Just when you think things couldn’t get any worse for our neighbour to the south of us, you find they can. And are.

Tired of watching the war, I turned the other day to the most recent posting from the The Atlantic magazine and an excellent article by staff writer, Ali Breland. To say the article brought me no comfort is an understatement. Breland’s subject was the return of McCarthyism to the United States.

For the uninitiated, McCarthyism refers to a period when Joseph McCarthy, a failing junior senator from Wisconsin, decided to attempt to secure his shaky political future by finding communists under every bed, in every public office, in every classroom, in every movie studio, on every news outlet in America.

It was the late 1940s and ‘50s, the Cold War period, and his witch hunt had a lot of appeal to the many who feared the Soviet Union. Lives were ruined and careers destroyed as neighbour turned against neighbour, until McCarthy was finally taken down by the journalist Edward R. Murrow and a little Boston lawyer named Joseph Welch.

McCarthy didn’t hesitate to call anyone a communist, from General George Marshall to Gypsy Rose Lee. He had a list, he said, of 205 communists working inside the American government. Or was it 81? Or 57? The number kept changing. The names on the list were never revealed.

Most of us alive today are too young to actually remember the height of that dreadful time in American history. At least consciously.

We remember if we were affected by it.

I had a friend who was affected by it.

Joan Brady was a successful author, living in England — the first woman to win the prestigious Whitbread Award, for her novel, “Theory of War.” Her father was a prominent American economist and academic.

Robert A. Brady, also an author and a founder of the Consumer Union, taught at California’s Berkeley University. On principle, not because he was a communist (he wasn’t), but because he was an American who didn’t think he should have to do such a thing, Dr. Brady refused to sign a loyalty oath.

For this, he was dismissed from Berkeley. For this, he ended up committing suicide. Joan knew all about McCarthyism. We talked almost every Sunday for nearly 20 years until she died in 2024.

Sometimes we talked about her father.

Now, Breland tells us, McCarthyism is returning to America, encouraged by MAGA supporters such as Steve Bannon and Laura Loomer.

Bannon, to whom McCarthy is a hero, has proclaimed “The age of McCarthy is upon us.” Loomer said, “We need to make McCarthy great again.”

Breland’s article suggests the new McCarthyism is more aggressive. That it targets not just one group, such as communists, but tries to destroy all MAGA’s political enemies, including anyone with left-of-centre ideas regarding race, gender or sexuality.

He quotes University of Virginia historian, David Walsh, “It isn’t even really McCarthyism anymore — it’s just fascism.”

Where are the controls that helped expose McCarthyism for “what it was? Where is the due process?”

Where is Joseph Welch asking the new McCarthys in a House Un-American Activities Committee, “Have you no decency?”

Or Edward R. Murrow defying his network and his sponsors to expose what is happening?

Or Eleanor Roosevelt saying simply, “I am tired of being afraid.”

Why should it matter to us in Canada? It didn’t happen here last time; it doesn’t mean it won’t this time.

Only we can guarantee that.

© Peterborough Examiner