Individuals indeed may deceive and be deceived; but no one has ever deceived all men, nor have all men ever deceived any one. ~ Pliny The Younger
A New McCarthyism For A New Century
2/27/2011
If you examine a mountain at first sight it seems extraordinarily grand and large but as you walk it's paths you see it's pebbles and leaves and realize that even the grandest bodies are composed of smaller bits and pieces. So to if one looks at a great untruth one begins to find a multitude of smaller half truths and outright lies: such is the basis of much prejudice. Though some lies may come about purely through the chance of rumor or even the province of well intended popular belief it is in the winding up into a grander fallacy that the true danger emerges.
This is why in seeking to understand that which at first glance seems to great to dislodge from it's place in the sun one must first begin with it's various details that lay open for all to see.
In recent times many a scholar has acquiesced on the rehabilitation of one Senator McCarthy due in large part to extracts unearthed in Russia by a scholar who clearly has an ideological axe to grind. Has no one thought to question the province of these documents or to review the actions of the infamous in light of the revelations?
Historical revisionism can take on many forms such as picking and choosing your documents in order to find that which you wish to find and by conveniently overlooking anything that might contradict you. This is not the same as taking the same documents looking at them in entirety and then writing about one aspect such as the role of industrialization in society or some other aspect. What we are concerned with here is the use of presumably real primary documents in a way that manipulates them to fit a desired outcome. In the post-Soviet era can we seriously believe that anything in Russia is beyond the reach of the almighty dollar when all that was once an empire is now sunken into an abyss of corruption? The very province of the documents are not assured in this day just because it comes from archives billed to be "official" and frankly it is a wonderment that more PhDs have not questioned them. Perhaps it will take a new generation who do not suffer from a Politically Correct hangover to examine it more closely.
Beyond that does the existence of concerted operation to infiltrate the government of the United States by that of the USSR really excuse or exonerate McCarthy and if so how does it? Were all those who were blacklisted really agents of a foreign power or was the Senator simply groping in the dark and stating an obvious thing that every one knew? Frankly that is probably the best someone seeking to exonerate him could hope for because if he in fact had accurate lists somehow it raises a more intriguing question of where he actually got any lucid information if not from intelligence operatives. If as he claimed there were communist agents in every branch of government including intelligence and the armed forces this would seem to suggest he had contacts with the agents of a foreign power with knowledge of the said agents.
Is it in the archives?
It is not enough to simply prove the Russians were spying on us at various times all manner of foreign competitors are spying on us and we on them so it does not exonerate. The key question where McCarthy is concerned is not the question of whether there were spies about even then it was a topic at the highest levels and no one questioned it. What they did question were his sources and his accusations. I have heard of no high ranking official say at the cabinet level as he implied being proven a spy by these documents. Other than the initial revelation that not everything the man said was lie not much else has come out. It would seem that one man has written about this obsessively for the past many years and just about everyone takes it at face value. Now there are echoes of echoes and in many quarters it simply taken for fact.
So why has there been no concerted effort to address something so obviously questionable?
Well perhaps it relates to the fact that this is a question that spans the normal academic field specialties and involves both Russian and American history not to mention presumably British and others. Then there is the language barrier as the source documents are presumably in Russian at a time when Arabic is the one to know. Perhaps it is a simple matter than many people took it at face value that maybe there was a kernel of truth in McCarthy while forgetting that a kernel does not a nugget of gold make.
Why does it matter after all that was the 1950s and this is now right?
It matters because it is in the analogy of the mountain a detail that helps make up the whole. If this thesis were indeed to be disputed or even largely disproved it removes one of the many underpinnings of the mountain of lies and distortion that is the extreme right viewpoint today. I would argue that the issue of McCarthy is relevant today in a contemporary way and not in the way it was 60 years ago and that many scholars have failed to distinguish between the two of them. The things McCarthy stood for have echoed down the years and taken on additional meaning beyond their contemporary context because people are exhuming his corpse from history. Exoneration of McCarthy is important now not just for his role in the historical past but for what many believe is the truth about today.
This author also suspects that students or faculty with an interest in it might just show the emperors new clothing for what it is which in the Senator's case was most likely naked ambition. There are a great many questions that we might suggest to aspiring scholars but only if they are willing to admit the full truth even if it contradicts what they thought or hoped to find.
~Examine the accused conspirators in all phases of HUAC.
~What happened to all the little people he hurt?
~ Where any of them actually in the Russian archive?
~ If so what percentage?
~ What does it say about Hollywood in this period and was Ronald Reagen in there or curiously absent?
We ought to wonder if with all the money that is spent on right wing think tanks and all manner of other ideological warfare whether this was in fact extended to collusion and corruption of foreign governments and their archives. The very providence of the documents ought to be questioned most likely.
Finally in closing there is one more suggestion to take under advisement and that is whether the issue is truly closed or whether there is yet another chapter to be written to include not just the question of contemporary legitimacy of the senator's claims but in light of it's assumption and use in modern right wing media and propaganda.
McCarthyism was most likely not a new thing even in it's own day but rather it represents the most celebrated fear monger in that cast. There may even be a grain of truth in the fear they spread but that does not equate to a not guilty verdict on all counts. It is not just about fear these days the modern McCarthyites have made it all about hate speech substituting old terminology for new by grouping Jews, niggers, gays, socialists, and most others on the KKK shitlist under one term: The Liberals.
Just in case you do not understand why they are the way they are one need only look to see what McCarthyism is all about philosophically and it was and is an attack on the philosophy of liberalism. This leads in one thing and one thing only if left unchallenged but that 'comrades' I will write another day and it may just surprise you how obvious and late in the day it is.