00.400 --> 00:31:03.259 bureaucratic ranks in Washington. But the strategists 00:31:03.259 --> 00:31:05.220 of the Cold War, the politicians and the FBI, 00:31:05.720 --> 00:31:08.099 quickly realized that sanitizing Washington wasn't 00:31:08.099 --> 00:31:10.859 enough. If you want to truly win a cultural ideological 00:31:10.859 --> 00:31:13.039 conflict, you cannot just control the people 00:31:13.039 --> 00:31:15.319 shuffling papers. You have to control America's 00:31:15.319 --> 00:31:17.480 cultural narrators. His storyteller. Exactly. 00:31:17.500 --> 00:31:19.440 You have to control the people writing the nation's 00:31:19.440 --> 00:31:22.500 stories. And that realization shifted the crosshairs 00:31:22.500 --> 00:31:25.859 directly westward. From the capital to the culture. 00:31:26.420 --> 00:31:28.480 Let's dig deeply into the Hollywood blacklist. 00:31:29.140 --> 00:31:32.339 The government recognized the profound, unprecedented 00:31:32.339 --> 00:31:34.740 cultural power of the motion picture industry. 00:31:35.480 --> 00:31:37.650 Movies weren't just entertainment. They were 00:31:37.650 --> 00:31:39.930 the primary vehicle for transmitting American 00:31:39.930 --> 00:31:42.170 values, both domestically and internationally. 00:31:42.349 --> 00:31:45.569 They exported the American dream. Right. If communist 00:31:45.569 --> 00:31:48.789 sympathizers were subtly embedding subversive 00:31:48.789 --> 00:31:51.690 anti -capitalist messages into the dialogue of 00:31:51.690 --> 00:31:53.809 blockbuster films, the government viewed that 00:31:53.809 --> 00:31:56.869 as a massive national security threat. So the 00:31:56.869 --> 00:31:59.170 purge moves to Hollywood, spearheaded by the 00:31:59.170 --> 00:32:01.650 House Committee on Un -American Activities, or 00:32:01.650 --> 00:32:06.329 HUAC. HUAC is a central pillar of this entire 00:32:06.329 --> 00:32:09.019 era. The committee had actually been formed much 00:32:09.019 --> 00:32:11.440 earlier, back in 1938, originally known as the 00:32:11.440 --> 00:32:13.980 DICE Committee, investigating both fascist and 00:32:13.980 --> 00:32:16.400 communist activities. But it achieved its absolute 00:32:16.400 --> 00:32:19.220 greatest notoriety and power in October of 1947, 00:32:19.380 --> 00:32:21.619 when it turned its glaring spotlight fully onto 00:32:21.619 --> 00:32:23.680 the film industry. And they went to LA. Yes. 00:32:23.930 --> 00:32:26.450 The committee members traveled to Los Angeles 00:32:26.450 --> 00:32:29.490 and began subpoenaing high -profile screenwriters, 00:32:29.609 --> 00:32:32.369 directors, and actors, dragging them before the 00:32:32.369 --> 00:32:34.710 flashing bulbs of the press to testify about 00:32:34.710 --> 00:32:36.910 their suspected membership in the Communist Party 00:32:36.910 --> 00:32:39.470 or their association with its members. And this 00:32:39.470 --> 00:32:42.410 leads us to one of the most famous chilling questions 00:32:42.410 --> 00:32:44.630 in the history of American political theater. 00:32:45.410 --> 00:32:47.609 The chairman would bang the gavel and the committee 00:32:47.609 --> 00:32:50.269 would demand an answer to a single defining query. 00:32:51.079 --> 00:32:53.819 Are you now or have you ever been a member of 00:32:53.819 --> 00:32:56.140 the Communist Party of the United States? Yes. 00:32:56.759 --> 00:32:58.759 That question was a trap. And among the very 00:32:58.759 --> 00:33:00.559 first witnesses called to testify were a group 00:33:00.559 --> 00:33:03.559 of 10 men, mostly prominent screenwriters and 00:33:03.559 --> 00:33:05.500 directors, who made a collective decision that 00:33:05.500 --> 00:33:07.380 they were not going to cooperate with the committee's 00:33:07.380 --> 00:33:09.859 demands. They became known to history as the 00:33:09.859 --> 00:33:12.930 Hollywood 10. I want to slow down and really 00:33:12.930 --> 00:33:15.289 examine the legal strategy of the Hollywood 10 00:33:15.289 --> 00:33:18.190 because it is crucial to understanding how the 00:33:18.190 --> 00:33:20.869 Constitution was functioning or failing to function 00:33:20.869 --> 00:33:24.190 during this panic. When they sat in that witness 00:33:24.190 --> 00:33:26.210 chair, they didn't plead the Fifth Amendment 00:33:26.210 --> 00:33:29.359 initially. They explicitly cited their rights 00:33:29.359 --> 00:33:31.980 under the First Amendment. Right. This is a deeply 00:33:31.980 --> 00:33:35.380 principled, calculated legal stand. They argued 00:33:35.380 --> 00:33:37.859 forcefully that the First Amendment's guarantees 00:33:37.859 --> 00:33:40.559 of free speech, free assembly, and freedom of 00:33:40.559 --> 00:33:43.500 association legally protected them from being 00:33:43.500 --> 00:33:46.220 forced by any branch of the government to reveal 00:33:46.220 --> 00:33:48.460 their private political beliefs, their voting 00:33:48.460 --> 00:33:50.700 records, or their associations. They thought 00:33:50.700 --> 00:33:53.299 it was none of the government's business. Precisely. 00:33:53.480 --> 00:33:55.160 They believed that a congressional committee 00:33:55.160 --> 00:33:57.200 fundamentally had no cons... constitutional right 00:33:57.200 --> 00:33:59.700 to even ask the question, let alone demand an 00:33:59.700 --> 00:34:01.900 answer under threat of punishment. But that noble 00:34:01.900 --> 00:34:04.420 First Amendment tactic failed spectacularly in 00:34:04.420 --> 00:34:07.980 the courts. Let's explain why. How did a democracy 00:34:07.980 --> 00:34:10.820 legally justify forcing citizens to declare their 00:34:10.820 --> 00:34:13.639 political affiliations? It failed because the 00:34:13.639 --> 00:34:17.119 federal courts drew a very specific, very narrow 00:34:17.119 --> 00:34:20.599 distinction regarding congressional power. The 00:34:20.599 --> 00:34:23.119 courts ruled that while the First Amendment absolutely 00:34:23.119 --> 00:34:25.260 protects your right to speak and associate freely, 00:34:25.820 --> 00:34:28.079 it does not necessarily protect you from the 00:34:28.079 --> 00:34:30.420 broad investigative powers of the United States 00:34:30.420 --> 00:34:33.300 Congress when Congress is investigating a threat 00:34:33.300 --> 00:34:36.360 to national security. So national security trumped 00:34:36.360 --> 00:34:39.539 the First Amendment? In this context, yes. The 00:34:39.539 --> 00:34:41.719 courts essentially deferred to the legislative 00:34:41.719 --> 00:34:44.659 branch, ruling that the danger posed by international 00:34:44.659 --> 00:34:47.380 communism outweighed the individual's right to 00:34:47.380 --> 00:34:50.059 political privacy in the context of a congressional 00:34:50.059 --> 00:34:53.019 hearing. Therefore, the courts did not uphold 00:34:53.019 --> 00:34:54.639 the First Amendment defense for the Hollywood 00:34:54.639 --> 00:34:57.280 Ten. And the consequences of that legal failure 00:34:57.280 --> 00:35:00.739 were immediate and severe. All 10 men were charged, 00:35:01.019 --> 00:35:02.920 convicted and sentenced to federal prison for 00:35:02.920 --> 00:35:04.960 contempt of Congress, serving sentences ranging 00:35:04.960 --> 00:35:07.460 from six months to a year simply for refusing 00:35:07.460 --> 00:35:11.059 to discuss their politics. Exactly. So seeing 00:35:11.059 --> 00:35:14.199 the Hollywood 10 physically hauled off to prison 00:35:14.199 --> 00:35:17.599 sent a massive, chilling shockwave through the 00:35:17.599 --> 00:35:20.260 rest of the entertainment industry. Subsequent 00:35:20.260 --> 00:35:23.539 witnesses, who were subpoenaed by HEAC, quickly 00:35:23.539 --> 00:35:25.480 realized that relying on the First Amendment 00:35:25.480 --> 00:35:28.239 was a guaranteed ticket to a jail cell. It wasn't 00:35:28.239 --> 00:35:31.519 an option anymore. No. So they shifted their 00:35:31.519 --> 00:35:34.059 legal defense strategy. They began pleading the 00:35:34.059 --> 00:35:36.559 Fifth Amendment, the constitutional right against 00:35:36.559 --> 00:35:38.860 self -incrimination. And