A more troubling theory popular with his critics holds that McCarthy’s actions regarding Malmedy were driven by anti-Semitism. As evidence, they pointed to his casual and frequent use of anti-Jewish slurs, which even his closest friends acknowledged to biographers. […]
And, according to Army General Counsel John Adams, the senator repeatedly referred to a Jewish staffer he disdained as a “no good, just a miserable little Jew.” Then there was the support McCarthy got from notorious Jew-haters like radio commentator Upton Close, and the backing McCarthy gave to fascist activist William Dudley Pelley. “There was scarcely a professional American anti-Semite who had not publicly endorsed the senator,” said Arnold Forster, who followed the situation in real time as the general counsel at the Anti-Defamation League.
For years, friends recounted how McCarthy would pull out his copy of Hitler’s Mein Kampf, saying, “That’s the way to do it.” But, they were quick to add, that was just Joe being provocative. Now, the Malmedy hearings suggested a deeper-seated anti-Semitism. Why else would this one senator among 96 crusade to save the worst of [Berlin’s] shock troopers? Why single out Jewish investigators who, McCarthy claimed during the hearings, “intensely hate the German people as a race” and had formed what amounted to a “vengeance team?”
(Friendly reminder: although most moderate anticommunists do find Joseph McCarthy embarrassing, plenty of militant anticommunists still like him.)
[Addendum]
From Christopher Simpson’s Blowback, page 5:
Senator Joseph McCarthy employed a secret U.S. espionage squad made up in part of [Axis] collaborators to gather slanderous information used to smear political opponents.
Page 121:
[Nikolai N.] Poppe’s testimony […] proved to be an important element in the resurrection of McCarthy’s case against [Professor Owen] Lattimore. […] The fact that Poppe had worked for the SS during the war was not brought out at the hearings, nor was the issue of Poppe’s personal reason for disliking Lattimore.
Page 237:
One of Grombach’s most important weapons in his struggle for power was a series of blackmail type of dossiers that his men had compiled on his rivals inside the U.S. intelligence community. He had retailed much of this data piece by piece to the CIA over the years but by 1952 had decided to make use of his network of former SS men and collaborators on behalf of Senator Joseph McCarthy.
Page 241:
Bogolepov was an NTS man who free-lanced as an anti-Communist expert in Washington. In the early 1950s he was on a number of payrolls, including Grombach’s, and the State Department’s Ylitalo says that it was Grombach who primed Bogolepov for his rôle in McCarthy’s attack on Bohlen. Bogolepov had once been a Soviet Foreign Ministry official, but he defected to the [Fascists] and spent most of World War II making anti-Semitic propaganda broadcasts for the Goebbels ministry.
Somehow not at all surprised. Thank you for these information posts!
You are welcome! I’m glad that there are people appreciating my posts. Although our understanding of fascism does tend to be better than most, it still really benefits when we continue extending our understanding and express it in ways that are a little more formal than what many are used to. So I am glad to see others refining their understanding.
