McCarthyism: A Useful, But Incomplete, Analogy
McCarthyism operated via spectacle and the humiliation
of individuals. Writers, professors, labor leaders, and others were
summoned before congressional committees, threatened, blacklisted, and
ostracized for refusing to "name names" or disavow their beliefs. There
were at least some built-in frictions: public hearings (however
stacked), partial legal remedies, and, eventually, a backlash as its
ugliest excesses came to light.
Compare this to the machinery in operation today:
Tech-Enabled, Category-Wide Suppression
Today’s crackdown—accelerated by the Gaza crisis but
applying more broadly to dissent over foreign policy, racism, or
gender—targets not just individuals, but entire institutions,
communities, and even professions. AI-driven surveillance, lists like Project Esther,
and private-public blacklisting outfits systematically catalog
activists, students, faculty, and critics by the thousands. Where the
Red Scare was rumor-based and manual, today’s repression is drag-net, digital, and nearly invisible.
American universities, once icons of dissent, now face catastrophic fines, frozen funds, and blanket investigations—not for specific infractions, but for categories of speech, social media activity, or organizational association.
Most targeted never see their accusation, never get a hearing; there
are no due process guarantees, no public record—just summary punishment
and frozen careers.
“Due Process” Erased by Executive Fiat—and Judicial Retreat
In McCarthy’s day, hearings before HUAC or the Senate
Internal Security Subcommittee, though deeply flawed, at least nominally
offered targets a forum. Today, that hope is largely gone. The “shadow docket”—emergency,
unsigned Supreme Court rulings—lets the executive branch sidestep
normal process with cursory review. Universal injunctions against
blatantly unlawful actions are all but gone.
Summonses, detentions, and mass deportations of students
and professors can result from executive order, sometimes after a
single agency’s review, with those affected having little warning or
recourse. (Consider, for example, Yasmeen Alamiri, a Barnard student suspended and banned for organizing peaceful protest, or Rumeysa Ozturk at Tufts, detained and slated for deportation for writing an op-ed—later reversed after widespread outcry.)
No hearings are held for most labeled “terror-adjacent.”
No chance to clear one’s name. No meaningful legal redress. For
example, a university president may be ousted for not punishing peaceful
protest with sufficient force, as demanded by Congress in televised
hearings. Student activists are removed not for violence, but for affiliation alone; group membership or expressive acts suffice for institutional or legal exile.
Permanent Surveillance and Punishment by Algorithm
Where McCarthy-era blacklists depended on rumor and laborious tracking, modern repression leverages digital archives and algorithmic tagging
to monitor and penalize dissent. Social media posts, campus attendance
logs, donation records—all are scooped up by blacklists maintained by
organizations like the Heritage Foundation’s Project Esther and Canary Mission. Project Esther's list-sharing network, including Canary Mission, is known to extend to
partners in Israel and feed into U.S. agency screens—often justified as
fighting “antisemitism” according to the most expansive Trump-era
executive orders.
There is no transparent process for removal from lists
like Project Esther's “Hamas Support Network,” which, in surreal
fashion, pegs even anti-Hamas Jewish activists from JVP as supporters of
terror. The taint of association persists long after protests subside—and, while it has been less than two years since the latest wave of surveillance ramped up, there is so far no sign of relief or sunset. There is no clemency, only deterrent.
Collective Guilt, Media Acquiescence, and the Normalization of Emergency
McCarthy targeted individuals for confession. Today’s regime designates entire
organizations and communities—Jewish Voice for Peace, Students for
Justice in Palestine, Muslim advocacy groups—for exclusion,
surveillance, and stigma.
Mainstream media is complicit: images of riot police on
campus, student injuries, and faculty firings over Gaza protests are now
presented as routine news, stripped of their context as incidents of
state and institutional repression. Routine, precisely, is the
enemy—what once would have caused outrage is now normalized, and even
civil libertarians can struggle to keep up with the pace of escalation.
The Global Context: The US Joins Other “Hybrid Regimes”
It is not alarmist, but strictly comparative, to say
that these trends now align the United States with regimes such as
Hungary, Turkey, or El Salvador—formally competitive but functionally autocratic, where elections persist but civil liberties are alarmingly hollowed. Trump’s explicit campaign vow—"I am your retribution"—was not mere rhetoric but a program, rapidly accelerated with tools built or blessed by both parties.
This is a truly bipartisan catastrophe.
The House Committee on Education & the Workforce, led by Rep. Elise
Stefanik, staged televised inquisitions of university leaders.
Majorities of both parties have promoted or acquiesced to policies
(e.g., Antisemitism Awareness Act, IHRA adoption) that enable expansive
ideological enforcement, and Democratic mayors and trustees have joined
in bans and mass suspensions on campus groups critical of Israel or U.S.
foreign policy.
Why This Surpasses McCarthyism
This new, category-based repression is worse than its infamous Red Scare predecessor:
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Scope: Digital and algorithmic blacklists now sweep in tens or hundreds of thousands at once.
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Lack of Redress: There are even fewer hearings, and most never learn why they are targeted or who accused them.
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Permanence: Digital records and networked blacklists inflict damage—potentially irreparable—even if the “crisis” abates.
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Collective Fear: Officials across the
aisle admit they fear political retaliation; many Democrats remain
complicit or respond with timorous opposition.
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Normalization: Media and institutional acquiescence rob these affronts of their scandal, draining public outrage and hastening acceptance.
The New Engines of Dictatorial (Authoritarian) Power
Crucially, the core rationales that enable executive rule by fiat are the panic around “new antisemitism” and “wokeness”,
which now operate together—fueling both party’s policies and priming
the public to accept abrogations of due process, freedom of association,
and institutional autonomy in the name of crisis. Antisemitism,
expansively defined and weaponized, is now the primary excuse
for Trump’s dictatorial use of power: unprecedented federal fines,
deportations, censorship—including museums and National Parks
signage—and financial or legal threats to any institution not in
lockstep.
The bipartisan origins of this panic demand clarity from both sides: Democratic
support and rhetorical cover have “mainstreamed” much of this
machinery, ensuring its permanence and reach beyond partisan moments or
personalities.
What Must Happen Now
Resisting this slide requires call things by their names. We must expose and resist the new blacklist regime, government by summary fiat, and bipartisan ideological policing—across
parties, movements, and professions—before the fabric of dissent is
entirely choked off. Defending freedom of speech, protest, and academic
autonomy is now an emergency task, not a rhetorical luxury.
The era of algorithmic blacklists and retroactive
impunity is not “just another McCarthyism.” The stakes—and the
methods—are far greater. If we fail to push back, history will not just
condemn the architects of repression, but the public silence that
permitted them.
