So correct me if I’m wrong, but McCarthy was technically right that there were some “communist sympathizers” within the US military, specifically a handful of Marines who had worked with PLA forces during the Second Sino-Japanese War. Some held favorable views of Red China, though that didn’t necessarily make them ideological communists. McCarthy however treated these views as evidence that the entire military itself had been compromised.
>>18724515Pretty much. Remember that American reactionaries couldn’t tell the difference between the Soviet Union and being asked not to bomb black churches at the time. So basically anyone who espoused basic civil liberties was a card carrying communist or fellow traveler to them. After Stalinism and Maoism became known for their massive body counts, actual communism was always a fringe position. This resulted in the reds under the bed phenomenon.
>>18724531 But in McCarthy's time, none of that was true. Kruschev finally let the cat out of the bag, years later.
>>18724531Your timeline is worthless.
>>18724515Genuinely why do most Americans have no concept of honor? Any civilized army would have understood that soldiers are reluctant to shoot at their former brothers in arms.
>>18724515I blame the U.S. alliance with the USSR in ww2 for there having been communist sympathizers in the U.S. military. I don’t think the Soviets stopped at just stealing US military secrets during the war, I think they also took the time to brainwash young Americans when given the chance.
>>18724550The Wehrmacht and the Red Army were technically brothers in arms during the invasion of Poland, I don’t think they had any trouble shooting at the Soviets once Barbarossa started.
>>18724551Oh, that started in the '20's, same as everywhere.
>>18724554Being technically in the same side isn't the same as fighting alongside. Any more dishonesty?
>>18724515I think because of how american society is structured, McCarthy 'had' to be there to remove the reds from public life while the Verona Project was the secret intelligence response against commies spies.
>>18724545No, he just laid a lot bare. Examples of Soviet excesses were well known even before WW2. The extent of how bad they were only came out later, but even in the 1940s, post war some of Russia’s actions were next to impossible to justify in academic circles outside of the groups that would become what were later called tankies.>>18724547Just because the reds were ‘on team’ against the fascists doesn’t mean major warning signs weren’t trickling out even during the war.
>>18724576Of course, but again, it was Kruschev putting his imprimatur on it that did the trick. Nobody but the dolts could deny it now.
McCarthy was right about everything
>>18724613His problem is that he's a raging drunk and heroin addict (Who got him that? Sounds suspiciously like a typical stalinist plot, no? To discredit what was imminent?).Hoover fed this lunatic as per HIS typical, until he melted down and went to the loony bin. Only 'til Kruschev did we obtain hard public data, discrediting the Sovs and allowing us to heap scorn on all the academics, pinks and fellow travelers.
>>18724531>basic civil libertiesYour order is an aberration, in time the Warren Court and counter-culture's legacy will be in ashes.
>>18724613>>18724622McCarthy was technically right but his approach was retarded because he couldn’t fucking tell the difference between a democratic socialist who was in labour union in 1951 and a Marxist-Leninist. The fact that he never made the New Left in academia a central focus was also insane. I think the only academic he went after was a professor of Sinology. In the end McCarthy was arguably one of the greatest useful idiots for the New Left’s rise to power.
>>18724666>went after was a professor of SinologyIt was two separate academics really. One was Owen Lattimore, whom McCarthy literally called “the top Soviet espionage agent in the United States,” seemingly because of his his criticism of Chiang Kai-shek’s military strategy. The other was John King Fairbank, another professor of Chinese studies who correctly predicted the victory of Mao Zedong’s Chinese Communist Party and advocated establishing relations with the new government, because he believed doing so would serve American national interests and could provide a counterweight to the Soviet Union.Ironically, Fairbank later got into trouble with a very different generation of academics in the 1960s because he was initially one of the relatively few university professors who supported American intervention in Vietnam.
