The Investigator

What was it like during McCarthyism?

The best depiction of what it must have been like during the McCarthy era — and, indeed, what it’s like now for many academics and others — is a radio play called The Investigator.

Written in 1954 by Reuben Ship, it was a satire on McCarthyism, and was Ship’s revenge against the McCarthy investigations for his being branded a communist. It must have hit home, because Ship was summarily deported back to Canada, even though he was in hospital at the time.

The name of the “investigator” is never mentioned, but the actor who plays him could almost be McCarthy himself. Before you listen to the play, the link for which I’ll provide in a moment, listen for a couple of minutes to McCarthy himself speaking:

The play The Investigator has the protagonist using the same words as McCarthy himself did, such as:

No-one is too high. No-one is so high as to be immune from investigation.

The actor playing the investigator also sounds exactly like McCarthy.

Without giving too much of the plot away, the brilliant aspects of this play are as follows:

Firstly, when people such as John Milton and John Stewart Mill are called before the committee to explain themselves, they answer in quotations from their own writings.

Secondly, note how people eventually become too scared to be seen to be associated with anyone who might even remotely fall under suspicion.

There is some useful background information, with further links, here:

The Investigator.

The play is frightening, not least because we are living through a similar era now, in which people are frightened to speak their mind in case they are accused of “wrong think”.

It lasts around an hour. Enjoy — if that is the word I’m looking for: