What is McCarthyism? And how did it happen? - Ellen Schrecker

 

In the 1950s, as part of a campaign to expose suspected Communists, thousands of individuals were aggressively investigated and questioned before government panels. Named after its most notorious practitioner, the phenomenon known as McCarthyism destroyed lives and careers. But how did this episode of political repression take off? Ellen Schrecker traces the history of McCarthyism.

THE TRUTH OF THE MATTER, T@UMPISM IS THE MODERN VERSION OF McCARTHYISM

T@UMP CRANKS UP THE OLD REPIG HATE & FEAR RHETORIC.

Source: The article appears in the Huffington Post dated 6/19/23. The article comparing T@umpism to McCarthyism appears in its entirety in the Hill dated 12/14/22.

Commentary: Today the Nation celebrates Juneteenth a federal holiday in the United States commemorating the emancipation of enslaved African Americans. It is celebrated on the anniversary of the order issued by Major General Gordon Granger on June 19, 1865, proclaiming freedom for slaves in Texas. What people forget is that the Emancipation Proclamation was officially enacted two years before in 1863. Nothing has changed in the state of Texas it has only gotten progressively worse.

• McCarthyism aka Right-wing politics and Conservatism: It is the political practice of publicizing accusations of disloyalty or subversion with insufficient regard to evidence. McCarthyism, also known as the second Red Scare, was the political repression and persecution of left-wing individuals and a campaign spreading fear of alleged communist and socialist influence on American institutions and of Soviet espionage in the United States during the late 1940s through the 1950s.
• During his 10 years in the Senate, McCarthy and his staff gained notoriety for making outlandish accusations that, though initially directed to government employees, would later include Americans from all walks of life. Because he systematically engaged in the practice of public accusations of political disloyalty or subversion with little regard for evidence and the use of unfair investigatory methods, Senator McCarthy would later himself be accused of victimizing those who appeared before his committee and suppressing basic civil rights and liberties.
• T@umpism: A social/political movement based on elements of (a) racism, (b) religious bigotry, (c) demeaning attitudes towards women, (d) attempts to intimidate the press, (e) economic uncertainty, (f) rejection of scientific findings and (g) general expressions of hatred that are reminiscent of German National Socialism during the era of H@tler. T@umpism is nothing more than the modern version of Na@ism. It is the political ideologies, social emotions, style of governance, political movement, and a set of mechanisms for acquiring and keeping control of power associated with Donald T@ump and his political base.

The Crew thanks those who oppose T@umpism and realizes that History Repeats Itself. We can end this euphemism by staying motivated, educated, and voting BLUE on 11/5/24.

TFG, OTHER REPUGS CONJURE FAMILIAR ENEMY IN ATTACKING DEMS. AS COMMIES

Lashing out after his arraignment on federal charges last week, Donald Trump took aim at President Joe Biden and Democrats with language that seemed to evoke another era: He was being persecuted, he said, by “Marxists” and “communists.”

Trump has used the labels since he first appeared on the political scene, but it lately has become an omnipresent attack line that also has been deployed by other Republicans. The rhetoric is both inaccurate and potentially dangerous because it attempts to demonize an entire party with a description that has long been associated with America’s enemies.

Experts who study political messaging say associating Democrats with Marxism only furthers the country’s polarization — and is simply wrong: Biden has promoted capitalism and Democratic lawmakers are not pushing to reshape American democracy into a communist system.

That hasn’t mattered to Trump and other Republicans, who for years have used hyperbolic references to the associated political ideologies to spark fears about Democrats and the dangers they supposedly pose.

Hours after pleading not guilty in federal court, Trump told a crowd of his supporters at his golf club in Bedminster, New Jersey, that Biden, “together with a band of his closest thugs, misfits and Marxists, tried to destroy American democracy.”

He added, “If the communists get away with this, it won’t stop with me.”

He again hit on the Marxist theme days later during a telephone rally with Iowa voters. The comments came after numerous campaign emails and social posts in recent months in which Trump has claimed that Biden’s America could soon become a “third world Marxist regime” or a “tyrannical Marxist nation.”

Other Republicans have piled on with similar messaging. Georgia Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene last week took to Twitter to lambast what she called the “CORRUPT AND WEAPONIZED COMMUNISTS DEMOCRAT CONTROLLED DOJ.” Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, Trump’s closest rival for the GOP presidential nomination, has argued the U.S. risks falling victim to “woke” ideology, which he has defined in interviews as a form of “cultural Marxism.”

Experts say there is a long history of U.S. politicians calling opponents Marxist or communist without evidence — perhaps most infamously Sen. Joseph McCarthy, who led efforts to blacklist accused communists in the 1950s.

