Enemies from Within Speech

“This is a time when all the world is split into two vast, increasingly hostile, armed camps—a time of a great armament race.”

This quote is significant because it portrays McCarthy’s Manichaean division of the world couched in a demagogic, apocalyptic rhetoric. The use of superlative terms such as “all the world” is also indicative of the hyperbole that is employed at various points in the speech.

“Today we can almost physically hear the mutterings and rumblings of an invigorated god of war. You can see it, feel it, and hear it all the way from the Indochina hills, from the shores of Formosa, right over into the very heart of Europe itself.”

This quote more explicitly gestures to the mythical realm, providing a dramatic backdrop to the otherwise boilerplate good-versus-evil dichotomies. The second sentence continues to engage in hyperbole as McCarthy insists “you can see it, feel it, and hear it” but, importantly, references the material world and the real conflicts going on in China and elsewhere.

“There is still a hope for peace if we finally decide that no longer can we safely blind our eyes and close our ears to those facts which are shaping up more and more clearly…and that is that we are now engaged in a showdown fight…not the usual war between nations for land areas or other material gains, but a war between two diametrically opposed ideologies.”

This quote perfectly illustrates the paranoia of the second Red Scare. For example, the portrayal of facts as shaping up and taking form—almost as if they were living things with their own agency—is suggestive of a conspiratorial mindset. The phrase “showdown fight” is a reference to the Book of Revelation and illustrates McCarthy’s apocalyptic rhetoric.