McCarthyism and the Red Scare contributed to the Cold War by causing many Americans to have deep-rooted resent or hate to the Soviet Union and cause their fears of communism to spread.
The Second Red Scare happened after World War II when the Cold War was just kicking off. Many Americans were very scared that communism would spread and even eventually spread to the United States. As far as they knew, the Soviet Union had nuclear weapons and at any point, could kill millions of people within the country. This caused many people to live their lives in fear of both communism and the Soviet Union, which contributed to the tensions between the United States and the Soviet Union during the Cold War.
The United States Senator Joseph McCarthy was also against communism but used it to his advantage to try to obtain political gain. There were many people who were heavily against communism and went out of their way to try to stop it, just one of them being Joseph McCarthy. He would blame people of being communists with little to no evidence, ruining people's lives and even families. This is now known as McCarthyism, which contributed to both the Red Scare and the Cold War by striking fear into citizens and making them less reliant on what the government was saying.
