Latest news with #Risen
Yahoo
19-05-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
The Red Scare Still Haunts America
Since Donald Trump retook office on January 20, he's weaponized the federal government to execute his war on 'woke,' targeting diversity, equity, and inclusion programs, LGBTQ+ rights, and higher education—all in the name of restoring America's status as a global superpower. Many of his administration's actions are unprecedented, but the threats and intimidation surrounding them are not: Bullying, conspiratorial thinking, and legal overreach were similarly on full display in Washington in the years immediately following World War II. They're also part of the story told in Clay Risen's Red Scare: Blacklists, McCarthyism, and the Making of Modern America, which argues that the Cold War–era campaigns to purge the United States of those with suspect Communist leanings—the most visible led by Wisconsin Senator Joseph R. McCarthy, who in the early 1950s claimed he had a list of names of subversives in the State Department—were not just a reaction to fears of a Soviet expansion but also a response to the change wrought by Roosevelt's New Deal. That expansive political, economic, and social agenda forever altered how the U.S. government addressed the well-being of its citizens—as well as how the government was perceived by those same citizens. Many of the New Deal's hallmark programs and projects are still in place today, and helped Roosevelt build a winning electoral coalition. But cultural conservatives interpreted the progressive agenda, according to Risen, as 'evidence that something sinister, something foreign, was creeping into the American bloodstream.' 'Starting almost as soon as Roosevelt took office in 1933,' Risen writes, 'this impression that the New Deal was being run by an East Coast elite fed into attacks on the administration as not just un-American, but as a tool of Soviet subversion.' Though Red Scare was completed over a year ago and does not engage in speculation about a second Trump term, there certainly seems to be a through line from McCarthyism—with its purging the federal workforce of 'enemies from within,' its interrogating what is taught in classrooms and by whom, and its breaching of civil liberties—to the Trump administration's assaults on freedom of speech and the rule of law. I recently spoke with Risen about the conspiracy thinking behind the Red Scare—and the political conditions in which it reemerges—and what can be learned by looking back at a perilous time in American history. Our conversation has been edited for length and clarity. Marin Scotten: The Red Scare has historically been framed as a reaction to the Cold War, but you write that much of the anti-Communist sentiment of the time stemmed from resistance to the New Deal. What sort of friction did the New Deal create that helped spur this attack on the American left? Clay Risen: In the 1930s, there was obviously a period of a lot of social, cultural, and economic tumult with the Great Depression going on, but also deeper changes. America was still absorbing a large immigrant population that came in the late nineteenth century, so there was not just this tumult, and not just this explosion of government activism on the part of the Roosevelt administration, but also a wide swath of the American public who took up this banner and said, 'OK, this is the new America that we're building.' I mean, there really was a sense that America was on the verge of collapse as a country. And so the project—obviously the New Deal took this up—but the project that other people saw in more broad terms was: Let's build something better. Let's build a better America, right? Let's build one that has labor rights at the cornerstone. Let's build one that has more 'small-d' democracy, and one that is—and this is really important—fundamentally opposed to fascism. But obviously, not everyone agreed with this. There was a lot of America that opposed the New Deal for economic reasons but also for cultural and political reasons. They pined for an America that wasn't that long in the past. What did America look like in the '20s? Set aside the Jazz Age image from the cities; it was a very conservative place. It was much more of the America that you see in the stories of the Scopes Monkey Trial—much more conservative, much more patriarchal, much more Protestant Christian. Obviously, white supremacy was the name of the game. And there was not nearly the countervailing force that we saw emerge in the '30s, so these two things stood at odds. Around [the New Deal] was a deeper conflict, and often one that on the right birthed deeper conspiracy theories and allegations—that this is anti-American, and that Roosevelt and his cohort are sneaking communism into America. The kind of strictures and emergencies of the Cold War suddenly validated everything that people had said in the '30s and gave room for these conspiracy theories and wild accusations to grow and blossom and really take over a lot of the discourse in America. M.S.: Do you think the conspiracy that fueled the Red Scare ever really dissipated? C.R.: Conspiracy theories are nothing new in America. But what happened in the '30s was a signal change, because there emerged this conspiracy theory that located the enemy within the federal government, so that the critique was no longer that the federal government is too big or unconstitutional or inefficient, but [that it is] fundamentally anti-American. And not just anti-American in concept, but the actors within the federal government are consciously, programmatically going after American society. 'Conspiracy theories are nothing new in America. But what happened in the '30s was a signal change, because there emerged this conspiracy theory that located the enemy within the federal government.' That's sort of the core of this critique. This pops up throughout the Red Scare, and I think never really went away. Today, that's the 'deep state' conspiracy theory. People didn't have that term back then, but it matches up very clearly. It's not just any group of people in the administration, but it is liberal, leftist, radical elites who are beholden to foreign ideologies. Then it was communism; today it's whatever wokeism is. It's hard to look at where we are today and not see it as yet another outgrowth or another florescence of that same idea. M.S.: Do you think there are certain consistent cultural circumstances that lead to the strengthening of that idea? C.R.: My analysis is a little more political than cultural. Because this is fundamentally a conservative phenomenon, right? When the Republican establishment weakens, then this very powerful far-right, or hard-right—because it's not just the neo-Nazis, or the ultimate fringe, it's bigger than that, even if it waxes and wanes—that has always been sort of off to the side of the Republican Party. When the establishment weakens, it moves in. There have been times when the establishment has very much openly embraced these folks. It can be very tempting to say, 'Well, why don't you come into the tent?' It took a while for Republicans in the main to decide Pat Buchanan was too far to the right. There was a long period in the late '80s, when they tried to accommodate him. It's no coincidence that he came around after 12 years of Republican rule in the White House. [An adviser to a series of Republican presidents, Buchanan ran for the Republican presidential nomination in 1992 and 1996 on a strongly anti-immigration, protectionist, and isolationist platform.] Here's this guy with new ideas, new energy, and there's that opportunity. Every time is different, right? What happened with Buchanan is very different from what happened with Trump. I think what happened with Trump is unique because he essentially took over the party, but he did so at a time when it was very weak. M.S.: You write that Joe McCarthy, whose name defines this era in American history, is remembered as 'an aberration, a wild man, a singular cause of America's temporary national hysteria. But he was, in fact, a symptom of the era, not its cause.' What role did the media play in sensationalizing McCarthy? C.R.: McCarthy was, among other things, a master at manipulating print media. He understood how the media worked, and he knew how to use it to his advantage. There were a lot of reporters who were very self-interested and loved to get the exposure of the front-page byline that McCarthy basically guaranteed. Edward R. Murrow—who was a TV journalist and a courageous one—understood that TV was a fundamentally different thing. By putting McCarthy on TV [Murrow's show broadcast a half-hour prime-time report on the Wisconsin senator in 1954, followed by a damning editorial by Murrow himself], they would see him as the bully, the slob, the permanent five o'clock shadow—and all of that would change what people thought.… It's a master class in letting McCarthy hang himself. So the media both played into it and ultimately, I think, was responsible for his dumping. M.S.: Throughout the Red Scare, there's this culture of fear that created self-censorship in workplaces, universities, and the media, which we're also seeing today amid fears of funding cuts, job losses, and deportations. How did people emerge from that? C.R.: Well, some people were willing to stand up. The blacklisted writers and actors deserve enormous credit for not playing the game. But a lot of people just went along with it. And in my mind—and this goes beyond the scope of the book, and it's not really part of the argument—but I think it really took generational change. One of the dynamics of the '60s is the boomer generation coming along, being activated by the Civil Rights Movement and the Vietnam War, turning on their parents and basically saying, 'How could you let this happen?' And of course, the reason, for a lot of people, is simply they had been browbeaten or told that dissent was bad. It's one of the great upsides of that [boomer] generation, that they did stand up. And one of the outcomes of the Red Scare was a very vibrant civil liberties community in the United States, and an understanding that civil liberties were fundamental and could not be traded away during times of inconvenience, or self-declared emergencies. M.S.: You finished this book over a year ago, and you make it very clear that you didn't write it to draw parallels between past and present. What has it been like to watch much of what you'd been researching so deeply be replicated today? C.R.: It's frightening. It's eerie. Despite what lawyers are doing right now—I do think we have a very strong civil liberties community still, and those people are standing up. On the other hand, the Red Scare was always constrained by a White House that, whether it was Eisenhower or Truman, would only go so far. Today, it's like the Red Scare is in the house, literally. Someone called it the other day, 'the blue scare.' I won't take credit for that, but I will use it. That's exactly what's going on, and you see that in Trump's rhetoric: He will never just say 'the Democrats.' It's 'radical Democrats,' 'anti-American Democrats.' That is demonization, exactly like we saw in the Red Scare. Naïvely, I'd like to say the Red Scare ended and so our current moment will end. But I'm not sure what that looks like because, again, the differences are so pronounced.
