The New McCarthyism

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Wed, 5 Jan 2005 13:43:29 -0800 (PST)

The New McCarthyism

 

The New McCarthyism

by Matthew Rothschild

http://www.progressive.org/0901/roth0102.html

 

Donna Huanca works as a docent at the Art Car Museum,

an avant-garde gallery in Houston. Around 10:30 on the

morning of November 7, before she opened the museum,

two men wearing suits and carrying leather portfolios

came to her door.

 

" I told them to wait until we opened at 11:00, " she

recalls. " Then they pulled their badges out. "

 

The two men were Terrence Donahue of the FBI and

Steven Smith of the Secret Service.

 

" They said they had several reports of anti-American

activity going on here and wanted to see the exhibit, "

she says. The museum was running a show called " Secret

Wars, " which contains many anti-war statements that

were commissioned before September 11.

 

" They just walked in, so I went through with them and

gave them a very detailed tour. I asked them if they

were familiar with the artists and what the role of

art was at a critical time like this, " she says. " They

were more interested in where the artists were from.

They were taking some notes. They were pointing out

things that they thought were negative, like a recent

painting by Lynn Randolph of the Houston skyline

burning, and a devil dancing around, and with George

Bush Sr. in the belly of the devil. "

 

There was a surreal moment when they inspected another

element of the exhibit. " We had a piece in the middle

of the room, a mock surveillance camera pointed to the

door of the museum, and they wondered whether they

were being recorded, " she says.

 

All in all, they were there for about an hour. " As

they were leaving, they asked me where I went to

school, and if my parents knew if I worked at a place

like this, and who funded us, and how many people came

in to see the exhibit, " she says. " I was definitely

pale. It was scary because I was alone, and they were

really big guys. "

 

Before the agents left the museum, Huanca called Tex

Kerschen, the curator of the exhibit. " I had just put

down a book on COINTELPRO, " he says, referring to the

FBI's program of infiltrating leftwing groups in the

1960s. " Donna's call confirmed some of my worst

suspicions. Donna was frightened, and we're all a

little bit shocked that they were going to act against

a small art space, to bring to bear that kind of

menace, an atmosphere of dread. These old moldy

charges of 'anti-American,' 'un-American'--they seem

laughable at first, like we can't be accused of

anything that silly. But they've started coming down

with this. "

 

The director of the Art Car Museum is James Harithas,

who served as the director of the Corcoran Art Museum

in Washington, D.C., in the late 1960s. " It's

unbelievable, " he says of the visit from the G-men.

" People should be worried that their freedoms are

being taken away right and left. "

 

Robert Dogium, a spokesman for the FBI in Houston,

says the visit was a routine follow-up on a call " from

someone who said there was some material or artwork

that was of a threatening nature to the President. " He

says it was no big thing. " While the work there was

not their cup of tea, it was not considered of a

threatening nature to anybody or terrorism or

anything. "

 

She is a freshman at Durham Tech in North Carolina.

Her name is A.J. Brown. She's gotten a scholarship

from the ACLU to help her attend college. But that

didn't prepare her for the knock on the door that came

on October 26. " It was 5:00 on Friday, and I was

getting ready for a date, " she says. When she heard

the knock, she opened the door. Here's her account.

 

" Hi, we're from the Raleigh branch of the Secret

Service, " two agents said.

 

" And they flip out their little ID cards, and I was

like, 'What?'

 

" And they say, 'We're here because we have a report

that you have un-American material in your apartment.'

And I was like, 'What? No, I don't have anything like

that.'

 

" 'Are you sure? Because we got a report that you've

got a poster that's anti-American.'

 

" And I said no. "

 

They asked if they could come into the apartment. " Do

you have a warrant? " Brown asked. " And they said no,

they didn't have a warrant, but they wanted to just

come in and look around. And I said, 'Sorry, you're

not coming in.' "

 

One of the agents told Brown, " We already know what it

is. It's a poster of Bush hanging himself, " she

recalls. " And I said no, and she was like, 'Well,

then, it's a poster with a target on Bush's head,' and

I was like, nope. "

 

The poster they seemed interested in was one that

depicted Bush holding a rope, with the words: " We Hang

on Your Every Word. George Bush, Wanted: 152 Dead. "

The poster has sketches of people being hanged, and it

refers to the number who were put to death in Texas

while Bush was governor, she explains.

