Refers to the 1952-1954 virulent political witch-hunt that was inaugurated and sponsored by Joseph R. McCarthy, a little known glory-seeking Republican senator from Wisconsin, who upon taking over the chairship of the Government Committee on Operations in the U.S. Senate began a series of bogus investigative hearings into the alleged infiltration of the U.S. government by communists. This effort soon took on an aura of a national witch-hunt in which the lives and livelihood of hundreds of U.S. Americans (most were never communists) were permanently disrupted. McCarthyism ended when McCarthy was replaced as chair of the Operations Committee after the Republicans lost the Senate to the Democrats in the mid-term November elections of 1954, and thereafter condemned by the Senate for his activities. It may be noted that McCarthy had already begun his sensationalist accusations long before he began his hearings when at a speech in February 1950 he falsely claimed that over two hundred communists had infiltrated the U.S. State Department, thereby placing himself, much to his delight, in the national limelight. That the country initially went along with his witch-hunt—which was a clear violation of the civil rights of those accused—is testimony to the power of the ideology of the cold war that had begun to grip the country.