from a strictly legal 00:35:38.860 --> 00:35:41.280 standpoint, taking the Fifth was effective at 00:35:41.280 --> 00:35:43.550 keeping them out of federal prison. The courts 00:35:43.550 --> 00:35:45.469 recognized that admitting to Communist Party 00:35:45.469 --> 00:35:47.570 membership could potentially expose a witness 00:35:47.570 --> 00:35:50.809 to criminal prosecution under other laws. So 00:35:50.809 --> 00:35:52.849 pleading the Fifth protected them from a contempt 00:35:52.849 --> 00:35:55.610 of Congress citation. But while it saved them 00:35:55.610 --> 00:35:58.070 from a jail cell, culturally and professionally, 00:35:58.289 --> 00:36:00.329 it was an absolute disaster. It was a professional 00:36:00.329 --> 00:36:02.750 death sentence. Taking the Fifth was culturally 00:36:02.750 --> 00:36:05.489 translated by the press and the public as a de 00:36:05.489 --> 00:36:08.989 facto admission of guilt. Senator McCarthy, HUAC 00:36:08.989 --> 00:36:11.829 members, and conservative commentators popularized 00:36:11.829 --> 00:36:14.309 the incredibly damaging epithet Fifth Amendment 00:36:14.309 --> 00:36:17.369 Communists. The implication was clear. Innocent 00:36:17.369 --> 00:36:20.150 people don't hide behind the Fifth Amendment. 00:36:20.710 --> 00:36:23.019 If you took the Fifth, you were hiding something 00:36:23.019 --> 00:36:25.699 sinister and you were therefore unfit to work 00:36:25.699 --> 00:36:28.079 in American society. Let's put ourselves in the 00:36:28.079 --> 00:36:30.900 shoes of a witness during this time. I want to 00:36:30.900 --> 00:36:35.539 emphasize the impossible excruciating moral dilemma 00:36:35.539 --> 00:36:39.190 this created. You get a subpoena. You are sitting 00:36:39.190 --> 00:36:41.269 in the hearing room, the newsreel cameras are 00:36:41.269 --> 00:36:44.130 rolling, the lights are blinding, the legal requirements 00:36:44.130 --> 00:36:46.250 of the Fifth Amendment meant you couldn't just 00:36:46.250 --> 00:36:48.289 selectively answer questions. No, you couldn't. 00:36:48.309 --> 00:36:50.769 You couldn't say to the committee, yes, I was 00:36:50.769 --> 00:36:52.869 a member of a socialist writer's club back in 00:36:52.869 --> 00:36:55.150 college in the 1930s when it was popular, but 00:36:55.150 --> 00:36:57.309 I absolutely will not talk about my friends. 00:36:57.610 --> 00:37:00.119 That is the crucial legal trap. The courts had 00:37:00.119 --> 00:37:02.639 established that the privilege against self -incrimination 00:37:02.639 --> 00:37:05.219 cannot be used as a shield to protect others. 00:37:05.760 --> 00:37:08.099 If you voluntarily testified about your own past 00:37:08.099 --> 00:37:10.719 political associations, if you admitted to even 00:37:10.719 --> 00:37:14.199 a minor innocuous affiliation, you legally waived 00:37:14.199 --> 00:37:16.480 your Fifth Amendment rights regarding the entire 00:37:16.480 --> 00:37:18.599 subject. Oh, man. So once you open your mouth. 00:37:18.750 --> 00:37:21.369 Once you opened the door on yourself, you were 00:37:21.369 --> 00:37:24.050 legally compelled to answer all subsequent questions, 00:37:24.429 --> 00:37:26.809 which inevitably meant you were forced to name 00:37:26.809 --> 00:37:29.489 names of your friends, colleagues, and acquaintances 00:37:29.489 --> 00:37:32.489 who had also attended those meetings. If you 00:37:32.489 --> 00:37:34.949 refused to name names at that point, you went 00:37:34.949 --> 00:37:38.829 to prison for contempt. It was a ritual of absolute 00:37:38.829 --> 00:37:41.710 public submission. You either had to destroy 00:37:41.710 --> 00:37:44.449 your own career by taking the fifth, or you had 00:37:44.449 --> 00:37:46.789 to save your career by becoming an informer and 00:37:46.789 --> 00:37:49.599 destroying the lives of your peers. The actor 00:37:49.599 --> 00:37:52.360 Larry Parks articulated this agony perfectly 00:37:52.360 --> 00:37:54.360 when he took the stand. It's a heartbreaking 00:37:54.360 --> 00:37:56.719 quote. It really is. He pleaded with the committee 00:37:56.719 --> 00:37:59.539 saying, don't present me with the choice of either 00:37:59.539 --> 00:38:01.460 being in contempt of this committee and going 00:38:01.460 --> 00:38:03.800 to jail or forcing me to really crawl through 00:38:03.800 --> 00:38:06.320 the mud to be an informer. He begged them not 00:38:06.320 --> 00:38:08.900 to make him do it. But they did. They forced 00:38:08.900 --> 00:38:11.860 the choice. And many did name names out of sheer 00:38:11.860 --> 00:38:14.800 terror of losing everything. But let's look at 00:38:14.800 --> 00:38:17.360 how the industry responded structurally. because 00:38:17.360 --> 00:38:19.920 the government couldn't officially legally mandate 00:38:19.920 --> 00:38:22.340 that a private movie studio fire someone for 00:38:22.340 --> 00:38:26.019 taking the fifth. So how did an entire private 00:38:26.019 --> 00:38:28.619 industry, an industry fundamentally based on 00:38:28.619 --> 00:38:32.000 the concept of free expression, justify implementing 00:38:32.000 --> 00:38:34.739 self -censorship and blacklisting on such a massive 00:38:34.739 --> 00:38:37.340 scale? It justifies it entirely through the lens 00:38:37.340 --> 00:38:40.079 of public relations, corporate cowardice, and 00:38:40.079 --> 00:38:42.619 pure financial self -preservation. We have to 00:38:42.619 --> 00:38:45.960 look at the Waldorf Statement. On November 25th, 00:38:46.000 --> 00:38:48.840 1947, the very day after Congress officially 00:38:48.840 --> 00:38:51.639 cited the Hollywood Ten for contempt, Eric Johnston, 00:38:51.780 --> 00:38:53.780 the president of the Motion Picture Association 00:38:53.780 --> 00:38:56.679 of America, called a massive secret meeting of 00:38:56.679 --> 00:38:59.260 the major studio executives at the Waldorf Astoria 00:38:59.260 --> 00:39:02.099 Hotel in New York. Big bosses. Coming out of 00:39:02.099 --> 00:39:04.159 that meeting, they issued a unified press release 00:39:04.159 --> 00:39:06.480 that fundamentally changed American culture. 00:39:06.820 --> 00:39:08.900 The Waldorf statement announced the immediate 00:39:08.900 --> 00:39:11.820 firing of the Hollywood Ten without pay. But 00:39:11.820 --> 00:39:14.059 more importantly, it established an industry 00:39:14.059 --> 00:39:17.619 -wide policy. The studio heads declared, we will 00:39:17.619 --> 00:39:20.260 not knowingly employ a communist or a member 00:39:20.260 --> 00:39:23.340 of any party or group which advocates the overthrow 00:39:23.340 --> 00:39:25.900 of the government of the United States. There 00:39:25.900 --> 00:39:28.659 it is. And with that single sentence, the unofficial 00:39:28.659 --> 00:39:31.500 Hollywood blacklist was born. The studios signaled 00:39:31.500 --> 00:39:33.559 to Congress and the public that they would eagerly 00:39:33.559 --> 00:39:35.880 police their own ranks to avoid further government 00:39:35.880 --> 00:39:39.000 scrutiny or consumer boycotts. But here's the 00:39:39.000 --> 00:39:41.320 administrative problem the studios faced. They 00:39:41.320 --> 00:39:43.900 had just promised to purge subversives. But movie 00:39:43.900 --> 00:39:45.579 studios are in the business of making films, 00:39:45.699 --> 00:39:47.739 not conducting deep cover counterintelligence 00:39:47.739 --> 00:39:50.179 background checks on every grip, lighting technician 00:39:50.179 --> 00:39:52.260 and script supervisor. They don't want to get 00:39:52.260 --> 00:39:55.340 their hands dirty. Too much work. Exactly. So 00:39:55.340 --> 00:39:58.280 nature abhors a vacuum and capitalism fills it. 00:39:58.539 --> 00:40:01.219 An entire cottage industry of deeply cynical 00:40:01.219 --> 00:40:04.019 private loyalty review boards and anti -communist 00:40:04.019 --> 00:40:07.000 publications sprang up overnight to monetize 00:40:07.000 --> 00:40:09.630 the fear. It essentially functioned as a private 00:40:09.630 --> 00:40:13.349 ideological protection racket. If a broadcasting 00:40:13.349 --> 00:40:16.050 network or a corporate sponsor like a soap company 00:40:16.050 --> 00:40:18.929 felt vulnerable to bad public relations, they 00:40:18.929 --> 00:40:22.150 outsourced the paranoia. They hired private consulting 00:40:22.150 --> 00:40:25.650 firms, the most famous being aware, Inc. Right. 