ABSTRACT
The red scare of the late 1940s and early 1950s had its grassroots elements, but it was promulgated by elite conservatives—businessmen, top elected officials and prominent media personalities—both Republican and Democratic. Bell et al. suggested that the roots of McCarthyism lay in agrarian radical movements of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries claiming that the proponents of McCarthyism shared similar concerns their purported agrarian radical forebears. The link lay in the fact that, like the Populists, McCarthy's supporters were suspicious of leadership and ill at ease with America's growing industrialization and urbanization. Michael Paul Rogin wrote, "Politics alone does not explain McCarthyism; but the relevant sociopsychology is that which underpins normal American politics, not that of radicals and outsiders." This study is based substantially on a basis of the acceptance of the truth of that statement and constitutes an exploration of both the relevant politics and the relevant sociopsychology of McCarthyism in the context of normal American politics.
