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Did Joseph McCarthy cause the Red Scare of the 1950s?

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The Editors of Encyclopaedia Britannica
Encyclopaedia Britannica's editors oversee subject areas in which they have extensive knowledge, whether from years of experience gained by working on that content or via study for an advanced degree....
The Editors of Encyclopaedia Britannica

Despite being the popular face of the Red Scare that followed World War II, Joseph McCarthy did not start it. Congress and the American public widely supported anticommunist security measures in 1948 and 1950, due to contemporary anxieties after the rise of Communist China, the Korean War, and the Alger Hiss trial, among other factors.