The Ongoing Black Mark of the Red Scare

Summary

The Gist: The Ongoing Black Mark of the Red Scare

Host: Mike Pesca
Co-host: [Unnamed]
Guest: Clay Risen
Release Date: April 11, 2025

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Introduction to the Episode

In this episode of The Gist, host Mike Pesca delves into the enduring legacy of the Red Scare and McCarthyism in modern America. Featuring an in-depth conversation with historian and author Clay Risen, the discussion explores how the tactics and ideologies of the McCarthy era continue to influence contemporary political and social climates.

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Setting the Stage: Modern Echoes of McCarthyism

Mike Pesca [01:03]:
"The McCarthy era was a formative and terrible experience in American history, and also it resonates to today."

Pesca introduces the theme by highlighting the pervasive discussion of tariffs, the economy, and other economic issues, subtly drawing parallels between past and present political climates. He references a striking statistic from the New York Times about microplastics in human brains, using it as a metaphor for the hidden and pervasive nature of societal issues akin to the clandestine fears during the Red Scare.

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The Legacy of McCarthyism

Clay Risen [08:36]:
"The McCarthy era was a formative and terrible experience in American history, and also it resonates to today."

Clay Risen, author of Red Scare, Blacklists: McCarthyism and the Making of Modern America, discusses how McCarthyism laid the groundwork for modern political tactics that rely on guilt by association and conspiracy theories. He argues that the DNA of Joe McCarthy's methods can still be observed in current political strategies across the spectrum—left, right, and beyond.

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Case Study: Sterling Hayden

Clay Risen [09:19]:
"Sterling Hayden. He is Captain McCluskey, General Ripper in Dr. Strangelove, and his past is fascinating."

Risen brings forth the example of Sterling Hayden, an actor whose career was derailed by accusations of communism. Hayden's testimony before the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC) exemplifies the personal and professional destruction wrought by McCarthyism. Despite his public compliance, Hayden grappled with immense personal guilt and alienation, highlighting the internal costs of the Red Scare.

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Impact on Diverse Individuals and Institutions

Clay Risen [15:00]:
"Bronx Science is not an exaggeration. He was literally teaching the future best and the brightest at a time when America claimed, hey, we need to be at the forefront."

The conversation extends to the broader impact of McCarthyism on various sectors, including education. Risen narrates the story of Julius Lovaty, a distinguished math teacher at Bronx Science High School, who was unjustly targeted and dismissed due to unfounded communist accusations. This case underscores how McCarthyism's reach extended beyond Hollywood into vital educational institutions, stifling intellectual growth and innovation.

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Structural Origins: The Loyalty Program

Clay Risen [19:29]:
"The loyalty program began under Harry S. Truman, and it was, in some ways, really just a sop to the political moment."

Risen explains the origins of the loyalty program initiated by President Truman as a seemingly benign bureaucratic measure to ensure government employees' allegiance. However, the lack of safeguards allowed the program to spiral into widespread paranoia and baseless accusations, setting the stage for McCarthyism to thrive. This institutional framework provided the scaffolding for the Red Scare's expansion, illustrating how policies with humble beginnings can evolve into instruments of oppression.

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Political Dynamics and Party Realignment

Clay Risen [28:09]:
"Pat McCarron was very much a McCarthy."

The discussion shifts to the political landscape of the time, highlighting how McCarthyism influenced both major political parties. Risen points out that McCarthy, a Republican, garnered support from unlikely allies, including Southern Democrats like Pat McCarron. This cross-party alliance exacerbated tensions and blurred the lines between ideological factions, making it challenging for dissenters within the Republican Party to stand against McCarthy's methods.

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Resistance and the Role of Leadership

Clay Risen [25:18]:
"Margaret Chase Smith deserves an enormous amount of credit."

Risen emphasizes the significant yet often overlooked role of individuals like Senator Margaret Chase Smith of Maine, who courageously challenged McCarthy's tactics. Smith's 1950 speech condemning McCarthyism demonstrated that ideological unity was not absolute within the Republican Party. However, few followed her lead, highlighting the pervasive fear and pressure to conform during the Red Scare.

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Comparative Analysis: The American Character and McCarthyism

Mike Pesca [37:20]:
"But also, it's extremely true."

Risen reflects on the unique aspects of American society that allowed McCarthyism to take root. Unlike some European countries with existing communist threats, the U.S. faced an internal cultural struggle amplified by historical ideals of freedom and individualism. This self-inflicted turmoil stemmed from America's ideological contradictions, where the fear of communism clashed with foundational civil liberties.

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Institutional Responses and Civil Liberties

Clay Risen [43:36]:
"Once they started to see things turn, they were able to kind of rally."

The conversation delves into the role of institutions like the Supreme Court and the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) during the Red Scare. Risen notes that landmark figures such as Justice Hugo Black and Earl Warren eventually took strong stances in defense of civil liberties, catalyzing a shift against McCarthyism. However, initial resistance and complicity from other institutional leaders allowed the Red Scare to inflict significant damage before the tide began to turn.

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Modern Parallels and Continuing Challenges

Clay Risen [38:11]:
"I think, yes, there is something about our character. You know, there's something in the water."

Risen draws parallels between the McCarthy era and today's political climate, suggesting that periodic waves of extremism are characteristic of American political cycles. He warns that without conscious efforts to uphold civil liberties and resist divisive tactics, similar patterns of fear and persecution could reemerge, perpetuating the legacy of the Red Scare.

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Conclusion: Lessons from History

Mike Pesca [46:46]:
"And I think one of the things that is maybe a silver lining of all of this is that then in the 60s and the 70s and the 80s, so much of the rights revolution was supported by groups like the ACLU."

As the episode concludes, Pesca and Risen reflect on the enduring lessons of the Red Scare. The importance of vigilance in protecting civil liberties, the role of courageous leadership, and the necessity of resisting fear-based political tactics are underscored as essential to preventing the recurrence of such dark chapters in American history.

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Key Takeaways

• Historical Continuity: The tactics and ideologies of McCarthyism have enduring influences on modern political discourse, evident in current practices that echo guilt by association and conspiracy-laden accusations.

