High Holy Days Hodge-Podge: Day 7

Today's story has a relationship to Judaism that is tenuous at best...I was going to choose another topic, but this is an interesting thought, and might be a welcome repose from the very high (and very holy topics) of late.

It is difficult to conceive of any group more consistently persecuted throughout human history than the Christian church--though this is indeed probably a "statistic" that is impossible to quantify. If there has been a group that has born more oppression and mistreatment, however, I think it would have to be the Jews. They faced social and economical marginalization in medieval and early-modern worlds, and the genocide during the holocaust. Even today they are still the favorite target of intolerance and discrimination across the European Union.

While I categorically deplore the historical suffering of the Jews--and in no way condone it--today I will look at "oppressors", or rather, one "oppressor" in general: Joseph Raymond McCarthy. Yes, we all learned to denounce the House of unAmerican Activities from our high school history teachers. Yes, we all read The Crucible and quaffed its pedagogy on the ills of McCarthyism. But let's re-examine--if only for a moment--Senator McCarthy and the times surrounding McCarthyism.

Communism. It was all about the fear of communism, right? But these fears were paranoia, just mass hysteria created by McCarthy. I think it's easy to vilify him in hindsight, but the growth of communism during that time did seem to threaten capitalist democracy. In 1949, the Soviets nuclear testing confirmed their appropriation of nuclear technology. Later that year, Maoist forces took control of China, effectively bringing (what was then) over one-fifth of the world's population under the Red umbrella. The General Secretary of the UN Charter meeting was convicted of perjury regarding espionage for the USSR, and a physicist from the Manhattan Project confessed to espionage for the Soviets in the same year. Throw in a war in Korean and some iron drapery for good measure, and you've got yourself a real source of angst.

I'm not denying that many people lost their careers and had their lives ruined by (sometimes baseless) accusations, but it's hard not feel that McCarthy's fears were, at least in part, justified. With little exhortation, one can imagine the growing concern these events must have caused: the growing popularity of communism was something akin to the ineffable global attraction to the Macarena in 1996. We were all swept up in the craze, in the novelty and quirkiness. Sure, in retrospect it's easy to dismiss both as well-meaning mistakes of the past, but caught up in the moment, who could resist their seductive allure?

So McCarthy was out to protect America from communism, which was just as appealing as the Macarena, but without those carefree pelvic gyrations--and seemingly far more pernicious. It seemed America was hemorrhaging state secrets; the Red shadow was creeping across the globe, and threatened cherished American values: democracy, capitalism, the Lindy Hop, and individualism. Without encouraging reckless witch hunts, I think we can sympathize with the fear of a (perceived) inexplicable foreign threat.


Surprise Jew of the Day: Kerri Strug (who knew?!?)
Not-so-Surprising Jew of the Day: Toby Ziegler (of the West Wing)