In a country that has historically positioned itself against Marxism, “red-baiting is as American as apple pie in political communications,” said Tanner Mirrlees, an associate professor at Ontario Tech University in Canada who has researched political discourse about “cultural Marxism.”

The attacks are carefully constructed to hit voters emotionally, said Steve Israel, a former U.S. congressman from New York who studied political messaging as chair of the House Democratic Policy and Communications Committee.

“Democrats tend to message to the part of the brain that is about reason and empirical evidence,” he said. “Republicans message to the gut.”

For some Hispanic Trump supporters who gathered outside the federal courthouse in Miami where the former president was arraigned, the charges evoked memories of political persecutions their family members had once escaped.

“This is what they do in Latin America,” said Madelin Munilla, 67, who came to Miami as a child when her parents fled Fidel Castro’s Cuba.

She carried a poster with a photo of Biden alongside Castro, Venezuela’s Nicolas Maduro and Nicaragua’s Daniel Ortega — leftist leaders whose jailing of opponents has driven immigration to south Florida for decades.

Unlike the U.S., which has a tradition of respect for the rule of law and constitutional separation of powers, the judiciary in many parts of Latin America lacks the same independence. In a region where corruption flourishes, poorly paid prosecutors and judges are routinely caught doing the bidding of powerful politicians seeking to settle scores or derail criminal investigations.

A surge in immigration from Southeast Asia after the Vietnam War also brought a population of staunchly anti-communist voters, some of whom have aligned with the Republican Party in part because of its forceful messaging on the issue.

Yet opposing an actual regime that suppresses individual freedom and opposes a free market economy is different from the way many Republicans use these terms now —- to falsely claim Marxists are U.S. society’s ruling class.

“Bluntly, there is no empirical ground beneath the Republican claim that Marxists rule the big institutions of American society,” Mirrlees said.

Other Republicans, from DeSantis to Texas Sen. Ted Cruz, have used another term, “cultural Marxism,” to characterize fights for gender or racial equity that they argue are “woke” and threaten a traditional American way of life. Cruz used it in the title of his book.

Though the term has become popular among mainstream Republicans, it has a darker past. Experts say the concept of “cultural Marxism” posing a threat was historically spread by antisemitic and white supremacist groups.

For most voters who hear candidates say someone is communist or Marxist, the true meaning may matter less than the negative associations with the terms, said James Gardner, a University at Buffalo law professor who focuses on election law.

“The tactic seems to be to pick an adjective that most people think describes something bad and try to associate it with the person you are denigrating,” he said.

Still, while railing against communists and Marxists may be effective at animating voters who form the Republican base, it may not be an effective strategy in next year’s general election, Israel said.

That’s because it doesn’t as easily sway moderate and independent voters who don’t see evidence that ties Democrats to those ideologies.

“Moderate voters may succumb to the Republican argument that Democrats are for more spending, but they’re not going to fall for the argument that Democrats are Marxists,” Israel said. “The Republicans are overplaying their hand.”

T@UMPISM IS McCARTHYISM ON REPIG STEROIDS

In many ways, the Republican Party’s history with Donald Trump harkens back to its experience with another demagogue, Joseph R. McCarthy. In 1950, the Wisconsin Senator cliamed to have in hand a list of 205 communists working in the State Department, a charge that catapulted the heretofore little-known McCarthy onto the national stage. Sen. Bricker (R-Ohio) told McCarthy, “Joe, you’re a real SOB, but sometimes it’s useful to have SOBs to do the dirty work.” Sen. Robert Taft (R-Ohio) encouragedMcCarthy to “keep talking and if one case doesn’t work, he should proceed with another.”

For years, Republicans refrained from criticizing McCarthy for fear of alienating their most loyal supporters. Eugene Pulliam, a conservative Republican and prominent newspaper publisher, declared that McCarthy “has the confidence of literally millions of people who think he is being directed by God.”

A cardinal rule of politics is that no political party wants to alienate its base supporters. Republicans have slavishly adhered to that maxim. One exception came in 1950 when Sen. Margaret Chase Smith (R-Maine) broke with her colleagues when it came to dealing with Joe McCarthy. In her Declaration of Conscience speech, Smith declared that she did not want the Republican Party to ride to victory on the “Four Horsemen of Calumny-Fear, Ignorance, Bigotry, and Smear.”

But hers was a lonely voice. Today, Rep. Liz Cheney (R-Wyo.) has issued her own Declaration of Conscience, and promises to “do whatever it takes” to make sure Trump never again enters the Oval Office. But, like Smith, hers is a lonely voice

Republicans must now make a choice: Will they call out Trump by name, refuse to endorse him and finally purge him from their ranks? Or will they remain silent? Put another way: Will this be a moment when Republicans finally rid themselves of Donald Trump in the same way they did of Joe McCarthy, or not?