• Personal and Institutional Impact: McCarthyism not only ruined individual lives and careers but also deeply affected institutions like education and entertainment, stifling intellectual and creative freedoms.

• Role of Leadership: Effective resistance against oppressive political movements often hinges on decisive leadership and the willingness of individuals to stand against popular but harmful sentiments.

• Cultural Reflections: America's foundational ideals of freedom and individualism create a unique backdrop against which periods of intense political fear, like the Red Scare, play out, revealing inherent ideological tensions.

• Ongoing Vigilance: Protecting civil liberties requires continuous effort and awareness to prevent the resurgence of divisive and fear-based tactics that can undermine democratic principles.

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Notable Quotes:

• Clay Risen [12:35]:
  "This is how lives were destroyed. It wasn't just taking off your money. The courts would follow up."

• Clay Risen [17:27]:
  "This just boiled down the insanity of the era into a few hundred words."

• Mike Pesca [38:27]:
  "It's part of our character. There's something in the water."

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This comprehensive summary encapsulates the critical discussions and insights shared in The Gist episode "The Ongoing Black Mark of the Red Scare," providing listeners with a thorough understanding of the episode's exploration of McCarthyism's lasting effects on American society and politics.

Transcript

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[Mike Pesca]

It'S Friday, April 18, 2025. From Peach Fish Productions, it's the Gist. I'm Mike Pesca. So other than interviews, I don't think there was a single segment this week which didn't touch on tariffs, the economy, possibly the fauna of Heard and McDonald Islands. No tango put the sardine down and disengage from predatory pricing. By the way, I did find out that those islands with no structures or human inhabitants do somehow show up on official government statistics as having exports. The experts are not sure how, but when you're not sure how, slap a tariff on them, I say. And I'll tell you what else I read besides McDonald and Heard island export coverage. Well, not that much. I read about bonds, I read about tariffs, I read about markets, I read about equity flows, all that bond. But I'd only barely hear that the Congo hostages were released. And also that there were hostages in Congo. I did catch up on a lawsuit between Build a Bear and Squishmallows. I think the name is. I'm sure that's going to be a three parter on the gist soon. But one story that I got to today and that I read it was in the New York Times has left a fact buried, just lodged in my brain. It was in fact a fact about things lodged in our brains. The Times reports that a New Mexico research team found out that human brains today contain 50% more microplastics than they did in 2016. But that's not the fact. Here's the fact. The researchers reported the median concentration of microplastics was nearly 5,000 micrograms per gram. That's about 7 grams of plastic per brain as much as makes up a disposable spoon.

[Co-host]

Whoa, whoa, whoa.

[Mike Pesca]

We're walking around with a spoon in the brain? Duh, Mike. Not literally, though. Maybe literally. I don't know. How am I supposed to decide I have a spoon in the brain? Okay, so here's what they're saying. If you add up all those tiny nano microplastics inside of cells, a lot of them are inside of the cells, sort of like the dust in the air, but in the cells of the brain. And you do some math, you find 5000 micrograms per of plastic per gram of brain. 5000 micrograms is 5 milligrams. Do the math. Because human brains have 1400 grams on average, 7 grams of plastic exist in the brain. And a plastic spoon I look this up to weighs 2 to 6 grams. So that actually means we have three plastic spoons in the brain. Yeah, I know people are going to hear this and say, mike, not literally. You know, it's tiny parts per thousand and they're kind of tucked in there and blah, blah, blah. And if you isolated all the non spoon parts of the brain from the spoon parts of the brain, what this is saying, and you can't get around this somehow, you add the centrifuge, the brain centrifuge, that extracted all the plastic. After that, you'd have 1393 grams of non spoon brain, and you'd have 7 grams of spoon in the brain. And I say this is impossible. I do not believe it. I mean, if we believe this, maybe certain parts of the brain have higher concentrations, right? Maybe there's a prefrontal vortex or a spatula oblongata. I think the world exploding from tariffs is actually slightly more comforting than this information. But like I say, I literally don't believe it. But like I also say, definitely don't trust me, my brain is 0.5% spoon. On the show today, McCarthyism gets applied to all manner of social phenomenon these days. Any tactic that relies on guilt by association or conspiracy theory or leveraging the powers of suggestion and allegations of disloyalty for cynical political aims. But during the actual McCarthy era, those tactics weren't hinted at or inferred if you looked at them the right way. They rode roughshod over society. But it is also true that there are clear vestiges of McCarthy ism today. And as my guest argues, not just vestiges. The DNA of Joe McCarthy can be found in so many political actors and tactics in the present. My guest is Clay Risen, and for the rest of the show we shall discuss his fascinating book, red scare blacklists, McCarthyism and the making of Modern America. Clay Risen up next.

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[Clay Risen]

Thanks for having me.

[Mike Pesca]

So the argument of the book is many fold and I want to get to all that and I want to get to the history and I want to talk about today. But, but I don't want to leap past what the book does so well, which is it told me and I know a lot about the Blacklist, I thought, I think, but surfaced many stories that I had never even heard of. Pick one. Pick a character who's probably lost to even someone who read Naming Names by Victor Nevaski Navaski and who watched a lot of documentaries about the, about McCarthy and there are many that I didn't even know about. Pick one.

[Clay Risen]

Yeah.

[Interviewee]

Okay, so one, one person I haven't.

[Clay Risen]

Talked about in some of my interviews.

[Interviewee]

But I really was fascinated by was Sterling Hayden.

[Mike Pesca]

Yes.

[Clay Risen]

Who is Captain McCluskey takes it in.

[Mike Pesca]

The neck by Michael.

[Clay Risen]

Captain McCluskey. He was also, you know, appeared in Dr. Strangelove.

[Mike Pesca]

General Ripper, right.

[Clay Risen]

Yeah, he's General Ripper. And you know, but his, his past is fascinating. Just to give a quick picture, you.

[Interviewee]

Know, he was a sailor.

[Clay Risen]

He didn't want to go into the, into Hollywood but he ended up in California and he was sort of picked out because he was a really good looking dude and he was castrapping. Yeah. And so he was cast in a bunch of, you know, sort of B movies.

[Interviewee]

He hated it. And so When World War II came.

[Clay Risen]

Around, he signed up for the military.

