The New McCarthyism: How the Culture Wars Replaced the Function of Our Government

The United States is in a new era of hysteria — one not driven by the lingering spectre of Soviet-era communism, as in the 1950s, but by the targeting of sex, gender and so-called “radical leftism.” The new McCarthyism has taken hold, and it is far darker and unruly than what men like Joseph McCarthy ever encouraged and instigated.

For example, in an unhinged, baseless rant in late September 2025, right as the federal government’s fiscal year ended, President Donald Trump and his powerful allies in Congress blamed a plethora of people, besides their own party, for the government shutdown. A screed from Trump, posted on his Truth Social platform from his official account on September 24, blames the Democrats for the shutdown because he says they want to “force taxpayers to fund transgender surgery for minors, […] allow men to play in women’s sports, and essentially create transgender operations for everybody.” Others in the GOP blamed groups, including so-called “Haitian male prostitutes.”

That was what Sen. John Kennedy, R-L.A.., and Rep. Nancy Mace, R-S.C., among others, claim, as it relates to the radical left’s attempts to shut down the government if certain budget line items aren’t included. In a Senate floor speech on October 3, Kennedy claimed to identify, via a fact check by Snopes, “$3.6 million in pastry classes and dance focus groups for ‘male prostitutes in Haiti.’” As a sidebar, it is essential to note that the fact check on Kennedy’s claim was false. Of the accusations against the Democrats for the government shutdown, there is absolutely no truth to the claim that members of the left-wing major party — namely, Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-NY — walked away from budget negotiations for such claims. Mace, a notoriously transphobic Christian nationalist, circulated the falsehoods on Facebook. I point to both cases because they clearly highlight an alarming denigration of governance.

That denigrated governance is now nothing more than foul-mouthed humor and pointless, bigoted rants reminiscent of an 8kun message board. And the class of people who claim to engage in this new “governance” resort to collective self-victimization by claiming they are being censored and targeted by an entirely absurd definition of anti-MAGA “hate speech” when faced with the simplest of challenges. Note, this all derives from far deeper, decades-old symptoms rotting our country’s core. While this episode may seem like ordinary partisan dysfunction, its rhetorical DNA traces directly to an older tradition of paranoia and persecution.

Historical McCarthyism Reappearing

History is repeating itself, as already seen in the Cold War. “The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language” defines the actual term, “McCarthyism,” as “the practice of publicizing accusations of political disloyalty or subversion with insufficient regard to evidence” and “the use of unfair investigatory or accusatory methods to suppress opposition.” The term is derogatory in its nature and is directly derived from the actions and anti-communist positions of the late Sen. Joseph McCarthy.

McCarthy rose to prominence in the conservative politics of the late 1940s and early 1950s. A devout anti-communist Republican from Wisconsin, he became one of the most visible elected leaders in office at the time that masterfully stoked the general public’s fears over the supposed influences of communists in the U.S. government. Serving as chair of the former Senate Government Operations Committee’s Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations, McCarthy used his position to lead investigations into alleged communist ideological infiltrations from within the federal government, especially within the State Department and the diplomatic corps.

Sen. McCarthy proclaimed that he had a list of known “communists” who worked in the State Department and characterized the people on this supposed list as the “enemies from within.” He declared the existence of these “enemies from within” during a Lincoln Day speech he gave before a Republican Party meeting at Wheeling, West Virginia, on February 9, 1950. He warned, “Today we are engaged in a final, all-out battle between communistic atheism and Christianity. The modern champions of communism have selected this as the time, and ladies and gentlemen, the chips are down—they are truly down.” McCarthy then paraphrased what historians believe to be President Abraham Lincoln, by saying, “As one of our outstanding historical figures once said, ‘When a great democracy is destroyed, it will not be from enemies from without, but rather because of enemies from within.’”And, interestingly enough, there is no account of Lincoln ever saying those words verbatim. Instead, it is believed McCarthy paraphrased Lincoln in an 1838 address he delivered to the Young Men’s Lyceum of Springfield, Illinois, entitled “The Perpetuation of Our Political Institutions.”

It was the speech at the Wheeling Lincoln Day event that major newspapers started criticizing McCarthy by categorizing his over-the-top Red-baiting as what we call McCarthyism today. “The Christian Science Monitor” was one of the very first newspapers to report critically on McCarthy during his tenure before his fall from grace in 1954. In fact, the Monitor initiated in-depth reporting on McCarthy the day after the Lincoln Day speech and resorted to the use of the term McCarthyism the following March.

As we’ve seen decades later, President Trump uses the exact phrase to conjure fear and panic at social causes like anti-fascism and LGBTQ+ equality movements. For example, Trump has been vocal about the “enemies within” or “enemies from within” since the 2024 election. During a meeting of 800 generals and admirals of the U.S. military at the end of last month, Trump told his military leadership that “America is under invasion from within.” In that same speech, Trump used similar language, alluding to an unspecified “enemy.” While some can speculate as to who the enemy is, Trump’s deployment of the Army National Guard to large cities controlled by liberal or progressive elected officials is indicative of old McCarthyistic tactics.

