Senator Joe McCarthy - Blacklisted by History, by M. Stanton Evans: A Review by Achmed E. Newman

By N.S.

A.E. Newman, proprietor of the blog Peak Stupidity, had been teasing us for so long about his forthcoming review of the late Stan Evans’ book that I worried that Newman and I might both die before either of us published a review of the work that, to my mind, was the most massive work of research since William L. Shirer’s The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich.

(I came across a paperback edition of Shirer’s magnum opus while at sleepaway camp at age seven in a wooden cabin full of old books, and read parts of it while at camp.

Later, at the Long Beach Public Library, when I asked to read it, the ladies doubted I could grasp it, and so they invited me to read a few pages aloud to them. I gladly obliged them, and when I was done, they asked me if I’d understood the passage. I replied that I had. They were very impressed, and did not not challenge me.

Apparently, they weren’t used to getting requests for that book from kids who were seven or eight years old, much less tykes who looked like they were four or five.

And I still recall numerous passages from Shirer. One was about collective punishment. When one member of a professional group, or a village defied the Nazis, they would punish the entire group, e.g., slaughtering the entire village. Another was about a sexually integrated youth camp. When girls met boys they liked who knocked them up, the adult staffers shrugged and said, ‘Well, we need more soldiers to fight for the Fatherland.’

Another thing I recall was a great deal of duplication. The finished book ran some 1,200 pages, and editors did not have the luxury of computers.

Shirer must had a battalion of researchers going through crates of captured, Nazi documents, which previous researchers had organized.

Stan Evans must have similarly had a battalion of researchers working through documents going back to the 1930s through the Cold War.

Previously, on the same book, by the same reviewer:

“Young Commies in LUV”;

“Did American Commies cause the attack on Pearl Harbor?”;

“Truman v McCarthy, McCarran, and Ike”; and

“Same Stuff, Different Decade.…”

Senator Joe McCarthy - Blacklisted by History, by M. Stanton Evans
Reviewed by Achmed E. Newman
Peak Stupidity
January 19, 2023

“Peak Stupidity’s review of this important history book by M. Stanton Evans is long overdue. I finished the book months ago, the library might want it back*, and I'm gonna forget half of it if I don’t get this going. However, we’ve had 4 posts already based on certain stories within it, namely ‘Young Commies in LUV’; ‘Did American Commies cause the attack on Pearl Harbor?’; ‘Truman v McCarthy, McCarran, and Ike’; and ‘Same Stuff, Different Decade.…’

“Published in ‘07, Blacklisted by History is subtitled The Untold Story of Senator Joe McCarthy. However, there’s only a very short biography of the man, less than one short chapter out of 44, called The Caveman in the Sewer**. This book is about the political struggle of this famous/infamous (depending on whether you fell for the 70 year-long lies or not) Senator against Communists that had infiltrated the US State Department and, to a lesser extent, other parts of the US Feral Gov’t, in the 1930’s through 1954. 1954 was the year he was censured by Congress, and Joe McCarthy died only 30 months later.

“In those few biography-oriented pages, we learn that Joe McCarthy was a lawyer, as are many legislators, which soon enough came in handy in his anti-Communist work in the Senate. We also learn about that appellation “Tail-gunner Joe” that the Senator was disparagingly referred to by his domestic enemies. Joe McCarthy was not drafted into WWII, but joined the Marines and did intelligence work with the flyers in the Pacific. He had gone on a dozen or so Photo/Recon missions, occupying the tail-gunner’s spot. No, he didn’t shoot down any Commies - they were still the good guys, or so we were led to understand, by those American Commies who didn’t like that later sniping by Tail-gunner Joe.

“Another thing I just now thought of is about the clever idea of the title, as it was the Communists who bitched for half a century later about being blacklisted. Interestingly, there is nothing in this book about blacklisting. That is due to the fact that there was no such thing done by Senator McCarthy. The counterpart to his investigations was the House Un-American Activities Committee, which was accused of causing blacklisting in the movie business. This book is directed at the McCarthy story, so only passing mention is made of the HUAC [which was chaired by Rep. Martin Dies].

“I can’t cover all the many stories of infiltration, sympathizing, influence, and downright espionage by Communists in the US Gov’t of this era that are told in this book. (Those past 4 posts should give the reader a small idea.) I’ll just give a brief summary of how this book is laid out and the good (mostly) and a little bad….

[Read the whole thing here.]