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mccarthyism
As Lies Abound and Divisions Deepen, Democracy Is Calling
Democracy requires our determination to create a more widely shared understanding of the dangers we face.
Jun 03, 2025
I have a story to tell that feels eerily relevant to our dire political moment.
It’s 1953, and I’m 9 years old in Fort Worth, Texas. I hear a knock at the door, and I rush to say hello. A stern man looks down at me: “I’m from the FBI, and I need to speak with your parents.”
Hmmm… must be important, I thought, calling out: “Mommy, daddy, someone’s come to see us!”
Yes, indeed, it was grave—totally unexpected and life changing.
Since none of today’s mighty challenges—from climate chaos to virtually unprecedented economic inequity—can be addressed without democracy, our calling is clear.
“I’m with the FBI,” he said. My dad invited him in, and they sat talking. I had no idea what was going on. But later my folks explained that the FBI was investigating us because my parents had co-founded the first Unitarian Church in our city. Somehow that made us suspect—as communists or sympathizers.
My parents were not arrested. But word spread quickly of the FBI probe, and some of my best friends’ dads lost their jobs solely by virtue of association with it. The trauma in our community was great.
Our family escaped the harm others suffered likely because my dad’s work as a forecaster in the U.S. Weather Bureau was essential. He soon accepted a two-year “hardship” post on a tiny island in the Pacific, which later I came to assume was an attempt to evade this suppression.
For most of my life, I have assumed our church was targeted because the FBI believed Unitarians were atheists, which at the time was associated with communism. Only many decades later when I gained access to FBI archival material did I discover that I was wrong. Our church was targeted because it was integrated when Fort Worth was strictly segregated.
This awful time came to be called “McCarthyism”—triggered by the leadership of the junior senator from Wisconsin—Joseph R. McCarthy who in 1950 alleged that he had a list of 205 suspected communists who were working in the government.
Eventually, it led to a period of fear, limiting freedom of speech and thought. As happened in Fort Worth, many were blacklisted, lost jobs, or faced persecution. And many more hesitated to express dissenting opinions for fear of being labeled a communist. Such self-censoring no doubt led to stifling intellectual and artistic life.
Now in our current moment, I find myself asking: Are Donald Trump’s tactics just as dangerous to democracy?
For one, both rest on false premises. About 10 months ago, NPR produced an analysis called “162 Lies and Distortions in a News Conference: NPR Fact-Checks Former President Trump.” It found that he uttered “more than two a minute.” Late last year New York Times columnist Peter Baker decried that “Trump’s Wild Claims, Conspiracies, and Falsehoods Redefine Presidential Bounds.” Perhaps most destructive to democracy was his lie that he was the real winner of the 2020 election.
Yet, today lies continue to undermine democracy, and, just as in the McCarthy era, they are not without consequence.
Immigration has been one of the clearest areas where lies abound. Immigrants are less likely to commit crimes than native-born Americans, and they complement rather than compete in jobs while adding to our GDP and taxes. Yet, Trump has cracked down on the border.
In an opinion piece published in late April, I argued that the removal of migrants without due-process—and particularly the targeting of those who had been advocates for causes contrary to Trump’s agenda—posed a deep threat to key democratic principles including free speech.
It hasn’t stopped with migrants: Without constitutional power, Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) arrested Newark Mayor Ras Baraka and Rep. LaMonica McIver (D-N.J.). Charged with a crime for going to an ICE facility to oversee its action, which she described as “my job and my lawful right as a member of Congress.” When ICE moved to arrest Mayor Baraka, colleagues encircled him, but ICE pushed through and arrested the mayor.
Many of us have heard the refrain that “democracy dies in darkness,” the slogan officially adopted by The Washington Post (now ironically owned by Amazon founder Jeff Bezos). It feels right. Fact-based exchange is democracy’s life blood.
I began with my memories of the lives devastated by lies in the 1950s. And, as the cliché goes, those who do not learn from history will repeat its errors.
Today, most of us would likely agree that democracy cannot survive without fact-based interchange, as history offers strong evidence—from Hitler to Stalin to Mao Zedong whose lies divided their people.
