The New McCarthyism
Wednesday October 14, 2015
Cold War II is upon us. Once again, to write the phrase “the Kremlin” is to evoke images of an Oriental despotism both ominous and inscrutable, only slightly less sinister than the Dark Tower. Russia, once thought to have been liberated from its Soviet chains, is now the new Mordor. And, of course, Vladimir Putin is the new Sauron: cunning, amoral, inhumanly ruthless, he is routinely likened to Joseph Stalin, the Soviet dictator who murdered millions and imprisoned many more in the gulags.
Not that Putin has murdered millions, or even as many as a dozen, but the ethics of the new McCarthyites – yes, they’re back – aren’t overly punctilious. Their polemics are even less exacting than their forebears’ for the simple reason that Communism, as an organized international movement with its epicenter in Russia, is dead, and will doubtless remain so. Furthermore, “Putinism,” if such an ideological creature can be said to exist – a problematic proposition – is not a global movement, let alone an international conspiracy: there are no “Putinist” parties outside of Russia, assiduously subverting the moral and political foundations of the West and harboring the 21stcentury version of the Rosenbergs. No Whittaker Chambers will emerge to reveal the dark secrets of these saboteurs of democracy and shine a bright light on their moral espionage – but never fear, because we have Cathy Young.
A columnist for various and sundry outlets, and long associated with Reason magazine, Young – born Ekaterina Jung – came to the US when she was 17 and became a naturalized citizen in 1989, the year her book, Growing Up in Moscow: Memories of a Soviet Girlhood was published. The book, which details life under the totalitarian rule of the Communists, might have ensured her a career as a defected Soviet dissident, perhaps a female version of Natan Sharanksy, but – alas – the Soviet Union fell before such promise could be fulfilled and she had to find another ideological niche, eventually zeroing in on the absurdities of radical feminism in her second book, and promoting a movement known as “Women Against Feminism.”
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