[Interviewee]

And he ended up working for the.

[Clay Risen]

OSS and was parachuted into Yugoslavia.

[Interviewee]

He fought with the partisans.

[Clay Risen]

He got to know Tito personally and as a result he sort of had this romantic idea about communism.

[Interviewee]

So after the war he went back to Hollywood and he joined the party.

[Clay Risen]

Very briefly and he realized, you know, this communism is not the communism I knew. I don't want anything to do with this. So he left very quickly.

[Mike Pesca]

It's not Tito's communism.

[Clay Risen]

Yeah, well, you know, I think he just became more of a realist. And tito was a U.S. ally. Yeah, no, sure. And right. I mean he wasn't a Soviet communist. But in any regard, in any case, years later, you know, in 1953, Hayden was fingered as it was as a communist. And so he was, you know, required.

[Interviewee]

To name names and he was called.

[Clay Risen]

By the House UN American Activities Committee to come forward.

[Interviewee]

He got a lawyer.

[Co-host]

Yeah.

[Clay Risen]

The lawyer basically said, and this was.

[Interviewee]

A guy who did this for everybody.

[Clay Risen]

The lawyer said, you've got to do it.

[Interviewee]

You know, your career's over.

[Clay Risen]

You got to do it.

[Mike Pesca]

Hayden career is over if you don't do it.

[Clay Risen]

Right? Yes, yes, you got to do it.

[Mike Pesca]

And at that time, to set the tone, to set, to give the setting. Many had testified already. Hundreds had. Or many had named names. And they name. I think you put in the book like 908 names at that point.

[Clay Risen]

Yeah.

[Interviewee]

And some people named a lot, some people named a few. The lawyer said, look, at this point, this is all just a degradation ceremony. Everybody knows all the names. There's no secret. You're not going to reveal something, but.

[Clay Risen]

But you have to do it just.

[Interviewee]

To bend the knee to Congress.

[Clay Risen]

And it's terrible and it's anti American. And the thing.

[Interviewee]

Hayden was recently divorced and he didn't.

[Clay Risen]

Wanna lose his kids.

[Interviewee]

That was really the thing.

[Clay Risen]

He didn't care about Hollywood. He didn't wanna lose his kids. So he did it and.

[Mike Pesca]

Cause this is how lives were destroyed.

[Clay Risen]

This is how lives were destroyed.

[Mike Pesca]

Right. So it wasn't just taking of your money. The courts would follow up. Just the institutions of society would look at a person who either didn't testify or was found in violation. That was it. It was on so many levels.

[Clay Risen]

Yeah, absolutely. And Hayden, he did testify. He named names of people he already knew.

[Mike Pesca]

Two names.

[Clay Risen]

I think he had two names.

[Interviewee]

They were people who had already been fingered.

[Clay Risen]

He said, I don't remember the rest. And he was valorized by Hollywood, the.

[Interviewee]

Conservative side of Hollywood.

[Clay Risen]

You know, here's somebody, a good American who went along. He got contracts and. And he writes, he has. I would recommend people, if you have.

[Interviewee]

If you're curious about Sterling Hayden, his memoir is fantastic. It's called Wanderer.

[Clay Risen]

He's a really great writer. And he recounts this and he says, you know, years afterward, people would come up to me and they would say, hey, you know, you did a great thing for America.

[Interviewee]

And he would say, you don't understand how much I hate myself.

[Clay Risen]

Yeah, you don't.

[Mike Pesca]

He would get jobs in Westerns, which he hated. He lived on a series of houseboats and he moved out of la.

[Clay Risen]

Yeah.

[Interviewee]

He lived in Sausalito.

[Mike Pesca]

This is a guy who, you know, in the continuum of heroes or Clifford Odettes or the whole continuum of. Did you name names or didn't? Didn't you? He did the very reasonable thing. That I think almost all of us or if we were decent people would do. And it still ruined him. They weren't ruining communists, they weren't ruining far leftists. And they weren't just going after, they weren't just going after people who had, you know, some association they needed to apologize for. Hayden was seen, he played heroes in the movies and it ruined him. Why? Because he had a conscience. Unlike McCarthy.

[Clay Risen]

Yeah, absolutely. I mean, it's, I mean, the thing.

[Interviewee]

That really jumps out for me is that story, right? You can look on the surface and say, wow. And his best roles, the roles we.

[Clay Risen]

Remember him for, were ahead of him. You know, he really became famous after all of this.

[Mike Pesca]

The reason why Wanderer gets published is because he was those roles I talked about.

[Interviewee]

But when you hear from him, you find out, oh, the destruction was all internal.

[Clay Risen]

And that's something, I think sometimes that's what I wanted to communicate through the.

[Interviewee]

Book was that even people who collaborated were often destroyed internally. And so the costs weren't measured simply.

[Clay Risen]

In how many people were fired, how many people were blacklisted, but was also.

[Interviewee]

How many consciences were destroyed. And that's immeasurable.

[Clay Risen]

But it's easy to say this affected the entire country. And that's, I think, what I wanted.

[Interviewee]

To get across with the book.

[Mike Pesca]

And so we know about Sterling Hayden because he was Sterling Hayden. He wrote a memoir about it. There are countless people who were teachers, who were civil servants, who were low level members of the armed forces, and they were probably in the exact same.

[Clay Risen]

I mean, there's another guy that I, that I talk about in a chapter on education. He was the, he was a Slovakian immigrant.

[Interviewee]

Hovlaski was Julius Lovaty.

[Clay Risen]

And he grew up poor in New York, but he went through the public school system. He ended up getting a PhD from.

[Interviewee]

Columbia and he taught math at Bronx Science. He was widely considered the best math teacher in America.

[Mike Pesca]

And he and Bronx Science, to interrupt, has produced more Nobel laureates than Spain, Mexico, I can name most countries in the world.

[Clay Risen]

Yeah, yeah. I mean, Bronx Science is not an exaggeration. Right. So he's literally teaching the future best and the brightest at a time when America claimed, hey, we need to be at the forefront, we are part of.

[Mike Pesca]

The reason there's a red scare is because of our scientific vulnerabilities to the Soviets. Yes.

[Clay Risen]

And in. And you know, look, Lovati, like a.

