McCarthyism

The Right Wing Action Plan To Take Down The Palestine Movement

November 23, 2024 Mitchell Plitnick, Mondoweiss. Strategize! Israel, McCarthyism, Palestine, Palestine Solidarity, Project Esther

The Heritage Foundation got a lot of publicity during this election cycle for its infamous Project 2025. But that’s not the only project they intend to carry out now that Donald Trump is returning to the White House. Project Esther is a new proposal from Heritage that claims to lay out a plan to combat antisemitism in the United States. In fact, it aims to destroy the Palestine solidarity movement as a first step in a crusade to, ultimately, restrict activism against American policy of all sorts, foreign and domestic. . It’s not a new enterprise, of course.

McCarthyist Attack On Gaza Protests Threatens Free Thought For All

April 21, 2024 Ari Paul, Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting. Educate! Censorship, Freedom of Speech, Gaza, McCarthyism, Right to Protest, Student Activism

With the encouragement of the state, universities from coast to coast are taking draconian steps to silence debate about US-backed violence in the Middle East. The Columbia University community looked on in shock as cops in riot gear arrested at least 100 pro-Palestine protesters who had set up an encampment in the center of campus (New York Post, 4/18/24). The university’s president, Nemat Shafik, had just the day before testified before a Republican-dominated congressional committee ostensibly concerned with campus “antisemitism”—a label that has come to be misapplied to any criticism of Israel, though the critics so smeared are often themselves Jewish.

‘Material Support’ In The Form Of Speech Can Be Criminalized

January 1, 2024 Janine Jackson, Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting. Educate! Censorship, Free Speech, Israel, McCarthyism, Palestine, Student Activism

Depending on when you hear this, the Rutgers/New Brunswick chapter of Students for Justice in Palestine might be the most recent campus group to be suspended for what administrators called “disruptive and disorderly conduct,” and “failure to comply with university or civil authority.” SJP is a student-activist network of campus groups in support of Palestinian lives and liberation, and naturally very active now in the midst of Israeli military attacks on Gaza that, as we record, have killed some 20,000 Palestinians minimally, injuring and displacing orders of magnitude more. Calls for a ceasefire, at least, are growing in this country and around the world, but that’s in the face of ever-more aggressive, top-down efforts to shut those calls, and the people making them, down.

The Shift: Congress Embraces McCarthyism

December 8, 2023 Michael Arria, Mondoweiss. Educate! Anti-Semitism, Congress, Gaza, Genocide, Israel, McCarthyism, Palestine, Zionism

It’s now generally understood that McCarthyism was a dark and shameful aspect of our history. Oppenheimer made $953 million at the U.S. box office this summer and the bulk of Christopher Nolan’s film isn’t about the bomb, but the Red Scare attacks that destroyed the physicist’s reputation. Political repression might get pilloried in films these days, but you can still hear the faint echo of the Wisconsin Senator’s accusations in any number of policies being pushed throughout the country. One of the most glaring examples is the GOP’s ongoing war on libraries. However, that crusade is mainly waged by just one party. The war on Palestine activism that has emerged since October 7th is a bipartisan affair.

The New Hollywood McCarthyism Emerging Around Palestine

December 4, 2023 Sybil Davis, Left Voice. Resist! Hollywood, Israel, McCarthyism, Media, Palestine

Following the outbreak of Israel’s latest war on Gaza, Melissa Barrera, an up-and-coming young actor who made a name for herself as the star of the Scream franchise, became vocal on social media, denouncing the war on Gaza and resharing posts which accused Israel of perpetuating ethnic cleansing and genocide. In response to these posts, Spyglass Media, the production company of Scream, fired Barrera from the upcoming film and accused her of antisemitism despite Barrera explicitly posting, in one of her Instagram posts denouncing Israel, “We don’t need more hate. No Islamophobia. No antisemitism.”

‘McCarthyite Backlash’: Response To Criticism Of Israel Alarms Groups

October 31, 2023 Chris McGreal, The Guardian. Educate! Civil Rights, Free Speech, Israel, McCarthyism, Palestine

Civil rights groups in the US have warned of a “wave of McCarthyite backlash” against criticism of Israel’s bombardment of Gaza after Americans expressing support for the Palestinians have been sacked, faced threats of violence and hounded by pro-Israel groups. The American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee (ADC) has warned of the “continued criminalisation of advocacy for Palestinian rights” and described an “increasing tide of anti-Palestinian and anti-Arab attacks in the US” following the Hamas cross-border attack in which about 1,400 Israelis were killed and more than 200 abducted.

