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Is Donald Trump the new Joe McCarthy? Reading

Is Donald Trump The New Joe McCarthy?Top of Form

JAN 8, 2016 @ 02:29 PM 

 “Those who cannot remember the past are doomed to repeat it.”

- George Santayana, “The Life of Reason,” 1905

There seems to be nothing Donald Trump will not say.  Or at least infer.

Take for example his recent comment that evangelicals should not trust Ted Cruz because his father is from Cuba, and Cubans are mostly Catholic. He didn’t say Mr. Cruz wasn’t an evangelical, he just inferred that Mr. Cruz must not be, due to his origins. That Mr. Cruz’s father is a “born again Christian” and Bible-belt evangelical minister is simply ignored, regardless of its relevance.

Or, take for example the notion that Mr. Cruz is not eligible to be president because he was born in Canada, even though his mother is an American citizen. Mr. Trump doesn’t say Mr. Cruz isn’t a natural born citizen, he just implies thatpossibly he is not and therefore he may not be a legitimate candidate. Maybe Mr. Cruz really isn’t the American he claims to be?

Or, inferring all Muslims are bad, because some followers of Islam have implemented bad acts. Mr. Trump has denounced all Muslims, and would deny all Muslims entry into the USA, because of the actions of a few. After all, why not?  If you can’t tell the good from the bad, why not condemn them all? If he were doing the same to Jewish believers we would call Mr. Trump’s language antisemitic. Could you imagine denying all Jews entry into the USA – for any reason?

These are just a few of the outrageous things Mr. Trump has said, and yet he has people who think he is an admirable business leader suitable to be a political leader. Recently a good friend of mine was quite eloquent in her praise for how well Mr. Trump “plays the media like a church organ.” Even if she didn’t like some of his messages, she thought it admirable how he obtains media attention, and keeps it focused on himself, and lures people into listening to him.

Which takes me to my opening quote. Mr. Trump is great at practicing McCarthyism – and yet nobody seems to care. And if we don’t do something, we will repeat a part of history that was a very black eye.

Senator Joe McCarthy was a conservative Senator from Wisconsin in the early 1950s. To achieve fame and glory, he famously developed a great skill for feeding the news media bits of information that would bring attention to himself. Senator McCarthy excelled at building on the public’s FUD – Fears, Uncertainties and Doubts.

At the time, Americans were terribly afraid of communists. Fearful they would ruin the U.S. social order and make the country into the next Soviet Union. So Senator McCarthy conveniently blamed all social ills on communist infiltrators – people working in government jobs who were set on destroying the country. He then would accuse those he didn’t like of being communists. Or, if that accusation was proven baseless, he would accuse those he saw as political opponents of sympathizing with communists – claims that amounted to “you are guilty unless you can prove yourself innocent.” He didn’t have to prove someone was bad, just that they might look bad, sound bad or know someone who was possibly bad.

Mr. McCarthy was fantastic at feeding great lines to the media – newspapers, radio and TV. He would seek out reporters and say outrageous comments, which were so outrageous that the media felt compelled to report them. And the more outrageous Senator McCarthy was, the more media attention he acquired. And the more attention he had, the more he used false attacks, innuendos and statements that pandered to the FUD of many Americans.

Eventually, Senator McCarthy was exposed as the blowhard that he truly was. Full of innuendo and attack, but lacking in any real policy skills or ability to govern. The word “McCarthyism” was born to “ describe reckless, unsubstantiated accusations, as well as demagogic attacks on the character or patriotism of political adversaries.” Famous broadcaster Edward R. Murrow eventually exposed the baselessness of Senator McCarthy, leading to his Senatorial censure and media decline.

Few have ever demonstrated the skills of McCarthyism better than Mr. Trump. Feeding the public FUD, Mr. Trump doesn’t say President Obama is a Muslim – but he accepts the notion from an audience member’s shout out at a public rally. Just like McCarthy called members of the State Department “sympathizers” as he tried to ruin their careers, Mr. Trump says that the investigation of Benghazi implies that former Secretary of State Clinton did something wrong – even though the investigation results were that there was no wrong-doing by the Secretary or her staff. The “investigation” is held out as evidence, when it is nothing more than an inference. And attacks on whole groups of people, like Muslims, is the definition of demagoguery.

