Oct 3, 2026 · 28 min · 9 segments
In July 2026, the Trump administration invoked “communism” 81 times in two weeks. A State Department report openly praised McCarthy-era blacklists as “a model that worked.” The White House declared an…
Let's talk about the careers.
Richard Nixon was a first-term congressman from California in 1948 when he was appointed to HUAC.
He used the committee to pursue the Alger Hiss case with a tenacity that most of his colleagues had abandoned.
He had been nobody.
Hiss made him somebody.
He was elected to the Senate in 1950 by running the most nakedly red-baiting campaigns of the era against Helen Douglas, whom he labeled the Pink Lady, and distributed campaign material on pink paper linking her voting record to a New York congressman with alleged communist sympathies.
Douglas' response, calling him Tricky Dick, became his permanent nickname.
Nixon became Eisenhower's vice president at 40 and was nearly elected president in 1960.
He came back to win it in 1968.
Joseph McCarthy's story is simpler and shorter.
He was looking for a political issue in the early 1950s.
He found anti-communism, used it to terrify the Republican establishment into giving him more power than any freshman senator should have had, and wrote it until the Army McCarthy hearings exposed him on national television.
His career lasted four years at full throttle.
His methods did not die with him.
J. Edgar Hoover is the key figure in the entire Red Scare story because he is the one who built the permanent machinery rather than just riding the wave.
Hoover had been building his files since 1919 when he ran the General Intelligence Division at 24.
By the time the second Red Scare came, he had three decades of dossiers on communists, on suspected communists, on politicians, on celebrities, on civil rights leaders, on businessmen, on anyone who had ever done anything that might someday be useful.
He shared this information selectively, with McCarthy when it was convenient, with senators and congressmen who needed ammunition against their opponents, with presidents who needed to know what their enemies were doing.
He also gathered material on the presidents themselves.
John Kennedy suspected the same.
Robert Kennedy, as Attorney General, was Hoover's nominal superior and knew that Hoover had surveillance material on his family.
No president in Hoover's 48-year tenure successfully moved against him.
Let's talk about the careers.
Richard Nixon was a first-term congressman from California in 1948 when he was appointed to HUAC.
He used the committee to pursue the Alger Hiss case with a tenacity that most of his colleagues had abandoned.
He had been nobody.
Hiss made him somebody.
He was elected to the Senate in 1950 by running the most nakedly red-baiting campaigns of the era against Helen Douglas, whom he labeled the Pink Lady, and distributed campaign material on pink paper linking her voting record to a New York congressman with alleged communist sympathies.
Douglas' response, calling him Tricky Dick, became his permanent nickname.
Nixon became Eisenhower's vice president at 40 and was nearly elected president in 1960.
He came back to win it in 1968.
Joseph McCarthy's story is simpler and shorter.
He was looking for a political issue in the early 1950s.
He found anti-communism, used it to terrify the Republican establishment into giving him more power than any freshman senator should have had, and wrote it until the Army McCarthy hearings exposed him on national television.
His career lasted four years at full throttle.
His methods did not die with him.
J. Edgar Hoover is the key figure in the entire Red Scare story because he is the one who built the permanent machinery rather than just riding the wave.
Hoover had been building his files since 1919 when he ran the General Intelligence Division at 24.
By the time the second Red Scare came, he had three decades of dossiers on communists, on suspected communists, on politicians, on celebrities, on civil rights leaders, on businessmen, on anyone who had ever done anything that might someday be useful.
He shared this information selectively, with McCarthy when it was convenient, with senators and congressmen who needed ammunition against their opponents, with presidents who needed to know what their enemies were doing.
He also gathered material on the presidents themselves.
John Kennedy suspected the same.
Robert Kennedy, as Attorney General, was Hoover's nominal superior and knew that Hoover had surveillance material on his family.
No president in Hoover's 48-year tenure successfully moved against him.
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