(Opinion) History has an unfailing way of repeating itself.
It looks as if we are in for a repeat of the bad old days of Wisconsin Senator Joe McCarthy’s House Un-American Activities Committee, which in the 1950s terrorized anyone suspected of ‘communist’ leanings.
No more than attendance at a meeting of the American Civil Liberties Union or the NAACP or having checked out a copy of Carl Marx’s ‘Das Capital’ from the public library could put you under ‘suspicion’.
Hard to believe but true; an over-zealous Wisconsin GOP official demanded to my headmaster that I be expelled from my prep school because of a positive review I had written in the school newspaper (circulation 500) of an anti-McCarthy book.
He threatened to withdraw his son if I was not summarily expelled, which, of course, I wasn’t, and he didn’t.
Especially in the publishing, movie, creative, entertainment areas and the government security services, and despite a lack of any proof of subversion, the ‘red scare’ was used to get more than 2,000 government employees fired from their jobs and slandered as ‘sympathizers’ often as payback by their enemies.
It was a period later described by Republican Senator Susan Collins of Maine, the first woman elected to the Senate, as “a shameful chapter in American history…a time when character assassination, mud-slinging, and guilt by association trumped the truth and fairness.”
Are we heading for a replay? It’s too early to tell, but the signs are ominous.
An election denier and right-wing ally of former President Donald Trump, Congressman Jim Jordan (R-Ohio) will chair the easy-to-remember Select Subcommittee on the Weaponization of the Federal Government.
This title yells its prejudice before even its first meeting.
Wrote Tom Nichols in the Atlantic: “I suspect that the Jordan committee will not look to uncover abuses, but rather to portray any government actions that it does not like as abuses, especially the investigations into Trump.”
The woeful handling by President Biden’s White House and Mike Pence (and heaven knows whom else) of a small number of ‘classified’ documents from the incredible 50 million issued yearly is regrettable.
We must share a particular concern with Jordan that something is wrong with the system.
This time it is not ‘communism’ on the whipping platform, but any action not considered supportive of the right-wing conservative agenda.
And there are plenty of those. Anyone connected with the January 6 investigation had better watch out.
In an apparent effort to blunt comparisons with the odious McCarthy effort, House leadership is promoting the committee as a new ‘Church Committee’, the respected 1975 investigation of abuses in the US security agencies led by Senator Frank Church.
“It is outrageous to call it a new Church committee,” wrote Gary Hart, a former senator from Colorado and Church committee member.
“Trying to disguise a highly partisan effort to legitimize undemocratic activities by cloaking it in the mantle of a successful bipartisan committee from decades ago is a mockery.”
Jordan has thrown down the gauntlet, promising punishment to anyone or anything he may consider a danger – an enemy of his ultra-MAGA conservative tribe.
He has clearly stated that he plans a wide-ranging investigation into what he alleges is how the federal government, especially the FBI, CIA, and Department of Justice, have abused the rights of conservatives and, especially, the former President.
He has insisted that his committee be guaranteed a budget no smaller than the funding of the January 6th House investigation, suggesting that he’s on a ‘get even’ mission with the committee that formerly deprived him of a seat.
The newly created committee is expected to investigate the investigators scrutinizing GOP criminality.
Where that will lead, we can only guess.
McCarthy’s technique was to create mass paranoia. If your career and reputation are endangered because you signed a ‘never Trump’ petition and Jordan decides to point at never-Trumpers as ‘un-American’ and attackers of the Capital as ‘patriots’, history is almost sure to repeat itself, and there assuredly will be victims.
Can we learn from the McCarthy days how to fight back?
A concerned President Eisenhower ordered the broadest swath of his administration officials to exert executive privilege and ignore any call or subpoena from McCarthy to testify.
Thus, a large and vital coterie could avoid the corrosive public questioning McCarthy and his lawyer, the reviled Roy Cone, practiced without shame.
If they could not be subpoenaed as witnesses, broadcast hearings were starved of excitement, and audiences quickly dwindled.
While historical similarities with today are striking, the differences are as well.
The fifties were less divisive. Today, the GOP’s narrow majority in the House of Representatives and minority in the Senate should be a powerful brake on Jordan’s ability to do more than make a lot of expensive partisan noise and damage reputations.
MAGA republicans have floated their desire to impeach President Biden, not least as an unvoiced payback for their two unsuccessful impeachments of Donald Trump.
]The withdrawal from Afghanistan, illegal immigration and border enforcement, Biden’s extension of a federal pandemic eviction moratorium, and severe exposure for possessing top-secret documents to a laundry list of legitimate charges.
These are serious, but none would seem to meet the high bar of “Treason, Bribery, or other “High Crimes and Misdemeanors” which the constitution sets for conviction, especially with the makeup of the legislative chambers.
Good political theater, it may be, but little else.
It’s easier to panic at the current threats emanating from the Hill than to accept them as historically consistent.
At the dawn of the 20th century, George Santayana memorably wrote that those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.
We are on the cusp of seeing if, in this case, he was right.