USA Today
11-05-2025
- Sport
- USA Today
Boston Celtics jersey history No. 19 - Arnie Risen (1955-58)
Boston Celtics jersey history No. 19 - Arnie Risen (1955-58) The Boston Celtics have had players suiting up in a total of 68 different jersey numbers (and have three others not part of any numerical series) since their founding at the dawn of the Basketball Association of America (BAA -- the league that would become today's NBA), worn by well over 500 players in the course of Celtics history. To commemorate the players who wore those numbers, Celtics Wire is covering the entire history of jersey numbers and the players who sported them since the founding of the team. With 25 of those jerseys now retired to honor some of the greatest Celtics to wear those jerseys, there is a lot of history to cover. And for today's article, we will continue with the fourth of six people to wear the No. 19 jersey, Boston big man alum Arnie Risen. After ending his college career at Ohio State, Risen joined (then) Rochester Royals (now, Sacramento Kings) in 1948. The Hall of Fame Lexington, Kentucky native would play the first seven seasons of his pro career with the Royals before his contract was bought by Boston in 1955, winning a title with the team in a reserve role in 1957 before retiring in 1958. During his time suiting up for the Celtics, Risen wore only jersey No. 19 and put up 7.3 points, 6.9 rebounds, and 1.1 assists per game. All stats and data courtesy of Basketball Reference.
Boston Globe
09-05-2025
- Politics
- Boston Globe
The chilling effect of crackdowns on leaks to the press
There would be little known about national intelligence programs — important and newsworthy information for the public to know — without reporters being able to protect the identities of their sources. But three presidents, George W. Bush, Barack Obama, and Donald Trump, went to great lengths to try to force reporters to reveal their sources. Advertisement Three years after Miller's jailing, another reporter who worked closely with me, James Risen, was embroiled in a leak investigation that dragged on for six years after he was subpoenaed and ordered to reveal his confidential source for a story about Iran. The source, a CIA employee, went to prison for the leak. Risen was spared prison only because the Supreme Court refused to hear his case. Although he was out of legal jeopardy, I saw the toll the long, highly pressured court battle took on Risen. It's hard to report and write news stories with the possibility of jail time hanging over you. Advertisement Bush and Obama initiated more criminal leak investigations than all their predecessors combined. Having been a journalist in Washington, D.C., for 20 years, I saw firsthand how these Justice Department probes curbed the ability of journalists to talk to government officials who feared being jailed. I remember one of the Times' Pentagon reporters telling me that his sources left the building any time they took his calls. In 2010, Fox News correspondent James Rosen had his phone records seized by the government. During his first term, Trump tripled the number of criminal leak investigations, though there were few prosecutions. Merrick Garland, attorney general in the Biden administration, put in When he returned to the White House, Trump, who is hostile to the traditional news media and calls reporters 'enemies of the people' and purveyors of 'fake news,' junked the Garland rules, which went into effect in 2022. Last month, Attorney General Pam Bondi issued a Advertisement What is truly invasive and worrisome is These changes, which will surely sit in the growing pile of constitutional challenges to many of Trump's new policies, clearly flout the intention of the First Amendment, which guarantees freedom of the press. A reporter who covered the Garland changes told me: 'For reporters, the message coming from the Trump Justice Department is clear: They now regard ordinary aspects of news gathering, such as the protection of anonymous sources, as potentially criminal. Hugely important stories vital to the public, such as Woodward and Bernstein's Watergate reporting, would have been impossible without anonymous sources. But these changes threaten to make that kind of reporting