 

Ultimately, Brown agreed to open her door so that the

agents could see the poster on the wall of her

apartment, though she did not let them enter. " They

just kept looking at the wall, " which contained

political posters from the Bush counter-inaugural, a

" Free Mumia " poster, a picture of Jesse Jackson, and a

Pink Floyd poster with the quotation: " Mother, should

I trust the government? "

 

At one point in the conversation, one of the agents

mentioned Brown's mother, saying, " She's in the armed

forces, isn't she? " (Her mother, in fact, is in the

Army Reserve.)

 

After they were done inspecting the wall, one of the

agents " pulled out his little slip of paper, and he

asked me some really stupid questions, like, my name,

my Social Security number, my phone number, " she says.

" Then they asked, 'Do you have any pro-Taliban stuff

in your apartment, any posters, any maps?'

 

" I was like, 'No, I don't, and personally, I think the

Taliban is just a bunch of assholes.' "

 

With that, they left. They had been at her apartment

for forty minutes.

 

" They called me two days later to make sure my

information was correct: where I lived, my phone

number (hello!), and my nicknames, " she says.

 

Brown says she's " really annoyed " about the Secret

Service visit. " Obviously, I'm on some list

somewhere. "

 

Welcome to the New McCarthyism. A chill is descending

across the country, and it's frostbiting immigrants,

students, journalists, academics, and booksellers.

 

" I'm terrified, " says Ellen Schrecker, author of Many

Are the Crimes: McCarthyism in America (Princeton

University, 1999). " What concerns me is we're not

seeing an enormous outcry against this whole structure

of repression that's being rushed into place by the

Bush Administration. "

 

" I've been talking a lot about the parallels between

what we're going through now and McCarthyism, " says

Nadine Strossen, president of the ACLU. " The term

'terrorism' is taking on the same kind of

characteristics as the term 'communism' did in the

1950s. It stops people in their tracks, and they're

willing to give up their freedoms. People are too

quickly panicked. They are too willing to give up

their rights and to scapegoat people, especially

immigrants and people who criticize the war. "

 

Attorney General John Ashcroft is rounding up or

interrogating thousands of immigrants in what will go

down in history as the Ashcroft Raids. The FBI and

Secret Service are harassing artists and activists.

Publishers are firing anti-war columnists and

cartoonists. University presidents are scolding

dissident faculty members. And rightwing citizen's

groups are demanding conformity.

 

In this article, I focus on the threats to free

speech, which go well beyond the much-publicized

attack on Bill Maher of Politically Incorrect. These

threats are real. They are frightening people. They

are ruining some livelihoods. And they may be just a

taste of sour things to come.

 

Barbara Wien worked as a program officer and a

conflict resolution trainer at the United States

Institute of Peace for five years. She doesn't work

there anymore.

 

On September 11, while at an official function of the

Institute, Wien spoke out. " I said that I would hope

that the United States would not resort to military

retaliation and that we need to do a great deal of

soul-searching in this country about how U.S. policies

might have contributed to the emergence of terrorist

policies, " she recalls.

 

Her comments were not well received. " My conservative

colleagues became outraged, and said, 'You're the most

leftwing person we've ever met, and you should not be

leading any trainings here. While the buildings are

still smoldering, you're blaming the U.S.' "

 

This wasn't the first time Wien had raised hackles

inside the Institute, which is, according to its web

site, " an independent, nonpartisan federal institution

created and funded by Congress to strengthen the

nation's capacity to promote the peaceful resolution

of international conflict. " She had clashed with her

colleagues before over U.S. policy regarding sanctions

on Iraq, Israel's occupation of the West Bank and

Gaza, the Sudan, and the bombing of Belgrade, she

says.