00:40:26.389 --> 00:40:29.349 For a hefty fee, these private teams would investigate 00:40:29.349 --> 00:40:31.650 the political backgrounds of a company's employees. 00:40:32.409 --> 00:40:35.510 And the process was entirely Kafkaesque. If you 00:40:35.510 --> 00:40:37.150 were flagged by one of these firms, you were 00:40:37.150 --> 00:40:39.889 subjected to a private tribunal. You had no right 00:40:39.889 --> 00:40:42.409 to an attorney. You couldn't face or cross -examine 00:40:42.409 --> 00:40:45.210 your accusers. And you were aggressively interrogated 00:40:45.210 --> 00:40:47.269 about your politics, your charitable donations, 00:40:47.269 --> 00:40:50.309 and your past associations, all based on massive 00:40:50.309 --> 00:40:52.769 cross -reference lists maintained by these private 00:40:52.769 --> 00:40:55.369 vigilante groups. And these groups literally 00:40:55.369 --> 00:40:58.150 published physical lists, essentially catalogs 00:40:58.150 --> 00:41:00.650 of ruined lives. We are talking about books like 00:41:00.650 --> 00:41:02.789 Red Channels, which was the report of communist 00:41:02.789 --> 00:41:05.170 influence in radio and television. and weekly 00:41:05.170 --> 00:41:07.250 newsletters like Counter Attack. The business 00:41:07.250 --> 00:41:09.610 model was simple. They published your name, and 00:41:09.610 --> 00:41:11.690 then they offered your employer a paid service 00:41:11.690 --> 00:41:14.570 to clear your name. It's extortion. It's total 00:41:14.570 --> 00:41:16.929 extortion. If your name appeared in red channels, 00:41:17.230 --> 00:41:19.949 your career was effectively instantly over. Your 00:41:19.949 --> 00:41:22.489 phone just stopped ringing. And we must emphasize 00:41:22.489 --> 00:41:25.610 the staggering human and cultural cost. This 00:41:25.610 --> 00:41:28.429 wasn't just a few radical fringe activists. More 00:41:28.429 --> 00:41:31.730 than 300 actors, authors, directors, and musicians 00:41:31.730 --> 00:41:34.250 were placed on these lists and systematically 00:41:34.250 --> 00:41:37.349 denied work in the United States. We are talking 00:41:37.349 --> 00:41:40.750 about massive foundational cultural figures whose 00:41:40.750 --> 00:41:42.809 voices were silenced. Give us some examples. 00:41:43.210 --> 00:41:45.719 Well, Lucille Ball. The star of I Love Lucy, 00:41:45.900 --> 00:41:47.880 one of the most universally beloved figures in 00:41:47.880 --> 00:41:50.420 the history of American television, was subjected 00:41:50.420 --> 00:41:53.460 to a terrifying FBI investigation simply because 00:41:53.460 --> 00:41:55.760 she had registered as a Communist Party supporter 00:41:55.760 --> 00:41:59.260 years earlier in 1936, largely to appease her 00:41:59.260 --> 00:42:01.219 socialist grandfather. The fact that they went 00:42:01.219 --> 00:42:03.539 after Lucille Ball shows how wide the net was 00:42:03.539 --> 00:42:06.659 cast. But it also captured brilliant, defining 00:42:06.659 --> 00:42:09.280 writers like Dalton Trumbo, who had to resort 00:42:09.280 --> 00:42:11.679 to writing Oscar -winning screenplays under fake 00:42:11.679 --> 00:42:13.960 names and having frontmen collect his awards. 00:42:14.559 --> 00:42:16.719 It captured legendary performers and civil rights 00:42:16.719 --> 00:42:19.579 advocates like Lena Horne and Paul Robeson, whose 00:42:19.579 --> 00:42:22.119 passports were revoked, severely damaging their 00:42:22.119 --> 00:42:24.239 international career. The list goes on and on. 00:42:24.300 --> 00:42:27.139 It really does. It ensnared playwright Arthur 00:42:27.139 --> 00:42:30.340 Miller, the composer Aaron Copland. Even Albert 00:42:30.340 --> 00:42:33.159 Einstein, arguably the greatest scientific mind 00:42:33.159 --> 00:42:35.940 of the century, was closely tracked by Hoover's 00:42:35.940 --> 00:42:38.960 FBI for his advocacy of global arms control and 00:42:38.960 --> 00:42:41.119 civil rights. And it's crucial to note that this 00:42:41.119 --> 00:42:43.800 private blacklisting machinery didn't just target 00:42:43.800 --> 00:42:46.840 glamorous Hollywood stars, it permeated every 00:42:46.840 --> 00:42:49.820 sector. For example, the U .S. Coast Guard, under 00:42:49.820 --> 00:42:52.199 government mandate, initiated a massive port 00:42:52.199 --> 00:42:55.239 security program. They required a rigorous loyalty 00:42:55.239 --> 00:42:57.699 review of every single maritime worker. Merchant 00:42:57.699 --> 00:43:00.119 Marines, longshoremen, dock workers. Blue -collar 00:43:00.119 --> 00:43:03.800 jobs. Exactly. Nearly 3 ,000 blue -collar seamen 00:43:03.800 --> 00:43:05.960 lost their jobs and their ability to feed their 00:43:05.960 --> 00:43:08.760 families, very often without ever knowing the 00:43:08.760 --> 00:43:11.360 specific nature of the accusations against them, 00:43:11.679 --> 00:43:14.119 based purely on the whims of secret informants. 00:43:14.280 --> 00:43:17.460 A systemic purge of this absolute magnitude touching 00:43:17.460 --> 00:43:20.119 everyone from Hollywood elites to dock workers, 00:43:20.400 --> 00:43:22.760 it doesn't just happen because a few cynical 00:43:22.760 --> 00:43:25.780 politicians in Washington demand it. It requires 00:43:25.780 --> 00:43:28.260 the act of complicity, the silent permission, 00:43:28.639 --> 00:43:30.960 and sometimes the terrifying eager enthusiasm 00:43:30.960 --> 00:43:33.320 of the general public. Which brings us to the 00:43:33.320 --> 00:43:35.829 paranoia in the public square. How did everyday 00:43:35.829 --> 00:43:38.849 citizens become active participants in this machinery 00:43:38.849 --> 00:43:41.710 of ruin? A crusade like McCarthyism requires 00:43:41.710 --> 00:43:44.650 both a dense legal framework to legitimize the 00:43:44.650 --> 00:43:46.710 persecution and a grassroots social movement 00:43:46.710 --> 00:43:48.889 to enforce it. Let's look at the legal framework 00:43:48.889 --> 00:43:51.369 first. At the federal level, Congress passed 00:43:51.369 --> 00:43:53.550 a series of laws that heavily criminalized political 00:43:53.550 --> 00:43:56.570 affiliation. The cornerstone was the Alien Registration 00:43:56.570 --> 00:43:59.929 Act of 1940, widely known as the Smith Act. Now, 00:44:00.190 --> 00:44:02.090 I want to drill down into the legal mechanics 00:44:02.090 --> 00:44:04.489 of the Smith Act because it is mind -boggling 00:44:04.489 --> 00:44:07.590 from a modern constitutional perspective. The 00:44:07.590 --> 00:44:09.929 Smith Act made it a federal criminal offense 00:44:09.929 --> 00:44:13.090 for anyone to knowingly or willfully advocate, 00:44:13.289 --> 00:44:17.250 abet, advise, or teach the desirability of overthrowing 00:44:17.250 --> 00:44:20.550 the U .S. government by force or violence. On 00:44:20.550 --> 00:44:24.179 the surface, preventing violent overthrow Sounds 00:44:24.179 --> 00:44:26.119 reasonable. That does sound reasonable. But how 00:44:26.119 --> 00:44:28.679 did the government actually apply this law in 00:44:28.679 --> 00:44:31.539 practice? How do you legally criminalize an abstract 00:44:31.539 --> 00:44:34.000 political philosophy? The application of the 00:44:34.000 --> 00:44:35.940 Smith Act is where the constitutional boundaries 00:44:35.940 --> 00:44:39.320 were completely obliterated. Between 1941 and 00:44:39.320 --> 00:44:42.559 1957, the Justice Department prosecuted hundreds 00:44:42.559 --> 00:44:45.369 of American communists under this law. But the 00:44:45.369 --> 00:44:47.489 crucial detail is that they were almost never 00:44:47.489 --> 00:44:50.190 prosecuted for actually committing acts of violence 00:44:50.190 --> 00:44:53.190 or for gathering weapons or for actively plotting 00:44:53.190 --> 00:44:55.750 a specific rebellion. So what were they prosecuting 00:44:55.750 --> 00:44:58.349 them for? They were prosecuted purely for their 00:44:58.349 --> 00:45:02.409 ideology. In the landmark 1949 trial of the 11 00:45:02.409 --> 00:45:05.630 top leaders of the Communist Party, the prosecution's 00:45:05.630 --> 00:45:08.869 entire case relied heavily on reading dense passages 00:45:08.869 --> 00:45:11.489 from the philosophical texts of Karl Marx and 00:45:11.489 --> 00:45:14.340 Vladimir Lenin to the jury. So the government's 00:45:14.340 --> 00:45:17.039 argument was essentially, you read Marx. Marx 00:45:17.039 --> 00:45:19.920 advocates revolution. Therefore, by existing 00:45:19.920 --> 00:45:22.599 as a party leader and teaching these texts, you 00:45:22.599 --> 00:45:25.320 are actively conspiring to violently overthrow 00:45:25.320 --> 00:45:27.920 the government. It was guilt by pedagogy. Exactly. 