much more difficult and risky. It may help those in power, but it's going to hurt everyone else.' When leak investigations began proliferating during the Bush administration and I was the Times's Washington bureau chief, Max Frankel, a former executive editor of the Times, gave me a copy of the famous affidavit he filed in the Pentagon Papers case, which, in 1971, resulted in a 6-3 decision that banned the government from preventing publication of any news story. Frankel's affidavit emphasized that leaks were part of everyday discourse between reporters and government officials. In fact, President Johnson, standing in waist-high water in a swimming pool, had discussed classified information about the Vietnam War with his guest, none other than Max Frankel. Advertisement Of course, some leaks have been damaging or embarrassing to the federal government. But a decade after the Pentagon Papers ruling, the solicitor general who argued the case admitted that leaking the secret history had not harmed national security. Giving the government the strong hand in stopping leaks once again only accomplishes one thing: It denies the public knowledge of the government's inner workings, including situations that might be illegal, like
Daily Mail
23-04-2025
- Daily Mail
SARAH VINE: Forget tariffs... it's a proper crisis when the tills break down at our beloved M&S!
Forget the ravens in the Tower of London. Forget the King asleep in his cave and the eagles circling the mountain top. The surest sign that the Kingdom is in mortal peril is the news that the tills stopped working at Marks & Spencer over the Easter weekend. As portents of doom go, this must surely be a serious one. The Pope may be dead, but what about the fact that in Bexleyheath shoppers can't use their contactless cards? Did Nostradamus mention this in his Les Propheties? He might have done. 'And on the day of the Risen Christ / In the year of our Lord two thousand and twenty-five/ the tillers of Spencer and Marc shalt fayle and fall silent / And the people will be refused their three-pack loin coverings and porcine confectionery / And verily Sparks will fly.' Chilling. The panic was palpable. There was righteous anger on social media. 'I've tried to return some clothing to the Camden store and have been told that your wi-fi has been down company-wide since Saturday so I can't return them,' fumed one customer. Another: 'Went to @marksandspencer did a full food shop only to be told that I can't use contactless. Heading to Waitrose now instead.' Some reported apocalyptic scenes: 'In a queue with ten customers at @marksandspencer, I was the only person remaining when they announced that their contactless service was not working on their card machine.' (Which begs the question: what happened to the others?) Yet another: 'When you drive 20 minutes for breakfast at the cafe but there's a company-wide issue, contactless isn't working and they decide to close the cafe.' Setting aside the fact that driving 20 minutes to find breakfast in a supermarket cafe seems a little excessive, the strength of feeling at what is, after all, a fairly minor inconvenience, offers an interesting insight into the importance of Marks & Spencer in the national conscience. Or, to coin a phrase, this isn't just any technical glitch, this is an M&S technical glitch. No store, not even John Lewis, comes close to Marks and Sparks in the hearts of British shoppers. It is as quintessentially British as the Royal Family, rain-lashed beaches and endless cups of milky tea. It is the closest we have these days to a national identity we all share. It also – despite the occasional hiccup – represents quality, reliability, consistency. No wonder the general public was so freaked out by this meltdown. In an uncertain and troubling world, M&S stands as a beacon of stability against the wild seas of misfortune (and, let's face it, those seas have been quite wild of late). Everything else may be crashing down around our heads, but so long as you can get a prawn sandwich and a packet of Percy Pigs from M&S, all is well. It's civilisation. The Greeks invented democracy, the Romans devised the aqueducts, we built Marks and Sparks. Indeed, growing up in Rome, my mother's first port of