The last days of progressive McCarthyism
For whatever one sows, that will he also reap
The Labor ship has struck the rock of identity politics, with too many of its spokespeople adopting a censorious tone to those who fail to embrace their particular social policy agendas. As the party of political grievance, it has been selective in the narrow range of marginalised groups it supports.
Handing over greater influence to those who are doing well and appear[ing] oblivious to, or even possibly dismissive of, the struggles of those who are, in the overused contemporary parlance, ‘doing it tough’ a long way from the well-serviced environment of the inner city, is political poison.
Former Labor minister Kim Carr talking to Troy Bramston, The Australian, 24/10/24
It wasn’t so long ago progressives were riding high. They had a moment; they really did. Their radical views set the agenda and tone for the Democratic Party and, especially in cultural areas, were hegemonic in the nation’s discourse. Building in the teens and cresting in the early ‘20s with the Black Lives Matter protests and heady early days of the Biden administration, very few of their ideas seemed off the table. Defund the police and empty the jails? Sure! Abolish ICE and decriminalize the border? Absolutely! Get rid of fossil fuels and have a “Green New Deal”? Definitely! Demand trillions of dollars for a “transformational” Build Back Better bill? We’re just getting started! Promote DEI and the struggle for “equity” (not equal opportunity) everywhere? It’s the only way to fight privilege! Insist that a new ideology around race and gender should be accepted by everyone? Of course, only a bigot would resist!
As far as progressives were concerned, they had ripped the Overton window wide open and it only remained to push the voters through it. In their view, that wouldn’t be too hard since these were great ideas and voters, at least the non-deplorable ones, were thirsty for a bold new approach to America’s problems.
Ruy Teixeira, The Liberal Patriot, 25/10/24
Video summary
AI podcast
There’s been a lot of ‘It’s 50:50, too tight to call’ softcock prevaricating about the election. I don’t dispute that the poll results show the candidates being evenly matched. Nonetheless, I assume the political hardheads know the polls are overestimating Kamala’s support and are expecting a Trump victory.
I made a lot of money, on a small outlay, betting on Trump to win in 2016. (Like they say, it’s not about being right; it’s about being right when everyone else is wrong.) I then lost an almost equivalent amount of money betting on Trump to win in 2020. This time around, I’m not betting. But if I were, I’d be putting my money on Trump.
Events, dear boy, events
Everyone who’s anyone now has a Substack. But that wasn’t the case when I early adopted back at the start of 2022. I didn’t have a cunning plan when I launched Precariat musings beyond busting out a weekly thinkpiece about topics gig-economy types might find interesting. I certainly didn’t expect to be issuing semi-regular denunciations of the professional-managerial class (PMC). A class, full disclosure, I’m a self-hating but fully paid-up member of.
I was six months into Substacking before I even mentioned our university-educated, socially liberal and fiscally conservative overlords. And that was mainly in regard to France.
As an aside, I did note in passing, “If there’s a Biden-Trump rematch, or a Harris-Trump contest, in 2024, Orange Hitler almost certainly wins.” (I was reassured when the brilliant if erratic Paul Keating issued a similar forecast in early 2024, though he assumed the Democrats wouldn’t be foolish enough to run Harris.)
After another European election – the one that swept Giorgia Meloni to power – I authored the first of what would be multiple posts about the PMC’s indefatigable enthusiasm for mass migration in late 2022. But even at that point, I was still a long way off PMC-derangement syndrome.
That set in when I started seeing a then low-profile British academic called Matt Goodwin on then-obscure British podcasts, such as Triggernometry.
After I read Values, Voice and Virtue, I became convinced Goodwin and his fellow ‘heterodox’ thinkers were onto something. That those he critiqued – legacy media types and academics, mainly – reacted so furiously to his accusations made me even more certain he was prodding a raw nerve.
