Trump and his allies are trying to bring McCarthyism back as a political weapon to crush political opposition in the United States.
WASHINGTON, D.C. — The State Department released a report on Monday titled, “Cuba: The Capital of 21st Century Communism,” filled with ridiculous claims that echo the old McCarthyite attack on progressive activists: that they are dupes or agents of a malign foreign power, as if people in the U.S. would not protest injustice unless some other government told them to do so.
This is not just a rhetorical throwback. The report explicitly lauds the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC), the body responsible for ushering in the blacklisting of writers, artists, and organizers in the 1940s and ‘50s, and whose tactics were later condemned across the political spectrum as a stain on American democracy. By treating HUAC as a credible body with tactics to be emulated, the State Department is desperately trying to rehabilitate McCarthyism. But instead of the Soviet Union, progressive movements are now pawns of “Communist Cuba.” The report characterizes everything from Black Lives Matter to anti-ICE protests as machinations of the Cuban government. Notably absent from the Cuba report is any mention of the criminal U.S. blockade of Cuba, condemned by the UN General Assembly as a violation of international law and the UN Charter, which is now depriving people of food, water, electricity and the means to survive.
The report devotes an entire section to what it calls “front groups and fellow travelers”, openly reviving McCarthy-era language used to brand anyone advocating for justice as a secret agent of a foreign power. Under this heading, the State Department targets organizations including the Democratic Socialists of America, the People’s Forum, IFCO/Pastors for Peace, and Code Pink, and singles out individual activists and advocates, insinuating that Americans organizing for peace and racial and social justice have ulterior motives and are acting at the behest of a foreign power.
“It is critical to understand exactly what this is. It is a direct frontal assault on free speech and democracy. It is an effort to justify repression at home and usher in a greater crackdown against our constitutionally protected First Amendment rights to speak out and protest,” stated Mara Verheyden-Hilliard, constitutional rights lawyer and Executive Director of the PCJF. “This is an attempt to frighten people into silence. It is an attack on democratic rights by an administration afraid of democracy because it knows the people of the U.S. are growing in opposition to its repressive programs. And it won’t work. Standing together, we can ensure this tired playbook fails.”
The Partnership for Civil Justice Fund is providing legal defense to organizations and individuals under attack in this new witch-hunt. Late Tuesday, on the heels of this overt onslaught on free speech, the House Ways and Means Committee issued subpoenas targeting groups for their progressive organizing and journalism that the right wing wants to suppress. We will defend our clients’ First Amendment rights – constitutional rights that cannot be compromised – before this modern day HUAC.
A blatant attack on First Amendment rights, these outlandish claims from the State Department and Congress are nothing more than an attempt to smear anyone fighting for change. The main obstacle to Trump’s agenda has been the massive wave of resistance sparked by his regressive policies — including the largest protests in American history. To combat this, the Trump administration is attempting to set out the machinery of the state to repress those who oppose it.
The administration has announced its new creation, “violent left-wing extremists”, as one of the greatest terrorist threats facing the country. Based on targeting of lawful viewpoints that it does not like, the Trump regime is attempting to label anyone as a terrorist in order to unleash state repression against those exercising their First Amendment rights. The proposed method of attack against these so called “terrorists” is precrime enforcement action — the administration openly admits it is targeting groups and people in the absence of any criminal activity, based on viewpoint. In other words: the unconstitutional targeting of organizations and individuals based solely on views the government doesn’t like.
The Trump administration may want to crush dissent through the same old McCarthyite tactics, but they will not prevail. So long as Trump arrests our immigrant neighbors, wages foreign wars, and attempts to strip us of our rights, the people will continue to fight back, and the PCJF will stand with them.