[Interviewee]

Lot of teachers, was an idealist.

[Clay Risen]

And in the 1930s he had associated with, you know, he was still a.

[Interviewee]

Member of the American Labor Party. Which was a left wing party in the United States.

[Clay Risen]

But he was called down to call.

[Interviewee]

Down to Congress in front of Joe McCarthy. And they asked him, are you a Communist? Have you ever been a Communist?

[Clay Risen]

And he said, look, I'm not going to tell you, but I know now that by not telling you, my, my.

[Interviewee]

Life is over when I get back to New York. And sure enough, a few weeks later.

[Clay Risen]

He was hauled in front of the Board of Education and summarily fired.

[Interviewee]

And his wife, for good measure, was also fired.

[Clay Risen]

She was a teacher. And I came across him just because.

[Interviewee]

There was a little squib in the.

[Clay Risen]

Newspaper and I was doing searches for keywords and I came across his story and I thought that what a story, if I can unpack this.

[Interviewee]

And I got in touch with his son, who is still around, and we talked about his dad.

[Clay Risen]

And for me it was just this. Oh, and really just the nail on the head, the final stitch for this is that. So his one book was basically a.

[Interviewee]

Book of math problems, of geometry problems.

[Clay Risen]

It was a primer for middle school kids and really almost no text.

[Interviewee]

And it was very popular. It was in libraries around the country.

[Clay Risen]

It was in our state department libraries overseas. It was removed.

[Mike Pesca]

The math problem.

[Clay Risen]

The math problem.

[Mike Pesca]

Communist math going on.

[Clay Risen]

Yeah, exactly. And he wrote a very angry letter.

[Interviewee]

To the New York Times.

[Clay Risen]

I mean, not against the Times, but explaining like, this is ridiculous. This is the.

[Interviewee]

He didn't say it this way, but.

[Clay Risen]

This is a giant cell phone by the United States.

[Interviewee]

You know, regardless of what you think.

[Clay Risen]

Of me, this is a book that everyone is benefiting from and it's being removed for just irrational reasons. And to me, that just was so much. It just boiled down the insanity of the era into a few hundred words.

[Interviewee]

And that's what made me just jump out at him as a character.

[Mike Pesca]

Yeah, there was so much countenancing of collateral damage for. And this is where your book, I think, separates itself from a lot of the other scholarship and writing about the period for the bona fide worry about communism. And it was bona fide and it was real. And Julius and Ethel Rosenberg did sell secrets to the Soviets. Don't think especially Ethel should have been executed. But. Yes, but this was real. It was a real concern. The communists weren't just a boogeyman under your bed. They were an evil empire oppressing people. And for many years afterwards, that wasn't acknowledged as much. I guess the people who were writing about it, who were most aggrieved maybe had some associations or, you know, new people in their families who are red diaper babies or whatever. But the collateral damage got to be so great that I think it was more defining of the era than the actual, the actual program which was the legitimate. The legitimate opposition to communists.

[Clay Risen]

Well, look, I mean the. No one was ever found, no subversives.

[Interviewee]

Or spies were ever found through the federal loyalty programs.

[Clay Risen]

The Hollywood blacklist didn't remove communism.

[Interviewee]

The boogeyman.

[Clay Risen]

I mean, it was all made up. You know, what did get the Rosenbergs, for example, or algerhists was just law enforcement.

[Interviewee]

I mean, the FBI had a role.

[Clay Risen]

To play and the FBI did its role in those cases very well. They hunted down the Rosenbergs and that's.

[Interviewee]

What should have been done and nothing else. And maybe you have a loyalty program.

[Clay Risen]

That'S very well designed and respect civil.

[Interviewee]

Liberties, but instead we had this loyalty.

[Clay Risen]

Program that was just gave carte blanche to anonymous gossip and didn't allow the accused to confront their accuser or even.

[Interviewee]

Know the evidence against them.

[Mike Pesca]

Well, tell me about the loyalty program. How was it instituted? What were the aspects of it?

[Clay Risen]

Yeah, so the loyalty program began under Harry S. Truman, and it was, in some ways it was really just a sop to the political moment. You know, the 1946 elections had really.

[Interviewee]

Gone against the Democrats.

[Clay Risen]

Truman was new in office.

[Interviewee]

He was back on his heels.

[Mike Pesca]

There was a widespread notion that this guy's no fdr.

[Clay Risen]

Yeah, exactly. And also the Cold war was starting up and there was evidence of subversion in the United States and espionage. So there was enough chatter where he felt like I need to do something to at least make it look like.

[Interviewee]

I'm taking a stand.

[Clay Risen]

You know, Truman maybe is naive, I think probably naive in a way, but he, he didn't believe any of this. You know, he didn't believe that there.

[Interviewee]

Was a communist threat.

[Clay Risen]

He was never a red baiter at all.

[Mike Pesca]

And so he had a rational belief that of course our, our intelligence apparatus has to be patrolled, of course. And we have spies there. They have spies here.

[Clay Risen]

Yeah, he knew that.

[Co-host]

Yeah.

[Clay Risen]

And.

[Interviewee]

But he also didn't believe that the red scare could happen.

[Clay Risen]

And so he signed an executive order.

[Interviewee]

Creating this loyalty program that was basically, I think in his mind was going.

[Clay Risen]

To be just this bureaucratic box check where, yeah, we're going to go around.

[Interviewee]

We'Re going to talk to everybody, ask them, are you a communist? And if you say no, great.

[Clay Risen]

But the way it took off from there and the way it really metastasized.

[Interviewee]

Was far beyond what he expected.

[Clay Risen]

And it had no guardrails and so pretty quickly every agency had to have a loyalty board.

[Interviewee]

The FBI was deeply involved in these investigations and it moved very quickly.

[Clay Risen]

And suddenly people were being accused for obvious political reasons or for opportunistic personal reasons.

[Co-host]

Yeah.

[Clay Risen]

The other thing that I don't think.

[Interviewee]

Truman really appreciated was that by doing this, he gave a green light to everybody else to do it. Because suddenly if the President says this.

[Clay Risen]

Is a concern, then, you know, private industry and local governments can also.

[Mike Pesca]

We're seeing that now. We're seeing that now with the DEI crackdown.

