>>>"McCarthyism", like "fascism" has become a buzzword that most often reflects that the user intends it as code to elicit huzzahs from fellow believers rather than something rooted in actual history {s}
>>>>
>>>Sort of like "Socialism"???????????????
>>
>>Actually, yes. Very little proposed seriously by the 'left' in this country would be recognized as socialism in really socialist countries. (as Dragan while quickly confirm) I'm also not fond of 'racism' and 'treason' except in truly appropriate context.
>>
>>But fascist and fascism is particularly misused and I think really unwittingly by people who really don't know what it means. The word "progressive" is equally tricky if one knows anything of Wilson's people and the US in the first two decades of the last century.
>
>Flashback to the 60's.............................
>
>I always thought, back then, that the left had the advantage in the name calling business. Call a right-winger a Facist and you were insulting him. Call a left-winger a Communist and it was either shrugged off as a McCarthyite slur or accepted as a compliment.
>
>Nowadays, all those things seem to be labels with meaning only to the insulter and easily ignored by the insultee.

The degrading of all the words certainly has caused them to lose their sting. 'Communist' of course was actually proudly embraced by people who should have known better as they were definitely talking Chairman Mao ( Russians were already too stogey by then but the Cultural Revolution was *cool* - you could *denounce* people and say stuff like "running dog" and "imperialist lackey" with a straight face. That "Death to the Fascist insect that preys on the life of the people" that the Symbionese Liberation Army was using as its sign-off in 1974 was delivered without a drop of irony and resonated well in Berkeley.

Anyone not old enough to remember those times when at least 18 should read Tom Wolfe's Mau-Mauing the Radical Flac Catchers - his tale of Leonard Bernstein's dinner parties for the Black Panthers.