 

" There was generally a hostile work environment for my

peaceful activism at the Institute, " she says. After

her colleagues jumped all over her on September 11,

Wien objected. " I went to the management and said a

pacifist position here is being punished, and they

said, 'It's time for you to go, Barbara. You don't fit

into

the culture,' " she recalls. " Then they basically

hounded me for about two weeks for my letter of

resignation, so I finally caved under duress. "

 

Harriet Hentges is the executive vice president of the

United States Institute of Peace. " She submitted a

letter of resignation to me October 17, and beyond

that I don't have a comment, " says Hentges. " But we

would never make an individual staff member's personal

views a litmus test for employment. "

 

You are no longer free to patronize a bookstore

without fear of government scrutiny. On November 1,

the American Booksellers Foundation for Free

_Expression (ABFFE) sent a disturbing letter to its

members.

 

" Dear Bookseller, " it begins. " Last week, President

Bush signed into law an antiterrorism bill that gives

the federal government expanded authority to search

your business records, including the titles of the

books purchased by your customers. . . . There is no

opportunity for you or your lawyer to object in court.

You cannot object publicly, either. The new law

includes a gag order that prevents you from disclosing

'to any person' the fact that you have received an

order to produce documents. "

 

The letter recommends that booksellers who get hit

with such an order should call their attorney or the

foundation, but " because of the gag order . . . you

should not tell ABFFE that you have received a court

order. . . . You can simply tell us that you need to

contact ABFFE's legal counsel. "

 

Marsha Rummel of Rainbow Bookstore Cooperative in

Madison, Wisconsin, denounces this new government

policy as a " terrifying encroachment on the privacy

rights of citizens. " Noting that " the danger to

booksellers is just one small part of this new

landscape, " she says, " We must collectively take a

stand to defend our democratic rights, including the

right to protest our government and oppose the war,

and the right to read whatever we like. "

 

Katie Sierra is a fifteen-year-old sophomore at

Sissonville High School in West Virginia. On October

22, she notified her principal, Forrest Mann, that she

wanted to form an anarchist club. He denied her

request. It was the only club he has ever disallowed,

according to the lawsuit Sierra and her mother filed

against the school.

 

Sierra had already made up fliers for the club, which

she wasn't able to distribute. The fliers said:

" Anarchist club. Anarchism preaches to love all

humans, not just of one country. Start a newspaper, a

food-not-bombs group, a book discussion group. Speak

your point of view, and hear others. Please join. "

 

The next day, Sierra came to school with a T-shirt on

that said, " Racism, Sexism, Homophobia, I'm So Proud

of People in the Land of the So-Called Free. " The

principal suspended her for three days.

 

" I've never been in trouble before, " Sierra says. " I

was kind of upset at first: How could he? Then I was

crying. How could he suspend me for something so

ridiculous as that? "

 

On October 29, she was told that before she could come

back to school, she would have to provide the

principal with authorization to obtain her medical

records, she would have to meet with a school

psychologist, and she couldn't wear T-shirts like the

one she wore or organize her anarchist club.

 

At a school board meeting on October 29, the school

board president, Bill Raglin, said, " What in the hell

is wrong with a kid like that? " Another school board

member, John Luoni, accused her of treason, according

to her court papers.

 

To make matters worse, says Sierra, Principal Mann

mischaracterized her T-shirt in the Charleston

Gazette, falsely stating it included statements such

as " I hope Afghanistan wins " and " America should

burn. "

 

As a result, students at school ganged up on her. " I

got shoved against lockers, " she says. " People made

pictures of me with bullet holes through my head and

posted them on, like, the doors in the school. They

said some really harsh things. It was scary. "

 

Sierra and her mother sued the school district but

lost in the lower courts and in the state supreme

court by a 3-to-2 vote. " We sought an injunction to

force the principal to allow her to form the anarchy

club and wear her peace T-shirts and void her

suspension, " her attorney, Roger Forman, says. Forman,

a former president of the West Virginia ACLU, says her

free speech rights have been violated.

 

Sierra plans to appeal. " I'm really disgusted with the

courts right now, and with the school, " she says. " I'm

being punished for being myself. "

 

Because she felt unsafe at Sissonville High, Sierra is

now being homeschooled.

 

Until recently, Jackie Anderson was a staff reporter

for the Sun Advocate in Price, Utah. She had worked

there for three years, and she was encouraged to write

editorial columns as part of her job. So, on September

18, she wrote a column that said, " War is not the only

action available to us. Seeking justice is action.

