Joseph McCarthy, Date of Birth, Place of Birth, Date of Death

    

Joseph McCarthy

Wisconsin politician

Date of Birth: 14-Nov-1908

Place of Birth: Grand Chute, Wisconsin, United States

Date of Death: 02-May-1957

Profession: judge, lawyer, politician, farmer, military officer, usher

Nationality: United States

Zodiac Sign: Scorpio


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About Joseph McCarthy

  • Joseph Raymond McCarthy (November 14, 1908 – May 2, 1957) was an American politician who served as a Republican U.S.
  • Senator from the state of Wisconsin from 1947 until his death in 1957.
  • Beginning in 1950, McCarthy became the most visible public face of a period in the United States in which Cold War tensions fueled fears of widespread Communist subversion.
  • He is known for alleging that numerous Communists and Soviet spies and sympathizers had infiltrated the United States federal government, universities, film industry, and elsewhere.
  • Ultimately, the smear tactics that he used led him to be censured by the U.S.
  • Senate.
  • The term "McCarthyism", coined in 1950 in reference to McCarthy's practices, was soon applied to similar anti-communist activities.
  • Today, the term is used more broadly to mean demagogic, reckless, and unsubstantiated accusations, as well as public attacks on the character or patriotism of political opponents.In his book The Bureau: The Secret History of the FBI, journalist Ronald Kessler quoted former FBI agent Robert J.
  • Lamphere, who participated in all the FBI's major spy cases during the McCarthy period, as saying that FBI agents who worked counterintelligence were aghast that FBI Director J.
  • Hoover initially supported McCarthy. “McCarthyism did all kinds of harm because he was pushing something that wasn’t so,” Lamphere told Kessler.
  • The VENONA intercepts showed that over several decades, “There were a lot of spies in the government, but not all in the State Department,” Lamphere said.
  • However, “The problem was that McCarthy lied about his information and figures.
  • He made charges against people that weren’t true.
  • McCarthyism harmed the counterintelligence effort against the Soviet threat because of the revulsion it caused.
  • All along, Hoover was helping him.”Born in Grand Chute, Wisconsin, McCarthy commissioned in to the Marine Corps in 1942, where he served as an intelligence briefing officer for a dive bomber squadron.
  • Following the end of World War II, he attained the rank of major.
  • He volunteered to fly twelve combat missions as a gunner-observer, acquiring the nickname "Tail-Gunner Joe".
  • Some of his claims of heroism were later shown to be exaggerated or falsified, leading many of his critics to use "Tail-Gunner Joe" as a term of mockery.McCarthy successfully ran for the U.S.
  • Senate in 1946, defeating Robert M.
  • La Follette Jr.
  • After three largely undistinguished years in the Senate, McCarthy rose suddenly to national fame in February 1950 when he asserted in a speech that he had a list of "members of the Communist Party and members of a spy ring" who were employed in the State Department.
  • In succeeding years after his 1950 speech, McCarthy made additional accusations of Communist infiltration into the State Department, the administration of President Harry S.
  • Truman, the Voice of America, and the U.S.
  • Army.
  • He also used various charges of communism, communist sympathies, disloyalty, or sex crimes to attack a number of politicians and other individuals inside and outside of government.
  • This included a concurrent "Lavender Scare" against suspected homosexuals (as homosexuality was prohibited by law at the time, it was also perceived to increase a person's risk for blackmail).
  • Former U.S.
  • Senator Alan K.
  • Simpson has written: "The so-called 'Red Scare' has been the main focus of most historians of that period of time.
  • A lesser-known element ...
  • and one that harmed far more people was the witch-hunt McCarthy and others conducted against homosexuals".With the highly publicized Army–McCarthy hearings of 1954, and following the suicide of Wyoming Senator Lester C.
  • Hunt that same year, McCarthy's support and popularity faded.
  • On December 2, 1954, the Senate voted to censure Senator McCarthy by a vote of 67–22, making him one of the few senators ever to be disciplined in this fashion.
  • He continued to speak against communism and socialism until his death at the age of 48 at Bethesda Naval Hospital in Bethesda, Maryland, on May 2, 1957.
  • His death certificate listed the cause of death as "Hepatitis, acute, cause unknown".
  • Doctors had not previously reported him to be in critical condition.
  • Some biographers say this was caused or exacerbated by alcoholism.

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