Enemies From Within Speech Analysis

Response to Senator McCarthy’s “Enemies From Within Speech”

With anti-communism being the dominant political issue during the Cold War, hysteria and paranoia spread throughout the minds of Americans. The “Enemies From Within Speech” delivered at Wheeling, West Virginia in 1950 by Senator Joseph McCarthy focused on worsening that national fear. Senator McCarthy used ethos, metaphor, and hyperbole to create the notion of disloyalty within the federal government. In order to persuade the American public in a convincing way, Senator McCarthy appeals to their ethics. He indirectly inserts an Abraham Lincoln quote in his speech and refers to him as “one of our outstanding historical figures.” McCarthy continues to mention Lincoln, stating that he would have been satisfied with the reaction by Americans to communist infiltration of the

As a ruthless politician, he went to any extent to get his point across. His speech can be considered a far fetched exaggeration. He focused more on manipulating his audience’s feelings, rather inserting logic or credibility. His attempt to insert credible statistics would be fruitless, as he claimed that “800,000,000 people” are under the “absolute domination of Soviet Russia” with an increase of “over 400 percent.” This generalization intended to convince the audience that the enemy was in complete world domination and that the dramatic increase in power was a threat.
Senator Joseph McCarthy was a merciless politician who would be censured by the Senate in 1954 for his false accusations. However, his political journey throughout the country had a significant impact on the American public. Americans let fear override their conscious and allowed a bully to insert panic into their minds. McCarthy’s crusade was powerful and convinced the naive public during a time of war to question their own government without sufficient