call on trips home was always M&S. The flagship store in Oxford Street was her favourite: she once disappeared for five hours into its comforting embrace, stocking up on pyjamas and underwear to take back with her. I found her in the food hall buying all the raspberry jellies (her favourite). Her mother was the same. My grandfather had strict instructions for the weekly shop. The basics were to be obtained from Sainsbury's. But the important groceries – real fruit juice, certain vegetables, quiche and good apples – were to be procured strictly at Marks. They were eked out during the week, small slices of delicious luxury. Even now, when I'm feeling a bit discombobulated, I find a trip to Marks soothing. The clothes are neither too cheap nor too expensive, neither too fashion forward nor too frumpy. Some years they're better than others (this year is an especially good one) but, overall, the quality is consistent. One of the oldest items of clothing I own is a wool cape I bought there in the Nineties; my daughter recently discovered it and won't stop wearing it. Marks and Sparks caters for everyone – tall, short, fat, thin, old, young. But at its essence its secret is simple: affordable quality. But also trust, reliability, a fair price for a good product – in other words, old-fashioned British values. Better get those tills fixed, guys; we don't want a revolution. There should be plenty of sympathy for Marianne It seems rather sad that Marianne Faithfull – singer, model, rock 'n' roll muse and the inspiration for Rolling Stones classics such as Wild Horses and You Can't Always Get What You Want – died leaving assets worth just £35,000. For a few years she was instrumental to the image of the band and its leading man, Mick Jagger. Indeed, arguably the Stones would not have been so successful were it not for the glamour her bohemian lifestyle lent them. One of their most famous songs, Sympathy For The Devil, was inspired by The Master And Margarita, a novel by Mikhail Bulgakov, which Faithfull introduced Jagger to – and yet what thanks did she get? Hers is a tale familiar to so many women who give their all to support the men they love then somehow find themselves with no one to turn to in their hour of need. I understand that Prince Andrew is a problematic character for the Royal Family, but I really don't see why this has any bearing on his right to attend church with them at Easter. Indeed, I would have thought that if anything, he should be encouraged to atone for his sins. Now that we finally have clarity on the definition of a woman, can we please stop using the term 'cis'? It's ugly, derogatory – and, crucially, redundant. Males who mark their territory with urine are common in the animal kingdom. I thought humans were more sophisticated – but judging by the actions of trans protesters last week, apparently not. Cries of 'we pee where we want' and 'I love p***ing on Terfs' accompanied footage of activists in a ladies' loo, aggressively chanting 'Where we do our business is none of your business!' As someone who has owned several male pets, I'm afraid there's only one cure for this kind of behaviour. A quick trip to the vet should fix it. Following Newsnight's decision to almost completely ignore last week's Supreme Court ruling on the definition of a woman, the BBC's comedy show, Have I Got News For You, failed to mention it at all – despite it being the leading news item of the week. You might have thought that, as seasoned satirists, show regulars Paul Merton and Ian Hislop and their guests – including Julian Clary, who is known for his waspish wit – would have mined the comedy seam of the highest court in the land being forced to state the bleeding obvious. But no, not a peep. Why do we fund band's sick stunt? Whatever you think of the Israel/Palestine conflict, projecting 'Free Palestine, F**k Israel' on stage at a music festival is at best offensive, at worst an endorsement of terrorist acts given the atrocities committed on October 7, 2023. That is what the band Kneecap chose to do at Coachella. This is the group given £14,250 of arts funding at the behest of this Government – after the Tories tried to block it. Should taxpayers' money really be going to supporters of terrorists?