00:45:28.059 --> 00:45:30.320 And the jury bought it. The leaders were convicted 00:45:30.320 --> 00:45:32.519 and sentenced to up to five years in federal 00:45:32.519 --> 00:45:35.139 prison. The hysteria surrounding the trial was 00:45:35.139 --> 00:45:37.800 so absolute that even the defense attorneys who 00:45:37.800 --> 00:45:39.719 had represented the communist leaders in court 00:45:39.719 --> 00:45:42.079 were subsequently cited for contempt of court 00:45:42.079 --> 00:45:44.739 by the judge and given prison sentences themselves 00:45:44.739 --> 00:45:47.199 simply for vigorously defending their clients. 00:45:47.500 --> 00:45:49.840 It is utterly wild. The defense attorneys go 00:45:49.840 --> 00:45:52.119 to jail just for doing their constitutional duty 00:45:52.119 --> 00:45:55.280 and Congress kept escalating. In 1950, they passed 00:45:55.280 --> 00:45:57.960 the McCarran Internal Security Act. This law 00:45:57.960 --> 00:46:00.980 was so draconian that President Truman, the man 00:46:00.980 --> 00:46:03.420 who started the loyalty boards, actually vetoed 00:46:03.420 --> 00:46:06.760 it. Yes, Truman's veto message is one of the 00:46:06.760 --> 00:46:09.280 most articulate defenses of civil liberties of 00:46:09.280 --> 00:46:12.699 the era. He wrote to Congress, in a free country, 00:46:12.940 --> 00:46:15.400 we punish men for the crimes they commit, but 00:46:15.400 --> 00:46:18.260 never for the opinions they have. And the reason 00:46:18.260 --> 00:46:20.639 this is so is that if a man can be punished for 00:46:20.639 --> 00:46:23.559 his opinions, our freedom will be at an end. 00:46:24.360 --> 00:46:26.989 That's a powerful quote. It is. But the political 00:46:26.989 --> 00:46:29.429 panic was so intense that Congress easily overrode 00:46:29.429 --> 00:46:32.449 his veto. The McCarran Act officially required 00:46:32.449 --> 00:46:34.949 all communist organizations to publicly register 00:46:34.949 --> 00:46:37.230 their members with the attorney general, effectively 00:46:37.230 --> 00:46:39.570 demanding they paint a target on their own backs. 00:46:39.929 --> 00:46:42.030 And it set up a subversive activities control 00:46:42.030 --> 00:46:44.789 board to investigate. While legal challenges 00:46:44.789 --> 00:46:47.230 delayed much of its practical enforcement, the 00:46:47.230 --> 00:46:49.769 clear legislative intent was to criminalize political 00:46:49.769 --> 00:46:52.329 association. And if the federal laws weren't 00:46:52.329 --> 00:46:55.510 enough, in 1954, Congress passed the Communist 00:46:55.510 --> 00:46:58.809 Control Act, incredibly, drafted jointly by a 00:46:58.809 --> 00:47:01.489 Republican and a leading liberal Democrat, Hubert 00:47:01.489 --> 00:47:04.630 Humphrey. This act literally sought to outlaw 00:47:04.630 --> 00:47:07.130 the Communist Party entirely, declaring it not 00:47:07.130 --> 00:47:09.750 a political party, but an instrumentality of 00:47:09.750 --> 00:47:13.150 a conspiracy. But as deeply alarming as the federal 00:47:13.150 --> 00:47:15.550 laws were, the source material reveals that the 00:47:15.550 --> 00:47:18.329 individual states and local municipalities went 00:47:18.329 --> 00:47:21.389 even further into the realm of absolute legislative 00:47:21.389 --> 00:47:24.010 absurdity. The state -level response was a race 00:47:24.010 --> 00:47:27.590 to the bottom of civil liberties. By 1952, several 00:47:27.590 --> 00:47:29.969 states had enacted incredibly harsh statutes 00:47:29.969 --> 00:47:33.179 against criminal anarchy and sedition. Six different 00:47:33.179 --> 00:47:35.260 states actually set up their own state -level 00:47:35.260 --> 00:47:38.159 equivalents to UBIC to hunt for local subversives, 00:47:38.340 --> 00:47:40.340 such as the Florida Legislative Investigation 00:47:40.340 --> 00:47:43.000 Committee, which notoriously targeted civil rights 00:47:43.000 --> 00:47:45.480 leaders and homosexuals in academia. And the 00:47:45.480 --> 00:47:47.539 penalties attached to these state laws were downright 00:47:47.539 --> 00:47:50.280 medieval. In 1950, the state of Michigan enacted 00:47:50.280 --> 00:47:52.880 a law that made writing or speaking subversive 00:47:52.880 --> 00:47:56.039 propaganda a felony punishable by life imprisonment. 00:47:56.099 --> 00:47:58.380 Life in prison. Life in prison for a pamphlet. 00:47:58.670 --> 00:48:01.230 The very next year, the state of Tennessee enacted 00:48:01.230 --> 00:48:04.329 legislation authorizing the death penalty for 00:48:04.329 --> 00:48:06.590 advocating the violent overthrow of the government. 00:48:06.809 --> 00:48:09.690 The death penalty. It highlights how utterly 00:48:09.690 --> 00:48:12.909 terrified the political class was. The rhetoric 00:48:12.909 --> 00:48:16.110 matched the laws. The source is quote, Texas 00:48:16.110 --> 00:48:18.710 Governor Alan Shivers passionately describing 00:48:18.710 --> 00:48:21.070 membership in the Communist Party as a crime 00:48:21.070 --> 00:48:23.599 that is worse than murder. Worse than murder, 00:48:23.679 --> 00:48:26.000 when the governor says that it gives every local 00:48:26.000 --> 00:48:28.420 official permission to lose their minds. And 00:48:28.420 --> 00:48:31.239 they did. Municipalities got deeply involved. 00:48:31.619 --> 00:48:34.159 Los Angeles passed an ordinance banning communists 00:48:34.159 --> 00:48:36.699 or anyone sympathetic to them from owning firearms. 00:48:37.179 --> 00:48:39.480 But the examples that truly show the breakdown 00:48:39.480 --> 00:48:42.000 of logic are from places like Birmingham, Alabama 00:48:42.000 --> 00:48:44.360 and Jacksonville, Florida. Both of those cities 00:48:44.360 --> 00:48:46.900 actually passed local ordinances banning any 00:48:46.900 --> 00:48:49.219 known communists from even being physically present 00:48:49.219 --> 00:48:51.639 within the city limits. That's absurd. How do 00:48:51.639 --> 00:48:54.719 you logically enforce a ban on an ideology crossing 00:48:54.719 --> 00:48:57.420 a municipal boundary line. You enforce it through 00:48:57.420 --> 00:49:00.599 fear, suspicion, and the active complicity of 00:49:00.599 --> 00:49:04.099 a highly radicalized citizenry. McCarthyism found 00:49:04.099 --> 00:49:06.559 a natural bedrock of support in established right 00:49:06.559 --> 00:49:09.119 -wing radical groups, but what made it a true 00:49:09.119 --> 00:49:11.780 mass movement is that it attracted a massive 00:49:11.929 --> 00:49:14.829 broad coalition of the aggrieved. Who was in 00:49:14.829 --> 00:49:17.070 that coalition? This coalition wasn't just driven 00:49:17.070 --> 00:49:20.690 by a fear of Soviet spies. It was united by a 00:49:20.690 --> 00:49:23.750 deep, simmering cultural resentment. They were 00:49:23.750 --> 00:49:26.269 united by a backlash against internationalism 00:49:26.269 --> 00:49:29.030 like the newly formed United Nations, which they 00:49:29.030 --> 00:49:31.550 viewed as a threat to American sovereignty and 00:49:31.550 --> 00:49:34.309 crucially, a deep -seated opposition to the social 00:49:34.309 --> 00:49:36.909 welfare provisions established by Franklin D. 00:49:36.969 --> 00:49:39.079 Roosevelt's New Deal. Oh, interesting. So they 00:49:39.079 --> 00:49:41.119 viewed the New Deal policies like Social Security, 00:49:41.360 --> 00:49:43.659 labor protections, government regulation as this 00:49:43.659 --> 00:49:46.000 creeping stealth socialism that was fundamentally 00:49:46.000 --> 00:49:48.079 altering the character of the country. And there 00:49:48.079 --> 00:49:51.119 were highly organized grassroots groups weaponizing 00:49:51.119 --> 00:49:53.159 this resentment. The sources mentioned the American 00:49:53.159 --> 00:49:54.860 Public Relations Forum and the Minute Women of 00:49:54.860 --> 00:49:57.260 the USA. Yes, the Minute Women. These groups 00:49:57.260 --> 00:50:00.099 successfully organize tens of thousands of middle 00:50:00.099 --> 00:50:02.539 -class housewives into intensive study groups 00:50:02.539 --> 00:50:05.500 and massive letter -writing networks. They train 00:50:05.500 --> 00:50:08.340 citizens to constantly monitor their local school 00:50:08.340 --> 00:50:11.119 boards, library collections, and community leaders 00:50:11.119 --> 00:50:13.760 to identify and report suspected subversives. 