“As Israel’s genocidal siege on Gaza deepens since Hamas’s October 7thattack, an inspiring wave of Palestine solidarity organizing has swept the U.S. Most recently, the establishment of student encampments on hundreds of college campuses across the country recalls earlier generation-defining youth mobilizations against the Vietnam and Iraq Wars. Public opinion is shifting in real time and setting off a sea change that will reverberate across policy, popular culture and movement-building for decades to come.
Unsurprisingly, authoritarian forces in the U.S. are desperate to quell the grassroots upsurge by responding with neo-McCarthyist repression tactics. Politicians, media figures, and pro-State of Israel groups are scapegoating protesters as akin to subversive fifth columnists, e.g., shadowy foreign agents destroying the state from within, while they cheer on mass arrests and violent police and vigilante attacks on students. They are calling for progressive organizations to face federal investigation and be stripped of tax-exempt status, while attempting to pass legislation that would restrict activists’ free speech rights.
These tactics contribute to a climate of brutal domestic repression unseen since the early years of the War on Terror. They are carried out in the name of fighting antisemitism, but instead, they only serve to make Jews less safe. Neo-McCarthyism is used by Rightists and many liberals, as well as the State, to demonize and silence activists, and combat a range of progressive change efforts. Like its namesake, today’s neo-McCarthyist panic draws on a conspiratorial worldview which sees radical threats (this time, from ‘terrorists’ and ‘antisemites’) around every corner.”
Ben Lorber 
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