The death of hundreds or even thousands can be caused by one single person spreading a small rumor. In the Salem witch trials, the death and false accusations of hundreds all started with a single rumor of a bunch of girls that were supposedly under spells of witchcraft. With many other factors contributing to this, the rumor had been blown out of proportion and as a result led to widespread hysteria and the trials of many innocent people. History does have a habit of repeating itself and there will be another event similar to the witch trials that will happen again. This starts with the tactics of Joseph McCarthy. Joseph McCarthy had a history of making false accusations in order to get his way. When he became a republican and ran for circuit judge, McCarthy had made false accusations that his opponent, Edgar Werner, was 73 when in fact he was 66. McCarthy has also implied Werner was guilty of financial corruption (Simkin). In McCarthy’s campaign for senate, he had made accusations that Robert La Follette had been guilty of war profiteering an attacked him for not serving in the army (La Follette was 46 when Pearl Harbor was bombed) (Simkin). Later on, at a meeting of the Republicans Women’s Club, McCarthy claimed he had a list of 205 (he reduced this number to 57) people in the State Department that were communists (Simkin). When McCarthy made this accusation, it was during the second Red Scare. As a result, many people believed this claim and sparked hysteria throughout the nation. In fact, Raymond Gram Swing, from the Blue Radio Network, had said,”he (McCarthy) throve as a demagogue, and frightened many, if not all, diplomats into failing to give their frank opinions to the government for fear of being falsely accused of Communist tendencies.”(Simkin). Two years after McCarthy’s claim, he questioned large amounts of people in the government about their political past, some had admitted they had been communists. This ws McCarthys’ys way of saying the only way to show loyalty was to name other communists (Simkin). This of course, spread the hysteria and many others were falsely accused. This was McCarthy’s witch-hunt known as, “McCarthyism” The era of McCarthyism closely reflects the events of the Salem Witch Trials. One example is Tituba claiming that she was a witch and claiming other people as witches (Linder). This relates to when people started admitting to McCarthy that they were communist during his investigations in government departments (Simkin). These two things relate because in the example of Tituba admitting that she was a witch, prior to her admitting she had denied any and all guilt, then suddenl