00:50:13.920 --> 00:50:16.760 And this grassroots mobilization is exactly where 00:50:16.760 --> 00:50:20.460 the political paranoia begins to bleed into absolute, 00:50:20.840 --> 00:50:23.110 undeniable absurdity. Because when a society 00:50:23.110 --> 00:50:25.130 is trained to view everything through the lens 00:50:25.130 --> 00:50:28.789 of a covert, existential ideological war, they 00:50:28.789 --> 00:50:32.030 lose their grip on empirical reality. This pervasive 00:50:32.030 --> 00:50:34.690 fear ultimately collided head -on with seemingly 00:50:34.690 --> 00:50:36.769 unrelated public health initiatives. I really 00:50:36.769 --> 00:50:38.969 want to emphasize this point because it is fascinating. 00:50:39.130 --> 00:50:41.309 How do we logically draw a line from the very 00:50:41.309 --> 00:50:44.429 real fear of Soviet nuclear espionage to protesting 00:50:44.429 --> 00:50:46.789 public health measures? The sources highlight 00:50:46.789 --> 00:50:48.929 massive pushbacks against vaccination programs, 00:50:49.110 --> 00:50:51.449 new mental health care services, and specifically 00:50:51.449 --> 00:50:54.349 the widespread implementation of water fluoridation. 00:50:54.570 --> 00:50:56.650 The connection lies in the psychology of mass 00:50:56.650 --> 00:50:59.619 panic. when you fundamentally believe that the 00:50:59.619 --> 00:51:02.539 enemy is an invisible, shapeshifting, ideological 00:51:02.539 --> 00:51:05.159 contagion. that is actively trying to weaken 00:51:05.159 --> 00:51:08.340 America from within, then quite literally any 00:51:08.340 --> 00:51:11.460 new sweeping action mandated by the government 00:51:11.460 --> 00:51:14.159 is immediately interpreted as part of the conspiracy. 00:51:14.679 --> 00:51:16.420 Wow. Public health officials started putting 00:51:16.420 --> 00:51:19.500 fluoride in municipal water supplies as a highly 00:51:19.500 --> 00:51:22.320 effective, scientifically proven way to prevent 00:51:22.320 --> 00:51:25.059 tooth decay in children. But the radical grassroots 00:51:25.059 --> 00:51:27.539 groups didn't see it as dental hygiene. Not at 00:51:27.539 --> 00:51:30.300 all. They vehemently denounced fluoridation as 00:51:30.300 --> 00:51:32.639 well as the polio vaccine and new mental health 00:51:32.679 --> 00:51:36.920 as insidious, covert communist plots. They argued 00:51:36.920 --> 00:51:38.940 that fluoride was a chemical agent designed to 00:51:38.940 --> 00:51:41.059 slowly poison the physical vitality of the American 00:51:41.059 --> 00:51:43.679 people, or worse, to chemically brainwash the 00:51:43.679 --> 00:51:45.800 population to make them docile and receptive 00:51:45.800 --> 00:51:48.280 to communist indoctrination. It sounds like the 00:51:48.280 --> 00:51:51.039 plot of a science fiction B movie, but the political 00:51:51.039 --> 00:51:55.280 impact was very real. This paranoia led to massive 00:51:55.280 --> 00:51:58.039 legislative controversies, like the incredible 00:51:58.039 --> 00:52:00.179 uproar over the Alaska mental health bill in 00:52:00.179 --> 00:52:04.199 1956. Congress was simply trying to pass a routine 00:52:04.199 --> 00:52:06.980 federal funding bill to build mental health facilities 00:52:06.980 --> 00:52:09.920 in the territory of Alaska. Sounds pretty mundane. 00:52:10.159 --> 00:52:13.300 Right. But a coalition of anti -communist radicals 00:52:13.300 --> 00:52:15.980 fought the bill bitterly, launching a massive 00:52:15.980 --> 00:52:18.159 national campaign claiming that the proposed 00:52:18.159 --> 00:52:20.840 hospitals were actually going to be used as remote 00:52:20.840 --> 00:52:23.219 Siberian -style concentration camps where the 00:52:23.219 --> 00:52:26.239 government would secretly imprison and brainwash 00:52:26.239 --> 00:52:28.579 conservative political dissidents. It perfectly 00:52:28.579 --> 00:52:31.159 illustrates the total breakdown of societal trust. 00:52:31.679 --> 00:52:33.380 When you believe the architect of the fortress 00:52:33.380 --> 00:52:35.739 is a spy, you don't trust the water in the pipes, 00:52:35.860 --> 00:52:37.679 you don't trust the medicine in the infirmary, 00:52:37.719 --> 00:52:39.400 and you certainly don't trust the people standing 00:52:39.400 --> 00:52:41.739 next to you. But a societal fever that burns 00:52:41.739 --> 00:52:44.659 this hot, that consumes so much logic, so many 00:52:44.659 --> 00:52:47.820 resources, and so many innocent lives inevitably 00:52:47.820 --> 00:52:50.539 has to break. The center cannot hold forever. 00:52:50.800 --> 00:52:53.309 It does break. But as we move into the final 00:52:53.309 --> 00:52:55.489 act of this era, we have to understand that the 00:52:55.489 --> 00:52:58.150 decline of McCarthyism was not swift, and it 00:52:58.150 --> 00:53:01.309 certainly wasn't inevitable. It required a rare 00:53:01.309 --> 00:53:04.309 potent combination of immense journalistic courage, 00:53:04.869 --> 00:53:07.429 growing public exhaustion with the sheer ugliness 00:53:07.429 --> 00:53:10.710 of the spectacle, and ultimately decisive intervention 00:53:10.710 --> 00:53:13.150 by the judicial branch. Let's start with the 00:53:13.150 --> 00:53:15.130 journalism, because this is where the cultural 00:53:15.130 --> 00:53:17.869 tide really begins to turn. We have to talk about 00:53:17.869 --> 00:53:20.329 the legendary broadcaster Edward R. Murrow and 00:53:20.329 --> 00:53:23.000 his CBS television program, See It Now. Edward 00:53:23.000 --> 00:53:25.139 R. Murrow was arguably the most trusted and highly 00:53:25.139 --> 00:53:27.920 respected broadcast journalist in America, famous 00:53:27.920 --> 00:53:30.619 for his live radio broadcasts from London during 00:53:30.619 --> 00:53:32.820 the Blitz and World War II. He became one of 00:53:32.820 --> 00:53:34.780 McCarthyism's most effective and consequential 00:53:34.780 --> 00:53:37.179 opponents because he recognized the unparalleled 00:53:37.179 --> 00:53:39.880 power of the relatively new medium of television. 00:53:40.000 --> 00:53:44.400 The visual medium. Yes. In October of 1953, Murrow's 00:53:44.400 --> 00:53:47.380 See It now aired a deeply compelling episode 00:53:47.380 --> 00:53:50.260 focusing on the case of Milo Rogilovic. Rogilovic 00:53:50.260 --> 00:53:53.159 was a reserve Air Force lieutenant. He was actively 00:53:53.159 --> 00:53:54.940 being stripped of his military commission and 00:53:54.940 --> 00:53:57.380 declared a security risk, but not because he 00:53:57.380 --> 00:53:59.639 had done anything wrong. He was being purged 00:53:59.639 --> 00:54:02.159 simply because he allegedly maintained a close 00:54:02.159 --> 00:54:04.599 and continuing relationship with communists, 00:54:04.900 --> 00:54:07.559 specifically his own father, who read a Serbian 00:54:07.559 --> 00:54:09.500 language newspaper that the government deemed 00:54:09.500 --> 00:54:12.179 radical, and his sister, who had attended some 00:54:12.179 --> 00:54:14.570 left -leaning protests. And the procedure The 00:54:14.570 --> 00:54:18.409 usual horror of the Radulovitch case, which Murrow 00:54:18.409 --> 00:54:20.590 brilliantly highlighted for the television audience, 00:54:20.949 --> 00:54:23.030 was that the Air Force presented their so -called 00:54:23.030 --> 00:54:26.010 evidence against him in a sealed manila envelope 00:54:26.010 --> 00:54:28.389 that Radulovitch and his defense lawyer were 00:54:28.389 --> 00:54:30.650 not even legally permitted to open or examine. 