Joseph McCarthy
1908–1957
The senator whose Red Scare gave 'McCarthyism' its name — with Roy Cohn at his side.
Joseph McCarthy is where the method starts on this site: the junior senator from Wisconsin whose 1950–54 anticommunist crusade — waving lists of 'known communists,' destroying careers on suspicion, and purging gay Americans from government — gave weaponized inquiry its name. His chief counsel and enforcer was a young Roy Cohn, who carried the technique forward for the next three decades.
What the record shows
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His anticommunist crusade gave 'McCarthyism' its name and ended in Senate censure.
FACTFrom the 1950 'list of communists' speech through the 1954 Army–McCarthy hearings, he ruined careers on unproven accusation; the Senate censured him in December 1954, and he died in 1957.
Roy Cohn was his chief counsel — the partnership that ran the Red Scare and the Lavender Scare.
FACTCohn engineered the hearings that purged suspected communists and gay Americans from government, then took the method to New York, the mob, and Donald Trump.
Every investigation that touches Joseph
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