The Cold War, McCarthyism, Labor Movement and Donald Trump’s Rise to Power

The post WW II red scare at home began in March of 1946 with Winston Churchill’s Iron Curtain speech in Fulton, Missouri. They established the ideology of anti-Soviet anti-communism, and were followed by the passage of the Loyalty Oaths in March, 1947, The Taft-Hartley Act, in June of 1947 kicked communists in leadership positions out of the US labor movement. In 1948, New York State wrote the Feinberg Act kicking communists out of public schools, and many other states followed suit. The Hollywood 10 and those efforts to kick communists out of US film industry was thanks to the House UnAmerican Activities Committee which was established in 1938 and after WW II operated only against suspected Communists. Joseph McCarthy made an entirely unsubstantiated comment in 1950 in a speech saying there were hundreds of communists in US government.
Trump’s friend – and advisor Roy Cohen worked with McCarthy. [ “In 1973, a brash young would-be developer from Queens met one of New York’s premier power brokers: Roy Cohn, whose name is still synonymous with the rise of McCarthyism and its dark political arts. With the ruthless attorney as a guide, Trump propelled himself into the city’s power circles and learned many of the tactics that would inexplicably lead him to the White House years later” ( Vanity Fair) ] .The McCarthy Committee did not get “going” until the Junior Senator from Wisconsin looking for something to make a name for his drunken self, hit upon anti-communism, and Joseph McCarthy opened the “Hearings” which lasted from April to June, 1954, and were televised.