The US has always been a country of religious and national exclusiveness and messianism. Millions of Americans ever since the XVII century have been convinced that their country is a stronghold of democracy and freedom, especially the freedom of business and religion. American messianic nationalism has played a pivotal role in the fact that the US even started the Cold War against the Soviet Union. That is why ever sing 1945 there’s been a belief about America’s right to redraw the entire world in accordance with its perception of freedom. It was argued time and time again that this right will allow Washington to get the people of the world “liberated”, bring them in the sphere of interests of US business cycles.
All those who disagreed with notions beyond the borders of the United States were receiving the “cold war treatment”, while internal opposition was harshly suppressed with McCarthyism and the anti-Communist demagogy.
It is believed that the era of McCarthyism that was directed against leftist and liberal activists and organizations reached its heights in the 50s, yet, the recent events in the US demonstrate that this ideology hasn’t gone anywhere and Washington’s political establishment is determined to revive it today in the United States in all of its former “glory”.
Yet, a lot has changed since the Cold War days, even though US politics remains the same endless repeat of the same debates, conflicts, and tactics.
As it’s been noted by The Intercept, even back in 1950s he intrepid and independent journalist of the Cold War, Isidor Stone tried to explain why it’s impossible to stop McCarthyism in the US, as Kremlin leaders are constantly being depicted as gravely threatening and even omnipotent for the sole purpose of sustaining militarism at home. Other than the change in Moscow’s ideology — a change many of today’s most toxic McCarthyites explicitly deny – Stone’s observations could be written with equal accuracy today. For instance, he would state that:
If the public mind is to be conditioned for war, if it is being taught to take for granted the destruction of millions of human beings, few of them tainted with this dreadful ideological virus, all of them indeed presumably pleading for us to liberate them, how can we argue that it matters if a few possibly innocent men lose jobs or reputations because of McCarthy?
That is why today’s advocates of McCarthyism are doing everything they can to to sustain fears over foreign adversaries, depicting them as all-powerful and ubiquitous. Аnd once that image takes root, few will be willing to question the propaganda for fear of being accused of siding with the Foreign Evil. Those are the notions that no American dares to challenge anymore without the fear of becoming suspect himself.
Few foreign alleged villains have been vested with such omnipotence and ubiquity as Vladimir Putin has been — at least ever since Democrats discovered that he was a perfect candidate for the bogeyman role that remained vacant for a short while after the end of Cold War. The modern McCarthyism believers are trying to convince the US population that Russia is lurking behind all evils and whoever questions any of that is revealing themselves to be a traitor, likely on Putin’s payroll.
As it’s been noted by The Nation:
The bipartisan, nearly full-political-spectrum tsunami of factually unverified allegations that President Trump has been sedi- tiously “compromised” by the Kremlin, with scarcely any nonpartisan pushback from influential political or media sources, is deeply alarming. Begun by the Clinton campaign in mid-2016, and exemplified now by New York Times columnists (who write of a “Trump-Putin regime” in Washington), strident MSNBC hosts, and unbalanced CNN commentators, the practice is growing into a latter-day McCarthyite hysteria.
Much has changed since the Cold War days, except for the fact that US policies remain the same dull and mindless repetition of the same debates, conflicts, and tactics.