{"id":294177,"date":"2017-02-10T13:12:04","date_gmt":"2017-02-10T12:12:04","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/newswire\/trump-confronts-new-mccarthyism\/"},"modified":"2017-02-10T13:12:04","modified_gmt":"2017-02-10T12:12:04","slug":"trump-confronts-new-mccarthyism","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/newswire\/trump-confronts-new-mccarthyism\/","title":{"rendered":"Trump Confronts New McCarthyism"},"content":{"rendered":"<div>\n<p>President Trump has hit back forcefully against the New McCarthyism, including a stunning rebuke of Sen. John McCain for fanning a New Cold War with Russia and risking World War III, writes Gilbert Doctorow.<\/p>\n<p>By Gilbert Doctorow<\/p>\n<p>The original McCarthyism of the early 1950s appeared with the consolidation of the Cold War. It was a witch hunt over supposed communist subversion of America\u2019s democratic institutions. It was all about the Red Menace and the Russians are coming. Today\u2019s New McCarthyism grew with the onset of a New Cold War and also has been about the Russians, especially the vilification of Vladimir Putin.<\/p>\n<div id=\"attachment_22514\" style=\"width: 310px\" class=\"wp-caption alignright\"><a href=\"https:\/\/consortiumnews.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/02\/5440002785_7b1ed0ac3e_b1.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/consortiumnews.com\/wp-content\/plugins\/lazy-load\/images\/1x1.trans.gif\" data-lazy-src=\"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/02\/5440002785_7b1ed0ac3e_b1-300x200.jpg\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-22514\" alt=\"\" width=\"300\" height=\"200\" srcset=\"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/02\/5440002785_7b1ed0ac3e_b1-300x200.jpg 300w, https:\/\/consortiumnews.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/02\/5440002785_7b1ed0ac3e_b1-768x512.jpg 768w, https:\/\/consortiumnews.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/02\/5440002785_7b1ed0ac3e_b1-160x107.jpg 160w, https:\/\/consortiumnews.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/02\/5440002785_7b1ed0ac3e_b1.jpg 1024w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px\"\/><noscript><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-22514\" src=\"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/02\/5440002785_7b1ed0ac3e_b1-300x200.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"300\" height=\"200\" srcset=\"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/02\/5440002785_7b1ed0ac3e_b1-300x200.jpg 300w, https:\/\/consortiumnews.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/02\/5440002785_7b1ed0ac3e_b1-768x512.jpg 768w, https:\/\/consortiumnews.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/02\/5440002785_7b1ed0ac3e_b1-160x107.jpg 160w, https:\/\/consortiumnews.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/02\/5440002785_7b1ed0ac3e_b1.jpg 1024w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px\"\/><\/noscript><\/a><\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-caption-text\">Donald Trump speaking at CPAC 2011 in Washington, D.C. (Flickr Gage Skidmore)<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<p>This anti-Russian hysteria reached a point of near absurdity in the last days of the Obama Administration with its trust-us allegations that the Russians defeated Hillary Clinton by releasing some emails showing how the Democratic National Committee sabotaged Bernie Sanders and other emails revealing what Clinton had told Wall Street banks but didn\u2019t want the voters to know. If you noted that Clinton had previously blamed her defeat on FBI Director James Comey for reopening and re-closing the investigation into her use of a private email server, you risked being labeled a \u201cPutin apologist\u201d or a \u201cKremlin stooge.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Of course, the anger toward anyone who resisted the \u201cRussia-did-it\u201d conformism did not come from nowhere. One can trace the current hostility to dissenters against U.S. foreign policy back to the presidency of George W. Bush when he gutted the Bill of Rights in promulgating the Patriot Act with almost no public challenge. In the post-9\/11 climate \u2013 when any resistance to Bush\u2019s edicts was regarded as close to treason \u2013 many of us became uneasy while talking politics on the phone or looking up certain topics on the Internet or taking books out of the library.<\/p>\n<p>This intimidating surveillance did not go away when the Democrats retook the White House and Congress in the 2008 elections, but we stopped thinking about it because supposedly the \u201cright people\u201d now held the levers of power and surely wouldn\u2019t repeat the abuses of&#8230;<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<p> <a href=\"https:\/\/consortiumnews.com\/2017\/02\/09\/trump-confronts-new-mccarthyism\/\">Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>President Trump has hit back forcefully against the New McCarthyism, including a stunning rebuke of Sen. John McCain for fanning a New Cold War with Russia and risking World War III, writes Gilbert Doctorow. By Gilbert Doctorow The original McCarthyism of the early 1950s appeared with the consolidation of the Cold War. It was a [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2524,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[519],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-294177","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-newswire"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/294177","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2524"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=294177"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/294177\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=294177"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=294177"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=294177"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}