It shouldn’t be at all surprising that with the increasing growth and popularity of socialism in the United States, the rise of neo-McCarthyism would follow along not too far behind.
It’s not like anti-socialist hysteria in the US ever truly went away. The Cold War, marked by US interventionism and coup attempts against socialist governments in Asia and Latin America, continued for decades after McCarthyism fizzed in the 1950s, and still continues today (see Venezuela and Nicaragua). For years right wing talking heads like Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity, and others have routinely engaged aneurysm inducing, infantile outbursts about socialists lusting after that evil boogieman named “free stuff.”
But labeling liberal reforms as “socialist” and engaging in imperialist wars (as horrible and devasting as imperialist wars are) is not the same thing as McCarthyism. To say that neo-McCarthyism has arrived and that we are in the midst of it would be inaccurate, but the fizzle is once again beginning heating up to a ferocious boil. We haven’t yet reached boiling point. But it is beginning to heat up.
Since this most recently attempted coup against Venezuela’s President Maduro went public, Trump has ramped up his anti-socialist rhetoric. In his state of the union address he took time out of his long-winded bag of hot air to ensure we all know that “America will never be a socialist country.”
It’s not just Trump’s anti-socialist rhetoric, however, that is worrisome. Since Trump took office, there have also been hints of a new Red Scare in the liberal rhetoric surrounding Meuller’s investigation into Trump’s presidential campaign and its possible connections to Russia.
Within the past week other signs of the rise of a neo-McCarthyism have begun to rear their ugly heads.
•Kurt Schlichter — Twitter addict and conservative talking head-senior columnist at the conservative website and print magazine called Townhall — posted a poll asking if people would violently “take up arms and fight to defend the US Constitution” against socialism.
•The Democrat-Reporter, an Alabama based newspaper, published a truly frightening editorial titled, “The Klan Needs to Ride Again.” The article states that it’s “Time for the Ku Klux Klan to night ride again” because Democrats driven by “socialist-communist ideology” are “plotting to raise taxes in Alabama.”
- Rep. Chris Stewart (R-Utah) started an “anti-socialism caucus” within the US House of Representatives that he says “will play a part in how we will defeat socialism once again.” It is impossible not to think that this is a likely precursor to a new House Un-American Activities Committee(HUAC).
The first time the hysteria of McCarthyism swept the United States it resulted in blacklists, arrests and prosecutions of hundreds of people (some of whom would spend years in prison), purges of socialists and communists from unions, and the witch hunts of HUAC. Laws like the Smith Act were passed that specifically targeted socialists and communists. The Taft-Hartley Act required that union leaders, as well as any union member who wanted to bring a case before the National Labor Relations Board, sign an affidavit declaring that they were not supporters of the Communist Party.
Exactly how neo-McCarthyism will manifest itself is yet to be seen, but the signs that is beginning to develop are there. We may not be able to completely prevent the ruling class from destroying the lives of people it deems a threat to the entrenched system of capitalist wealth and power, but we can and we must continue to build socialism here in the United States — in the seat of global empire — so that we can successfully uproot that exploitative system and create a better world for everyone.
Justin Norton-Kertson is a labor-community organizer and a member of the Democratic Socialists of America.
