The Briar Club

Events in the novel take place between 1950 and 1956. These years parallel the height of McCarthyism and its investigation of communism in the US. Senator Joseph McCarthy’s Senate Government Operations Committee was distinct from the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC), but both focused on weeding out members of the communist party in the US. HUAC primarily focused on communists in the entertainment industry, while McCarthy’s committee investigated communists in government. He and FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover were both obsessed with exposing LGBTQ+ people in government because they believed these individuals might be vulnerable to blackmail by communist spies.

At the time, the United States’ fears of communism accelerated in the wake of World War II. Russia, an ally in defeating Hitler, soon became an adversary when it installed puppet governments in eastern European countries. In 1947, President Harry S. Truman issued an executive order to weed out government workers who were intent on overturning American democracy. The Truman Doctrine, as it came to be known, opposed global Soviet expansion. Several events overseas stoked American fears of the threat of communism. The first was the Czechoslovakian Communist takeover of 1948. In 1949, the Soviets conducted their first successful nuclear test. The Chinese Communist Party (CCP) and the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) gained control of mainland China during the same year. In 1950, the Korean War began, pitting the democratic South Korea against the communist North Korea.

In February 1950, sensing an opportunity to raise his public profile and gain political power, Senator Joseph McCarthy of Wisconsin announced that he had compiled a list of members of the communist party working for the State Department. National anxiety related to the fear of an imminent communist takeover increased even further. Government investigations expanded to include left-wing activists, entertainment industry figures, academics, government employees, and union agitators.

McCarthy’s power and influence grew as he fed the United States’ fears of the Red Menace. His investigations frequently charged individuals based on unsubstantiated rumors of their communist activities and false accusations made by others seeking to save themselves from investigation. Anyone merely suspected of communist sympathies could be blacklisted and might lose their livelihood. The novel illustrates this situation when one character informs on another, causing her to lose her job. Eventually, members of Congress recognized McCarthy’s tactics as nothing more than a witch hunt. The McCarthy investigations began to run out of steam when some of the testimony witnesses gave was discredited, and accusations were proven to be baseless. The persecution diminished further with Supreme Court rulings, starting in 1956 under Chief Justice Earl Warren, which weakened the decisions McCarthy’s committee and the HUAC made.

Broadcast journalist Edward R. Murrow rebuked McCarthy publicly on his television programs. The novel mentions Murrow’s broadcasts as well as Senator Margaret Chase Smith’s denouncement of McCarthy in Congress. In December 1954, a month after the Briar Club murders in the novel, the Senate voted to condemn McCarthy’s conduct. His favorability ratings with the public had plummeted by this time as well. McCarthy would serve out the remainder of his term for two-and-a-half more years, but his power, influence, and political career were over. President Dwight Eisenhower quipped to his cabinet that McCarthyism had become “McCarthywasm.”

McCarthy’s decline was swift after this point. He drank heavily and became addicted to morphine. He died of cirrhosis of the liver in May 1957 at the age of 48. Decades after his death, Soviet documents revealed a heavy increase in spy activity in the United States beginning at the end of World War II. Unfortunately, McCarthy’s method of quelling the Red Menace injured many innocent Americans.