Joseph McCarthy

Some of today's most influential political figures also won power through their willingness to say things that capture media attention.

In the heat of the Cold War, Joe McCarthy’s anti-communist crusade became a media sensation.

Censure brought down a crusading anti-communist senator but fired up his followers.

A new biography of Joseph McCarthy does not reckon with the devastating effects of anti-communism.

McCarthy never sent a single “subversive” to jail, but, decades later, the spirit of his conspiracy-mongering endures.

Breaking with party unity can be costly. In the 1950's, Senator Margaret Chase Smith of Maine faced backlash after she condemned McCarthy, a fellow Republican.

Because that moment isn’t quite what we remember.

Just as as McCarthyism did decades ago, Trumpism conceals the Republican Party’s long-term program to dismantle the public sector.

At its height, the political crackdown felt terrifying and all-encompassing. What can we learn from how the movement unfolded—and from how it came to an end?

The closeted right-wing operative has become a tragic character in the American repertory.

Long before the rise of Trump, the American conservative mainstream enjoyed a complex partnership with the Far Right.

As the fear of communist subversion spread throughout America, McCarthy launched hearings that were based on scant evidence and overblown charges.

As director of the FBI for decades, J. Edgar Hoover helped build a massive, professionalized national security state and hounded leftists out of public life.

Seventy years after a disgraceful episode of anti-LGTBQ history, we are facing a new wave of McCarthyist fearmongering.

The modern Republican Party has always exploited and encouraged extremism.

In his lifetime, Robert Welch toiled in the mocked and marginal fringe. Today his ideas are the mainstream of the American right.

Roy Cohn connects the McCarthy era to the age of Trump across more than half a century.

From 1947 until the 1990s, an estimated 10,000 LGBTQ people were pushed out of government and military positions.

The conservative conspiracy lit that paved the way for Donald Trump.

Fifty years later, Bobby Kennedy’s passionate, inspiring, and tragic presidential campaign still fascinates.