Senator Joe McCarthy announced that he had the names of 205 Communists working the in State Department. You know what, Lee, I killed more people tonight than I have fingers on my hands. I shot them in cold blood and enjoyed every minute of it. I pumped slugs in the nastiest bunch of bastards you ever saw . . They were red sons-of bitches who should have died long ago. . . .
Witch hunts are about images and social control.
They have typically occured during times of social upheaval as a way of re-affirming normative boundaries or providing social unity in the face of a perceived threat. Similarly, in the 1950s, the imagery of good against evil was played out in media portrayals, political rhetoric, public ideology, and legislation. In both, the public was whipped into a paranoid frenzy by the creation of mysterious alien demons, in which the ends justified the means in removing the scourge from the public midst. Currently, expanding computer technology has created a new type of social demon as the techno-revolution challenges definitions of law, property rights, privacy, and conventional social control strategies. This has led to law enforcement fears that subcultures other than their own may possess the means to acquire, manipulate, or transmit knowledge that in rare cases may be predatory, but generally are not.