Is McCarthyism 2.0 finally loosing steam?

This isn’t a attempt at partisan finger pointing. I want to describe what McCarthyism is, how it came about, and pose the question of is McCarthyism 2.0 finally starting to lose steam.

What is McCarthyism?

McCarthyism is described as a vociferous campaign against alleged communists in the US government and other institutions carried out under Senator Joseph McCarthy in the period 1950–54. Many of the accused were blacklisted or lost their jobs, although most did not in fact belong to the Communist Party.. A campaign or practice that endorses the use of unfair allegations and investigations.

What are the key elements of McCarthyism?
McCarthyism is no new phenomenon, and has repeatedly happened thru out human history. The Spanish Inquisition, and Salem Witch Trials are a couple examples off the top of my head.
One needs to ask how does McCarthyism rear it’s ugly head. Well, you need three elements to make it work to unleash McCarthyism on one’s opponents.
The first part is moral panic. Moral panic is described as a widespread feeling of fear, often an irrational one, that some evil person or thing threatens the values, interests, or well-being of a community or society
The second key ingredient to McCarthyism is a Demagogue to exploit moral panic. A demagogue is a political leader who seeks support by appealing to the desires and prejudices of ordinary people rather than by using rational argument. History is littered with demagogues. Cleon of Athens, of course Joseph McCarthy, and Donald Trump are a few that come to mind. Usually demagogues are more associated with conservatism, and rightfully so. This goes back to moral panic, which usually comes about when there is a perceived threat to the status quo. But, demagoguery isn’t exclusive to the right. There’s plenty of these villains on the left as well. Take for instance Mao, and Maximilian Robespierre.
The third part needed for McCarthyism to take place is infrastructure. That would the mechanism one needs to amplify moral panic, as well as the means to use censorship to squash any decent.
Before the age of mass communication, you can imagine this infrastructure was rudimentary at best. Today moral panic is available at the touch of a button.

 

Part 2

McCarthyism 2.0

Now that I have have described what McCarthyism is, I’d like to move on to how it once again reared it’s ugly head in America.
I think it’s safe to say that the election of Donald Trump was the catalyst. The presidential election of 2016 sparked a moral panic. But, unlike other historical moral panics, this one wasn’t completely founded on irrational fears. That being said , the irrational fear that did surface was chart topping, and immediate.
Trump inspired irrational fears in people with his rhetoric, and character.
I honestly think the spark that set off the irrational moral panic came from no other than Hillary Clinton, and her campaign staff. The country was literally shell shocked by the victory of Trump. Hardly any of the so called experts, and pundits gave trump a snowball’s chance in hell of winning, even though the warning sights were there. The few pundits that did warn that the race was closer than what was thought were drowned out, or ridiculed into silence.
So after the shock wore off, the Clinton campaign had to scramble for excuses of why they lost to somebody as flawed as Trump. Instead of self reflection, they blamed a external threat, which was Russia.The seed was planted to explain away the most likely defeat in modern political history.
A new moral panic was born, and added to the one already surrounding Trump.
From then on, the country witnessed the insidious creep of McCarthyism 2.0.

Instead of one demagogue rising to exploit this super moral panic, there were literally hundreds. Celebrities, Politicians, media personalities, so called journalists, social media influencers, former officials from both parties. You name name it, people were crawling out of the woodworks. Grossly enough, a majority of these demagogue’s motivations were self serving. The worst kind of grifters.

The affects on discourse were catastrophic. Soon, people who didn’t buy into the narrative were accused being “Putin puppets”, unintentional and intentional Russian assets, and the worst of all, people were accused of being treasonous thought crimes. Everyday Americans who used the Democratic process, and voted for Trump were demonized, like they still are today. People who opposed every aspect of Trump, but didn’t hop on the moral panic bandwagon were demonized as well. I’m talking about people like Bernie Sanders, his supporters, Gill Stein as well as the people who voted for her, hell almost all the people who couldn’t stomach the two main choices offered, and chose to vote third party were accused of not caring about their country. John McCain stood on the floor of the senate, and denounced Rand Paul as a Putin sympathizer. The examples are endless.
The cost of opposing the prevailing narrative was risking personal destruction of one’s reputation, and livelihood.

