Actually, the real translation is that communism was a real threat, and the American Left, which had been the Soviet Union's bitch for years, finally succeeded in dragging the red herring* of Joseph McCarthy across the path, and he and the blacklists are pretty much all there is left of the story in our culture now. This despite the archives, the Venona papers, and everything else mentioned by this author.
"McCarthyism" is now the magic word by which those same leftists can rewrite their own history, a nearly unbroken sympathy with communist movements around the world that began with mainstream politics in the '30s and '40s and lasted at the far Left end of the scale until the fall of the Soviet Union. It still persists in many circles with Castro and Chavez.
*intended
Off Topic » in reply to translation: there always *were* Commies under the bed, and Joe McCarthy was really a fuzzy little talking bear
re: translation:
The whole thread (23 posts)
- History of communism in Minnesota