The hysteria began to subside after McCarthy looked more and more like a demented, egotistical demagogue, and when the government of Dwight Eisenhower (1952-61) realised that the commotion was doing more damage than good to the American image. McCarthy was increasingly discredited by certain journalists and he died in 1957 due to alcoholism. But his name became associated with a tendency that makes unabashed and reckless accusations of treason and unpatriotic acts without offering any convincing evidence. This tendency became known as McCarthyism.
Till the end of the Cold War in 1989, McCarthyism was often seen as a demagogic, right-wing tendency, even though deadlier purges of this nature took place in the Soviet Union, China and in Cambodia against so-called ‘counter-revolutionaries.’ Recently, the social psychologist Lee Jussim and controversial clinical psychologist Professor Jordan Peterson have been turning the idea of McCarthyism on its head by explaining ‘new McCarthyism’ as the liberal-left version of old McCarthyism.
In an essay for Psychology Today, Jussim cites the findings of an elaborate 2014 research, which says that there has been ‘a rising tide of leftist intolerance’ on American campuses. It has resulted in harassment, even violence, directed at speakers from non-left backgrounds. Speakers who present perspectives challenging ‘leftist sacred cows’ such as affirmative action, diversity programmes and feminism have been subject to aggressive, intolerant, ‘proto-authoritarian’ tactics, according to him.
The report concluded that “students and teachers who refuse to hear opposing viewpoints will be less likely to learn critical thinking skills and less able to defend their own beliefs once off-campus.”
Professor Peterson blames post-modernism for the intolerance exhibited by the liberals and new leftists. He describes post-modernists as ‘cultural Marxist conspiracy theorists’ who emerged in the 1970s after Marxism failed to win the class war. He adds that post-modernists readjusted Marxism’s core axiom of class struggle to other frameworks of perceived group power struggles: race, sex, ethnicity, etc. Whereas post-modernism had already disintegrated by the 1990s into meaning nothing more than empty intellectual kitsch, Peterson says it went on to create subjects such as sociology, anthropology, gender and ethnic studies, which he believes use ‘unscientific methods’ to reach conclusions that have more to do with peddling ideologies than intelligence. He says these create ‘cult-like behaviour’ which can explain the manner in which so-called neo-leftists have been reacting to opposing points of view. Peterson’s own views have often been criticised as conspiracy theories.
But in an environment where the far-right is going mainstream in various countries, it can’t be effectively challenged by the kind of liberal-left Peterson is critiquing. Simply because, it seems, more than anything else, causes being championed by the new liberal-left are a way to just appease individual existential crises — that old post-modernist trap. Thus, the reactionary behaviour and thin-skinned responses which are coming from a disposition of misplaced arrogance, self-righteousness, and an assortment of intellectual and emotional insecurities.
The response (to the far-right) would require a more informed (and less reactive) retort which should involve making pragmatic alliances. But such alliances cannot be made when the new liberal-left too spirals into acts of demonisation and reckless accusations. In fact, Peterson believes that it is this which has given birth to dangerous reactions in the shape of the rise of the far-right and the discrediting of once powerful ideas such as democracy and socialism.
Published in Dawn, EOS, July 14th, 2019