Making peace is action. "

 

The column never ran, though several pro-war columns

did. Six days after filing her column, Anderson says

she asked her editor, Lynnda Johnson, whom she

considered a good friend, why it wasn't running, and

Johnson told her to talk to the publisher, Kevin

Ashby. " This is not the direction I want my newspaper

to go in, " he told her, as Anderson recalls it.

 

" Well, I don't know if I can continue to work here,

and I certainly can't continue this afternoon, " she

says she told him, adding that she got permission from

her editor to take a personal day.

 

" The next day I went in to work, I was called into the

publisher's office, and he asked me to clear my desk, "

she recalls. " I asked him if I was being fired, and he

said, 'No, you quit. I'm accepting your resignation.'

And I said, 'I didn't quit.' "

 

Johnson explains the paper's side. " Look, this is a

personnel issue, " she says. " The bottom line is Jackie

Anderson walked out on a production day and said she

couldn't work here anymore. Period. She quit. "

 

As to not running the column, Johnson says, " She was

not told it wouldn't run. She was told there were

problems with it. I'm not going to discuss this. This

was a personnel issue. She said she quit her job and

then decided she could unquit at her convenience. "

 

Anderson is now collecting unemployment. " My options

are very, very limited, " she says. " This is a

depressed economy. There aren't many other jobs in

journalism. And it's put stress on my husband, who is

a coal miner, which is why we are very limited as to

where we can go. "

 

" This was a job that I loved and believed in. I

thought journalists were warriors for freedom in at

least as significant a way, if not a greater way, than

a soldier in the military. If people can lose their

jobs for their opinions this early on, then it does

not bode well. "

 

At least two other journalists have been fired for

their columns. Both received some attention in the

media. Dan Guthrie worked at the Grants Pass Daily

Courier in Oregon for ten years and was a columnist,

on and off, for seven of them. " During that time, I'd

won quite a few awards, including best columnist in

Oregon, " he says. But one recent column cost him his

job. It was called, " When the Going Gets Tough, the

Tender Turn Tail, " and it ran September 15.

 

Guthrie was the columnist who said Bush " skedaddled "

on September 11. " The picture of Bush hiding in a

Nebraska hole " was " an embarrassment, " he wrote. " The

President's men are frantically glossing over his

cowardice. "

 

A week later, the publisher fired him, even though the

city editor and the editor had signed off on the

piece, Guthrie says. " I told them this was going to be

hot, and they approved it as it stood. "

 

A few days later, the editor, Dennis Roler, issued a

front-page apology, entitled, " This Is No Time to

Criticize the Nation's Leader: Apology for Printing

Column. " The final paragraph reads: " In this critical

time, the nation needs to come together behind the

President. Politics, and destructive criticism, need

to be put aside for the country's good. Unfortunately,

my lapse in judgment hurt that positive effort, and I

apologize. "

 

Today, Guthrie is picking up unemployment, and he's

almost philosophical about journalism: " You wish

newspapers would be better than they are. You think

they have this covenant with the First Amendment. But

they don't, especially in times of crisis. "

 

Tom Gutting worked for the Texas City Sun, and on

September 22, he, like Guthrie, criticized Bush for

not returning to Washington on September 11. " There

was W. flying around the country like a scared child

seeking refuge in his mother's bed after having a

nightmare, " he wrote, adding: " What we are stuck with

is a crippled President who continues to be controlled

by his advisers. He's not a leader. He's a puppet. "

 

The day the piece ran, says Gutting, " the publisher

assured me straightaway that he wouldn't fire me. " But

a few days later, the publisher, Les Daughtry Jr.,

changed his mind.

 

Daughtry, too, issued a front-page apology, saying

Gutting's column was " not appropriate to publish

during this time. "

 

Gutting is unemployed. " I'm still looking for a job, "

he says. " I'm hoping it will end soon. I think I've

been pretty much blacklisted from the small papers the

company owns. "

 

The St. George, Utah, newspaper, The Spectrum,

apologized on November 13 for a cartoon it ran the

previous day from Pulitzer prize-winner Steve Benson.

