Photo by Joseph N. Welch | CC BY 2.0
In a recent piece for CounterPunch, Melvin Goodman invoked the memory of Sen. Joseph McCarthy as a jumping-off point for a critique of the political situation in the era of Trump & company. He wrote, “it is no surprise that the past 17 years of warfare have been accompanied by a series of lost liberties; a revival of McCarthyism; and a belief in conspiracy theory that has afflicted the left wing (‘Deep State’) as well as the right (‘Drain the Swamp’).” He details Trump administration efforts to repress dissent in the name of national security.
Goodman added, “Senator Joseph McCarthy’s vociferous campaign against alleged communists in the U.S. government and other institutions led to the term ‘McCarthyism’ to describe any campaign or practice that endorses the use of unfair allegations and investigations.”
McCarthy is cast as a fearful shadow, a warning as to what might happen if the current political crisis worsens. The invocation is provocative because the man and the reactionary campaigns he championed were far worse than the author suggests. Political repression during the post-WW-II era involved more than one man and the various positions he occupied in the Senate. It distinguished a powerful social force seeking to contain the new sense of possibility unleashed by postwar demobilization. But — and most important – McCarthy and McCarthyism were (temporarily) defeated.
For a decade-and-a-half,…