[Interviewee]

Yeah.

[Mike Pesca]

You know, the government does something and private industry says, well, we're going to not fund pride parades or we're not going to have scholarship programs.

[Interviewee]

If you feel like this is the.

[Clay Risen]

Way the wind is blowing, then you're going to follow suit pretty quickly. And it was amazing how, how quickly everyone, I want to say, fell in line. But it, but Truman wasn't even telling anyone else to do it. It was more that the vibe, the.

[Interviewee]

Environment changed so quickly and that the incentive structure.

[Mike Pesca]

Did McCarthy understand that he was good at certain aspects of what he did, dealing with the media. Red baiting. He was good at red baiting. Did he have a better or more global understanding of that aspect, how society would work with. Without actual dictates, but with just vibes?

[Clay Risen]

Yeah, I think he. An instinctual understanding, you know, by the.

[Interviewee]

Time he came around the Red scare.

[Clay Risen]

So he came on the scene as.

[Interviewee]

A national figure in the. In early 1950, and it was right after the Hiss conviction.

[Clay Risen]

So it was in the air.

[Interviewee]

Hiss had been a high ranking State Department official. So the idea that there were spies.

[Clay Risen]

In the State Department was.

[Interviewee]

Had some validity among the public.

[Co-host]

Yes.

[Clay Risen]

And, And I think McCarthy, it's important.

[Interviewee]

That the Red scare had already been going on because he could sort of leap into the stream that was flowing in the direction he wanted. And so in some ways he understood the moment he was able to distill it down.

[Clay Risen]

I write in the book that, you know, he wasn't the cause, but he was a symptom in a lot of ways.

[Mike Pesca]

And it came out a lot of extremism. You write about extremism today. This is a debate. Hey, did Donald Trump cause the degradation of principles within the Republican Party?

[Clay Risen]

No.

[Mike Pesca]

He probably just, you know, took advantage of it.

[Clay Risen]

Yeah. And that's why, you know, McCarthy was so effective, was because he was able to identify exactly where that stream was.

[Interviewee]

Going and to take advantage of it. He knew that if he said certain things, people were not going to push.

[Mike Pesca]

Back Right, right, right. Because the cost to them, they would say, well, we'll get by. Or we're just doing this as a sop word you used before to this ridiculous character. The fact that he was really seen as ridiculous and should have been.

[Clay Risen]

Yeah.

[Mike Pesca]

Alcoholic and gamble too much. And like the things he said didn't. You know, he just would lie and lie and lie and they'd catch him in a lie and lie and. And then he'd go on to the next level.

[Clay Risen]

I think it's important that if McCarthy.

[Interviewee]

Had come around in 1946, I think he would have not been as successful because people would have seen his extremism and his clownishness and said, oh, this.

[Clay Risen]

Is just over the top.

[Interviewee]

This whole thing, this whole enterprise, this.

[Clay Risen]

Whole Red scare is, is ridiculous.

[Interviewee]

But the fact that he came along.

[Clay Risen]

In 1950, people were used to it and they were, you know, I mean.

[Interviewee]

I think we're unfortunately entering another period.

[Clay Risen]

Or already have where people are willing.

[Interviewee]

To see gross civil rights violations and.

[Clay Risen]

Just say, oh, that's how things are today. And that's what happened in the Red Scare.

[Interviewee]

People were just, you'd hear some terrible.

[Clay Risen]

Story about someone who's, you know, was fired for almost no reason or they were blacklisted for a ridiculous reason. And no one, it would be a squib in the, in the newspaper because no one, no one thought it was weird. It was, it was a dog bites man.

[Mike Pesca]

Yeah. Or people want to be self protective, of course. Battles or people. This is a big thing. People congratulate themselves on being sophisticated enough not to fall into that trap. Like I know how to navigate these waters. I'm not Sterling Hayden. I didn't things like that. Or I'm not this guy from Bronx Science. I see where the wind is blowing.

[Clay Risen]

Yeah, yeah, absolutely. And it's why so few senators.

[Interviewee]

I mean Margaret Chase Smith gets. Should. Deserves an enormous amount of credit.

[Clay Risen]

She stood up in very early on. She was a senator from Maine.

[Co-host]

Republican.

[Interviewee]

Yeah, Maine Republican. She stood up in June of 1950.

[Clay Risen]

And gave a speech on the floor of the Senate where she just called.

[Interviewee]

Out McCarthy and just ripped into him.

[Clay Risen]

And you know, she had a statement of conscience that she asked everyone to sign on to.

[Interviewee]

Only four people did. Four senators.

[Clay Risen]

And two of them, three of them backed or she was one of them. Two of them backed out.

[Interviewee]

And the third, Wayne Morse switched parties.

[Co-host]

Yeah.

[Clay Risen]

So, you know, it wasn't.

[Interviewee]

She was.

[Clay Risen]

You know, deserves an enormous amount of.

[Interviewee]

Credit because she took a lot of heat for this.

[Clay Risen]

It was early on. But she was also made an example of. And so no one else spoke up for years afterward. I mean, Democrats did, but no one.

[Interviewee]

In the Republican Party until 1954 was.

[Clay Risen]

Willing to stand up to McCarthy.

[Mike Pesca]

We'll be back with more of Clay Rise and author of Red Scare and he'll explain why today a lot of people might be looking around saying, oh wow, McCarthy won.

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[Mike Pesca]

And we're back with Clay Rise, an author of red scare, blacklist, McCarthyism and the making of Modern America. And in this part, I want to address the partizan breakdown of all this because we have to remember at the time, the parties were not clearly right and left. A lot of Southern Democrats were very conservative, very much allies of McCarthy. And there were parts of McCarthyism that were less popular with Republicans than Democrats. Right. I mean, one of the things we say, McCarthy was a Republican senator from Wisconsin, but some of his biggest allies were Democrats from Nevada. Pat McCarron, he was very much into this.

[Clay Risen]

Yeah, Pat McCarron was, was very much a McCarthy.

[Mike Pesca]

When you're flying to that airport and.

[Clay Risen]

Yeah, it's still the Las Vegas McCarran Airport. I think that's really funny. But yeah, I mean, the Republicans, one.

