Modern Day McCarthyism Returns

Lance Hostetter
The Paw Print
In the 1950s, Senator Joseph McCarthy and FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover brought the country the Second Red Scare.  This was time that followed shortly after WWII and the beginning of the Cold War Era.  Communism, they thought, was our enemy.
McCarthy spent years compiling lists of names that he and other member of Congress thought to be Communists or Communist sympathizers, and therefore were considered a threat to the country.  People were subpoenaed to Congressional hearings, headed by McCarthy, and subjected to intense interrogation because of their Communist affiliation
Edward R. Murrow, a CBS broadcast journalist during the 1950s, helped bring an end to the Second Red Scare.  In 1953, his show “See It Now” explored the wrongful dishonorable discharge of an Air Force lieutenant because of his alleged association with Communism.
Later in 1954, Murrow aired a program that was extremely critical of McCarthy.  In the program, Murrow said, “We must not confuse dissent with disloyalty. We must remember always that accusation is not proof and that conviction depends upon evidence and due process of law. We will not walk in fear, one of another. We will not be driven by fear into an age of unreason, if we dig deep in our history and our doctrine, and remember that we are not descended from fearful men.”  This episode, some argue, helped bring about the end of McCarthyism.
Unfortunately, our country has a history of using our fear to suppress certain groups of people.  If we look throughout our history we find numerous instances where our country used wrongful acts for “the better good of our nation.”
If we think back to Manifest Destiny, then we are reminded of the Native Americans we pushed across the country and out of their native lands.  We found reasons to claim slavery was logical.  Then we found reasons to place Asian Americans, specifically Japanese Americans, in internment camps during WWII for what the Roosevelt administration claimed was for their protection (when clearly it was because we feared Japanese Americans might align with the Japanese).
It would be unlike us, with our present issues with the Middle East and radical Muslims, to leave our U.S. Muslim community untouched.
Yesterday, Rep. Peter King, R-NY, began the Homeland Security hearings on the radicalization of U.S. Muslims.  These hearings read and sound eerily similar to those hearings conducted by McCarthy in the 1950s.  What is to come of these hearings is yet to be proven, but the arguments have begun.
Nation Public Radio columnist Frank James argues, “…[T]he hearings could turnout to be somewhat anti-climatic.”
Co-director, Foreign Policy in Focus and Huffington Post contributor John Feffer argues the opposition, “[K]ing has had a rather difficult time explaining how stigmatizing an entire community as the primary source of extremism in America, calling a range of non-experts to testify on an extraordinarily sensitive topic, and ignoring the statistic that Muslims provided tips in 48 out of 120 terrorist cases in the United States, will somehow make Muslim Americans feel all warm, fuzzy, and patriotic.” Feffer also pointed out that Rep. King also formerly claimed that radicals controlled “85 percent” of Muslim mosques.
Rep. King’s hearings, like the McCarthy hearings, will unfairly and unjustly bring an unwanted attention to Muslim and Islamic people because we obviously still fear those communities, religious beliefs, and ideologies.  Because of ignorance we focus wrongly on subjecting an entire group of people.
Should the hearings end with a one-day hearing only, much of the smoke will clear revealing little damage.  But should these radicalization of U.S. Muslim hearings continue over multiple days and gather media stink, then more unnecessary damage will ultimately plague the U.S. Muslim community.
Rep. King represents what’s wrong with much of our political ideology.  Radical Muslims can be dangerous, but not all Muslims are radical.  Our country has long feared people because of their religious beliefs, political association, skin color, and place of birth.
There are radical Muslims in the U.S., but to use an act of McCarthyism to find them only subjects an entire group of people to injustices and unfair racial and religious stereotypes and prejudices that are otherwise dissipating.

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