Mr. Trump may be good at media management, but that is not to be admired. Being good at a skill is admirable only if that skill is used for good. We admire magicians for slight-of-hand, but not pickpockets. We admire forest rangers for skillful use of burns, but not arsonists. We admire locksmiths for knowing how locks work, but not thieves. We admire artists for great brushwork, but not forgers. We admire hard working business people for their skills, but not skillful lawbreakers like Skillling of Enron, Ebbers of Worldcom or investment advisor Bernie Madoff.

Mr. Trump clearly knows how to identify the Fear, Uncertainty and Doubts that plague many Americans. And he is quick with a phrase to make people even more fearful, uncertain and doubtful.  And he is well spoken enough to know how to obtain the attention of all media outlets, plus clever enough to know how to appeal to their need for quotes and images to meet the daily news cycle.  But, he does all of this as the heir apparent to Senator “Tailgunner Joe” McCarthy.

http://www.forbes.com/sites/adamhartung/2016/01/08/is-donald-trump-the-new-joe-mccarthy/#1c72cb2826bd

Dawn raids reading

Dawn raids

New Zealand

Dawn raids were a common event in Auckland, New Zealand during a crackdown on illegal overstayers from the Pacific Islands from the mid-1970s to the early 1980s. The raids were first introduced in 1973 by Norman Kirk's Labour government and were continued by Robert Muldoon's National government.^[1] These operations involved special police squads conducting raids on the homes and workplaces of overstayers throughout New Zealand usually at dawn. Overstayers and their families were often prosecuted and then deported back to their countries.^[2][3]

The Dawn Raids were a product of the New Zealand government's immigration policies to attract more Pacific Islanders. Since the 1950s, the New Zealand government had encouraged substantial emigration from several Pacific countries including Samoa, Tonga, and Fiji to fill a labour shortage caused by the post–war economic boom. Consequently, the Pacific Islander population in New Zealand had grow to 45,413 by 1971, with a substantial number overstaying their visas.^[4] During the late 1960s and early 1970s, New Zealand's economy had declined due to several international developments: a decline in international wool prices in 1966, Britain joining the European Economic Community in 1973 which deprived NZ of a major market for dairy products, and the 1973 oil crisis. This economic downturn led to increased crime, unemployment and other social ailments, which disproportionately affected the Pacific Islander community.^[5]

In response to these social problems, Prime Minister Kirk created a special police task force in Auckland in 1973 which was tasked with dealing with overstayers. Its powers also included the power to conduct random checks on suspected overstayers. Throughout 1974, the New Zealand Police conducted dawn raids against overstayers which sparked criticism from human rights groups and sections of the press. In response to public criticism, the Labour Immigration Minister Fraser Colman suspended the dawn raids until the government developed a "concerted plan." In April 1974, Kirk also introduced a two–month amnesty period for overstayers to register themselves with the authorities and be granted with a two–month visa extension. Kirk's change in policies were criticized by the mainstream press, which highlighted crimes and violence perpetrated by Māori and Pacific Islanders.^[6]

In July 1974, the opposition National Party leader Muldoon promised to reduce immigration and to "get tough" on law and order issues if his party was elected as government. He criticized the Labour government's immigration policies for contributing to the economic recession and a housing shortage. During the 1975 general elections, the National Party also played a controversial electoral advertisement that was later criticized for stoking negative racial sentiments about Polynesian migrants.^[7] Once in power, Muldoon's government accelerated the Kirk government's police raids against Pacific overstayers.^[3]