[Interviewee]

Reason why you didn't see more Republicans stand up is this is 1950, 1952. The Republicans had thought they were going to win the presidency in 1948.

[Clay Risen]

And Truman came roaring back. And Dewey did not defeat Truman, Dewey.

[Interviewee]

Did not defeat Truman. And Dewey had refused, to his credit, Dewey had refused to run on communism and refused to red bait. And the lesson of that was, we need to lean into this. And so it was very hard for.

[Clay Risen]

Republicans to say, you know, this McCarthy guy is helping us out. You know, he's, he is and that. And McCarthy was a, in that regard, a team player.

[Interviewee]

Like, if you were a friend of his or if you were on his side, he would fly into your state and he would give a barn burner speech and it would help you in your race.

[Mike Pesca]

I think if the primary system then looked like the primary system now, this would have been figured out during the primaries and the whole party would have been redefined as a anti communist party. And then you got to wonder what Eisenhower would have done. He still would have been elected. That's how popular he was. But as hard a choice as he had to do the decent thing or to stand up to this faction in his party that probably supported a lot of his agenda would be that much harder if it was clear that this party was a pro red baiting party.

[Clay Risen]

Yeah, yeah, absolutely. And, yeah, and it took years before, and I think it really took the.

[Interviewee]

Presence of Eisenhower to sort of in.

[Clay Risen]

The, in his victory to kind of lock in Republican dominance so that dissenters.

[Interviewee]

Within the party or opponents of McCarthy.

[Clay Risen]

Could start to feel like they can stand up.

[Interviewee]

And even then it took, you know, a year before any senator, you know, Ralph Flanders was the first senator from Vermont. He was a flinty old.

[Mike Pesca]

Vermont was very Republican.

[Clay Risen]

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[Interviewee]

But old school, small town Republican. And it took him well over a.

[Clay Risen]

Year after Eisenhower's victory to stand up and essentially give his version of what.

[Interviewee]

Margaret Chase Smith had said four years earlier. But he ripped into McCarthy and that made a difference.

[Clay Risen]

I mean, Flanders was a really, you.

[Interviewee]

Know, he was one of these quiet.

[Clay Risen]

Guys that you never heard from until he got his backup and he went after McCarthy viciously. You know, he was one of. I think, you know, when you tell the story of McCarthy's downfall, Flanders sometimes gets forgotten. It's not like he was the decisive.

[Interviewee]

Force, but it mattered that a Republican.

[Clay Risen]

Stood up and just so clearly under, you know, indicted McCarthy.

[Mike Pesca]

I know there are not a lot of international flights into Rutland, but name an airport after that guy, right?

[Clay Risen]

Yeah, right. Yeah, exactly.

[Mike Pesca]

By the way, total side note, I have said for a long time that one of the worst things that happened to American politics was the ideological sorting of the parties. And this was something that the political science advocated for. And Schatznider did a. You know, the, the journals of political science said, this is so. This is so unreasonable. That the parties are not ideological. Lee. Sorted. And I've always likened it to dogs. And when you have purebred dogs, there is more genetic. There's more genetic problems. And there's a lot of examples like this. When you have a weird mixing of different interests in a group, you'll get oftentimes much better outcomes.

[Clay Risen]

Oh, absolutely.

[Mike Pesca]

When I look, I never. I always thought of it with the Civil Rights era. I never thought of it as much with the red baiting era, but it's so true.

[Clay Risen]

Yeah.

[Interviewee]

One of my previous books was a.

[Clay Risen]

History of the making of the Civil Rights act.

[Interviewee]

And that's absolutely the case.

[Clay Risen]

I mean, there were all kinds of.

[Interviewee]

Republicans and all kinds of Democrats. And of course, the Democrat. The Southern Democrats were the big hurdle.

[Co-host]

Yeah.

[Clay Risen]

And so, so much of what made that bill possible and made it possible in this very, you know, I mean.

[Interviewee]

It'S amazing how big the Civil Rights.

[Clay Risen]

Act is, was because there were so.

[Interviewee]

Many liberal and maverick Republicans. It could never happen today because everyone is just. There is a party line, there's an.

[Clay Risen]

Ideology, and if you don't fit in, you're out.

[Co-host]

Yeah. Yeah.

[Mike Pesca]

Well, this brings me to the New Deal, and this is one of your. You have two great theses about this and then about what caused this. So one is it's a reaction to the New Deal. The New Deal was really all encompassing in American life. And conservatives, I think it's fair to say conservatives objected. And it wasn't always really clear how these. How these objections would find full flower. And sometimes they just leaked out in these really malignant ways. And so you say that the Democrats got. The New Deal was remaking society. The right kind of goes nuts about it. And a consequence of that is the Red scare.

[Clay Risen]

Yeah. I mean, the New Deal was so much more than just a policy agenda.

[Interviewee]

Right.

[Clay Risen]

It really was a culture.

[Interviewee]

There's a great book that came out in the 1990s called the Cultural Front by Michael Denning.

[Clay Risen]

And he makes this case.

[Interviewee]

He says, you know, the 1930s was.

[Clay Risen]

About music and theater, you know, as much as it was about policy. But this was all intertwined because people would be, you know, out building a dam, and then, you know, they would hear, you know, folk songs and they.

[Interviewee]

Maybe they would go to a traveling, you know, Federal Theater Project presentation.

[Clay Risen]

Yeah, it was. It was really all of a piece. And politically, it was this grand coalition, the popular front of New Deal Democrats.

[Interviewee]

All the way to communists who deeply disagreed on a lot of things. But they could get behind this project.

[Co-host]

Yeah.

[Interviewee]

But as you Said there was a lot of opposition to that.

[Clay Risen]

There were a lot of people for, you know, reasonable economic or political reasons, but also some deeply conspiratorial wingnut stuff. And often that had its own sort.

[Interviewee]

Of spectrum and coalition, but it was.

[Clay Risen]

Suppressed by the headiness of the time.

[Interviewee]

And the urgency of the time. You know, this is the Great Depression. And then, of course, World War II comes around, and all of that gets set on the back burner.

[Clay Risen]

And it's only after the war that this fight, this kind of simmering cultural conflict comes back to the front.

