McCarthy had nothing to do with the investigation of Hollywood. The leftist media in this country has done a good job of confusing people with this. They control language and it's easier to cry McCarthy than it is to talk about the House Un-American Activities Committee. HUAC actually investigated communist sympathizers in Hollywood in 1947.
Joseph McCarthy was a Senator who chaired the Army-McCarthy hearings in 1954. They investigated communist infiltration in the State Department and security risks in the Army, not Hollywood.
If you research this, you will see it often written that McCarthy had no direct part in the Hollywood investigations. An accurate statement would be that he had NO part in them. The left likes confusing issues when it helps their cause. If a lie can be defined as "an attempt to deceive" then the left does it often.
I am aware of the distinction between the House and the Senate’s investigations at the time, but the destruction of McCarthy, who was essentially the leading figure in the fight against the red menace, was a watershed moment. After that, all investigations into communism melted away quickly, because as you say, people were branded as ‘McCarthyites’ going on ‘witch hunts’. In 1959, Truman denounced HUAC publicly as un-American. It was finally laid to rest in 69.