>>18724515You’re partly correct, but it wasn’t some Marine commanders. The accusation was against the Army cause high-ranking officers from the Army had pushed for closer relations with Mao's forces during the war. They were later accused of contributing to the “loss of China,” because the argument was that, without their influence, the US would have provided greater support to Chiang's government and China would not be lost. The thing with all of these guys is the context they were operating in. They had essentially babysat Chiang’s corrupt, dysfunctional, third world army and when they encountered the PLA, they saw something very different. they romanticized them as noble partisan's. I remember in Stilwell’s book, where he compares them to Apaches or some other tribe. So it was less that they were convinced by the PLA’s ideological merits and more that they preferred the image of the “noble savage” over dealing with Chiang’s dysfunctional forces.>During World War II some Foreign Service Officers of the United States Department of State had experience in China, a few with expertise going back to the 1920s. Since the general expectation was that the war would continue for perhaps another two years and that the invasion of Japan would be based in China, General Joseph Stilwell determined that American interest required liaison with the military force of the communists. At his behest, the Dixie Mission was sent to the Communist headquarters in Yan'an in July 1944. Colonel David Barrett and John S. Service reported favorably on the strength and capabilities of the Communist led forces compared with the Chinese Nationalists. Many China Hands argued that it would be in American national interest to work with the communists during the war, and to maintain relations if, as many government and civilian experts expected, they gained power. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/China_Hands#Beginning_of_the_Cold_Warhttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dixie_Mission
>>18724666Remember, it was Hoover investigating, the criminal. He fed piecemeal to McCarthy what he wanted him to mouth.
Back then it was assumed the USSR ran the entire world communist movement, the idea that for example the Chinese wanted to be their own bosses and weren't Soviet puppets didn't occur to anyone
>>18724962Well they were, through the 20's and into the 30's. But by 1950 direct control went bust.
McCarthy went too far when he accused the Army of having communist infiltrators at which point Eisenhower threw him overboard. You will notice he never disavowed McCarthy and even appeared with him during the 52 election, up until the Army-McCarthy Hearings.
>>18724986touching the Army is a big No-No in American Politics, specially during the cold war, gotta keep that MIC going, it doesn't matter if the soldiers running it are gay feminists or redneck christians
>>18724515Dude America sided with the Orcish horde against White Germany. It’s a communist shithole filled with trash.
>>18724781Sterling Hayden, the actor who played the paranoid anti-communist Gen. Ripper in Dr. Strangelove, was one of these guys who parachuted into Yugoslavia to link up with Tito's partisans while in the OSS. He went into the OSS via the Marines. I think he might've joined the Communist Party after the war in the late 1940s (I'd have to look it up) because he thought Tito's guys were based, but when HUAC landed he had left and was like I don't have anything to do with that and also I was being stupid heh.Also there's a funny anecdote about Stilwell thinking of Mao's forces as like the Apaches, when he got off the plane during one of the Dixie Missions he let out an Apache war whoop. I don't think the Chinese communists knew what that was, like huh that must be a traditional American greeting.>>18724551There was an alliance. Also in countries in like China there could be a link between socialism and national-defense patriotism. And the communists (despite the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact) had a certain cachet for being the most militant anti-fascists, so people who really didn't like the Axis could find the communists attractive.It's also not emphasized much (and this seems highly alien to the left today) but communists themselves made a point on joining the military back then. It was a condition of admission into the Comintern for constituent parties to place a special emphasis on recruiting and agitating / spreading propaganda within the armed forces wherever they were because the plan was always for a revolution to occur due to a split within the military. Bolshevism was like a militarized version of socialism. In Spain the communists gained control over the Spanish republican state's regular army and police forces iirc.
>>18725707>It’s a communist shithole filled with trash.It was a shithole yes but they kept the streets clean. That's one thing communist countries did well (Cuba excepted) because they ran full employment economies where employment was required by law, it was completely authoritarian and the government assigned you a job, and if they really didn't have something good for you then you swept the streets.
>>18725735the later years of the USSR saw increased homelessness, drug abuse, and cities falling apart
>>18724550Are you by any chance a fucking retard who has never read any European history before 1945? Just look up the Napoleonic Wars, buddy. France backstabbed Spain, then the Prussians backstabbed the French at Torgau, the Austrians backstabbed France, the Danes got surprise attacked by Britain, and every little German statelet who owed their independence to France decided to betray France the second it became convenient.
>>18724550>OP describing the sympathy of Americans for former brothers in arms>WHY AMERICANS HAVE NO HONOR FOR BROTHER IN ARMS??gee what a mystery
>>18724613>Mccarthy was right about something as blatantly intuitive as the idea that the enemy has spies among us And yet he was obviously full of shit about knowing exactly who was a commie, as his declaration of suspicion was a massive breach in OPSEC during the height of the Cold war. Assuming any spies were present, he basically let them know he was onto them and gave them an out to reorganize. This would completely ruin any legitimate ongoing internal into communist infiltration.What a retard.
