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In the McCarthy era, people were actually put on trial by the state for possible connections to the communist party. In Britain today, we have a communist party who are able to function freely, in fact I know some of them. I can see how it would feel at the moment from Corbyn's end, though.
William.-
We weren't talking about the 'McCarthy era', and I can't remember seeing it referenced recently. We were talking about what 'McCarthyism' has come to mean. A further quote from further down in the same article:
Since the time of McCarthy, the word McCarthyism has entered American speech as a general term for a variety of practices: aggressively questioning a person's patriotism, making poorly supported accusations, using accusations of disloyalty to pressure a person to adhere to conformist politics or to discredit an opponent, subverting civil and political rights in the name of national security, and the use of demagoguery are all often referred to as McCarthyism. McCarthyism can also be synonymous with the term witch-hunt, both referring to mass hysteria and moral panic.
All of these things have recently been tried on Corbyn, which is why the reference is accurate, pertinent, and justified. It's not a question of how it 'would feel' to Corbyn, either, but what his political opponents clearly aim to achieve by smearing him in this way.
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In the McCarthy era, people were actually put on trial by the state for possible connections to the communist party.
When one thinks of the McCarthy era, they think about public hearings which were used to "out" people as being communists/having communist sympathies (which in itself was not illegal), which then resulted in the real loss of livelihood for which there was no legal recourse. It was the power of insinuation mixed with moral scare and a public willing to go along with (or, in many cases, afraid to go against) the narrative of "us vs them" which the era is infamous for. Not actual laws or trials.
Oliver Schick
No, it's perfectly OK to point out that there are probably certain people who would want defence spending to rise again. Just because it's currently at a low (obviously still much too high all over the world) doesn't mean that it can't escalate again.
The definition of McCarthyism, according to the Wikipedia article, is:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/McCarthyism
Clearly, this hasn't happened at all in the recent past, to anyone, least of all to Jeremy Corbyn.
Besides, I know for an absolute fact that @mmccarthy would very much welcome a new Cold War.