The infrastructure to magnify this super moral panic is a easy guess. Social media, and legacy media
are the two main culprits. Trump was a cash cow for Media. I can’t even imagine how many hours were dedicated to Russia gate stories on cable news, or how many articles were written on the subject to the run up of Robert Mueller‘a report being released.
Once the Mueller report was made public, instead of ending in some type of bang, it ended in a fizzle.The propaganda slowly shifted to other issues surrounding Trump.

 

Part 3

Is McCarthyism 2.0 starting to ebb?

One would think that the electoral defeat of Donald Trump would start to dampen the moral panic that lead to McCarthyism 2.0
I say yes, and no.
I think it’s safe to say that there is a drastic decline in media consumption, and is a important indication that the public at large is over it. One could only hope that this decline in viewers consumption is due to the total destruction of media’s credibility, but I don’t think that’s the case. I think the public is just exhausted. Another reason could be related to trump being out of office, so people no longer feel obligated to partake in moral panic.

Where I say no, is the moral panic surrounding Trump just morphed into the buffoonery of Jan 6th, the insurrection that wasn’t. Another moral panic might come about if Covid comes back in another wave. I like to think of these two examples as mini moral panics lurking below the surface.

I plan on taking a couple classes this fall semester, and I know one is going to involve writing a paper, so I figured I’d get started on a rough draft on this forum.
Any honest criticism, as well as not so honest criticism is welcomed.

 

If you stop teaching the failed history of communism in school, and instead teach that it is better than capitalism, then yes, McCarthyism will fade with time.

Never underestimate the sheer brute force of ignorance.

Unless you ignore 90 years of empirical data, you'd never know communism has never been shown to work, yet we have millions of school aged kids and recent college graduates that think communism is the answer for their ills.

 

the moral panic caused by satanic pedophilic cannibals sacrificing "the baaabies" that they order from a pizza menu.

the "deep state" composed of everyone suspected of less than incredible loyalty to dear leader.

unnamed pedophiles filmed en flagrant by epstein

the lists of voting irregularities that no one really has evidence of.

and numerous other "moral panics" that sound like headlines in a supermarket tabloid come straight from mar a lago.

 

Post #5 demonstrates Modern McCarthyism ain't goin' nowhere...need to rethink your thesis. It's less "McCarthyism" than an ever widening political and cultural divide.

 

And yet post # 5 is filled with the what is posted on this forum daily by members of the party of McCarthy on this forum

 

Yes, post #5 is full of the hysteria posing as fact which is endemic in legacy media. One would have to have lived under a rock the last 4 years to not see it.

 

Glad you can see it. Everything he posted is things you folks have ranted about for the last 4 plus years. ****, some of you all still think there is a pedo ring under the pizza joint.

 

Is McCarthyism on the wane? Hardly. I see articles ramping up the Russian Collusion delusion again in a minor different form. The claims of racism against anyone not on board with teaching our kids to judge others by race is hot and heavy. The concerted effort to push an experimental treatment and ostracize anyone that has concerns has been made a political issue by the McCartyites.

 

Sigh. Logical fallacy is all you have.

 

The truth seems to hurt your feelings for some reason.

 

This is a well defined and presented series of posts.

While money IS a motivating factor for the media and others, it is not the ONLY motivating factor. Presenting and maintaining a certain narrative might be more important than money. They already have more money than God.

Maintaining the false narrative is the goal.

 

This calls for a little out of the box thinking. In this case the box being a construct of the OP's making. The response to Trump was neither McCarthyism nor a moral panic. It's the kind of reaction one would expect regardless of whether his election was a surprise. It was a reaction to his repulsive character and his policies. The former being one of bigotry, ignorance, misogyny, and immorality. Traits that ultimately influenced his policies. A reign culminating in what is perhaps the most destructive lie of his presidency. One directly leading to an attempt to overturn the results of the election. An attempt to subvert the will of the majority.
If anything the reaction by the public was far too muted for the threat he posed....and still poses. So many things he did called for actual, physical protests in the streets, not righteous indignation expressed in words. A lack of protests possibly being due to the onslaught of outrageous actions being too overwhelming to respond to as one was quickly replaced with another.

 

Hes a loser and a liar a true Republican!

 

McCarthyism died when people got fed up with the lies coming from its originator: Joe McCarthy. The new McCarthyism will go down in history as "Trumpism" (or something similar). And it's dying as people get fed up with the lies coming from its originator and maximum promoter: Trump. It boils down to xenophobia, fear of a "Deep State" conspiracy, fear of black people, fear of educated people, fear of gays, fear of women rights, and a dash of good ol' fear of socialism (that never fails to win over the most gullible right-wingers).

