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The New McCarthyism
September 1, 2016 - 10:19am
"Something dangerous is happening in the American media."
"Normal" journalistic standards must be abandoned say NYT reporters.
Thanks for this!
Which must be understood within the context of a growing desperation, dangerous desperation as the Empire and its system of financial control slips into disaster!
No time for complaceny for sure!
some more on the New McCarthyism
Democracy Now: A New McCarthyism: Greenwald on Clinton Camp's Attempts to Link Trump, Stein & WikiLeaks to Russia
had to look up McCarthyism.
can't reach people if they have know idea what you're talking about or making reference to.
lol. Let's silence dissenting opinions and looking at new phenomena. Because freedom.
You're not being silenced. This is spamming the board. You've already got multiple threads running with the same topic. If I asked for all of them to be closed, that would be silencing. Many threads for the same topic is bad board etiquette, IMO, but let's let the mods decide if a new thread is warranted.
If that is the way you feel then you should just not open any new threads started by him. It is everyones choice whether they read a thread or not.
Well, the problem with that is that once a single topic starts to dominate a board, it changes the engagement of users with the board. It's actually a sort of silencing of it's own. If you have to scroll through 20 threads about auto mechanics, you're going to give up looking for flower arrangement, and voila! You have an auto mechanics board.
The interesting thing is that many people in the State Department and the White House were in fact Soviet spies.
Read "Clever Girl" (bio of Elizabeth Bentley) by Lauren Kessler if you are in doubt.
lol. It's rather comic how threads about certain subjects - Russophobia, and now the new McCarthyism - invariably get provided with a rich set of examples of the phenomena.
Well, the funny part is that it's not clear if the examples were intended as such.
Of course McCarthyism and related guilt-by-association is a new phenomena not to be confused with simple Russophobia. A new quality comes into being, expanding and deepening the process. Now, it is not simply that all Russians are bad, inherently, but also that anyone who says anything that could be construed as neutral, not unfriendly, etc. to them is also bad. The net of hatred widens, engulfing ever more targets. Quantity becomes quality.
The Clinton Trump example is interesting; both sides have business connections with Russia, at various times in the past especially. However it's clear that the Clinton campaign has ramped up the rhetoric to incendiary levels. It's desperation. HRC is now being compared to Richard Nixon for a comparable McCarthyite extremism. Nixon, of course, was very close to the original McCarthy, so he had plenty of practice.
Round up the usual Communists becomes round up the usual Russians becomes round up the usual Russian "sympathizers". It's all fun and games until someone shoots your Siberian Husky dog because his bark sounded Russian.
I thought that fishing for disagreement -- which you define as 'Russophobia' -- was pretty much the purpose of these threads.
Start a thread called "Haters gonna hate". Soon enough someone will suggest that human nature isn't as negative as you suggest, then you can say "Oh, lookie here, ANOTHER HATER. hoo rah."
I'm really not seeing where anyone who doesn't hate Russia is the bad guy. But I'm definitely seeing lots and lots of suggestion that the mere criticism of Russia is somehow similar to homophobia.
It's honestly starting to look like this is the only thing in the entire world that you care about. The poor, misunderstood Russian.
well. Kill 'em all, Let Magoo sort them out. because magoo freedom.
I honestly don't think most Canadians hate Russians. Don't they tend to think of the Arctic neighbours as normal people with long cold winters and good hockey players?
There is real prejudice in Canada, but it hits Indigenous people worst, and of late there has been a lot of ignorant bigotry towards people who are, or who are suspected of being "Muslim". And one can hardly live next to the US without being affected to stereotypes about people of African origin. Russians, not so much.
Some examples of/discussion of/denial of [take your pick] McCarthy-ite xenophobia on babble over here ... Sov Union/Poland thread
The thread is mostly discussion of historical events around WW2, but some oblique claims are also made about babblers, etc.
Fill your boots.
Oh hi, ikosmos.
Thanks for the plug, though careful. You wouldn't want to direct people to a thread where some are very very concerned about insulting those who made the supreme sacrifice.It's illegal in some places, you know.
As for oblique comments, you're being a bit oblique yourself, as I am not sure exactly what you are talking about. I do know I spoke to you directly, and I mentioned you, by name regarding comments you made which I felt weren't entirely true.
Maybe you can explain the "denial of McCarthyite xenophobia". Were any of us trying to get anyone fired or blacklisted?
