Aided by new sources, Clay Risen's 'Red Scare' brings McCarthyism back to life
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Hey, it's NPR's Book of the Day. I'm Andrew Limbaugh. What does it look like to stress test the Constitution? The journalist Clay Risen has a book out about one of the times we as Americans really tried to find its limits. It's called Red Scare, Blacklist, McCarthyism, and the Making of Modern America.

And he gets into the anti-communist fervor Senator McCarthy and his allies got into after World War II and how they used it as an opportunity to elevate their own status. Reisen tells NPR's Steve Inskeep that this was a real constitutional crisis, a real test. And America, quote, did not do very well until it did. That's coming up.

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Get tickets now at OnSwiftHorses.com. A new book by journalist Clay Risen brings back to life a period of American history after World War II known as the Red Scare. According to Risen, what should have been a counterintelligence effort ended up as... A whole cultural witch hunt against all kinds of people who, regardless of their past,

did not deserve to be hounded out of their professions and out of their livelihoods. The book is Red Scare Blacklists McCarthyism and the Making of Modern America, and it's based in part on newly declassified sources. Ryzen spoke with our co-host Stephen Skeap. It would be easy to think of the McCarthy era as a relic or a part of the Cold War, but you say it's part of a culture war. What do you mean by a culture war?

What I mean, Steve, is that beginning in the 1930s, there was a real cultural change in America. It was brought about by the experience of the Depression, but also the government activism on the part of the Roosevelt administration.

what we know as the New Deal. And obviously, we know the New Deal had a lot of impact in terms of building new institutions, but it also helped foster a cultural change in America, a progressive change, a more cosmopolitan, more pluralistic change

And from the very beginning, there was a lot of opposition to that, even though it was ascendant. There were a lot of people who didn't like it and a lot of people who took a very conspiratorial view toward that. You acknowledge early on there really were communist spies. There were Soviet spies in America. So there was an actual threat, right? Yeah.

Absolutely. The Soviet government really was trying to infiltrate elements of American society, either through the Communist Party or through spies in the government. But it's also important to recognize two things. First, that it was a pretty small effort. The Communist Party was small. These spies were not very effective. But also most of this, almost all of it,

it, in fact, was ended by the end of World War II. So by the time the Red Scare started, we were talking about ghosts of the past, and yet the people we were going after were in the present. What was the motivation of people like Senator Joseph McCarthy, whose name was given to the era, and others who were extreme anti-communists? Well, I think it's a mix of both real ideological fervor, and I would say legitimate concern of

about the state of the country, but also a lot of opportunism. And, you know, you look at someone like McCarthy, and I do think on some level McCarthy really believed that there was this conspiracy at the heart of the American government, and he really believed that communism was this threat, but he also believed

was no doubt an opportunist. And he saw this as an opportunity to elevate his position in the Senate, in American politics. And of course, that's what he did. And you can look at a lot of other people around him, both who preceded him during the Red Scare and also who saw him as someone they could sort of rise with.

And it's hard not to read that as opportunism and rank partisanship. As I read your account of this, I think about the power of narratives. If people have bought into, if they believe the narrative that there is a vast, vast communist conspiracy to take over America, any evidence you find can be judged baselessly.

in light of that narrative. And if you don't find any evidence, it just shows the conspiracy is even bigger than you thought. Yeah, that's right. I mean, this is a part of the story that I think Americans today will connect with, is this all-consuming power of the conspiracy theory. And of course, again, this is all in the context of

the Cold War, which is a new thing, and it was a nuclear thing, and was really scary for a lot of people. And so as soon as someone came along and said, we have to be absolutely sure, regardless of whose rights we violate, that we are safe as a country, and there's a conspiracy, by the way, that we have to check against, well, really, Katie, bar the door, there's no stopping those people. In your judgment, Clay, how well did the Constitution hold up?

You know, it's like a lot of things in America. It did not do very well until it did. And one of the things I think is really important to note about the Red Scare is that

For a long time, the people who should have stood up did not stand up. They were afraid or maybe they were complicit in some way, but eventually people did. And these were lawyers and they were some politicians. They were journalists like Edward R. Murrow. One person that I really highlight is Chief Justice Earl Warren, who no one expected to be a strong civil libertarian. But when he came into office or onto the bench, rather unexpectedly,

he began to develop a philosophy around civil liberties. And he saw the Red Scare as what it was, a fundamental threat to American civil liberties. And over the course of four years, even as he's going after school desegregation, he was also developing a list of cases that

that would allow him to start to dismantle the tools of the Red Scare and using the power of the court to uphold constitutional values and ultimately to validate them and to push back the Red Scare. So I think there were moments of real constitutional crisis in America, but ultimately it was people like Earl Warren who stood up and took the best of the Constitution and pushed things back.

In the long run, and it was a period of years, of course, and many lives were ruined, did Americans at large end up being more secure in their civil liberties then? I think, yes. I think that one of the silver linings of the Red Scare is that it reminded a lot of people that civil liberties cannot be taken for granted, that they need to be defended. How did the Red Scare end?

Threatscare ended partly because the world moved on. Communism was clearly not a threat to the United States. People came to realize that. Also, the Cold War simmered down.

But I think also it ended because of the actions of people who stood up against this. And we're talking about journalists like Edward R. Murrow, who exposed McCarthy on television. We're talking about people like Chief Justice Earl Warren, who very systematically worked his way through the legal architecture of the Red Scare and either pulled it back or dismantled it completely. And

that's ultimately what brought the Red Scare to an end. Clay Risen's latest book is Red Scare, Blacklists, McCarthyism, and the Making of Modern America. Pleasure talking with you again. Well, thanks so much for having me, Steve.

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