Hollywood endings
Historical eras rarely have neat beginnings and endings. In the popular imagination, McCarthyism abruptly crumbled when an avuncular lawyer demanded, “Have you no sense of decency, sir, at long last? Have you left no sense of decency?” An unbeatable climax to a courtroom drama, I’ll grant you. But in the real world, McCarthyism petered out somewhat less dramatically for a multitude of reasons. Not least, McCarthy drinking himself to death just shy of his 50th birthday. (McCarthy’s brilliant, sociopathic chief counsel Roy Cohn, who died of AIDs just shy of his 60th birthday, served as a mentor to Trump.)
McCarthy initially had many reasonable Americans onside. (Back then, Communism was regarded as even more of an existential threat than racism, sexism or transphobia.) But he overplayed his hand with increasingly irrational claims and unhinged behaviour.
True, he never insisted there were 58 genders. Or went about ostentatiously kneeling in public. But in the Irish fashion, he liked a drink and suffered from alcoholic paranoia in his declining years. At the bitter end, he probably truly believed there were ill-intentioned Marxist-Leninists lurking in his bedroom.
Those on the Left, especially on the American Left, used to go on and on about McCarthyism. Curiously, Leftists have been keeping shtum about McCarthyist excesses of late, so let me educate younger readers.
Senator Joseph McCarthy was not a cartoon villain. Like many men of his generation, he served his nation honourably in WWII. McCarthy didn’t invent the Red Scare, and the Americans weren’t wrong to believe there were Communist spies at work in the US.
But like many politicians – and political movements – McCarthy and McCarthyism fell victim to mania. McCarthy saw Communism everywhere. Given McCarthy, like most Americans at the time, believed Communism was bad, it wasn’t much of a leap to conclude any means were justified to reach the utopian end of a Communist-spy/agitator/sympathiser-free America.
If that meant McCarthy – almost certainly gay himself – drove a colleague to suicide by threatening to publicise his son’s arrest for homosexual solicitation, well, you can’t make an omelette without breaking some eggs.
If hundreds of left-leaning or even just liberal actors, directors, journalists, musicians, and writers had their careers derailed or their lives destroyed, well, surely they bought it on themselves by being recklessly Communism-adjacent.
If academics, public servants and movie stars had to sign a loyalty oath swearing they weren’t a member of the Communist Party, well, who wants someone with an insufficient commitment to free markets potentially sowing dissension, especially among the impressionable youth?
The denouement
The non-cinematic truth is that McCarthyism dissipated because the fever dream broke. Studio executives – then as now, ultimately more concerned with box office receipts than ideology – started re-employing blacklisted actors, directors and writers.
Employers stopped insisting potential hires sign an oath declaring they had no subversive ideas. Mainstream centre-right politicians, intellectuals and captains of industry started distancing themselves from McCarthy. Comedians such as Mort Sahl and Lenny Bruce (the Dave Chappelle of his day) relentlessly mocked McCarthy and audiences began chuckling less tentatively.
While the American public remained staunchly anti-Communist, they came to realise Communist subversion wasn’t the sole cause of all of America’s ills. Then they began to question the motivations and sanity of the reds-under-the-bed ranters.
At some cost, I’ve spent the last couple of years arguing that progressive elites would reap the whirlwind if they continued to overreach, particularly regarding immigration.
The whirlwind arrived some time ago, as evidenced by centre-left politicians – not least Kamala – crab-running away from identity politics and beginning to get serious about reducing unprecedentedly high levels of immigration (both legal and, in the case of the US and UK, illegal). And universities dropping DEI loyalty oaths. And tech-companies shuttering DEI departments. And showbiz types steering clear of earnest agitprop (soooo 2020!). And independent media outlets outgunning their more rigidly ‘woke’ legacy media competitors. And opinion polling showing growing fatigue with the progressive agenda.
But if Trump wins on November 5, the whirlwind will descend with full force.
Like the 1932 or 1980 elections, it will be a societal tipping point for the US. Given the Anglosphere, especially in this digital epoch, orbits around an American sun, a Trump victory will soon rearrange the political dynamics in Australia, Canada, New Zealand, and the UK.
On which, more next week.
you are not betting on this one?
was going to suggest next dinner on it. Ill take Harris!.