Two Cheers for "McCarthyism"? Part II

TomF

Yet, as Hoffman reluctantly conceded, these assessments were in turn lies, myths, and carefully constructed distortions. The reality was that "in a global sense McCarthy was on to something. McCarthy may have exaggerated the scope of the problem but not by much… The Age of McCarthyism, it turns out, was not the simple witch hunt of the innocent by the malevolent as two generations of high school and college students have been taught."

But even as honest liberals like Von Hoffman were coming to grips with reality, many on the Left decided to take another approach. From the 1950s through the 1980s, the Left was largely content to describe McCarthyism in Hellman's terms: a baseless assault by right-wing paranoids and fanatics. But in the 1990s — as the evidence against the Rosenbergs, et al., became undeniable and the general obsession with Marxism was replaced by an obsession with postmodern sexual gobbledygook — the Left began rewriting the moral of McCarthyism.

The McCarythites — defined as almost anyone who was meaningfully anti-Communist — were still venal and unjustified in their assaults on "civil libertarians." Now, however, they were homophobes as well. The canard about anti-Communism being a stalking horse for anti-Semitism was replaced by the canard that anti-Communism was really the dyspepsia of repressed right-wing homosexuals. Sidney Blumenthal, for example, wrote in The New Yorker that the "true legacy" of Whittaker Chambers was that "he helped to transmute an external threat into a moral panic, and to encourage a new generation of Cold War conservatives to do the same." For "a pantheon of anti-Communists . . . conservatism was the ultimate closet," a way of disguising their latent homosexuality. "Conservative anti-Communism," Sidney Blumenthal lamented, is "an anachronism. What endures is the fear of the enemy within: the homosexual menace." Blumenthal's bile is mild compared to what you might find on many college campuses.

THE "NEW MCCARTHYISM"
Now, I don't bring this up because I'm one of those conservatives who can't get over the fact that the Left got away with decades of dishonesty and deceit on the subject of America's struggle to save Western civilization. (Though, for the record, I am one of those conservatives.) Rather, this history has new meaning and relevance now because the Left is again invoking "McCarthyism" in an assault on those who would defend the country.

The USA Patriot Act, wrote David Cole in The Nation, "resurrects the philosophy of McCarthyism, simply substituting 'terrorist' for 'communist.'" Arab-American and Muslim groups denounce almost any accusation of someone with an Arab surname as "McCarthyism." "It smacks of McCarthyism and other events in history in which heavy-handed government tactics against an entire community have done nothing but ruin innocent lives," Sarah Eltantawi, a spokeswoman for the Muslim Public Affairs Council, predictably declared of a Justice Department policy. Hussam Ayloush, executive director of the Council on America-Islamic Relations of Southern California, exclaims, "This new McCarthyism against Muslims must end," he said. "Are you going to deport us all?"

Now, I have no problem with Muslims denouncing McCarthyism — if, by McCarthyism, you mean unfairly accusing someone of wrongdoing either through guilt-by-association or through simple prejudice. But that's not what those throwing around the "McCarthyite" smear are up to. When they denounce McCarythism, they are working on the clear assumption that McCarthyism victimized only innocent people. That is a lie. And it also a lie that the USA Patriot Act is being used solely to punish innocent people.

Consider Sami al-Arian, the controversial University of South Florida professor who's been arrested on 50 counts of supporting terrorism. He is alleged to be a senior member of the Palestinian group Islamic Jihad, which carries out "suicide" bombings and the like. If "terrorist" has any meaning at all, Islamic Jihad is a terrorist group. Al-Arian's arrest would not have been possible without the Patriot Act, which allows domestic law enforcement to use foreign intelligence.

When al-Sami was the subject of intense controversy for his statements justifying terrorism against the U.S. and Israel, his defenders claimed that — you guessed it — this was nothing but so much McCarthyism (see John Podhoretz's excellent column on the subject). On CNN, the charming spokesman for the Arab-American Anti-Discrimination Committee, Hussein Ibish, insisted: "Until we have some reason based in fact to think otherwise, I think that the presumption has to be that this is a political witch-hunt, a vendetta, and a kind of very, very ugly post-9/11 McCarthyism." Eric Boehlert of Salon wrote: "Media giants, eagerly tapping into the country's mood of vengeance and fear, latched onto the Al-Arian story, fudging the facts and ignoring the most rudimentary tenets of journalism in their haste to better tell a sinister story about lurking Middle Eastern dangers here at home." Professors reveled in the opportunity to change the subject to "academic freedom," in much the same way as defenders of Stalin's gulag used to insist that the only issues worthy of public passion were the civil liberties of spies and traitors.

Al-Arian hasn't been proved guilty yet. But, between you and me, I find it hard to believe the Justice Department would risk the colossal embarrassment of being proved wrong about a case so popular among its critics. And, any reasonable person must concede that there are some Muslims and Arabs in America either in the employ of al Qaeda, Saddam Hussein, Islamic Jihad, et al., or, at minimum, sufficiently sympathetic to such causes as to be indistinguishable from employees of bin Laden & co.

This hardly means that all Arabs or Muslims are terrorists or terrorist sympathizers. I agree with Ibish that the vast, vast majority of such citizens are innocent and decent people. And no one wants to bully or mistreat innocent people the way McCarthy sometimes did. But to claim that the current legal and political environment for Muslims is "McCarthyite" does not change the fact that there are, in fact, real Muslim terrorists here in America — just as decrying the excesses of Tail Gunner Joe doesn't change the fact that he was right when he said there were Stalinist spies in the State Department.

Meanwhile we will all wait for the verdict on Mr. al-Arian, who has gone on a hunger strike in jail to protest the supposed McCarthyite vendetta against him. Professor al-Arian is not stupid and he knows that the crowd that considers John Ashcroft a bigger threat than Osama bin Laden is nothing if not a sucker for a good hunger strike. This is no doubt an ordeal for al-Arian. Indeed, it prevented him from doing the work second-most-dear to his heart. On March 5, he was originally scheduled to give a speech at the University of Colorado. It was titled "McCarthyism II: The Post 9/11 Erosion of Civil Liberties."

What a coincidence.