00:54:30.769 --> 00:54:33.289 They couldn't even see the evidence. No. Murrow's 00:54:33.289 --> 00:54:36.989 broadcast meticulously exposed the sheer undeniable 00:54:36.989 --> 00:54:39.789 unfairness of the secret process to millions 00:54:39.789 --> 00:54:41.969 of Americans sitting in their living rooms. It 00:54:41.969 --> 00:54:44.150 was a massive crack in the armor of the security 00:54:44.150 --> 00:54:46.550 state. And Murrow didn't stop at the edges of 00:54:46.550 --> 00:54:51.070 the bureaucracy. On March 9, 1954, he took direct 00:54:51.070 --> 00:54:54.369 aim at the King himself. He dedicated an entire 00:54:54.369 --> 00:54:57.070 broadcast of See It Now to a critical report 00:54:57.070 --> 00:54:59.949 on Senator Joseph McCarthy. It was a devastating, 00:55:00.469 --> 00:55:03.010 masterfully constructed broadcast because Murrow 00:55:03.010 --> 00:55:06.210 largely refused to editorialize. Instead, he 00:55:06.210 --> 00:55:09.269 simply used McCarthy's on -recorded words, audio 00:55:09.269 --> 00:55:12.519 clips, and visual footage against him. He expertly 00:55:12.519 --> 00:55:14.840 curated clips that portrayed McCarthy exactly 00:55:14.840 --> 00:55:17.619 as he was, reckless, constantly contradicting 00:55:17.619 --> 00:55:20.219 himself, intellectually dishonest, and deeply 00:55:20.219 --> 00:55:22.159 abusive toward the witnesses who appeared before 00:55:22.159 --> 00:55:24.039 him. Let the man speak for himself. Exactly. 00:55:24.239 --> 00:55:26.260 And Murrow closed that historic broadcast with 00:55:26.260 --> 00:55:28.719 a direct -to -camera monologue that still resonates 00:55:28.719 --> 00:55:31.000 powerfully today as a defense of civil liberties. 00:55:31.400 --> 00:55:33.280 I want to read a piece of that monologue because 00:55:33.280 --> 00:55:35.920 it dismantled the entire logical fallacy of the 00:55:35.920 --> 00:55:38.409 era. Murrow looked into the camera and said, 00:55:38.869 --> 00:55:41.070 we must not confuse dissent with disloyalty. 00:55:41.429 --> 00:55:43.889 We must remember always that accusation is not 00:55:43.889 --> 00:55:46.369 proof and that conviction depends upon evidence 00:55:46.369 --> 00:55:49.650 in due process of law. We will not walk in fear 00:55:49.650 --> 00:55:52.190 one of another. We will not be driven by fear 00:55:52.190 --> 00:55:54.590 into an age of unreason if we dig deep in our 00:55:54.590 --> 00:55:56.809 history and our doctrine and remember that we 00:55:56.809 --> 00:55:59.710 are not descended from fearful men. Accusation 00:55:59.710 --> 00:56:02.800 is not proof. That single clarifying sentence 00:56:02.800 --> 00:56:05.900 completely pierced the bubble of bogus specificity 00:56:05.900 --> 00:56:07.860 that McCarthy had relied upon for four years. 00:56:08.440 --> 00:56:10.940 The public reaction was overwhelmingly positive. 00:56:11.559 --> 00:56:13.719 And Murrow's broadcast primed the American public 00:56:13.719 --> 00:56:15.840 for what happened just a month later, in April 00:56:15.840 --> 00:56:19.219 of 1954, when the entire nation got to see McCarthy's 00:56:19.219 --> 00:56:22.400 abusive tactics live, unedited, and raw during 00:56:22.400 --> 00:56:24.849 the Army -McCarthy hearings. The Army McCarthy 00:56:24.849 --> 00:56:26.989 hearings were the spectacle that finally brought 00:56:26.989 --> 00:56:29.969 the demagogue down. McCarthy had grown so arrogant 00:56:29.969 --> 00:56:32.190 in his power that he started investigating the 00:56:32.190 --> 00:56:34.550 United States Army, wildly claiming there was 00:56:34.550 --> 00:56:38.010 a massive, entrenched communist spiring operating 00:56:38.010 --> 00:56:40.369 at the Signal Corps Laboratory at Fort Monmouth. 00:56:40.949 --> 00:56:44.289 Then, in a deeply petty move, he fixated his 00:56:44.289 --> 00:56:47.269 investigative wrath on a specific U .S. Army 00:56:47.269 --> 00:56:49.489 dentist who had been promoted to the rank of 00:56:49.489 --> 00:56:51.869 major despite having refused to answer questions 00:56:51.869 --> 00:56:54.980 on a standard loyalty. The United States Senate 00:56:54.980 --> 00:56:57.820 finally pushed to the brink by McCarthy attacking 00:56:57.820 --> 00:57:00.400 the military leadership, organized televised 00:57:00.400 --> 00:57:02.579 hearings to investigate the conflicting claims 00:57:02.579 --> 00:57:05.119 between the Army and McCarthy's committee. For 00:57:05.119 --> 00:57:07.699 36 agonizing days, the proceedings were broadcast 00:57:07.699 --> 00:57:10.239 live on the ABC television network. Unfiltered. 00:57:10.440 --> 00:57:12.559 Completely unfiltered. The American public sat 00:57:12.559 --> 00:57:14.659 glued to their screens and watched McCarthy in 00:57:14.659 --> 00:57:17.019 real time. Without the filter of sympathetic 00:57:17.019 --> 00:57:19.679 journalists, they saw a man who constantly interrupted, 00:57:20.099 --> 00:57:22.400 bullied, sneered and verbally berated decorated 00:57:22.400 --> 00:57:25.360 military officers. He appeared unhinged, cruel 00:57:25.360 --> 00:57:28.139 and desperately grasping for relevance. The climax 00:57:28.139 --> 00:57:30.019 of those hearings is one of the most legendary 00:57:30.019 --> 00:57:33.199 moments in American political history. The Army's 00:57:33.199 --> 00:57:35.500 chief legal counsel was an attorney named Joseph 00:57:35.500 --> 00:57:39.119 Welch. During the proceedings, McCarthy, entirely 00:57:39.119 --> 00:57:41.940 unprovoked and completely ignoring a prior agreement, 00:57:42.320 --> 00:57:44.780 suddenly launched a vicious, televised attack 00:57:44.780 --> 00:57:48.099 on the reputation of a young junior lawyer who 00:57:48.099 --> 00:57:50.860 worked in Welch's law firm back in Boston, attempting 00:57:50.860 --> 00:57:53.780 to smear the young man's early minor affiliations. 00:57:54.400 --> 00:57:57.239 And Joseph Welch, with the cameras rolling, reached 00:57:57.239 --> 00:58:00.340 his breaking point. Welch interrupted McCarthy's 00:58:00.340 --> 00:58:02.820 tirade, his voice shaking with genuine emotion, 00:58:03.139 --> 00:58:06.039 and delivered the fatal, defining blow to McCarthy's 00:58:06.039 --> 00:58:08.960 public credibility. He famously said, until this 00:58:08.960 --> 00:58:11.059 moment, Senator, I think I never really gauged 00:58:11.059 --> 00:58:13.460 your cruelty or your recklessness. Let us not 00:58:13.460 --> 00:58:15.360 assassinate this lad further, Senator. You've 00:58:15.360 --> 00:58:17.480 done enough. Have you no sense of decency, sir? 00:58:17.699 --> 00:58:20.079 At long last, have you left no sense of decency? 00:58:20.199 --> 00:58:22.619 Wow. The silence in the hearing room was deafening. 