The cartoon depicted President Bush dropping bombs

that carried scrawled messages, such as " starving

millions of Afghans " and " killing innocent civilians. "

Many local veterans descended on the paper,

threatening to cancel their subscriptions if it didn't

issue an apology, according to The Salt Lake Tribune.

 

Aaron McGruder, who draws The Boondocks, has seen his

strip taken out of many papers after September 11 for

its anti-war content. And lesser known cartoonists may

be especially vulnerable.

 

Todd Persche drew a cartoon for the Baraboo News

Republic in Wisconsin once a week for the last three

years. Not anymore. After September 11, he drew a

couple of cartoons that got him canned. One said,

" When the media keeps pounding on the war drum . . .

it's hard to hear other points of view. " Another was

about Big Brother " turning our civil rights upside

down. "

 

Persche says, " In these times, they make you feel like

you're not a patriot just because you're dissenting. "

 

At the moment, professors who criticize the U.S.

government aren't being fired as they were during the

McCarthy days. But some are being taken to the

woodshed.

 

At the University of New Mexico, history professor

Richard Berthold made a comment to his class that he

now regrets: " Anyone who can blow up the Pentagon gets

my vote, " he said. The university president has said

" he will 'vigorously pursue' disciplinary action "

against Berthold, the Chronicle of Higher Education

reported.

 

Robert Jensen, associate professor of journalism at

the University of Texas at Austin, wrote a column for

the Houston Chronicle on September 14 entitled " U.S.

just as guilty of committing own violent acts. " In it,

he said that the terrorist attacks of September 11

" were reprehensible and indefensible . . . but this

act was no more despicable [than] the massive acts of

terrorism--the deliberate killing of civilians for

political purposes--that the U.S. government has

committed during my lifetime. "

 

For this, Jensen was publicly ridiculed by the school

president, Larry R. Faulkner, who wrote a letter to

the Houston Chronicle, which was published on

September 19. " Jensen is not only misguided, but has

become a fountain of undiluted foolishness on issues

of public policy, " he said.

 

" I've been marginalized on this campus, " Jensen says.

But he takes pains not to exaggerate the threat

against him. " I'm a tenured white male professor at a

major university. I'm so protected I have no fears.

But an untenured brown professor is not so protected. "

 

Jensen worries that untenured faculty may censor

themselves, and he and many others are concerned about

Lynne Cheney's group, the American Council of Trustees

and Alumni, which she co-founded in 1995 with Senator

Joseph Lieberman, Democrat of Connecticut.

 

That group issued a report after September 11 called

" Defending Civilization: How Our Universities Are

Failing America, and What Can Be Done About It. " It

said, " When a nation's intellectuals are unwilling to

defend its civilization, they give comfort to its

adversaries. " And it cited more than 100 examples of

what it considers unpatriotic acts by specific

academics.

 

" What's analogous to McCarthyism is the self-appointed

guardians who are engaging in private blacklisting, "

says Eric Foner, professor of history at Columbia

University. " That's why the Lynne Cheney thing is so

disturbing: Her group is trying to intimidate

individuals who hold different points of view. There

aren't loyalty oaths being demanded of teachers yet,

but we seem to be at the beginning of a process that

could get a lot worse and is already cause for

considerable alarm. "

 

We've been here before. From the Alien and Sedition

Acts to Lincoln's suspension of habeas corpus and his

imprisonment of anti-war editors, from the suppression

of speech during World War I and the Palmer Raids to

the internment of Japanese Americans during World War

II and the repression of the McCarthy days, the

government has seized upon times of peril to scapegoat

immigrants and to suppress liberties.

 

" We're talking about exactly the same phenomenon, "

says the ACLU's Strossen.

 

" No analogy is ever perfect, and history doesn't

repeat itself exactly, but there's a pattern of the

government restricting freedom of _expression and

running roughshod over traditional protections for the

accused, " Foner says. " Anybody concerned with freedom

of _expression and civil liberties should be very, very

concerned. "

 

Matthew Rothschild is Editor of The Progressive.

======================================

McCarthyism Watch 12/08/01:

If You Don't Want American Flag Stamps, Watch Out!

http://www.progressive.org/webex/wxmc120801.html

 

 

 

 

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