So earlier today, my teacher was talking about McCarthy and how in a speech he said that the United States was in a "final, all-out battle between communistic atheism and Christianity." This as a result made me wonder, was McCarthyism helpful in red-bating? I would appreciate any help with this!
You might want to check out this answer I wrote about the effectiveness of McCarthy's campaign.
I'll repaste the summary:
So in summary: again, no Soviet agents were ever caught because of McCarthy. But McCarthy wasn't really interested in counter-espionage. He was interested in using anti-Communism and a general fear of Communist influence to bolster his career politically, and in a populist style to take down elites that he saw as too liberal, too "high class", too mainline Protestant, and too homosexual. Until he overreached himself he was largely successful, and it was in no small part because other Senators supported him, or saw a use in him, or did not want to get involved (to their credit, seven liberal Republican Senators, led by Margaret Chase Smith of Maine, had spoken out against him in 1950, but got little traction).