There is a hate layer of opinion and emotion in America. There will be other McCarthys to come who will be hailed as its heroes.

Max Lerner

No one can terrorize a whole nation, unless we are all his accomplices.

Edward R. Murrow

"We have seen the technique of the
'Big Lie,' elsewhere employed by the totalitarian dictator with devastating success, utilized here for the first time on a sustained basis in our history....

....We have seen the character of private citizens and of Government employees virtually destroyed by
public condemnation on the basis of gossip, distortion, hearsay, and deliberate untruths.....The spectacle is one we would expect in a totalitarian nation where the rights of the individual are crushed beneath the juggernaut of statism and oppression; it has no place in America where government exists to serve our people, not destroy them."
............The Tydings Committee Report on McCarthy's Charges(1950).

As a result of this anti-communist hysteria, many Americans were constantly looking over their shoulders wondering whether their neighbors, friends, and government officials were communists.