The Guardian
30-03-2025
- Politics
- The Guardian
‘Have you no sense of decency, sir?' Joe McCarthy and the road to Trump
On 9 June 1954, in a Senate hearing room on Capitol Hill, Joseph Nye Welch made American history. With one question, the lawyer prompted the downfall of Joe McCarthy, the Republican Wisconsin senator who for years had run amok, his persecution of supposed communist subversives ruining countless lives. 'Until this moment, Senator, I think I never really gauged your cruelty or your recklessness,' Welch said, as millions watched on TV, as he defended Fred Fisher, a young lawyer in McCarthy's sights. 'Let us not assassinate this lad further, Senator. You have done enough. Have you no sense of decency, sir, at long last? Have you left no sense of decency?' As Clay Risen writes in his new history, Red Scare: Blacklists, McCarthyism, and the Making of Modern America: 'McCarthy, it seemed, did not.' The public listened. McCarthy was abandoned by those in power. McCarthyism had become McCarthywasm, President Dwight D Eisenhower joked. The senator died three years later, aged just 48, firmly in disgrace. Risen published his book last week, to glowing reviews, smack in the middle of another dramatic Washington moment, full of drama, replete with disgrace, in which many have compared McCarthy and Donald Trump, a Republican president pursuing his own purges and persecutions. Government workers are in Trump's sights. So are protesting students and anyone or anything he deems representative of progressive values – of promoting diversity, equity and inclusion. Trump's political enemies are best defined as anyone he thinks wronged him in his first term, his defeat in 2020, his four criminal cases and in the election last year. 'McCarthy was not a lone wolf,' Risen said, 'but he was willing to go and say things. No one knew what he was going to say. There was something Trumpian in that regard.' Asking historians to discuss their subjects in light of modern figures and events is a journalistic cliche. But it seems fair when talking to Risen. He has addressed the question, writing for his employer, the New York Times, about the Trumpist 'New Right' in a piece illustrated with a picture of McCarthy in a red Maga cap. Given McCarthy was finally brought down by a simple appeal to decency, could that possibly happen, one day, to Trump? 'I think that's been the question since 2015,' Risen said. 'I remember when he went crossways with [the Arizona senator] John McCain, and everyone said, 'Well, that's the end, because you say something like that about a war hero … ' But remember, Trump said right around the same time, 'Look, I go walk out into Fifth Avenue and shoot someone, and my supporters will still be with me.' And it's funny: so many things he's been wrong about, or incoherent about, but in that he was right.' Reading Red Scare, it seems inconceivable such hysteria could have lasted so long, stoked by postwar paranoia about agents of the emerging Russian enemy, reaching sulfurous heights in years shot through with nuclear panic. It seems inconceivable ordinary Americans could have allowed it. To Risen, it's not inconceivable at all. 'The way I always explain it is, 'Look, America is a big place, and most Americans don't pay any attention to politics. They have no idea. Most of their interpretation at least of national politics is strictly economic.'' The 1950s were boom years. Now, since Trump's return to the White House, the economy is shaky but the president has not shouldered the blame. 'There are ancillary things,' Risen said. 'Immigration as an economic issue. Occasionally a cultural element comes in. Abortion is obviously part of that. But most people, when they think about 'What does the federal government mean to me?', they think in economic terms.' As the red scare raged, most Americans simply did not care. Now, Risen said, many persist in thinking: 'Well, shouldn't we have a businessman running the country?' 'So that raises the question: now the economy's tanking, or the markets are tanking, and we may find ourselves in recession, do those people move away from Trump? Or do people go with it?' At long last, sir, have you no currency? Could happen. Risen is 48. He worked at Democracy: A Journal of Ideas and the New Republic, then at the Times he edited opinion and politics before switching to writing obituaries. Somehow he has written nine books, five on American whiskey and four histories: of the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr; of the Civil Rights Act of 1964; of Teddy Roosevelt at war; and now Red Scare. 'Postwar American politics and political culture is sort of my lodestone. The red scare seemed a natural fit.' Sign up to First Thing Our US morning briefing breaks down the key stories of the day, telling you what's happening and why it matters after newsletter promotion Risen spoke from the Times newsroom in midtown Manhattan. Further uptown, in the Morningside Heights neighborhood, protesters rallied for Mahmoud Khalil, a Palestinian graduate student with a green card and an American wife, arrested for his role in anti-Israel protests. Spirited to Louisiana, Khalil was charged with no crime. Instead, he was held under an obscure law – from 1952, the heart of the red scare – that allows for the deportation of anyone deemed a threat to US foreign policy. Many fear Khalil is a test case for purges to come. Risen said: 'The way they have gone after him, even the tools they're using, are one and the same with the way they tried to get Harry Bridges, who was an Australian-born labor leader of the west coast longshoremen' in the early 1950s. 