The McCarthy era took what might have been a genuine threat, Stalin was alive, the Soviets took Eastern Europe, East Germany, West Berlin and other places after the war and wanted more. They developed an atomic bomb in 1949, 4 years after the US. North Korea had invaded South Korea in June, 1950 and then the Chinese under Mao got involved. So the Communists were somewhat of a military threat.
But the paranoia then was that there were "Commies' or "Reds" or "Pinkos" (not out and out Communists but those who were 'too liberal' and leaning toward Marxism) in academia, in labor unions and above all in Hollywood. Hollywood could reach many millions of people and many were influenced, including many young people by what movies said. If they seemed 'too liberal' or "Communist" to some they were seen as a threat. It was thought by some that getting the "Communist threat' out of Hollywood would help save people from turning Communist. The fact was, many of the writers and actors who were 'blacklisted' were not actually Communists.
The thinking was similar to the ideas that put thousands of Japanese Americans in internment camps in WW II and that many have that any Arab is a potential Terrorist since 9/11. The thinking was you could not pick a terrorist or a Communist from a larger group, you had to assume all were bad.Why was Hollywood a target of anti-communist investigations by Congress in the 1950s?Because of a goofy guy named McCarthy
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