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McCarthyism “It is now apparent that the present Administration has fully embraced, for political advantage, McCarthyism. I am not referring to the Senator from Wisconsin. He is only important in that his name has taken on the dictionary meaning of the word. It is the corruption of truth, the abandonment of the due process law. It is the use of the big lie and the unfound accusation against any citizen in the name of Americanism or security. It is the rise of power of the demagogue who lives on untruth; it is the spreading of fear and the destruction of faith in every level of society.”(Truman, Harry S.) Senator Joseph McCarthy used the Red Scare to gain political power by accusing the State Department of being “infested” with communists and communism. The American Communist Party was formed in 1919 when the Socialist Party expelled 20,000 workers who supported the Soviet Government. Thus began the Red Scare period. Woodrow Wilson worried about the communists and his Attorney General, Mitchell Palmer, arrested 10,000 suspected communists, now called the “Palmer Raids”, however, there was no evidence of the proposed revolution. During World War II, the United States and Soviet Union were wartime allies,