“RED SCARE: BLACKLISTS, MCCARTHYISM AND THE MAKING OF MODERN AMERICA” by Clay Risen (Scribner, 480 pages, $31).
In the preface to “Red Scare: Blacklists, McCarthyism and the Making of Modern America,” Clay Risen states his intention to resist “drawing parallels between the past and the present.”
In conversation, that resistance goes by the wayside quickly.
“I was struck this summer when [now Vice President] JD Vance was talking about these Haitian immigrants in Ohio who are supposedly eating pets,” said Nashville native Risen, a historian and editor at The New York Times. “When evidence was brought to show him that this is actually not true at all, he said, ‘Well, the truth of it doesn’t matter because sometimes we have to tell these stories in order to get a larger truth across.’ To me, that was exactly what McCarthy was doing.”
McCarthy is Sen. Joseph McCarthy from Wisconsin, who used the threat of communist infiltration into American politics, entertainment and elsewhere as a rocket ride to power in Washington, only to flame out when much of the threat was shown to be feverishly oversold.