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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.
Oliver Schick-
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
An important distinction. I was thinking about the public hearings that @blackbucket mentions above. We have open dissent against the slurs against Corbyn, and successful legal action against it. It's a long way from that climate. Regarding how it 'feels', there is a question of perception: the climate seems more opressive to those on the recieving end, more trivial to those on the outside watching.
William.
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.