The Red Scare is not just the ironic name of a humorous political commentary podcast. The Red Scare was a real historical event– people hunted communists on little pretext. This panic is known as McCarthyism, after the trenchant and sometimes belligerent anti-communist Senator from Wisconsin, Joe McCarthy.  But is this view of history accurate?  

History Class

It is no coincidence that our history textbooks demonize McCarthyism, and even English textbooks, if you look at plays like The Crucible, in which the Salem witch-hunt is used as a metaphor for McCarthyism.  We are to infer that just as the innocent people of Salem, Massachusetts were accused of being witches unjustly, so too were those who fell “victim” to the hunt for communists. 

This metaphor is usually lost upon the high school students who are obligated to read the play, but nonetheless, this was Arthur Miller’s authorial intention.  Great play, by the way, but the point still stands. We are instilling this notion that the hunt for communists was delusional, as delusional as the Puritans who hanged innocent people with little pretext.   We’re perpetrating this deception on adolescents who have little context to contradict that point, and can hardly be hoped to investigate the matter in adulthood when they are pursuing careers and families.

As such, a false, or at least highly misleading view of history is accomplished.

The Red Scare

It’s no wonder we lament so loudly the hunting of communists in the 50s and 60s.  After all, the so-called Red Scare represented the rooting out of subversive leftists in our own government and elite.  Of course leftists today aren’t going to like that.  Naturally they would want to whitewash any subversion coming from the left, even if it came from a tyrannical faction of the left; namely, communists.  Better to minimize that historical threat to America and instead go all in on fascism.  

This partly explains the elites hatred of Richard Nixon, incidentally. As a zealous Cold War-warrior, Nixon offended their sensibilities. And it’s not like Nixon was making it up–his so-called communist with hunts produced actual communists.

Full Circle

Perhaps now we’ve come full circle, now that Russia is perhaps associated with the right, or at least a faction of the right, which finds in Putin a character more sympathetic than some Western leaders. Meanwhile, it is the left, or more specifically the Democrat party, who sounds the most belligerent on Russia rather than the anti-communists of old. But that is merely an historical irony, and not the main point.

At any rate, when we view McCarthyism as purely a fiction created in the mind of a psychotic individual, we tend to misconstrue history. But we also tend to overlook tyranny that may be upon us at present.

Paul Gottfried writes in the paleoconservative publication Chronicles Magazine: 

“The anti-Communist “crusade” of the early 1950s pales in comparison to the never-ending Red Terror that our ruling class has unleashed, one that touches every corner of our society in the forms of cancel culture, government surveillance, and diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI).”

In this view, we are currently under a more repressive regime than that faced by those who lived under the Red Scare during the Cold War.  Exaggeration?  Maybe, but it also has the ring of truth. 

Follow Michael Machera Blog on Facebook , Twitter and YouTube.

Comment below: