Doug Henwood wrote:
>
> Mikhail Simkin wrote:
>
> >Out of 159 persons in McCarthy's list at least 9 were communist spies.
>
> Wow, that's reassuring. So all the paranoia and repression were
> justified? Or are you just being a provocative little asshole?
>
There's an objection to calling it a witch hunt -- but not one that would that would please Mikhail. The point about actual witch hunts is that witches don't exist, but would be obnoxious if they did. Hence "witch hunt" applied to the Red Scare implied that all that was wrong with it was that it hurt people who weren't communist. For the most part the opposition to the Red Scare _accepted_ the premise that it was a bad thing to be a communist, but objected that non-communists were being unfairly accused. No one really defended the right TO BE a communist! Very few NSA employees (civilian or military) approved of McCarthy, but none of us spoke up for the rights of communists as such.
At the '69 SDS convention reporters wanted us to say we weren't communists so they could accuse us of associating with communists. The baiting tactics worked out through the '50s didn't work with people who proclaimed they were communists or anarchists.
Carrol