The play we are about to read, Inherit the Wind, was written in the 1950's as a response to McCarthyism, as was the play The Crucible which many of you read last year. Even though the public hysteria that McCarthyism specifically provoked is not with us anymore, are there other similar examples from history or modern day that have caused rampant fear, suspicion, public outcry, or media frenzy unnecessarily? Explain the situation.
http://www.pbs.org/wnet/americanmasters/database/mccarthyism.html
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12 comments:
i personally dont feel that there is anything that caused as much of an public outcry as the McCarthyism era. that time was filled with fear and anxiety. back then you didnt know if you were talking to the "Enemy" everyone was scared and they didnt talk freely like we do now.
The big concern that we had back in the 1940-50's was communism in Eastern Europe and China. The big one from present day America was the 9/11 attacks, which made everyone fear being on an airplane and riding with the certain race. All over the media now is how we are invadeing Iraq for oil.
The mass hysteria that fuled McCarthyism in the 40's and 50's is evident in past and will be repeated in the future. The salem witch trials are a good example of McCarthyism which took place hundreds of years ago. The bigggest fear among the people during the witch trails was the devil and just the claim without any evidence that someone was a witch was enough to get them killed or put into jail. The biggest fear during McCarthy's time was communists and it had the same effect. These type of events will repeat, we are lucky that the events of 9/11 did not cause the same effect agaist middle easterns but history will repeat itsself.
From history a great example would be Fidel Castro. He inflicted fear on millions of US people during the cuban missle crisis. Modern day communistic figures are North Korea and China. Being a communist country the leaders do not have to make decisions to anyone is advance. They can do whatever they want when they want it. That is why the communist countries inflict fear on innocent people around the world.
During the 40's and 50's many thousands of Americans were accused of being Communists or communist sympathizers and became subject of aggressive investigations and questioning before government. I don't feel there is much of anything else that really caused McCarthyism.
Well with the terrorist attacks on the world trade centers america has become somewhat of a racial profiling mass. people see someone of muslim origin or really anyone who resembles a person of that region and either get scared or outraged. they are also missrepresented in the media which gives people the wrong idea. not since WW2 has america racially profiled an entire mass of people.
We have faced many simialar situations to McCarthyism. A big example of this was September 11. The fear of terrorism made a steryotype that all Muslims were terrorists. Even if some people knew that every Muslim was a terrorist the all the strong emotions like fear and anger had to be taken out on sombody.
I agree with Patrick in the sense that nothing can be truly comparable to that time. In the 1950s there was a bone chilling feeling that the person your talking to may cause of a chain reaction of events in turn ending your life. Some of that fear may be similar to terroristic actions but in the sense of searching for communist people in the 1950s were not limited to sterotypical generalizations concerning things such as race or religion. Anyone could be the enemy.
Well there is alot of infulunce on the public by the media. I would say that tv and news papers could replace McCarthyism because not evey thing that is published or said is true but could be taken as direct fact by tha reader or listener.
Back in the 1940s-50s, the big problem was communism. Many people back then were treated unfairly and killed for something they had nothing to do with, Ex. Witch trails. Many people were accused of practicing witchcraft, therefore they were hung. This would be McCarthyism.
There are some examples from modern day that include diseases like aids. Aids caused fear and media frenzy because of how aids became known to more people. Also the accusation of Saddam Hussein having weapons of mass destruction cause a big media frenzy and caused an even bigger fear of people from the middle eastern region.
I agree with Patrick that there in no current event that causes much pulbic out cry as the McCarthyism era. The reason for all this is that we are no longer ruled by religion and religion does not dictate what should be said or done in the world. We as a population now think for our selfs. The biggest issue that could be compared to the outcry of McCarthyism is the war in Iraq and our president we are every emotionally charged about that type of issuue
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