‘McCarthyism’ is an overused bogus term, but it’s part of the lexicon that will never go away.
Senator Joe McCarthy was far more correct than he was wrong (it is a fact that some of the people caught into the net at the time were actually innocent) about Russian infiltration in US government and politics leading up to the 50’s during the Cold War.
That said, what’s happening now is in fact something similar to what the Left fraudulently accused McCarthy of, a bona fide witch hunt.
The Republican senator at least, was truly acting on a sense of patriotism, the Democrats however, couldn’t give a toss about Russian involvement which can be proven over their silence on Barak Obama and Hillary Clinton’s selling of 20% of US uranium deposits to the them. They’re just being the same crass, opportunistic bastards that Ted Kennedy was when he actually did seek Russian/Soviet help to derail the candidacy of the then ex-Governor of California, Ronald Reagan for the US presidency.
‘Russian bots’ washed your brain: FBI channels John Birch Society, becomes Hooverstan again
The U.S. federal government fears that in 2016, Russians conspired to overstimulate the American public with news favoring a particular point of view.
That’s the gist of the brief against Russia in a specific aspect of the Russia-hacked-the-election probe. The aspect in question involves getting to the bottom of this proposition, outlined by McClatchy today:
Operatives for Russia appear to have strategically timed the computer commands, known as “bots,” to blitz social media with links to the pro-Trump stories at times when the billionaire businessman was on the defensive in his race against Democrat Hillary Clinton, these sources said.
In other words, Russia allegedly tried to saturate social media with “pro-Trump stories.”
This allegation itself is far from proven. But even if it were proven – so what?
The FBI has apparently blown right past “so what,” and is moving out smartly to check and see if the publishers of “pro-Trump stories” were somehow colluding with the “Russian operatives” to hype their wares.
For whatever reason – make up your own; I’m sure it has nothing to do with Steve Bannon or any other Trump adviser – Breitbart keeps appearing first in the list of purveyors of “pro-Trump stories.” Breitbart’s sinister fellows in this hypothetical endeavor are InfoWars, RT (Russia Today), and Sputnik. The latter two are Russian state media outlets.
An FBI-led task force is thus investigating…a post-modern Red Scare. It still involves the Russians. It still involves a fell conspiracy to wash the American people’s brains and make them do terrible things.
But instead of the Communist Left, the new Red Scare is a conspiracy of the – well, I guess the narrative-writers would call it the “Populist Alt-Right.” (I’m not too all-fired sure what that is. For a while I thought it was Milo Yiannopoulos. But he’s not really a populist. On the other hand, neither are Trump’s better-known henchmen. Neither are most Trump supporters, for that matter – if we’re talking populist populism. It seems to me we’re really talking Vague, All-Purpose Bogeyman Populism, but that can be, you know, anything. Well, I digress.)
The distinctive feature of this story – “Russian bots washed your brain and maybe Breitbart helped, and for your safety it must be investigated immediately by the FBI” – is that it’s the same basic narrative in which the American Left cast anti-Communism 60-70 years ago. At that time, the Left considered it appalling.
The FBI, investigating people just because some Russians happened to appreciate their work? What’s next, profiling the audience at Hamilton?
Have they no decency?
