Can factual reporting diligently investigated and brilliantly written still make a difference? –

A photograph of an old black-and-white television display showing a suited man at a desk addressing the camera. Senator Joseph R. McCarthy in a broadcast from 1954: NAJ screen shot

The Big Picture –
By Glynn Wilson –

A new Red Scare threatens American democracy. This time, it’s not a deranged Senator from Wisconsin making all the noise and ruining lives. It’s the president himself, seemingly serving the interests of the new Russia, no longer a Communist country but a corrupt capitalist dictatorship.

A Red Scare is a form of moral panic provoked by fear of the rise, supposed or real, of left-wing ideologies in a society, especially communism and socialism, according to historians. Historically, red scares have led to mass political persecution, scapegoating, and the ousting of those in government positions who have had connections with left-wing movements. The name is derived from the red flag, a common symbol of communism and socialism. Now days social media can spread misinformation faster than any other technology to date, creating a heightened crisis of confidence out there.

As a member of the Baby Boom generation born in the 1950s who grew up in a suburban house with an underground basement inspired by the nuclear threat from that period, and as a student of Soviet politics during the Cold War, this is a subject I know something about. My main question is what will bring this scare to an end, and can American journalism make the key difference to stop it? Or is that era over, when a factual story diligently investigated and brilliantly written can make a difference?

Maybe we can learn something from history. As I was driving back from Montgomery on Monday after covering historic civil rights anniversaries for public radio, I listened to an interview with New York Times reporter and author Clay Risen on NPR’s “Fresh Air.” He has a new book out on the Red Scare, making the connection to events happening in the United States today.

‘Red Scare’ revisits the fear of Communism that gripped post-WWII America

When stopping for a couple of nights in a St. Clair County driveway on Logan Martin Lake, I looked up the New York Times book review.

In “Red Scare,” Clay Risen shows how culture in the United States is still driven by the political paranoia of the 1950s.

First a little background. The term Red Scare is most often used to refer to two periods in the history of the U.S. The First Red Scare immediately after World War I revolved around a perceived threat from the American labor movement, anarchist revolution, and political radicalism that followed revolutionary socialist movements in Germany and Russia during the 19th and early 20th centuries. The Second Red Scare, which occurred immediately after World War II, was preoccupied with the perception that national or foreign communists were infiltrating or subverting American society and the federal government.

Wisconsin Senator Joseph McCarthy got famous on the new medium of television as the head of this scare when he held hearings on what he called the House Un-American Activities Committee. Some people testified that Soviet spies and communist sympathizers had penetrated the U.S. government before, during and after World War II. Others defied the committee, and many lives were ruined, most famously many writers and actors in Hollywood.

The events of the late 1940s and the early 1950s, including the trial of Ethel and Julius Rosenberg, the trial of Alger Hiss and the Soviet Union’s first nuclear weapon test in 1949, surprised the American public and influenced public opinion about the alleged threat to national security. This was connected to the fear that the Soviet Union would drop nuclear bombs on the United States, which led to the building of houses with underground basements in many new suburbs developed in the post-war economic boom of the 1950s.

The second Red Scare went by another name, “McCarthyism,” after its best-known advocate, Senator McCarthy.

According to Times reviewer Kevin Peraino, when the end came for Joe McCarthy, it was Edward R. Murrow who delivered the knockout blow. On his CBS program “See It Now,” Murrow ran damning footage of the red-baiting Wisconsin senator, who appeared hectoring and disheveled to viewers. Murrow proclaimed that McCarthy’s “primary achievement has been in confusing the public mind.” The senator’s reputation never recovered from Murrow’s nationally televised exposé.

But Murrow also recognized that his moment’s dangers ran deeper than one man. He urged Americans to accept their own culpability in the tragedy of McCarthyism. McCarthy “didn’t create this situation of fear,” Murrow said, “he merely exploited it.” The broadcaster quoted Shakespeare to drive home his point: “The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars, but in ourselves.”

You can watch that episode now on YouTube.

While Peraino points out that the stories in Risen’s book have been told before and are already well known, he still says: “There may be no better diagnosis for our own Trump-era predicament … revisiting the Red Scare reveals a great deal about how we ended up here. As Clay Risen’s meaty and powerfully relevant new book, Red Scare, makes clear, our own times are ringing with echoes of the clamorous battles of mid-20th-century McCarthyism.

A New Murrow

Is it possible that a new Ed Murrow might emerge to challenge this president and turn public opinion away from this anti-democratic trend? Only time will tell.

But for now let’s deal with the common meme circulating on social media claiming that Donald Trump is a long-time Russian asset. That may or may not be a conspiracy theory, but it has certainly gained traction thanks to the reporting of Craig Unger, an American journalist and writer who has written two books on Trump’s connections to Russia’s security services and the Russian mafia stretching all the way back to the 1980s.

I share some common thread with Unger, having written myself about the Bush years and the Republican effort to subvert the justice system to railroad a popular Alabama governor into prison and away from elective office, Don Siegelman. So he’s worth listening to this time.

Unger says he is “absolutely certain” that the U.S. president is a Russian asset whose current actions are benefiting Russian President Vladimir Putin, and destroying relationships with long-time allies.

You can watch an interview with him on YouTube as well.