H eadlines
Series Examines Legacy of Sen. Joe McCarthy
L OCA L
SOPHIE PANZER | JE STAFF
DICK LEVINSON knows the
tumultuous political climate of
the past five years didn’t appear
out of thin air.

When he heard polit-
ical pundits claim President
Donald Trump was unlike any
leader who came before, he
was troubled that they didn’t
seem to be aware of Trump’s
connections to another promi-
nent Republican: Sen. Joe
McCarthy, who spearheaded
the Red Scare of the 1950s.

Levinson, who works
as librarian II at the Free
Library of Philadelphia, and
his colleagues are hosting
“Trust No One: Joe McCarthy
and the Politics of Fear.” The
lecture series about the legacy
of McCarthy is designed to put
current events into perspective.

“One of the reasons we’re
doing this program is that Joe
McCarthy is really the guy who
wrote the political playbook
that was used throughout
the Trump presidency and
is now used by politicians in
both political parties,” said
Levinson, who is Jewish.

McCarthy was
the namesake of McCarthyism,
the practice of lobbying sensa-
tional accusations of treason,
subversion and communist
activity at political opponents.

The right-wing politician
from Wisconsin warned the
American public that commu-
nists had infiltrated American
society and sought world
domination. He gave a speech
claiming to know the number
of card-carrying communists
in the State Department.

“That number
was constantly fluctuating, and
every time people in the media
attempted to pin McCarthy
down about what he was doing
or why the figures were always
changing, he always had some
lie and he always had some
excuse,” Levinson said.

With the help of aide Roy
Cohn, who went on to mentor
Trump; FBI Director J. Edgar
Hoover; and other Republicans
in Congress,
McCarthy launched a series of probes into
largely baseless allegations of
communist activity in the State
Department, the White House,
the Treasury Department and
the Army.

Politicians, government
officials and other federal
employees whose political
views were deemed suspicious
Sen. Joe McCarthy
Courtesy of the Library of Congress
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6 APRIL 8, 2021
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