City College’s 1940s Fight Against Political Repression: Lessons For Today

October 31, 2023 Olivia Wood, Left Voice. Strategize! Higher Education, History, Israel, McCarthyism, New York City (NYC), Palestine, Student Activism, Worker Rights and Jobs

Students, faculty, and staff at colleges and universities across the United States and the world are facing an unusually high level of repression for speaking out in support of Palestinians. A city councilwoman brought a gun to a protest outside of Brooklyn College. Billboard trucks displaying the faces and names of pro-Palestine activists are circling the block at Harvard and Columbia. Students are having their job offers revoked. Florida governor Ron DeSantis is trying to ban Students for Justice in Palestine from all Florida schools. Earlier this week, the U.S. Senate unanimously voted a resolution condemning the student protests as “pro-Hamas” and encouraging the U.S. government to “fully and completely support Israel.”

The New York Times Reveals That A Tech Mogul Likes China

August 18, 2023 Julie Hollar, Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting. Educate! China, Foreign Agents Registration Act, McCarthyism, New York Times (NYT)

“A Global Web of Chinese Propaganda Leads to a US Tech Mogul,” the New York Times (8/5/23) announced on its front page. “The Times unraveled a financial network that stretches from Chicago to Shanghai and uses American nonprofits to push Chinese talking points worldwide,” read the subhead. This ostensibly major scoop ran more than 3,000 words and painted a picture of multimillionaire socialist Neville Roy Singham and the activist groups he funds as shady agents of Chinese propaganda. The piece even referenced the Foreign Agents Registration Act, noting that “none of Mr. Singham’s nonprofits have registered under the Foreign Agents Registration Act, as is required of groups that seek to influence public opinion on behalf of foreign powers.”

McCarthyism Is Back, And It’s Coming For The Peace Movement

August 13, 2023 Defending Rights and Dissent. Resist! China, FBI, McCarthyism, Peace Movement, US Imperialism

Defending Rights & Dissent condemns in the strongest possible terms the increasing McCarthyite attacks on leftwing and peace groups critical of US-policy towards China. As tensions between the US and China escalate, we have unsurprisingly seen attacks against those who dissent from the prevailing foreign policy orthodoxy. Over the weekend, the New York Times published an inflammatory regurgitation of innuendo, aspersions, and propaganda focusing on a number of groups, including Code Pink and the People’s Forum. With the “paper of record” giving these smears a veneer of legitimacy, Senator Marco Rubio sent a letter to the Department of Justice urging them to investigate these activist groups under the Foreign Agents Registration Act.

The Red Scare

April 3, 2022 Alice Slater, In Depth News. Educate! Communism, McCarthyism, NATO, Russia, Wars and Militarism

New York City, New York - In 1954 I attended Queens College during the years before Senator Joseph McCarthy finally met his comeuppance at the Army-McCarthy hearings after terrorizing Americans for years with accusations of disloyal communists, waving lists of blacklisted citizens, threatening their lives, their employment, their ability to function in society because of their political affiliations. In the college cafeteria, we were discussing politics when one student thrust a yellow pamphlet into my hands. “Here you should read this.” I glanced at the title. My heart skipped a beat as I saw the words “Communist Party of America.” I hastily stuffed it unopened into my bookbag, took the bus home, rode the elevator to the 8th floor, walked directly to the incinerator, and tossed the pamphlet down the chute, unread, before I entered my apartment.

McCarthyism Down Under

June 28, 2020 Joe Lauria, Consortium News. Educate! Australia, China, McCarthyism, Police

Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison held a somber press conference on Friday to announce that the Australian Federal Police (AFP) and the Australian Security Intelligence Organisation (ASIO) had conducted a raid on a sitting member of the New South Wales parliament all because, so far, he’d said favorable things about China and had traveled to the country. The Murdoch-owned Australian newspaper reported that the office and Sydney home of NSW Labor MP Shaoquett Moselmane had been raided because he “has repeatedly praised Beijing, even describing Chinese President Xi Jingping’s response to the COVID-19 pandemic as ’emphatic’ and ‘decisive.’” Moslemane was portrayed as an “extremely serious” threat because he had written about China: “Failure to contain the epidemic could mean thousands if not hundreds of thousands of lives would be lost.

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