The New McCarthyism Is Here

Dissent Is Being Suppressed, And Alternative Journalism Is Being Censored Wholesale, So Why Aren't Americans Speaking Out?

In the early 1950s, a relatively unknown and dodgy political figure from the state of Wisconsin subjected America to one of the most shameful moments in its History.

Joseph McCarthy had been elected as the junior Senator from the state of Wisconsin in 1946, after switching political affiliations from Democrat to Republican. The war was still at the forefront of American consciousness, with the surrender of the Axis powers occurring just months prior in 1945. The traumatic effects of the global war were something that Americans did not take lightly. How could they? There were immense amounts of collective trauma that were being processed. The entire country had literally sacrificed their sons and daughters, and lived with real austerity at home, to fight off Adolf Hitler and his allies. It was a collective sacrifice in the truest sense.

So, McCarthy needed a leg up to stand out in his campaign, and he effectively used both his war record, (calling himself “Tail Gunner Joe”) and his position as a sitting judge, to paint a picture of himself as a heroic, loyal, true blue American.

The fact that he was caught taking bribes for his votes, as well as personal loans from big businesses like Pepsi Cola, didn’t stop his infamous career trajectory. He was, at one point, dubbed “The Pepsi Cola Kid” ridiculed for his grift as if he were a stagecoach robber from the Old West. He was successful in using the power of the United States Senate as a bully pulpit against Americans of all stripes.

When did McCarthyism begin and what did it mean exactly?

As the New Year began in February of 1950, McCarthy made a speech to the Ohio County Republican Women's Club. You can read excerpts from the speech here. Other accounts say it was ignited during a speech in Wheeling, West Virginia, but the “where” is irrelevant to what it was to become: a “witch hunt” conducted at the whim of an autocratic, powerful demagogue.

Within that speech, McCarthy claimed that he had “evidence” that, within the US Department Of State, there were “57 cases of individuals who would appear to be either card-carrying members of, or certainly loyal to the Communist Party, but who nevertheless are still helping to shape our foreign policy….”

America was, according to McCarthy, in a state of “apathy to evil” (sound familiar?), and due to the trauma inflicted by war, people in high governmental positions had let their guard down against “Communist infiltration” at all levels of government and society.

McCarthy wasted no time ratcheting up and amplifying the entirely reasonable fear that something comparable, or worse than recently defeated Nazisim, could soon transform America. He used the power of a bully pulpit in the Senate, along with the relatively new media technology of network television, to broadcast his “warning” in the form of the Army McCarthy hearings.

DuMont Television Network offered gavel to gavel coverage. America’s attention was focused, like watching a serial soap opera of very real drama, where McCarthy and his committee would find the “true evil” and expose it for what it was. They were the salvation and preservation of American democracy.

Essentially, McCarthy had taken his State Department accusations one step further and accused the Army of “coddling Communists” within their ranks. What could be more alarming than the thought of an Army with questionable loyalties, fighting against Democracy at home and abroad, betraying everything that American citizens had fought against just a few years prior?

The hearings were conducted in a constant state of hysteria, more accusations, fear-mongering, and spectacle, with flashbulbs from newspaper cameras constantly popping, and arrays of microphones broadcasting to radio and television. McCarthy, at his whim, subpoenaed anyone he thought vital to proving his accusations. It wasn’t long before it all fell apart.

A great summation of the trials and the end of McCarthy induced Communist hysteria from this video from The Smithsonian Channel:

Journalism, as practiced in the 1950s to the 1970s bears little resemblance to journalism today. That isn’t solely because of time and technological differences. Then, there was little or no room for speculation, punditry, or the dominance of talking head panels. Sources and facts mattered. Reporting from the field, as opposed to punditry in a bubble, comfortably ensconced behind a desk, was the rule, not the exception. Edward R. Murrow was a journalist who excelled at both.

In a tense close to a major broadcast on the CBS news program “See It Now”, Murrow called out McCarthy and McCarthyism for the opportunistic fraud it was. There were only three major networks at the time, four if you counted DuMont, and journalists like Murrow took their responsibilities seriously. Murrow, no doubt, realized that not only were his career, reputation, and credibility on the line, but more importantly, the principles of free speech, and rights to citizens and journalists’ activity free from accusations by the government. It’s worth a few minutes of time to watch and listen to a courageous and principled journalist who called out the truth to power.

History writes that this singular broadcast was the turning point that helped bring about the demise of McCarthyism.

Imagine, for a minute, that things had turned out differently.

Imagine popular opinion being against Murrow, and citizens across the US flooding the CBS switchboards 24 hours a day calling for his head on a platter.

Imagine that CBS, under pressure, took to the airwaves, and its executives formally announced that they were severing ties with Murrow, and that, in fact, his stated loyalty to America was, after a careful internal investigation, suspect. That he was a possible “puppet” of the Communist regime.

Then imagine that he was summarily dismissed from his duties and that all archived and recorded audio and video content affiliated with Murrow would be destroyed.

This is exactly what happened with at least two stellar journalists of the same courage and caliber, upholding the tradition of Murrow: Chris Hedges and Abby Martin.

I was completely stunned yesterday to see this article drop on my newsfeed from ScheerPost.

Everything I described above in the imaginary scenario about Murrow is happening to Hedges and Martin.

Chris Hedges has more than earned his credibility as a journalist in the truest sense. He has covered wars and seen the atrocities first hand. He writes with a high degree of intellect, and knowledge of world affairs, and keeps his skeptical filter full on. He questions and sources his material. He upholds moral values, has pushed against American imperialist pro-war narratives, and was fired by The New York Times from a lucrative position for upholding his principles.

In his words:

“I received no inquiry or notice from YouTube. I vanished. In totalitarian systems you exist, then you don’t. I suppose this was done in the name of censoring Russian propaganda, although I have a hard time seeing how a detailed discussion of “Ulysses” or the biographies of Susan Sontag and J. Robert Oppenheimer had any connection in the eyes of the most obtuse censors in Silicon Valley with Vladimir Putin. Indeed, there is not one show that dealt with Russia. I was on RT because, as a vocal critic of US imperialism, militarism, the corporate control of the two ruling parties, and especially because I support the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement against Israel, I was blacklisted. I was on RT for the same reason the dissident Vaclav Havel, who I knew, was on Voice of America during the communist regime in Czechoslovakia. It was that or not be heard. Havel had no more love for the policies of Washington than I have for those of Moscow.” 

Abby Martin has a similar stellar reputation. She was also censored across the board, disappeared in the same sense by YouTube. Her “crime” and similarity with Hedges is that she worked for RT News.

There are people on Twitter and other social media, alleged lovers of freedom and democracy, who are, like McCarthy, mindlessly cheering on wholesale censorship of anyone they perceive as affiliated with Russia, and by default, Vladimir Putin, the 2022 version of the axis of evil. Even Russian History and culture is being erased.

Crippling financial sanctions, basically a weapon used to censor livelihoods and life in alleged “peaceful” economic warfare are also encouraged, despite the fact that the average Russian citizen, not the targeted “Oligarchs” suffer the most.

There is no doubt in my mind that we’ve reached a point of disinformation dystopia in the United States and the West, when reason and fact, dissenting opinions, and healthy debate are shut down. People are as fearful of speaking out with dissenting opinions as they were in the time of McCarthy.

Americans should know better, but maybe they don’t have a sense that this has all happened before.

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Late Edit(4/3/22) I just came across this interview with Chris with Democracy Now’s Amy Goodman. It is worth your time to listen in its entirety.