[Mike Pesca]

So we've been like, repressing it. Repressing it. It's been building up. We can't acknowledge war to fight. We could all agree that the Nazis are the enemies, the Nazis are defeated, and we have this festering cultural wound that has the right. That hasn't been addressed.

[Clay Risen]

Yeah. And that intersects in.

[Interviewee]

In a very violent way with the.

[Clay Risen]

Cold War and the onset of this absolute black and white security mindset in which anything that has the slightest whiff of Communism is suspect and has to be rooted out. Right. And then, of course, that comes around to indict this whole coalition, the whole popular front. If you were someone who protested against Franco. Well, you know who else protested against Franco?

[Interviewee]

Communists.

[Co-host]

Yeah.

[Mike Pesca]

Fellow travelers.

[Clay Risen]

Fellow travelers. And maybe you weren't even. I mean, there were people who were active.

[Interviewee]

Fellow travelers.

[Clay Risen]

They associated or sort of cozied up. There were some people who didn't.

[Co-host]

Yeah.

[Clay Risen]

But they simply held similar views.

[Mike Pesca]

Yeah. And also Communists were pre Stalin, not as now there was. Not as discredited as they were. Communists helped us defeat the Nazis.

[Clay Risen]

And there was a range of Communists, I mean, especially in the rank and file, you had people who, you know, wanted nothing more than to be inspired by utopian political vision.

[Interviewee]

Right.

[Clay Risen]

There were Communists, particularly in the leadership, who were in collaboration with Moscow and did facilitate espionage. But it became a blanket indictment.

[Co-host]

Yes.

[Interviewee]

You know, if you ever signed a.

[Clay Risen]

Petition, if you gave money to this group, then we've got to talk. And of course, Hollywood being Hollywood, was.

[Interviewee]

A place where people had really leapt into this.

[Clay Risen]

And now all of a sudden, all.

[Interviewee]

Of these actors and actresses and writers.

[Clay Risen]

Were looking over their shoulders because they're.

[Interviewee]

You know, they were at a party. They were at the wrong party. You know, same thing with teachers, postal.

[Clay Risen]

Workers, labor activists, I mean, you name it.

[Interviewee]

They were suddenly civil rights activists. They were suddenly suspect. And that became the fodder for the Red Scare. Right.

[Clay Risen]

So much of the way the Red Scare played out, you know, there was a There, there.

[Interviewee]

But ultimately, in my interpretation, it was.

[Clay Risen]

This cultural conflict that pitted these two visions of America.

[Co-host]

Yes.

[Clay Risen]

And I think, not to get ahead of myself, but that's also one of.

[Interviewee]

The big legacies of the Red Scare.

[Mike Pesca]

But also, Americans are a little nutty. And I know that you address this idea, but as you point out, the Brits had a lot to worry about with communists and Kim Philby and there were communist infiltration and it was real. And Ted hall, and there are a lot of communists in Great Britain and in France and Italy, you know, the Red Army Brigade, these were real communist organizations killing people out in the open. They didn't have the equivalence of the red scale.

[Clay Risen]

I mean, that was part of it.

[Mike Pesca]

Is like you say, it was a reaction to the New Deal, which those countries didn't have. But I do think part of it was just America. And Kurt Anderson and others have written about it. Our character is. We go in these extremist waves.

[Clay Risen]

Yeah. And I think. I mean, that was when I started, when I started thinking about the book. That comparative aspect was something that really got me started.

[Interviewee]

And you're right.

[Clay Risen]

I mean, I don't think it's. It's hard to deny that there is a. A craziness.

[Co-host]

Yes.

[Clay Risen]

That kind of comes in and out as, from a. As a historian, that is both an explanation, but not sufficient.

[Interviewee]

To me, I wanted to explain.

[Clay Risen]

I mean, my question really was, that's right. Why did it happen this way at this time?

[Interviewee]

Why did it end?

[Clay Risen]

And so, you know, it's sort of.

[Interviewee]

A predicate to say, well, this is something that happens every once in a.

[Clay Risen]

While and it's part of our character. I was interested in the specifics of this event, this period, but I think, yes, there is something about our character. You know, there's something in the water.

[Interviewee]

That gives us over to these moments that.

[Clay Risen]

Particularly in the Red Scare, but in others.

[Mike Pesca]

Well, we were founded in revolution. We don't go back hundreds of years. The Scottish, Irish settled the South. All of these reasons.

[Clay Risen]

No, but there's an irony because so.

[Interviewee]

Much of it goes against our founding, our purported founding beliefs.

[Clay Risen]

I mean, the First Amendment is the bedrock of civil liberties, and yet from.

[Interviewee]

Time to time we openly violate it.

[Co-host]

Yeah.

[Interviewee]

And we celebrate the violations of this.

[Clay Risen]

Thing that we're supposed to hold at the highest. It was almost a 10 commandment, and yet we are very happy to get rid of it.

[Interviewee]

And then later on we look back and say, oh, God, that was a mistake.

[Mike Pesca]

Well, what did the civil liberties apparatus, such as they were. What Were they doing because the ACLU did not cover themselves in glory?

[Clay Risen]

No, they did not look good, partly because to be seen defending communists was, or even to speak up for, for.

[Interviewee]

Civil liberties was to be seen as anti American and going against the national.

[Clay Risen]

Interest at a time when supposedly, you know, we were about to go to.

[Interviewee]

War with the Soviet Union.

[Clay Risen]

And so the aclu, the American Bar association, really, I mean, they didn't just.

[Interviewee]

Stand down, they ran the other way.

[Clay Risen]

And often, you know, indicted their own members if they spoke out too much.

[Mike Pesca]

Well, I think. But you tell me that many of the institutions you have named that are identified as progressive today, Hollywood, the New York Times, which, which wrote about our Bronx science teacher, the Bar association, now they're very, very left progressive then? I don't think they were, no.

[Clay Risen]

And there was also, you know, there was a.

[Interviewee]

As much as there was the Red.

[Clay Risen]

Scare between left and right, there was also the Red Scare also had a valence on the left and the war between non communist, anti communist liberals. And the left was also almost as.

[Interviewee]

Destructive as the Red Scare itself. I mean, it tore apart the labor movement.