'Personally, I think Bridges is a hero … He was detained without cause at the start of the Korean war because he was considered a threat to national security. His case went to the supreme court, he won, and he lived a long time. 'Obviously there are some differences but it's hard not to see the same stories playing out now. The Department of Education recently announced a tip line where if you're a parent and you think some teacher or some librarian is, I don't want to use the verb, 'DEI' … Essentially, it's: 'If you just have a complaint about a teacher, in this vein, let us know.' 'The same thing existed during during the red scare. The FBI had the Responsibilities Program, where they would take input from grassroots organizations, veterans groups, concerned parents groups, and then they would share information with PTAs, with local school boards. You know: 'This teacher has a background that's kind of suspect,' 'Here's a list of books that you want to remove from your library.' It's just the same playbook. It's terrifying to see it play out. And in fact, in some ways, I think it's much scarier now.' After the red scare, Republicans marched ever further to the right. There was Richard Nixon, who cut his teeth questioning suspected communists as a congressman in the 50s, scenes retold in Risen's book. There was Ronald Reagan, who testified before the House un-American activities committee and flirted with extremists. There was Pat Buchanan, who challenged the establishment from the far right, and there was Newt Gingrich, who polarized and radicalized Congress. But, Risen said, 'despite everything, there were safeguards' that had ultimately withstood the red scare. 'We had a center-right establishment of the Republican party that tolerated but ultimately moved on from the red scare. We had a fairly established media that was credulous and made a lot of mistakes but ultimately was not taken in by the red scare and was willing to call some of the worst red scarers to account. One of the things that came out of the red scare was a stronger awareness of the importance of defending civil liberties. The ACLU and the American Bar Association did not cover themselves in glory during the red scare. But ever since then, groups like that have been much more present and aggressive in terms of defending civil liberties, and so we see that today. 'Hopefully it's enough. I think a lot remains to be seen whether what we're going through now will be worse than the red scare, but I'm not at all hopeful.' In that fateful hearing in 1954, Joe McCarthy's own counsel sat at his side. It was Roy Cohn, a ruthless New York lawyer who later became mentor to a young Trump. Risen sees plenty of other parallels between McCarthy and Trump. 'I spent a lot of time looking at the encomiums to McCarthy when he died, and letters his friends were sharing, and so much of it was the sentiment that McCarthy was the ultimate victim, because McCarthy was the guy who was willing to say the truth, and he was destroyed for it.' Trump also presents himself as both victim and avenger, promising revenge and retribution. 'There was around [McCarthy] this idea that it wasn't enough just to replace the leaders. It wasn't enough just to control spending. Reform was not enough. The fundamental core of the New Deal' – Franklin Roosevelt's vast modernization of the US state, from the 1930s – 'needed to be thrown in the garbage, and anybody ever connected to any of that needed to be banished.' In the 1950s, that effort failed. In the 2020s, Trump and his mega-donor and aide Elon Musk are trying again – it seems with more success. Risen said: 'When you look at not so much Trump but at some of the more systematic thinkers around him, like JD Vance and his circle, like Kevin Roberts, Stephen Miller, I think some of these guys do have a sense of history.' 'I don't think Elon Musk does, necessarily, but he is saying those same things about 'We need to go in and dismantle, essentially, the New Deal architecture.' And it's not just because it's expensive, it's because it's [seen as] un-American and a rot on society. In the 1940s and 50s, the name for this was 'communism'. In that sense, communism was a red herring. It wasn't really about communism. It was about progressivism. It was about the New Deal. It's about this culture in America that was more tolerant, pluralistic, in favor of labor rights, women's rights, civil rights. That was the target.' During the red scare, in what came to be called 'the lavender scare', gay men were ensnared and ruthlessly ruined. Risen said: 'Today, it's DEI or woke or whatever. But it's the same thing. It's not that they're getting rid of DEI programs, whatever that might mean. They're mainly getting rid of fundamental civil rights protections or offices that protect civil rights, that are nothing about what they charge. 'That is the real game, at heart. It's what was going on in the red scare.' Red Scare is published in the US by Scribner