00:58:22.829 --> 00:58:24.909 followed immediately by the gallery erupting 00:58:24.909 --> 00:58:27.610 in spontaneous applause. The spell of fear was 00:58:27.610 --> 00:58:30.150 permanently broken. The emperor very clearly 00:58:30.150 --> 00:58:33.530 had no clothes. McCarthy's approval ratings plummeted 00:58:33.530 --> 00:58:37.289 overnight. By December of that same year, 1954, 00:58:38.030 --> 00:58:40.110 his colleagues in the U .S. Senate finally found 00:58:40.110 --> 00:58:43.570 their courage and voted 67 to 22 to officially 00:58:43.570 --> 00:58:45.550 censure him for conduct that tended to bring 00:58:45.550 --> 00:58:48.679 the Senate into dishonor and disrepute. He was 00:58:48.679 --> 00:58:51.099 politically ruined and he drank himself to death 00:58:51.099 --> 00:58:53.679 just three years later. He did. But as we've 00:58:53.679 --> 00:58:56.519 established, McCarthy the man was just the loud 00:58:56.519 --> 00:58:59.579 frontman. His fall did not immediately dismantle 00:58:59.579 --> 00:59:02.380 the massive entrenched machinery of the bureaucracy 00:59:02.380 --> 00:59:05.619 or the private blacklists. How did the Hollywood 00:59:05.619 --> 00:59:08.340 and broadcast blacklist actually end? Breaking 00:59:08.340 --> 00:59:10.420 the private blacklist required a different kind 00:59:10.420 --> 00:59:13.119 of courage. It required a willingness to engage 00:59:13.119 --> 00:59:15.719 in prolonged legal and financial warfare. The 00:59:15.719 --> 00:59:18.159 turning point was a lawsuit filed by John Henry 00:59:18.159 --> 00:59:21.139 Falk. Falk was a highly popular folksy radio 00:59:21.139 --> 00:59:23.800 host for CBS and a vocal progressive who was 00:59:23.800 --> 00:59:26.820 active in his labor union, FTRA. Because of his 00:59:26.820 --> 00:59:29.400 union activities, he was targeted, investigated, 00:59:29.619 --> 00:59:32.610 and marked as officially unfit by a wearer. Right, 00:59:32.809 --> 00:59:34.730 that private group we talked about. The most 00:59:34.730 --> 00:59:37.289 prominent of those private vigilante loyalty 00:59:37.289 --> 00:59:40.010 checking firms. Under pressure from sponsors, 00:59:40.449 --> 00:59:43.650 CBS fired him and his career was instantly destroyed. 00:59:44.170 --> 00:59:46.389 But unlike hundreds of other blacklisted performers 00:59:46.389 --> 00:59:49.170 who either fled the country, used pseudonyms, 00:59:49.329 --> 00:59:52.769 or simply faded into tragic obscurity, John Henry 00:59:52.769 --> 00:59:55.170 Falk decided to fight back using the courts. 00:59:55.849 --> 00:59:58.829 He sued a where? Inc. and its founders for libel 00:59:58.829 --> 01:00:01.969 in 1957, claiming they had maliciously and falsely 01:00:01.969 --> 01:00:04.050 destroyed his livelihood for their own financial 01:00:04.050 --> 01:00:06.570 gain. The legal battle was grueling. It dragged 01:00:06.570 --> 01:00:09.469 on for years and it essentially bankrupted him. 01:00:10.030 --> 01:00:13.289 But Falk finally won the case in 1962. A jury 01:00:13.289 --> 01:00:15.730 awarded him a massive sum in damages and the 01:00:15.730 --> 01:00:17.670 historical significance of that verdict cannot 01:00:17.670 --> 01:00:20.369 be overstated. Because it set a precedent. Exactly. 01:00:20.650 --> 01:00:23.719 By hitting a where. Inc. with a massive financial 01:00:23.719 --> 01:00:26.539 penalty, the verdict put all private blacklisters 01:00:26.539 --> 01:00:29.000 on strict legal notice. They could no longer 01:00:29.000 --> 01:00:31.380 hide behind the shield of patriotism. They could 01:00:31.380 --> 01:00:34.199 now be held legally and financially liable for 01:00:34.199 --> 01:00:36.539 the professional and emotional damage they caused. 01:00:37.019 --> 01:00:39.260 Overnight, the commercial viability of conducting 01:00:39.260 --> 01:00:41.900 private loyalty checks evaporated. It simply 01:00:41.900 --> 01:00:44.460 became too expensive of a legal liability for 01:00:44.460 --> 01:00:46.980 corporations to maintain. And the cultural wall 01:00:46.980 --> 01:00:50.420 was crumbling at the exact same time. In 1960, 01:00:50.679 --> 01:00:53.480 Hollywood and publicly broke its own blacklist 01:00:53.480 --> 01:00:55.460 when the actor Kirk Douglas and the director 01:00:55.460 --> 01:00:58.440 Otto Preminger both insisted that Dalton Trumbo, 01:00:58.519 --> 01:01:00.780 one of the original highly stigmatized Hollywood 01:01:00.780 --> 01:01:04.559 10, be given full public on -screen credit for 01:01:04.559 --> 01:01:06.860 writing the massive blockbuster films Spartacus 01:01:06.860 --> 01:01:09.260 and Exodus. When the American public flocked 01:01:09.260 --> 01:01:11.300 to see those movies and didn't care that a blacklisted 01:01:11.300 --> 01:01:13.559 writer had penned them, the power of the list 01:01:13.559 --> 01:01:17.599 vanished. But to truly dismantle the vast unconstitutional 01:01:17.599 --> 01:01:20.199 legal framework of the McCarthy era, to undo 01:01:20.199 --> 01:01:23.550 the Smith Act to Kurd -HUAC, it took the intervention 01:01:23.550 --> 01:01:26.010 of the highest court in the land. Precisely. 01:01:26.389 --> 01:01:29.849 It fell to the United States Supreme Court, specifically 01:01:29.849 --> 01:01:32.349 the progressive court led by Chief Justice Earl 01:01:32.349 --> 01:01:36.429 Warren. As the biographer Richard Rover elegantly 01:01:36.429 --> 01:01:39.409 wrote, the Supreme Court, acting as the ultimate 01:01:39.409 --> 01:01:42.710 guardian of the Constitution, took profound judicial 01:01:42.710 --> 01:01:46.429 notice of the massive structural rents McCarthyism 01:01:46.429 --> 01:01:48.730 was making in the fabric of American liberty, 01:01:49.289 --> 01:01:51.570 and they wrote a sweeping series of decisions 01:01:51.570 --> 01:01:55.269 explicitly designed to repair those tears. Let's 01:01:55.269 --> 01:01:57.349 break down the legal philosophy of these key 01:01:57.349 --> 01:01:59.809 Supreme Court rulings because this is where the 01:01:59.809 --> 01:02:01.630 constitutional rights we take for granted today 01:02:01.630 --> 01:02:04.809 were finally firmly reaffirmed after a decade 01:02:04.809 --> 01:02:07.789 of erosion. First we have the case of Slachauer 01:02:07.789 --> 01:02:11.150 v. Board of Education in 1956. Harry Slachauer 01:02:11.150 --> 01:02:13.329 was a tenured professor at Brooklyn College. 01:02:13.500 --> 01:02:15.599 He was summarily fired by the city of New York 01:02:15.599 --> 01:02:18.360 under a municipal charter provision simply because 01:02:18.360 --> 01:02:20.199 he had invoked his Fifth Amendment right against 01:02:20.199 --> 01:02:22.400 self -incrimination when questioned by a federal 01:02:22.400 --> 01:02:24.280 committee about his past political affiliations. 01:02:24.539 --> 01:02:27.119 Just for taking the fifth. Yes. The Supreme Court 01:02:27.119 --> 01:02:30.119 stepped in and ruled that his firing was fundamentally 01:02:30.119 --> 01:02:33.500 unconstitutional. They stated that the constitutional 01:02:33.500 --> 01:02:35.980 privilege against self -incrimination would be 01:02:35.980 --> 01:02:38.980 reduced to a hollow mockery if exercising that 01:02:38.980 --> 01:02:41.440 fundamental right was automatically legally tweeted 01:02:41.440 --> 01:02:44.539 by employers as a confession. of guilt. Then 01:02:44.539 --> 01:02:47.639 in 1957, the court issued a massive decision 01:02:47.639 --> 01:02:50.420 in Yates v. United States, which directly took 01:02:50.420 --> 01:02:53.159 on those absurd Smith Act convictions we discussed 01:02:53.159 --> 01:02:55.500 earlier, where people were going to prison just 01:02:55.500 --> 01:02:58.219 for teaching Marxist texts. How did the court 01:02:58.219 --> 01:03:00.860 fix that? The Yates decision is a cornerstone 01:03:00.860 --> 01:03:03.340 of modern First Amendment jurisprudence. The 01:03:03.340 --> 01:03:05.760 court overturned the convictions of 14 lower 01:03:05.760 --> 01:03:08.760 -level Communist Party officials. Justice John 01:03:08.760 --> 01:03:11.780 Marshall Harlan, writing for the majority, forcefully 01:03:11.780 --> 01:03:14.400 clarified the critical legal difference between 01:03:14.400 --> 01:03:17.019 advocating an abstract doctrine and advocating 01:03:17.019 --> 01:03:19.639 direct illegal action. Ah, so there's a line 01:03:19.639 --> 01:03:23.010 there. A very clear line. He noted that in the 01:03:23.010 --> 01:03:25.869 original Smith Act trials, guilt or innocence 01:03:25.869 --> 01:03:28.570 hinged entirely on what political theorists like 01:03:28.570 --> 01:03:31.650 Marx or Engels wrote a hundred years ago, rather 01:03:31.650 --> 01:03:35.010 than any specific imminent violent actions plotted 01:03:35.010 --> 01:03:38.190 by the actual defendants on trial. The court 01:03:38.190 --> 01:03:40.750 ruled decisively that teaching or discussing 01:03:40.750 --> 