I don't think any of us denied the truth of that "anti-communist" (your words) Guardian article about blacklisting you posted. We just couldn't find anything in there about anti-communism, so we wern't sure how it had any relation to what we were talking about, which was the situation here on babble.
Babble hall of fame for this post. First prize in the Taking a Fight to Every Thread category.
There is a good reason why babble discourages taking a fight from one thread and starting the same fight in another thread.
Why are you addressing me k, and not the person who actually did bring another thread over here?
If someone says something I'm not supposed to ask for clarification?
And if it is something you think should be discouraged you might want to consider that you are here too. I'm not sure it became a fight until you declared it one.
OK, agreed, but generally Hall of Famers have to be well written. And I ain't seeing that.
Seeing as ikosmos linked these two threads in post #14, and seeing as the question of "blacklisting" is probably better housed in this thread than the other, I'll ask again for some links, from the modern era, and in North America, of people who have been "blacklisted" solely for supporting communism.
If this "new McCarthyism" is a real thing, there should be plenty, right?
Yeah, otherwise, "round up the usual suspects", right, Magoo?
Fuck. Ain't you guys got anything better to do with your time?
So, no link(s) then?
Its hard to say how many people have ever been blacklisted soley for supporting communism. Usually it was the union organizing that triggered the blacklisting. The activists were blacklisted and I think that is still the case.
People still get blacklisted for trying to organize, especially in the retail industry. In better jobs at most businesses a marxist spouting new hire wouldn't make it through the probation period.
Here is one of favourite songs about the blacklisting of reds.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LZGlQXBjZ64
Nothing worth doing is just going to be easy.
But if "redbaiting" is still a grave concern, because the tragic victims might be blacklisted, then it's still a fair question.
And "OK, fine, that doesn't actually happen any more" is still a fair answer. Or, some links.
Here is a modern form of blacklist used to limit activists mobility.
http://thetyee.ca/Opinion/2016/09/22/Canadian-No-Fly-Lists/
Do those no-fly lists apply to "communists" and "communist sympathizers"? Or to those suspected of terrorist links?
I'm not defending no-fly lists, but we seem to be having a great deal of difficullty coming up with plausible examples of communists in Canada in 2016 suffering real and material persecution for being communists in Canada in 2016.
If there simply aren't any such examples, isn't it maybe time to put the whole "redbaiting" thing in the history books where it belongs?
Typical bait and switch from Magoo. Let's go back to the quote, shall we?
Me: You're quite wrong about that. There are always blacklists and always will be. Anyone who doesn't understand this has probably never been a serious activist with a revolutionary perspective. Tell the truth Magoo - that's you, isn't it?
Try a google search of blacklists in the UK, for example, in the pages of the [anti-communist] Guardian for at least one example of recent blacklisting.
.................
So the reference about blacklists - even by the resident Magoo sub-genius - did not refer exclusively to communists. And, of course, my remarks were meant to include people other than communists who were the target of such nefarious state activities. Why not? It's not just the Reds that are victimized by the barbarous NATO regimes like Canada. Trade unionists - as Kropotkin pointed out - peaceniks, FN activists, child advocates (Cindy Blackstock most recently) fo God's sake, Palestinian solidarity activists, etc., have all been the subject of blacklists and state/private sector retribution for simply exercising their rights in our "democracy".
What slimy and dishonest tactics! Give yourself a nice black swastika and take the rest of the day off.
Seriously. Do your homework and learn something for a change. These activists deserve your support for sticking their necks out.
Please, ikosmos, just give us an example. I'm not going to scour some other country's newspaper to make your point for you. Just an example of people being blacklisted for being communist (since, as that quote makes clear, that's what we're talking about... basically, the state penalty for being a communist).
Or, just stop with the "waaah waaah waaah! He just redbaited me!!" stuff.
Did you just Godwin-bait me??
I think that maybe everyone could stop the red baiting and Nazi slurs. If people on this board want to support the Russia government or the Ukranian government that is their right. The nasty bits don't help any debate.
I think one only has to read the coverage that most of the media give to China to know that communist is used regularly as a intentional slur. The idea that it is a neutral term in Canadian society is absurd.
Or neither of them.
Dude, Russia's petty squabbles with its former colonies are the MOST IMPORTANT progressive concerns on Earth right now!
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