And, since none of today’s mighty challenges—from climate chaos to virtually unprecedented economic inequity—can be addressed without democracy, our calling is clear. Democracy requires our determination to create a more widely shared understanding of the dangers we face.
Remember every one of us is an influencer. So, we can fact-check the many charges so dividing our nation and speak up in conversations with friends, family, and coworkers. We can support citizen organizations such as Democracy Forward “using legal strategies to challenge anti-democratic actions and advance democratic values” and Protect Democracy working to “defend elections, the rule of law, and fact-based political debate against authoritarian threat.” Another is Common Cause fighting for “the democracy we deserve” via transparency, accountability, and campaign finance reform.
When so much is at stake, democracy itself is our moral calling.
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Push Back Against Sen. Cotton’s McCarthyite Lies About CODEPINK: Women for Peace
Sen. Cotton does not seem to care that his untruthful statements in a U.S. congressional hearing aired around the world can have immediate and dangerous consequences for those he lies about, their friends, and family.
Mar 27, 2025
On Tuesday, in the U.S. Senate Intelligence Committee hearing on global threats with the five heads of intelligence agencies of the U.S. government, Republican Arkansas Sen. Tom Cotton accused on national TV a group I have worked with for over 20 years, CODEPINK: Women for Peace, of being funded by the Communist Party of China.
During the hearing CODEPINK activist Tighe Barry stood up following the presentation of the Director of National Security Tulsi Gabbard’s lengthy statement about global threats to U.S. national security and yelled, “Stop Funding Israel,” since neither Intelligence Committee Chair Cotton nor Vice Chair Sen. Mark Warner (D-Va.) had mentioned Israel in their opening statement, nor had Gabbard mentioned the Israeli genocide of Palestinians in Gaza in her statement either.
As Capitol police were taking Barry out of the hearing room, in the horrific style of the McCarthy hearings in the 1950s, Cotton maliciously said that Barry was a “CODEPINK lunatic that was funded by the Communist Party of China.” Cotton then said if anyone had something to say to do so.
CODEPINK members have been challenging in the U.S. Congress the war policies of five presidential administrations, beginning in 2001 with the Bush wars on Afghanistan and Iraq, long before Sen. Cotton was elected as a U.S. Senator in 2014.
Refusing to buckle or be intimidated by Cotton’s lies about the funding of CODEPINK, I stood up and yelled, “I’m a retired Army colonel and former diplomat. I work with CODEPINK, and it is not funded by Communist China.” I too was hauled out of the hearing room by Capitol police and arrested.
After I was taken out of the hearing room, Cotton libelously continued his McCarthyite lie: “The fact that Communist China funds CODEPINK, which interrupts a hearing about Israel, illustrates Director Gabbard’s point that China, Russia, Iran, and North Korea are working together in greater concert than they ever had before.”
Sen. Cotton does not appreciate the responsibility he has in his one-month-old elevation to the chair of the Senate’s Intelligence Committee.
Sen. Cotton does not seem to care that his untruthful statements in a U.S. congressional hearing aired around the world can have immediate and dangerous consequences for those he lies about, their friends, and family. In today’s polarized political environment, we know that the words of senior leaders can rile supporters into frenzies as we saw on January 6, 2021, with President Donald Trump’s loyal supporters injuring many Capitol police and destroying parts of the nation’s Capitol building in their attempt to stop the presidential election proceedings.
CODEPINK members have been challenging in the U.S. Congress the war policies of five presidential administrations, beginning in 2001 with the Bush wars on Afghanistan and Iraq, long before Sen. Cotton was elected as a U.S. Senator in 2014. We have been in the U.S. Senate offices and halls twice as long as he has. We have nonviolently protested the war policies of former Presidents George W. Bush, Barack Obama, Trump, Joe Biden, and now Trump again.
After getting out of the Capitol Hill police station, a CODEPINK delegation went to Sen. Cotton’s office in the Russell Senate Office building and made a complaint to his office staff.
We are also submitting a complaint to the Senate Ethics Committee over the untrue and libelous statements Sen. Cotton made in the hearing.
