18. The High Demagogue
The hurling of baseless accusations of subversion and treason, especially as it relates to communism and socialism, is known as “McCarthyism”. It is named after Senator Joseph McCarthy of Wisconsin, an unscrupulous and unethical demagogue. In the early 1950s, he alleged that he had discovered a massive plot involving Soviet spies infiltrating the US government, universities, the film industry, and other vital sectors of the American economy. At first, he claimed that the communist agents numbered in the dozens, a figure that gradually grew until it reached the hundreds. He claimed to know their identities, and that he had their names in lists that he waved about wherever he went. In a plot twist that everybody should have seen coming but too few did, McCarthy’s “lists” were bunk.
The lists were random sheets of paper, sometimes blank ones, and the spies were figments of McCarthy’s imagination. He simply made it all up. However, because a lie travels halfway around the world while the truth is still tying its shoelaces, it worked. McCarthy whipped up and rode a wave of anti-communist hysteria to national prominence before he was finally censured by the US Senate and his career cratered. Later, it turned out that the seedy Senator had been a drug addict. Worse, in a plot twist, few could have expected, McCarthy’s drugs were supplied by the DEA’s predecessor.