Trumpism is losing a lot of steam. But the "official" death of McCarthysm was in court decisions that brought down its founding precepts. The same way Trumpism will die when the courts imprison Trump. Not just for his financial crimes, but especially for the abuse of power, which was proven by the Mueller Report and the Republican Senate Report.

 

This is the not so honest criticism I said I welcomed. Thank you for taking the time, and effort to respond.

 

Yes, his name is McCarthy. Completely irrelevant, which exception to the name. So good job, I guess.

 

I honestly think this is a case of you looking outwards , and not inwards. Trump was, and still is a demagogue, this is abundantly clear. But, Trump getting elected on a complete irrational moral panic isn’t the case. Trump being the conman he is was able to exploit legitimate concerns as well. The trump phenomenon is complete reflection on the political elites than rule over this country.
I always ask a series of questions to people such as yourself, who seem to be in denial of the conditions that allowed Trump to rise to power.

1. If people had access to affordable healthcare, do you think Trump would have been elected?

2. If the rust belt would have never been gutted by free trade, do you think Trump would have won in Pennsylvania, and Michigan?

3. If we as Americans weren’t living in a gilded age with the biggest gap in wealth equality, do you think Trump would have won?

4. Do you think if DC wasn’t the center of overt corruption, and pay to play, do you think Trump would have won?

5. Do you think if the United States hadn’t been at war for 15 years, including the illegal imperialist war in Iraq, the same war that the bush administration lied the country into, and never was held accountable, do you think Trump would have won?

6. Do you think if the the bankers of Wall Street would had been held accountable for collapsing the housing market, and plunging the whole global economy in to a deep recession, do you think Trump would have won?

7. Do you think that if voters had a legitimate option to trump, trump would have won? Weird how Bernie Sanders was talking about the majority of the same issues as trump , but some how a corrupt status quo candidate like Clinton was foisted upon the public as a alternate to trump.

There are a whole host of other examples of how American institutions completely failed the people, and allowed the rise of Donald Trump.
Was there irrational moral panic exploited by Trump?
Of course, legal and illegal immigration being the main one, along to a plethora of lesser cultural wedge issues used to fire up the base. It’s not even worth addressing what you said about the Mueller report, since it was the biggest build up of expectations, to only end up as the biggest anti climatic let down of irrational expectations.

Trump was a threat to the status quo of America, and it spawned a moral panic based on rational, and irrational fears. So instead of pointing the finger, and screaming it was them!!!!!!!
Look inward, and examine how your own emotions, and view points played into the rational, and irrational moral panic that was the four years of trump.

I know, self examination is one of the hardest tasks a person can preform.

 

Sorry for blowing up your thesis. Don't take it personally. Just try to do better next time.

 

Your self delusion is kinda off putting. Maybe if you actually addressed any of the points I made, instead of using the steaming pile of strawman you belched up, you’d be more worthy of the self accolades you like to shower yourself with.
But, once again, thank you for the time and effort you put forth.

 

@Flynn from Az Just a detail : most things said about Robespierre are wrong, and a black legend constructed from his living period, no historian specialist of the period would agree on the "Robespierre dictator" or "sole master, instigator of the terror.

 

I’ll take this into account, and do more research on Robespierre, to see if he is fairly deserving of being labeled a demagogue.

Thank you.

 

I'm not sure there is a lot of work translated in english language, most things I saw often took just back the false legend. I don't pretend there is nothing that could be reproached potentially to Robespierre (even if to be honnest, I still see him as a great man), but not I don't think he could be classified as a demagogue.
For instance, he prevented people of the assembly to write the constitution of the republic (including himself), to be elected in the ruling assembly that came thereafter. You don't see a lot of demagogues doing that.

 

An erudite and scholarly set of posts, but I don't think the Trump fiasco quite qualifies for McCarthyism status. Proponents and practitioners of McCarthyism usually believe they are doing a good broad public service (even if they are really not). The Trump antagonists espoused good public service but that was just window dressing and they did not really believe it. Those antagonists were simply thoroughly and egregiously pissed off that they lost an election they were 99.99% confident of winning and spent the next five years trying to undo the election and effect a coup and overthrow of a sitting president any way they could. It will not diminish because of the 2020 election because a coup is never done until the purge of all the opposed people is complete -- hence the 2nd impeachment designed to assure that Trump will never ever be elected to federal office again.