The abduction and deportation of international students who joined protests against U.S. complicity in the Israeli genocide of Palestinians in Gaza and ethnic cleansing of the West Bank, the scathing treatment of visitors who have wanted to enter our country, and now the McCarthyite intimidating tactics used by Sen. Cotton in a Senate Intelligence Committee hearing of telling lies about individuals and organizations that challenge the policies of the U.S. government, particularly its complicity in the Israeli genocide of Gaza, must be called out and pushed back against.
And we must push back against U.S. senators who actually receive funding from front groups for other countries. Sen. Cotton has received $1,197,989 from the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) to advocate for the genocidal policies of the State of Israel.
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What Trump Means When He Calls Anyone Who Disagrees With Him Palestinian
This is the real warning in Trump’s attack: You don’t have to be Palestinian to be punished like one. You don’t have to be Arab or Muslim. You only have to step out of line.
Mar 23, 2025
“He’s not Jewish anymore. He’s a Palestinian.”
With these words, U.S. President Donald Trump did not merely insult Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.)—he exposed something far more insidious. In Trump’s world, Palestinian is not just a nationality. It is an accusation, a sentence of exile, a mark of delegitimization.
Schumer’s crime was questioning Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s increasingly authoritarian government. Schumer, a staunch Zionist who has long positioned himself as one of Israel’s most unwavering defenders, dared to suggest that Netanyahu’s extremism was harming Israel’s future.
A new McCarthyism is taking hold in America, and this time, it is not communists in its crosshairs. It is anyone who refuses to fall in line with Israel’s agenda.
That alone was enough for Trump to strip him of his Jewishness, to brand him as something else—something meant to be demeaning.
This is not the first time Trump has wielded the word “Palestinian” as a slur. He has used it against former President Joe Biden, against Schumer previously, and indeed against anyone who dares to question Israel’s policies.
The message is clear: To be called Palestinian is to be cast out. Your voice no longer counts. Your legitimacy is revoked, your rights erased.
Had Schumer not been Jewish, Trump would have called him antisemitic. But even that category is losing its meaning. This is not about identity. It is about obedience.
Because in this new political order, anyone can become Palestinian.
Erased From History
To be Palestinian in Trump’s world is to be without rights. A Palestinian can be starved, bombed, and expelled. A Palestinian can be erased from history—just as Trump and his son-in-law, Jared Kushner, did when they engineered the Abraham Accords, bypassing Palestinians as though they did not exist.
A Palestinian can be stripped of legal protections, even if they hold U.S. residency and have committed no crime. Mahmoud Khalil, a Columbia University student, is facing deportation for nothing more than expressing his political views.
A Palestinian can be arrested for protesting, fired for speaking, or blacklisted for dissenting. And now, anyone can be treated as one.
This is the real warning in Trump’s attack. You don’t have to be Palestinian to be punished like one. You don’t have to be Arab or Muslim. You only have to step out of line.
Even Jewishness is no longer protection. Your identity has become conditional, your history disposable. You can be declared a traitor, an enemy within, someone who has forfeited their place.
The moment you question Israel, you become Palestinian—not by birth, but by decree. Because in this world, a Palestinian has no rights, nor does anyone who defends them.
A new McCarthyism is taking hold in America, and this time, it is not communists in its crosshairs. It is anyone who refuses to fall in line with Israel’s agenda.
Historical Purge
In the 1950s, repression was justified as a crusade against subversion, a purge of those deemed enemies of the state. Today, the same machinery of silencing is at work under the guise of combating antisemitism. But this is not about protecting Jewish people from hate; it is about criminalizing criticism of Israel.
It is about silencing students, journalists, academics, activists—anyone who speaks out against occupation, apartheid, and ethnic cleansing.
And the hypocrisy could not be more glaring.
A system meant to safeguard the marginalized is now being repurposed to shield a foreign government from criticism.
Trump and his allies have built their brand on railing against political correctness. They claim to be defenders of free speech, warriors against censorship. Just a few weeks ago, Trump’s vice president, JD Vance, stood at the Munich Security Conference and scolded European leaders for restricting expression. He lamented the West’s supposed retreat from free debate.
