Red Scare Vs. Salem Witch Trials
Comparing and Contrasting
World Wide Hysteria
In both the Salem Witch Trials and the Red Scare, the world (or US) was flooded with hysteria. Both issues started with a legitimate fear, but then it progressed to unreasonable hysteria. The madness started when someone of power stands strong of their misled beliefs, and get enough of the general public scared enough to believe them. What the people don't understand is that they could have easily over thrown just the single leader causing all of this nonsense and save them a whole world of trouble.
RED SCARE
Fear that communism was taking over
Firing up the crowd
A speaker encouraging communism
Salem Witch Trials
They occured in 1692
How Does Something Like This Even Happen?
Salem With Trials
1692 was a time of instability. There was an ongoing fronteir war and poor economic conditions. Some young girls started having fits and the doctor could not identify what the problem was, so he said the girls were bewitched. The girls started yelling out names of people that had "bewitched" them and those people were arrested, and if they didn't confess, they were hung. This phenomon happened for a year, until the govenor's wife was accused, and he put an end to all of the nonsense.
The Red Scare
Joe McCarthy started the red scare by an act called McCarthyism. He called out anyone that wasn't a Republican and categorized them as being a Communist. People began loosing their jobs over this, black lists were created, even if they weren't accurate. People began to believe communism was taking over because their fears were greater than their logic. There was finally an end to the Red Scare, along with McCarthyism when Joe accused the military, and even President Eisenhower, a revered war hero, as being communist.