[Peace-discuss] James Carden | The Nation: The Demonization of Dissent: McCarthyism has gone mainstream

[Robert Naiman]

https://www.thenation.com/article/tulsi-russia-clinton/





The Demonization of Dissent McCarthyism has gone mainstream.
By James Carden <https://www.thenation.com/authors/james-carden/> OCTOBER
28, 2019

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[image: Tulsi Gabbard TPP]
<https://www.thenation.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/11/Tulsi-Gibbard_tpp_2016_ap_img.jpg>

Representative Tulsi Gabbard speaks during a news conference on November
15, 2015. (AP Photo / Bill Clark)

The war of words between former secretary of state Hillary Clinton and
current 2020 presidential aspirant Tulsi Gabbard has been, in some
respects, clarifying. Clinton’s insinuation that Russia is “grooming” the
Hawaiian Democrat for a third-party run in order to influence the outcome
of next year’s election, instead of provoking a “have you no shame?”
response from the establishment media, was gleefully repeated by such
establishment fixtures as the journalist Jonathan Alter
<https://twitter.com/jonathanalter/status/1186395785929416704>and the
scholar Norman Ornstein
<https://twitter.com/NormOrnstein/status/1167653678678970368>. In other
words, McCarthyism has gone mainstream.

To get to the root of what is going on here, the spat between the Clinton
camp and the upstart, anti-interventionist Gabbard must be placed within
the broader context of the past several years during which, under the
influence of Russiagate, the Democratic Party and the establishment media
have taken the lead in calling for a new Cold War. Only then can Clinton’s
accusation be seen for what it is, part of a long campaign of vilification
and demonization against critics of the establishment consensus on Russia
going back at least to late 2013, if not earlier.

Express doubts about the establishment’s preferred policy toward Russia,
and you will find yourself not only in the crosshairs of the liberal
mainstream media but, even more worryingly, on the radar of the
intelligence community—just ask a minor Trump campaign functionary like
George Papadopoulos.

Left-leaning outlets and think tanks like MSNBC (*Hardball* host Chris
Matthews has decreed that loyal “Americans don’t go to Russia”), *The Daily
Beast*
<https://www.thedailybeast.com/meet-the-anti-semites-truthers-and-alaska-pol-at-dcs-pro-putin-soiree>
, *New York* magazine
<https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2014/03/pathetic-lives-of-putins-american-dupes.html>
, *Think Progress*
<https://thinkprogress.org/acewa-anti-semitic-board-member-cf4a2e69e082/>,
the Center for American Progress
<https://twitter.com/neeratanden/status/1091894508520906752?lang=en>, and *The
New Republic <https://twitter.com/juliaioffe/status/461936460627996673>* have
all recklessly accused scholars, journalists, and activists with whom they
disagree of being Kremlin “toadies
<https://newrepublic.com/article/117606/stephen-cohen-wrong-russia-ukraine-america>”
and “useful idiots
<https://twitter.com/neeratanden/status/1091894508520906752?lang=en>” —this
last, of course, having been a common trope marched out by the John Birch
right during the Cold War, and even in the years following.

Former Vermont governor Howard Dean has frequently accused journalists and
news outlets with which he disagrees of being conduits for Russian
propaganda. An op-ed
<https://thehill.com/opinion/international/381246-Did-Californias-Ro-Khanna-get-duped-by-Russias-propaganda%253F>by
Kristofer Harrison in *The Hill *accused California Representative Ro
Khanna of doing a “favor” for Vladimir Putin in sponsoring legislation that
would cut off US funding to neo-Nazi battalions in Ukraine.

After the 2016 election, as the author Tony Wood puts it in his book *Russia
Without Putin*, “the paranoias of the Cold War seemed to have made a
comeback.”

Which is only too true.

Over the last several years, high government officials have attempted to
paint discourse and policy proposals with which they disagree as tantamount
to disloyalty, if not worse.

One need only look to March 2017, when, on the floor of the US Senate, the
senior senator from Arizona, John McCain, accused Kentucky Republican Rand
Paul of “working for Vladimir Putin.” The accusation came amid an effort by
Paul to have an actual debate (as opposed to a voice vote) over whether
Montenegro should join NATO. Said McCain to Paul, “If there is objection,
you are achieving the objectives of Vladimir Putin.”

Still more alarming, several months later, in December 2017, a
little-noticed amicus curiae brief sent by former high-ranking US
intelligence officials, asserted that Russia uses “political organizers and
activists, academics, journalists, web operators, shell companies,
nationalists and militant groups, and prominent pro-Russian businessmen” to
subvert the American political process.

Russia’s intermediaries, said the brief cosigned by, among others, former
CIA director John Brennan, may include “the unwitting accomplice who is
manipulated to act in what he believes is his best interest, to the
ideological or economic ally who broadly shares Russian interests, to the
knowing agent of influence who is recruited or coerced to directly advance
Russian operations and objectives.”

And this is precisely what Clinton has now accused Tulsi Gabbard, a woman
of color, a combat vet and a major in the Army National Guard, of being: an
accomplice in Russia’s malign campaign to influence the 2020 election. What
we are now seeing is nothing less than a joint effort by the former
secretary of state and her allies in the media (which very much include
certain former high ranking members of the US intelligence community) to
vilify those like Gabbard who vocally oppose a new Cold War with Russia.

With the exception of Representative Beto O’Rouke and Senator Bernie
Sanders, rather few of Gabbard’s 2020 rivals rushed to her defense. And
while *The Nation*’s national correspondent Jeet Heer noted
<https://www.thenation.com/article/clinton-tulsi-gabbard/> that it is
“crucial to defend Gabbard from Clinton’s smear, which is rooted in a
pernicious tendency of centrists to see criticism of the status quo as
treason,” the silence with which this development has been greeted by many
of the erstwhile guardians of political dissent on the left has been
nothing short of deafening.

James Carden <https://www.thenation.com/authors/james-carden/>

James W. Carden is a contributing writer at *The Nation* and the executive
editor for the American Committee for East-West Accord
<https://eastwestaccord.com/>.
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