And yet, in the U.S. under Trump and those who champion his ideology, free speech does not apply if the topic is Israel.
Pro-Palestinian students are arrested, expelled, and stripped of their degrees. Professors who challenge Israeli policies are pushed out. Journalists who report on Israeli war crimes are blacklisted, harassed, and silenced. Films documenting Palestinian suffering are cancelled. Human rights organizations are smeared as terrorist sympathizers.
Universities and colleges—once bastions of free inquiry—are under siege, with the Trump administration threatening to strip their federal funding if they do not suppress pro-Palestinian activism. The same institutions that once championed open debate are now being forced into policing thought.
The consequences extend beyond campuses. The U.S. Department of Education, which is supposed to protect students facing discrimination, has been ordered to prioritize antisemitism cases—some of which are politically motivated—over the needs of vulnerable children.
Parents of students with disabilities are struggling to access the support to which they are legally entitled, because civil rights resources have been diverted to police speech on Israel. A system meant to safeguard the marginalized is now being repurposed to shield a foreign government from criticism.
Witch Hunt
Another federal agency, Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), has also been redirected—not to combat human trafficking or drug smuggling, but to hunt down students who express solidarity with Palestine. ICE has reportedly paused key investigations so that its agents can monitor social media, tracking and flagging pro-Palestinian students for their posts and likes. This is not law enforcement. This is a witch hunt.
And now, the next step: legal oppression turning into outright state violence.
Trump is prepared to invoke the Alien Enemies Act of 1798, a wartime measure that allows the president to detain and deport non-citizens without due process.
Under this law, green-card holders, students, spouses of U.S. citizens—anyone without citizenship—can be rounded up and expelled at the president’s discretion. It was designed for times of war, for use against citizens of enemy nations. But Trump is repurposing it, transforming immigration status into a weapon of political control.
And this process has already begun. Trump just deported Rasha Alawieh, a Lebanese transplant specialist and professor at Brown Medicine, a legal resident on a valid H-1B work visa. There was no alleged crime, no hearing, and no due process. A respected doctor was expelled at the stroke of a pen because she fits the regime’s profile of the unwanted.
This is not a legal system. This is ethnic and political cleansing disguised as immigration enforcement.
Who will be targeted? We already know: Palestinians, Arabs, Muslims. Those who have protested, who have spoken out, whose very existence is now treated as subversive. The crackdown is escalating. First slander, then blacklists—now the threat of deportation without trial.
This is how rights are destroyed—not all at once, but in stages, each step paving the way for the next. It begins with one group, then it spreads. Soon, dissent itself is an act of defiance punishable by exile.
Crisis for Democracy
History has already shown us how this unfolds.
McCarthyism began with communists, but it did not stop there. It spread to journalists, academics, labor organizers, civil rights activists—anyone deemed subversive. Lives were destroyed, reputations ruined, entire fields purged of independent thinkers.
The same pattern is unfolding now. It starts with Palestinians, then students, then professors, then journalists, then public figures, then anyone who refuses to pledge unquestioning loyalty to the state of Israel.
Today, it is Palestinians who are denied their humanity. Tomorrow, it is anyone who dares to dissent.
This is not just a crisis for Palestinians. It is a crisis for democracy itself.
Israel and the U.S. were not content with trampling on international law to wage their genocidal war on Gaza. Now they are trampling on hard-won rights and freedoms at home to silence criticism of their war crimes, erode democracy, and criminalize opposition.
They are dismantling free speech in the name of combating antisemitism—when, in reality, they are weaponizing it, reducing it to a political tool. And in doing so, they fuel the very antisemitism they claim to fight, conflating such repression with Israel and Jewishness itself.
The moment we accept that criticism of Israel is a crime, we open the door to something even darker. Today, it is Palestinians who are denied their humanity. Tomorrow, it is anyone who dares to dissent.
Because in a world where the mere act of speaking out is enough to strip you of your rights, your identity, your place in society—then anyone can become Palestinian.
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