Editing McCarthyism (section)

==Portrayals of communists==
Those who sought to justify McCarthyism did so largely through their characterization of communism, and American communists in particular. Proponents of McCarthyism claimed that the [[Communist Party USA|CPUSA]] was so completely under Moscow's control that any American communist was a puppet of the Soviet intelligence services. This view, if restricted to the Communist Party's leadership<ref name=":7" /> is supported by recent documentation from the archives of the [[KGB]]<ref>{{Cite book| last = Andrew  | first = Christopher  | author2 = Vasili Mitrokhin  | title = The Sword and the Shield  | publisher = Basic Books  | year = 1999  | location = New York  | pages = [https://archive.org/details/swordshieldmitro00andr/page/108 108, 110, 122, 148, 164, 226, 236–237, 279–280, 294–306]  | isbn = 0465003109  | url = https://archive.org/details/swordshieldmitro00andr/page/108  }}</ref> as well as post-war decodes of wartime Soviet radio traffic from the [[Venona project]],<ref>{{Cite book  | last = Haynes  | first = John  |author2=Harvey Klehr  | title = Venona – Decoding Soviet Espionage in America  | publisher = Yale University  | year = 1999  | location = Connecticut  | pages = 221–226 | isbn = 0300077718}}</ref> showing that Moscow provided financial support to the CPUSA and had significant influence on CPUSA policies. J. Edgar Hoover commented in a 1950 speech, "Communist members, body and soul, are the property of the Party."

According to historian Richard G. Powers, McCarthy added "bogus specificity" to "sweeping accusation[s]", gaining support among "countersubversive anticommunists" on one hand, who sought to find and punish perceived communists. On the other hand, "liberal anticommunists" believed that the Communist Party was "despicable and annoying" but ultimately politically irrelevant.<ref>{{Cite book |last=Powers |first=Richard Gid |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=cMztAAAAMAAJ |title=Not Without Honor: The History of American Anticommunism |date=1995 |publisher=Free Press |isbn=978-0684824277 |pages=129, 214, 240 |language=en}}</ref>

President Harry Truman, who pursued the anti-Soviet [[Truman Doctrine]], called McCarthy "the greatest asset the Kremlin has" by "torpedo[ing] the bipartisan foreign policy of the United States."<ref>{{Cite web |title=President Harry S. Truman Responds to Senator Joseph R. McCarthy's Accusations of Disloyalty |url=http://historymatters.gmu.edu/d/8078 |website=historymatters.gmu.edu}}</ref>

Historian Landon R. Y. Storrs writes that the CPUSA's "secretiveness, its [[Authoritarianism|authoritarian]] internal structure, and the loyalty of its leaders to the [[Kremlin]] were fundamental flaws that help explain why and how it was demonized. On the other hand, most American Communists were [[Idealism|idealists]] attracted by the party's militance against various forms of social injustice." Furthermore, based on later declassified evidence, "The paradoxical lesson from several decades of scholarship is that the same organization that inspired democratic idealists in the pursuit of social justice also was secretive, authoritarian, and morally compromised by ties to the Stalin regime."<ref>{{Cite web |last=Storrs |first=Landon R. Y. |date=2015-07-02 |title=McCarthyism and the Second Red Scare |url=https://oxfordre.com/americanhistory/view/10.1093/acrefore/9780199329175.001.0001/acrefore-9780199329175-e-6 |access-date=2022-11-02 |website=Oxford Research Encyclopedia of American History |language=en |doi=10.1093/acrefore/9780199329175.013.6|isbn=978-0199329175 }}</ref>

In the mid 20th century, this attitude was not confined to arch-conservatives. In 1940, the [[American Civil Liberties Union]] ejected founding member Elizabeth Gurley Flynn, saying that her membership in the Communist Party was enough to disqualify her as a [[Civil libertarianism|civil libertarian]]. In the government's prosecutions of Communist Party members under the Smith Act (see above), the prosecution case was based not on specific actions or statements by the defendants, but on the premise that a commitment to violent overthrow of the government was inherent in the doctrines of Marxism–Leninism. Passages of the CPUSA constitution that specifically rejected [[social revolution|revolutionary violence]] were dismissed as deliberate deception.{{sfn|Schrecker|1998|pp=161, 193–194}}

In addition, it was often claimed that the party didn't allow members to resign; thus someone who had been a member for a short time decades previously could be thought a current member. Many of the hearings and trials of McCarthyism featured testimony by former Communist Party members such as [[Elizabeth Bentley]], [[Louis F. Budenz|Louis Budenz]], and [[Whittaker Chambers]], speaking as expert witnesses.<ref name=Witness>{{Cite book  | last = Chambers  | first = Whittaker | author-link = Whittaker Chambers  | title = Witness  | publisher = Random House  | year = 1952  | location = New York  | page = 799 | isbn = 978-0848809584}}</ref>{{sfn|Schrecker|1998|pp=130–137}}

Various historians and pundits have discussed alleged Soviet-directed infiltration of the U.S. government and the possible collaboration of high [[Federal government of the United States|U.S. government]] officials.{{sfn|Herman|2000|pp=5–6}}<ref>Allen Weinstein and Alexander Vassiliev, ''The Haunted Wood: Soviet Espionage in America – The Stalin Era'' (New York: Modern Library, 2000) {{ISBN|978-0375755361}}, pp. 48, 158, 162, 169, 229</ref><ref>M. Stanton Evans. ''[[Blacklisted by History]]: The Untold Story of Senator Joe McCarthy and His Fight against America's Enemies''. Crown Forum, 2007 pp. 19–21.</ref><ref>John Earl Haynes, Harvey Klehr. ''Venona: Decoding Soviet Espionage in America''. Yale University Press, 1999, p. 18.</ref>