With respect to McCarthy, Trump learned to shift and dodge blame by accusing his critics and opponents of baseless accusations — a commonplace practice throughout his career. Roy Cohn, a closeted gay conservative Republican lawyer regarded as Sen. McCarthy’s protégé, counseled Trump for years. That legacy now persists. The only difference between now and then is that Trump’s grasp on the Republican Party and the major party’s shift toward Christian nationalist ideology and its supremacist undercurrents is more fraught due to the wide, instantaneous accessibility of information enabled by social media networks and the internet. With that, it isn’t far-fetched to point out that historical examples of McCarthyism are recast and regurgitated for modern consumption.

The New Lavender Scare

There has rarely been a more tumultuous time to be LGBTQ+ in recent U.S. history, especially if you identify as transgender, gender diverse or gender non-binary. That said, I feel it necessary to point to the historical and intersectional marginalization of queer groups within the framework of modern-day American politics.

LGBTQ+ people have long been targets of the most powerful in our national culture through several types of frameworks: scapegoating, queerbaiting, ostracization and discrimination. Scapegoating is among the most prevalent. Amid the Red Scare that McCarthy and his colleagues exacerbated at the time (e.g., former FBI director J. Edgar Hoover, members of the former House Un-American Activities Committee, Roy Cohn, and others), these efforts of fighting ostensible communist ideological sabotage encompassed the overt targeting and removal of “sexual perversion” within the U.S. federal government.

President Dwight Eisenhower issued Executive Order (EO) 10450 in April 1953. That executive order directed agency heads, civil service hiring authorities and Hoover’s Federal Bureau of Investigation to determine whether any federal employees posed security risks. Among the security risks identified by EO 10450, “Employees could be a security risk and still not be disloyal or have any traitorous thoughts, but it may be that their personal habits are such that they might be subject to blackmail by people who seek to destroy the safety of our country.” The sentiment of the time was that LGBTQ+ people were more prone to being blackmailed into traitorous and seditious activities out of fear of being outed and castigated. The executive order did the exact opposite of its intended purpose. Openly queer applicants to the federal civil service were denied employment opportunities, and over 5,000 others lost their jobs under suspicion of being homosexual or ascribed to “sexual perversion.” Eisenhower’s executive order was pivotal during a period that coincided with the Red Scare instigated by McCarthy and his colleagues. This period is the Lavender Scare, where people were persecuted under suspicion of being gay, lesbian, transgender or queer. Sometimes these claims were even made against people who weren’t LGBTQ+ and lacked substantial evidence.

Not only was this a discriminatory period, but it also contributed to the scapegoating actions taken by a powerful few to suppress opposition and opposing viewpoints in the name of “national security” and “protecting morality.” Parallels to the present day are uncanny. Where McCarthy once conjured communist infiltrators threatening Christian America, today’s demagogues rally against the “woke mobs,” the “gender ideologues,” and, of course, the “enemies from within.” Both eras thrive on moral panic and the weaponization of fear as a means of generating political capital generation.

The Red Scare’s language of purity and loyalty tests has simply been repackaged for the digital age, amplified by modern political economics driven by outrage. Where McCarthy wielded television cameras, modern extremists wield algorithms — spreading suspicion faster than reason can respond. The loyalty oaths of the 1950s have become ideological purity tests against teachers, librarians, and anyone who dares affirm pluralism, gender equality and LGBTQ+ equality. And just as the Lavender Scare cast LGBTQ+ people as threats to national security, today’s culture warriors scapegoat transgender and queer Americans as dangers to children and morality.

Both movements also use state power to police identity and enforce conformity, further dressing persecution in the language of protection. Additionally, institutional cowardice persists as lawmakers, then and now, choose silence over courage for fear or removal from public life. In both eras, governance has given way to spectacle — rule not by reason, but by grievance. The result is the same: democracy weakened by paranoia, and a public square poisoned by fear masquerading as virtue.

Think of Trump’s executive orders targeting “gender ideology” and “transgenderism.” According to a policy briefing published by the National LGBTQ+ Bar Association and Foundation, Trump has issued seven anti-LGBTQ+ executive orders to date. All seven explicitly target queer populations, especially transgender people who receive public goods from the government or are employed by the federal government in some capacity. These are Lavender Scare tactics by design — tested and proven.

Framing and Opposing the New McCarthyism

The new McCarthyism, as you can see, can refer to the revival of McCarthy-era tactics within the contemporary political culture — the use of fear, accusation and moral panic to silence dissent and marginalize some of the most vulnerable groups of people.

Unlike the Red Scare’s obsession with rooting out communists, the new McCarthyism targets perceived “radical leftists” and LGBTQ+ communities under the guise of the protection of morality or a national identity. This replaces evidence-based governance with ideological witch hunts, turning paranoia and cultural grievances into tools of the state and the denigrated governance rampant today. The lesson of both McCarthy eras is clear: when fear becomes a governing principle, democracy withers. This era of new McCarthyism, like the old, depends on the public’s amnesia, on citizens forgetting how easily moral panic replaces moral principle.

A humanist politics requires us to see through the fog of fear and remember the shared dignity we possess, which demagogues exploit for power. Only when there is a collective rejection of scapegoating politics and a reaffirmation of the hard work of pluralism is prioritized, then the government is worthy of the people.