The Dawn Raids were condemned by different sections of New Zealand society including the Pacific Islander and Māori communities, church groups, employers and workers' unions, anti-racist groups, and the opposition Labour Party. One Pacific group known as the Polynesian Panthers combated the Dawn Raids by providing legal aid to detainees and staging retaliatory "dawn raids" on several National cabinet ministers including Bill Birch and Frank Gill, the Minister of Immigration. The raids were also criticized by elements of the police and the ruling National Party for damaging race relations with the Pacific Island community.^[8] Critics also alleged that the Dawn Raids unfairly targeted Pacific Islanders since Pacific Islanders only comprised one-third of the overstayers but made up 86% of those arrested and prosecuted for overstaying. The majority of overstayers were from Great Britain, Australia, and South Africa.^[2] The Muldoon government's treatment of overstayers also damaged relations with Pacific countries like Samoa and Tonga, and generated criticism from the South Pacific Forum. By 1979, the Muldoon government terminated the Dawn Raids since the deportation of illegal Pacific overstayers had failed to alleviate the ailing New Zealand economy.^[2]

Taken from: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Police_raid

McCarthyism and witch hunts reading

McCarthyism: Joseph McCarthy’s Witch-hunts

18 Jul 2013

Joseph McCarthy (1908-1957) was a product of his times. As the Cold War fever gripped America in the 1950s, McCarthy – a Republican Senator – rose to visibility as the public face of political paranoia. In a cynical bid to inject life into his dying prospects of re-election as a senator, McCarthy burst into popular public consciousness on February 9, 1950 by claiming that he had a list of 205 State Department staff members who were traitorous members of the American Communist Party.

The American media and the public went into a frenzy at the astonishing claim. The Tydings Committee appointed to investigate the claims labelled McCarthy’s claims as a “fraud and a hoax”, a result disputed by Republicans in the Senate and endorsed by the Democrats. Although unable to produce any evidence to support his claims, McCarthy continued to make sensational claims about the infiltration of American political circles by Communist subversives.

Reelected as Senator of Wisconsin in 1952, McCarthy was appointed as the chairman of the Senate Committee on Government Operations. Basking in his newly appointed post, McCarthy alleged several government departments of communist involvement and accused numerous innocent citizens of subversion and espionage, destroying their careers in the process. More than 2,000 government employees lost their jobs as a result of McCarthy’s aggressive and intimidating interrogation that has been described as a “witch-hunt”. An employee of the public broadcaster, Voice of America, committed suicide, after being harassed about unsubstantiated alleged Communist influence in their broadcasts. 

The beginning of the end of McCarthy’s remarkable political ride occurred when he overreached and accused the US army of communist subversion. President Eisenhower called for a public investigation of the alleged charges. The 1954 spectacle which was broadcast on television lay bare the real McCarthy to the American people – a bully who excelled at intimidating witnesses and was evasive in his own responses. The lowest point in the hearing took place when McCarthy attacked a young army lawyer, forcing the army’s chief attorney, Joseph Welch to exclaim, “Until this moment, Senator, I think I never really gauged your cruelty or your recklessness…Have you no sense of decency, sir, at long last? Have you left no sense of decency?”

Following the Army-McCarthy hearings, the senator lost support from the public and his own Republican party and was censured by a special committee appointed by the senate. His career in ruins and publicly avoided by colleagues, McCarthy died in 1957 due to cirrhosis of the liver at the age of 48. 

McCarthy’s vicious antics in the early 1950s ensured that his name forever entered the English lexicon in the form of “McCarthyism” to refer to political witch-hunts – demagogic attacks on the character of opponents and accusations of treason or disloyalty without sufficient regard for evidence.

http://www.thehistorychannel.co.nz/articles/11/mccarthyism-joseph-mccarthy%E2%80%99s-witch-hunts

Brief History of Salem reading

A Brief History of the Salem Witch Trials
One town's strange journey from paranoia to pardon

A girl is accused during the Salem Witch Trials (Bettmann / CORBIS)

The Salem witch trials occurred in colonial Massachusetts between 1692 and 1693. More than 200 people were accused of practicing witchcraft—the Devil's magic—and 20 were executed. Eventually, the colony admitted the trials were a mistake and compensated the families of those convicted. Since then, the story of the trials has become synonymous with paranoia and injustice, and it continues to beguile the popular imagination more than 300 years later.

Salem Struggling
Several centuries ago, many practicing Christians, and those of other religions, had a strong belief that the Devil could give certain people known as witches the power to harm others in return for their loyalty. A "witchcraft craze" rippled through Europe from the 1300s to the end of the 1600s. Tens of thousands of supposed witches—mostly women—were executed. Though the Salem trials came on just as the European craze was winding down, local circumstances explain their onset

The witch no. 1 is a lithograph representation, created by Joseph E. Baker, ca. 1837-1914, of the story of the witchcraft accusations, trials and executions that captured the imagination of writers and artists in the ensuing centuries. (Image Source: Wikimedia Commons)

In January of 1692, Reverend Parris' daughter Elizabeth, age 9, and niece Abigail Williams, age 11, started having "fits." They screamed, threw things, uttered peculiar sounds and contorted themselves into strange positions, and a local doctor blamed the supernatural. Another girl, Ann Putnam, age 11, experienced similar episodes. On February 29, under pressure from magistrates Jonathan Corwin and John Hathorne, the girls blamed three women for afflicting them: Tituba, the Parris' Caribbean slave; Sarah Good, a homeless beggar; and Sarah Osborne, an elderly impoverished woman.

Witch Hunt
All three women were brought before the local magistrates and interrogated for several days, starting on March 1, 1692. Osborne claimed innocence, as did Good. But Tituba confessed, "The Devil came to me and bid me serve him." She described elaborate images of black dogs, red cats, yellow birds and a "black man" who wanted her to sign his book. She admitted that she signed the book and said there were several other witches looking to destroy the Puritans. All three women were put in jail.

With the seed of paranoia planted, a stream of accusations followed for the next few months. Charges against Martha Corey, a loyal member of the Church in Salem Village, greatly concerned the community; if she could be a witch, then anyone could. Magistrates even questioned Sarah Good's 4-year-old daughter, Dorothy, and her timid answers were construed as a confession. The questioning got more serious in April when Deputy Governor Thomas Danforth and his assistants attended the hearings. Dozens of people from Salem and other Massachusetts villages were brought in for questioning.

On May 27, 1692, Governor William Phipps ordered the establishment of a Special Court of Oyer (to hear) and Terminer (to decide) for Suffolk, Essex and Middlesex counties. The first case brought to the special court was Bridget Bishop, an older woman known for her gossipy habits and promiscuity. When asked if she committed witchcraft, Bishop responded, "I am as innocent as the child unborn." The defense must not have been convincing, because she was found guilty and, on June 10, became the first person hanged on what was later called Gallows Hill.
Five days later, respected minister Cotton Mather wrote a letter imploring the court not to allow spectral evidence—testimony about dreams and visions. The court largely ignored this request and five people were sentenced and hanged in July, five more in August and eight in September. On October 3, following in his son's footsteps, Increase Mather, then president of Harvard, denounced the use of spectral evidence: "It were better that ten suspected witches should escape than one innocent person be condemned."
Governor Phipps, in response to Mather's plea and his own wife being questioned for witchcraft, prohibited further arrests, released many accused witches and dissolved the Court of Oyer and Terminer on October 29. Phipps replaced it with a Superior Court of Judicature, which disallowed spectral evidence and only condemned 3 out of 56 defendants. Phipps eventually pardoned all who were in prison on witchcraft charges by May 1693. But the damage had been done: 19 were hanged on Gallows Hill, a 71-year-old man was pressed to death with heavy stones, several people died in jail and nearly 200 people, overall, had been accused of practicing "the Devil's magic."

Read more:http://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/a-brief-history-of-the-salem-witch-trials-175162489/#3AibZvfDQmPJvcjr.99



By Jess Blumberg
smithsonian.com
October 23, 2007

Crucible audio for download

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Learning about McCarthy intro

Click on the link below and make notes on McCarthyims.
Ensure you can answer the following in class:

• when the McCarthy trials took place
• What McCarthyism is
• What sort of people were pick on
• Why people were jailed
• How many artists were 'black-listed'
• What Arthur Miller did
• Any ideas that the text raises

Homework note taking McCarthyism