[Clay Risen]

It decimated that coalition between left and center that had driven Roosevelt forward, that had lasted through the Truman era, but then in 1948 and then afterward really just ended in civil war on the left.

[Interviewee]

And a lot of those organizations aligned.

[Clay Risen]

With the liberals against, against the communists.

[Mike Pesca]

But lest someone have the far, the progressives, let's say, lest someone have just pure nostalgia for the coalition between the center and the left, you know, that was a coalition that had FDR make accommodations for theater, Bilbo, the Mississippi senator, where basically the whole New Deal was stripped of any civil rights because the guy was a vicious racist.

[Clay Risen]

Right, yeah, yeah. I mean, look, it's.

[Interviewee]

It is quite something that there was a coalition that went from Bilbo all.

[Clay Risen]

The way to, you know, the head.

[Interviewee]

Of the Communist Party.

[Clay Risen]

It's to Roosevelt's credit, such as it is, that he was able to hold.

[Interviewee]

That together, but there were enormous costs.

[Mike Pesca]

Yeah, right.

[Clay Risen]

Because he was not able to, say.

[Interviewee]

Extend a lot of the benefits of.

[Clay Risen]

The New Deal to, to African Americans.

[Mike Pesca]

I asked you about the institutions of civil liberties. This is what I was wondering about. It seems like the story is Eisenhower is a smart guy and a very decent person and in his guts he hates it. But eventually McCarthy is so weakened that Eisenhower and those aligned with him can do something about it. But it seemed more predicated or the opposition of the Red Scare seem more predicated on the decency of individuals than anything Institutional. I wonder today, maybe because we've been through the Red Scare. But this will get us to the section of our interview where we talk about how similar and how dissimilar it is. I wonder if today, if that were going on today, we point to, well, here's what we know about civil liberties and here's what we know about civil liberty law, and here's what we don't even have to think about or work through from a moral standpoint. We just know that it's wrong. Was that going on then? Were there enough people with. Who were respected thinkers or a body of work where you could point to what America is that could discredit the Red Scare?

[Interviewee]

Yes and no.

[Clay Risen]

I mean, it certainly existed, but there.

[Interviewee]

Were too many people who were willing to set that aside. I mean, the Supreme Court itself is.

[Clay Risen]

A great example where you had people like Hugo Black and William O. Douglas who were just adamant pro civil liberties.

[Interviewee]

And anytime a Red Scare case came.

[Clay Risen]

Before them, they were guaranteed to be unfortunately dissenting. And they were leaning on a pretty.

[Interviewee]

Established reading of the First Amendment and.

[Clay Risen]

Of, you know, civil liberties law broadly. And yet they didn't have a majority.

[Interviewee]

They just could.

[Clay Risen]

Even when Felix Frankfurter, who was sort of, you know, had a nuanced read.

[Interviewee]

Of things, even when he joined with.

[Clay Risen]

Them, there were just too many justices who were willing to set things aside. And you didn't have. I mean, in Carl Vinson, who is the Supreme Court chief justice for much of it, you just didn't.

[Interviewee]

He was not a leader. He wasn't going to push things. It was only when Earl Warren came.

[Clay Risen]

In in 1953, and Warren, to the surprise of many people, turned out to be this civil libertarian.

[Interviewee]

He sort of had this Saul on.

[Clay Risen]

The road to Damascus conversion and lined up with the strong. I mean, he was.

[Interviewee]

There was no distance between him and Hugo Black. Everyone was surprised about that. This is the guy who supported putting Japanese.

[Mike Pesca]

Yeah.

[Clay Risen]

Republican governor of California, putting them in concentration camps.

[Interviewee]

And yet now here he is going after, piece by piece, the Red Scare.

[Clay Risen]

And so I guess to answer your question, it took leadership by certain people to line up what was otherwise this kind of disparate community of civil libertarians, of thinkers who to some extent had been speaking out or had been a little quiet.

[Interviewee]

Once they started to see things turn, they were able to kind of rally.

[Clay Risen]

And I think, I mean, this is.

[Interviewee]

My personal interpretation, my reading in the book is that Warren deserves an enormous.

[Clay Risen]

Amount of credit for not only doing the hard work, you know, going through.

[Interviewee]

All these laws but also standing up and saying, okay, now the Supreme Court.

[Clay Risen]

Is on the right side. And I think you're right too, that there is the Red scare did leave.

[Interviewee]

Behind antibodies in the sense that organizations like the ACLU could look back and.

[Clay Risen]

Say, well, we made a mistake. We've learned from that. And I think one of the things that is maybe a silver lining of.

[Interviewee]

All of this is that then in the 60s and the 70s and the 80s, so much of the rights revolution was supported by groups like the ACLU.

[Clay Risen]

That said we can't go, you know.

[Interviewee]

We'Ve learned our lesson.

[Clay Risen]

We can't go back to that. Yes.

[Mike Pesca]

And then they also burnished that. This is a period where they burnish their credentials by taking on popular cases, you know, the Nazis and Skokie and all these cases. And they've become not to everyone, but certainly a figure of or an institution of respect.

[Interviewee]

Yes. Yeah, absolutely. And I think remains to be seen how that plays out today.

[Clay Risen]

Because one of the things in the book, one of the literary references that I touch on is, and that is.

[Mike Pesca]

The dreaded fade out. A good interview. We didn't hold back. You got a lot here. But if you want to finish the meal, Peska plus subscribers get even more of Clay Rise and go to subscribe.mikepeska.com you get bonus episodes, bonus features. On the 24th of this month, Ben Lindbergh will be doing a drop in after hours, sort of a book club. But we'll talk white lotus severance and baseball and other things almost too much to mention. Or just get the show ad free. That's available too at subscribe.mikepeska.com that's it for today's show. Cory Wara produces the gist. Michelle Peska's CBSO of Peach Fish Productions. Thanks for listening. Foreign is brought to you by Progressive Insurance. Fiscally responsible financial geniuses, monetary magicians. These are things people say about drivers who switch their car insurance to Progressive and save hundreds. Visit progressive.com to see if you could save Progressive Casualty Insurance Company and affiliates. Potential savings will vary. Not available in all states or situations.