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The swift rise and rapid collapse of McCarthyism more than
sixty years ago offers evidence and a relatively recent example of
the capacity of American society and democratic institutions to
recover from the paralyzing sway the politics of fear, xenophobia,
ethnic division and subversion can temporarily hold over the body
politic.
Donald Trump and Joseph McCarthy
Credit: NYMag.com
Surfacing during eras of extreme cultural stress, and highly
dependent on the symbolic appeal of simplistic purifying or
redemptive solutions targeting infectious ‘alien’ agents—the
Red Menace in the ‘50s or terrorist Muslims and Central American
caravans today-- such movements rely on two basic ingredients.
First, a heightened fear that ‘enemies’ have penetrated the
nation’s porous borders, taking advantage of our over-tolerant
institutions; and second the powerful appeal of a self-appointed
charismatic leader willing to transcending normal institutional
limits in order to protect the vulnerable homeland and root out by
any means necessary subversive elements within and without.
There have been previous outbreaks of what historian Richard
Hofstadter first described as the “Paranoid Style” in American
politics. But the infectious America First nationalism and anti
immigrant fear-mongering of Donald Trump today has only one major
parallel: the fierce anti-communist witch-hunt fanned to a fever pitch
by the Junior Senator from Wisconsin, Joseph McCarthy, in the early
1950’s. Though different in scope and scale, both McCarthyism and
Trumpism share a common script, and, if history is any guide, contain
similar seeds leading to their own ultimate devolution and
destruction.
McCarthy was late to recognize but quick to exploit the enormous
potential and power that extreme and undocumented charges against
‘elite’ government officials could bring at a critically
unsettling moment in the early Cold War. Aided and enabled by
ambitious politicians, credulous reporters and officials like FBI
Director J. Edgar Hoover willing to use the Senator for their own
purposes, McCarthy was suddenly elevated to a position where even the
threat of his investigations could silence or destroy powerful
individuals and institutions at every level of government and
society. Even without Trump’s enormous degree of institutional
authority, McCarthy’s assumed power, for a time, seemed unlimited.
Though initially challenged by a few members of his own party who
recognized the danger he posed to constitutional freedoms, and later,
publicly, by media figures such as the respected broadcaster, Edward
R. Murrow, it was, importantly, McCarthy himself whose continuing
excesses brought him down.
Legal decisions ultimately prevented some of his most extreme
actions, though not before thousands of individuals had their careers
and lives destroyed by mere threats or charges. Exposed to a
national audience during the televised Army-McCarthy hearings,
McCarthy and his counsel Roy Cohn’s bullying misuse of power,
prompting the famous line uttered by Attorney Joseph Welch: “Senator,
have you at last no decency left?” exposed him for the demagogue he
was.
Once the “spell” was broken, the air went rapidly out of the
balloon. Public approval diminished; previous supporters backed away
from the spectacle. McCarthy’s political power in congress soon
evaporated, and though in some cases it took decades, individuals and
institutions McCarthy had attacked could begin to respond and
rebuild.
We don’t know yet how many insulted American heroes, generals or
admirals it will take, or how many humiliated or berated intelligence
agents, or agencies. Nor how many ignorant and un-empathetic comments
about the Puerto Rican hurricane, synagogue shooting or Californian fire
victims.
How many juvenile
or vile name-calling tweets belittling basketball players,
commentators or political critics it will take to break the spell.
But the spell will break. Indecency has its limits!
On the political side, the scale of the country’s growing
repudiation of Trumpism is becoming increasingly evident as
final vote counts in various regions confirm the strength of an
actual ‘blue wave’ in national and state elections. Where
Trump’s acolytes and enablers did win, their victories were
hard-fought and far narrower than expected, often dependent on
deliberate techniques of voter suppression and political
gerrymandering. Denied or not, rising blue tides do indicate
gradually melting poles of support.
True to form, and much like that of the earlier demagogue, the
President’s immediate response was to attack: first by deriding
losing candidates who had not sought his blessing; then by firing the
Attorney General whom he had long blamed and demeaned for not
sufficiently protecting him from the Mueller investigation, and then
by appointing a strong supporter who would do so. Attempting to
reassure his base, Mr. Trump then reignited his war with the “fake
news” media, berating African American reporters at his first full
news conference and then banning an assertive CNN reporter who
insisted on asking difficult questions.
As vote counts tightened, he was quick to charge election officials
with fraud, whipping up resentment and public passion against
nameless ‘enemies’ as well as against the legitimate mechanisms
of democratic governance. Most recently, in attacking a Federal
Appeals Court ruling against his asylum policies, he incurred an
unheard of rebuke by the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court who
defined the independence of the Judicial System as a critical feature
of American democracy countering the President’s attack by saying
“there are no Obama judges, or Bush or Clinton judges…..”
Continual exposure to a Chief Executive whose authoritarian
tendencies, willingness to incite violent passions, compulsion to
lie, lack of empathy towards minorities, asylum-seekers, victims of
natural disasters—and even homeless children-- and vindictiveness
toward those in the press or public who dare to question his policies
and behavior, appears to have begun to awaken a significant portion
of the public, among them former supporters.
We may not know yet whether the “spell” has fully been broken, or
where the “break point” actually is, but it is clear politically
that his self-inflated balloon has sprung leaks. Attacks on old
‘enemies’ (Hillary, ‘fake news’ media, congressional
opponents, proponents of climate change, NATO allies) will go on, as
well, but have passed their sell-by date. Those, and even newer threats
like the ‘invasion’ of legitimate asylum-seekers from Central
America may no longer serve to patch the increasingly visible holes.
Failed tax policies, disruptive tariff wars and unexpected foreign
events emanating from the Middle East—as well as the fallout from
the Mueller investigation—may well complete the process.
Just as McCarthy’s rampage weakened democratic institutions at home
while endangering America’s standing abroad, Trump’s embrace of
authoritarian leaders and murderous tyrants can only undermine any
remaining sense of America’s moral capacity to guide international
affairs in a positive direction.
Yet, cultural and institutional limits to coarse, brutal and amoral
practices in the name of public welfare do exist, and if modern
American history is any guide, there is a point when ‘fevers’
(political or otherwise) do break. The question then is how
basically healthy bodies can slowly recover and rebuild, and how much
lasting damage has been done.
Les Adler
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