01:03:43.869 the abstract concept of a revolution is fully 01:03:43.869 --> 01:03:46.489 protected speech under the First Amendment. meaning 01:03:46.489 --> 01:03:48.570 you can talk about it, you just can't do it. 01:03:48.670 --> 01:03:50.989 The government can only criminalize speech when 01:03:50.989 --> 01:03:53.809 it crosses the line into actively inciting imminent 01:03:53.809 --> 01:03:57.849 unlawful violent action. This ruling effectively 01:03:57.849 --> 01:04:00.369 gutted the Smith Act and ended the practice of 01:04:00.369 --> 01:04:02.429 prosecuting people for their reading lists. In 01:04:02.429 --> 01:04:05.230 that same year, 1957, they also went directly 01:04:05.230 --> 01:04:07.210 after the tyrannical power of the congressional 01:04:07.210 --> 01:04:09.289 committees with the Watkins v. United States 01:04:09.289 --> 01:04:13.349 decision. Watkins severely curtailed HUAC's terrifying 01:04:13.349 --> 01:04:16.309 power to punish uncooperative witnesses with 01:04:16.309 --> 01:04:18.849 contempt of Congress. Chief Justice Earl Warren 01:04:18.849 --> 01:04:21.070 wrote a scathing opinion stating that Congress 01:04:21.070 --> 01:04:23.489 is not a law enforcement agency and the power 01:04:23.489 --> 01:04:25.849 to investigate must be strictly limited to a 01:04:25.849 --> 01:04:27.929 legitimate legislative purpose. They can't just 01:04:27.929 --> 01:04:30.679 go fishing. Exactly. He wrote that forcing a 01:04:30.679 --> 01:04:32.739 citizen to testify against their will about their 01:04:32.739 --> 01:04:35.380 deeply held beliefs, expressions, or associations 01:04:35.380 --> 01:04:38.360 is a profound measure of governmental interference, 01:04:38.920 --> 01:04:41.119 and that Congress cannot conduct exposure for 01:04:41.119 --> 01:04:43.719 the sake of exposure. Furthermore, the court 01:04:43.719 --> 01:04:46.519 continued to dismantle the apparatus in 1958 01:04:46.519 --> 01:04:49.500 with Kent v. Dulles, ruling definitively that 01:04:49.500 --> 01:04:51.820 the State Department could no longer arbitrarily 01:04:51.820 --> 01:04:54.639 revoke or deny a citizen's passport and thereby 01:04:54.639 --> 01:04:56.659 restrict their constitutional right to travel 01:04:56.659 --> 01:04:59.280 simply based on the applicant's communist beliefs 01:04:59.280 --> 01:05:02.159 or associations. So if we pull all the way back 01:05:02.159 --> 01:05:05.039 and look at the vast sweep of this history from 01:05:05.039 --> 01:05:07.679 the genuine, terrifying geopolitical realities 01:05:07.679 --> 01:05:11.079 of the Soviet atomic bomb and real espionage 01:05:11.079 --> 01:05:13.679 down to the absolute absolute tragic absurdity 01:05:13.679 --> 01:05:15.820 of the government investigating Lucille Ball, 01:05:16.380 --> 01:05:19.199 firing thousands of gay federal workers and local 01:05:19.199 --> 01:05:21.559 municipalities attempting to ban fluoride in 01:05:21.559 --> 01:05:24.980 the water, we see a profound failure of the American 01:05:24.980 --> 01:05:27.639 immune system. We see opportunistic men like 01:05:27.639 --> 01:05:30.659 Joseph McCarthy and J. Edgar Hoover successfully 01:05:30.659 --> 01:05:33.079 exploiting a very legitimate national security 01:05:33.079 --> 01:05:35.900 threat in order to settle petty political scores, 01:05:36.579 --> 01:05:39.300 crush domestic dissent, and accumulate massive 01:05:39.300 --> 01:05:42.190 unchecked bureaucratic power. we must soberly 01:05:42.190 --> 01:05:44.550 measure the immense cost of that failure. The 01:05:44.550 --> 01:05:46.550 human cost is quantified in thousands of ruined 01:05:46.550 --> 01:05:48.989 careers, shattered families, destroyed reputations, 01:05:49.070 --> 01:05:51.670 and tragic suicides. But the long -term institutional 01:05:51.670 --> 01:05:53.869 cost is perhaps summarized best by the historian 01:05:53.869 --> 01:05:56.230 Ellen Schrecker, whose profound observation and 01:05:56.230 --> 01:05:58.050 the source material we must return to. What does 01:05:58.050 --> 01:06:00.519 she argue? She argued that in its desperate, 01:06:00.699 --> 01:06:02.619 flailing attempt to protect American democracy 01:06:02.619 --> 01:06:05.820 from the threat of totalitarianism, the architects 01:06:05.820 --> 01:06:08.260 of McCarthyism eagerly utilized totalitarian 01:06:08.260 --> 01:06:11.280 tactics, secret evidence, guilt by association, 01:06:11.780 --> 01:06:14.760 ideological purges, and the demand for humiliating 01:06:14.760 --> 01:06:18.400 public confessions. Ultimately, McCarthyism likely 01:06:18.400 --> 01:06:20.800 inflicted far more lasting damage on the U .S. 01:06:21.179 --> 01:06:23.199 Constitution and the fabric of civil liberties 01:06:23.199 --> 01:06:25.280 than the American Communist Party ever managed 01:06:25.280 --> 01:06:28.460 to achieve. It is a profound, chilling historical 01:06:28.460 --> 01:06:31.420 irony, and it leaves us with a provocative lingering 01:06:31.420 --> 01:06:33.679 thought as we wrap up this deep dive into the 01:06:33.679 --> 01:06:36.539 source material. We collectively like to look 01:06:36.539 --> 01:06:38.820 back at the McCarthy era as a closed chapter 01:06:38.820 --> 01:06:41.260 of history, a terrible fever that broke thanks 01:06:41.260 --> 01:06:43.280 to the courage of journalists like Ed Murrow 01:06:43.280 --> 01:06:45.980 and the wisdom of the Supreme Court. But the 01:06:45.980 --> 01:06:48.019 sources reveal something deeply unsettling about 01:06:48.019 --> 01:06:50.340 the nature of bureaucracies. Portions of that 01:06:50.340 --> 01:06:52.659 massive security apparatus constructed during 01:06:52.659 --> 01:06:55.900 the height of the panic still quietly exist today. 01:06:56.380 --> 01:06:58.260 The historical record shows that the architecture 01:06:58.260 --> 01:07:01.730 was never fully dismantled. For example, loyalty 01:07:01.730 --> 01:07:04.849 oaths, a direct legacy of the Truman and Eisenhower 01:07:04.849 --> 01:07:07.929 purges, are still a mandated requirement, firmly 01:07:07.929 --> 01:07:09.849 embedded within the California Constitution. 01:07:10.289 --> 01:07:12.829 Today, right now, any official or employee in 01:07:12.829 --> 01:07:14.929 the state government of California, including 01:07:14.929 --> 01:07:17.030 disaster relief workers and public university 01:07:17.030 --> 01:07:20.170 professors, must sign a loyalty oath, affirming 01:07:20.170 --> 01:07:22.510 they do not advocate the overthrow of the government. 01:07:23.139 --> 01:07:25.659 While it may seem like an archaic formality to 01:07:25.659 --> 01:07:28.719 most, this lingering legal reality continues 01:07:28.719 --> 01:07:31.360 to create significant real -world problems for 01:07:31.360 --> 01:07:33.519 certain religious groups like Quakers or Jehovah's 01:07:33.519 --> 01:07:36.320 Witnesses whose deeply held pacifist or religious 01:07:36.320 --> 01:07:38.760 beliefs strictly preclude them from pledging 01:07:38.760 --> 01:07:40.679 absolute, unconditional loyalty to the state 01:07:40.679 --> 01:07:43.320 over their conscience. And that reality brings 01:07:43.320 --> 01:07:45.699 us right back to the parapets of our fortress. 01:07:46.440 --> 01:07:49.239 When a society gripped by sheer terror decides 01:07:49.239 --> 01:07:52.000 to build a massive emergency apparatus, when 01:07:52.000 --> 01:07:54.469 it will willfully wires its own basement with 01:07:54.469 --> 01:07:56.909 explosives and empowers secret committees to 01:07:56.909 --> 01:07:59.630 hunt for spies among its own citizens, does it 01:07:59.630 --> 01:08:01.889 ever truly completely dismantle those traps once 01:08:01.889 --> 01:08:04.250 the war is over? Or do we just comfortably learn 01:08:04.250 --> 01:08:06.090 to live our lives inside the architecture of 01:08:06.090 --> 01:08:08.510 our old fears, blindly hoping that the tripwires 01:08:08.510 --> 01:08:10.449 never get pulled again? Thank you for joining 01:08:10.449 --> 01:08:12.590 us on the Steep Dive. Keep questioning the walls 01:08:12.590 --> 01:08:13.070 around you.