The Blacklisting of America
Have You No Decency, Sir?
From Stalin to Hitler and Putin to Orbán, authoritarian regimes routinely blacklist journalists, activists, and political opponents. They are publicly condemned, ostracized, and intimidated to instill fear, suppress the truth, and control the public narrative.
Blacklisting was a central tool of McCarthyism during the redbaiting withchunts of the 1950s.
Joseph McCarthy served as a Republican U.S. Senator from Wisconsin from 1947 to 1957. He rocketed to fame by leading the “Red Scare” during the Cold War, alleging that communists, Soviet spies, and sympathizers had infiltrated the United States federal government, film industry, and academia.
McCarthy’s confrontational Senate hearings were likened to the Salem Witch Trials, with accusations frequently based on flimsy evidence, hearsay, and outright fabrications. Many of those he blacklisted lost their jobs and had their lives destroyed.
Republican colleagues in the Senate remained silent about McCarthy's redbaiting, fearing that speaking out might damage their political careers.
The Despicable and Ruthless Roy Cohn
Roy Cohn served as Senator Joseph McCarthy's chief counsel during the 1954 McCarthy hearings into alleged subversives in the U. S. Army.
Cohn believed in a confrontational approach to law and politics, often employing smear campaigns against those he considered enemies. He realized that creating a climate of fear and paranoia would lead to political power for him and McCarthy.
Cohn Became Donald Trump’s Mentor and Fixer
Ray Cohn was also a “consigliere” lawyer in New York, representing members of the Genovese and Gambino crime families.
Donald Trump hired Cohn in 1973 as a political fixer when the Justice Department sued him and his father for racist rental practices in their real estate business. Cohn soon became his full-time lawyer and mentor.
Trump's business career includes multiple bankruptcies, phony charities, a fraudulent university, a trail of unpaid contractors, and over 4,000 combative legal actions. Cohn's mentorship emphasized the importance of aggression, showmanship, and a willingness to always “hit back harder.”
The president is now using Cohn/McCarthy-style blacklisting against a growing list of perceived enemies that he feels threaten his power and control.
That list includes prominent law firms, universities, journalists, and media outlets that fail to embrace the Trump administration's policies or are perceived as political opponents who have wronged him.
This includes Liz Cheney, Adam Kinzinger, Adam Schiff, and other members of the House committee investigating the January 6 Capitol attack that Trump now says should be imprisoned.
He is ordering the Justice Department to scrutinize former senior officials Miles Taylor and Christopher Krebs, who both served in the Trump administration. Taylor was with the Department of Homeland Security, and Krebs was the director of the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency.
Taylor authored an anonymous op-ed in 2018 that criticized Trump and offered a scathing firsthand account of his decision-making process. Krebs is under attack for concluding that Trump’s claims of election fraud in 2020 “either have been unsubstantiated or are technically incoherent.”
Public figures and ordinary citizens who come into Trump’s crosshairs often face a tidal wave of severe harassment from his supporters, including doxing on social media, intimidation in public, and death threats against them and their families.
Blacklisting Democracy
The Trump administration is also seeking to undo the basic principles of our Constitution by ignoring the separation of powers while seeking to consolidate all authority for himself. This, in effect, is a blacklisting of our founding document and an assault on our democracy.
On June 9, 1954, Joseph Welch was chief counsel for the United States Army during McCarthy’s hearings into the military.
He is now famous for confronting the Senator and asking, "Have you no decency, sir?”
This became the turning point in public opinion against McCarthy. He was finally censured in the Senate and died in disgrace in 1957 from acute alcoholism. He was 48 years old.
Roy Cohn died penniless in 1986 at the age of 58. After decades of abusing the law, he was finally disbarred for unethical conduct and had his home and assets seized for tax fraud.
On June 14th, Indivisible plans nationwide protests for “No Kings Day,” a day of defiance against Donald Trump's authoritarianism.
Resources:
No King’s Day ~ Indivisible
40 Facts About McCarthy Hearings ~ Facts.net
The Man Who First Fueled Donald Trump’s Paranoid Politics ~ Time
The Final Lesson Donald Trump Never Learned From Roy Cohn ~ Politico
Just What Were Donald Trump's Ties to the Mob? ~ Politico
Trump Claims Liz Cheney And Jan. 6 Committee Should Be Jailed ~ ABC News
Trump Orders Investigation Of Two First-Term Administration Aides Who Criticized Him ~ Politico
A Look At The Universities With Federal Funding Targeted By The Trump Administration ~ Associated Press
They’re Eating the Truth ~ Perspectives
I Alone Can Break It! ~ Perspectives
From Julia: It helps me to be reminded that America finally turned on McCarthy. It scares me that Trump continues to have power, which he uses. What is America thinking!!! Will we finally see this country rising and dumping Trump? How much worse does he have to get?
Thanks, Brad. This is an important reminder of who and what we're dealing with.