Just to follow on from the preceding post, where I noted that Sen. McConnell is a bit off with respects to what McCarthyism is, I regret to inform that Sen. Ted Cruz probably knows exactly what it is, because he's basically practicing it with his proposition that Antifa be treated as a domestic terrorist organization. And for what it's worth, President Trump also seems to be onboard with the notion (even if people who understand these things somewhat better than Trump find it ridiculous at best, chilling at worst).
Demonization of anti-fascists (remember, folks, the "fa" in Antifa stands for "fascism" and fascism is bad!) is happening at a very awkward time--it has been reported that white supremacist violence is on the rise, but Antifa, as a response to white supremacy, which takes several forms including nonviolent action, is the movement being singled out. What grips me about this is that there are numerous loose groups that protest fascism and racism (not a single, centralized organization) but there is a good probability that language that simply calls this activity "left wing activists" or "affiliated with Antifa" will be used to target any "fellow traveler". (One might recall that HUAC looked into civil rights groups, but kept their paws off the Klan.)
I don't like the implications of it--and with McConnell crying about McCarthyism, I guess I'm just saying it seems to me to be a case of one side accusing the other of the very thing they'd like to do. And I guess I could just be misreading red meat for a red scare. Except there's also this denunciation of socialism proposed by Sen. Steve Daines. For some reason, he associates socialism with lack of freedom as opposed to being an alternative to unregulated free market capitalism, but again, this is a denunciation specifically of "the left".
