This statement is totally untrue and shows the author is ignorant of the history of the era.
Joe McCarthy was a member of and later Chairman of the Senate Committee on Investigations. In his role he investigated Communist infiltration of the government. Communist infiltration of the government was widespread at the time. There were many Communist spy rings within the government working for the Soviet Union. Alger Hiss was just one example. The people Senator McCarthy investigated were later proved to have been Communists or Communist sympathizers. He often backed off investigations when asked. Senator McCarthy had information about the Communist activities of Robert Oppenheimer but did not make them public at the request of President Eisenhower. McCarthy was extremely popular in his day among the American people. The media however continually attacked him.
Those Communists mounted a campaign against Senator McCarthy. They used his homosexual staffer Roy Cohn’s attempt to get special treatment for his gay lover David Schine from the Army as a reason to stage what became known as the Army McCarthy hearings. McCarthy was then attacked on TV and by others in government. He was censored by the Senate. The Democrats regained the Senate in 1954 and McCarthy was reduced to a minority member with no influence.
The term McCarthyism was invented by a communist agent within the Truman Administration. It was used to falsely claim McCarthy was untruthful.
My cartoon wasn’t intended to disparage McCarthy, but to point up the hypocrisy of the Left which presumably would not like being labeled as McCarthyites, although they are far worse in their abuse of government power. Having a Federal government which has the power to make citizens fear it is the real problem.
Ronald Reagan had a closer view of the era than you or I and he thought “McCarthy was using a shotgun when he should have used a rifle.”
And don’t forget the KGB archives also proved McCarthy was completely vindicated.