US: Zio-McCarthyism, a 21st century political purge that has dangerous overtones
In the 1950s, the United States launched a sweeping campaign to root out alleged communists from public life. Careers were destroyed, lives were upended and a culture of fear permeated the political and academic landscape.
That era, McCarthyism, is remembered today as a dark and shameful chapter in American history.
We are now living through its echo. But this time, it comes under a different banner. This is the era of Zio-McCarthyism, a new political purge targeting anyone who dares to oppose the atrocities committed by the Israeli state or express solidarity with the Palestinian people.
And just like the original, this one will not stop at its initial targets.
In recent months, we’ve seen a disturbing escalation. Pro-Palestinian activists are being detained, surveilled, deported and smeared for little more than exercising their constitutional rights.
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Mahmoud Khalil, a permanent legal resident and Columbia University graduate, was seized from his home by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents and transported to a detention facility in Louisiana.
A federal immigration judge has now ruled that he is deportable, not because of any criminal act, but because the secretary of state has labelled his "beliefs and associations" a threat to US foreign policy interests. The judge even admitted she lacked the authority to challenge the secretary’s designation.
Dissent alone is now enough to warrant deportation.
The next wave
Rumeysa Ozturk, a Turkish doctoral student at Tufts, was detained by masked ICE agents on her way to an iftar and moved across state lines before being incarcerated. Her apparent crime was writing an op-ed condemning Israel’s genocide in Gaza.
They are not alone. Yunseo Chung, Momodou Taal, Dr Rasha Alawieh, and Badar Khan Suri have all faced detention, expulsion or targeted scrutiny for similar reasons.
And this is all just the first wave a few months in to the insanity of Trump 2.0. The next wave is already forming.
Some press reports revealed that the Trump administration is preparing to strip naturalised citizens of their status if they are deemed disloyal or "aligned with foreign adversaries".
If implemented, this would mark the first wide-scale denaturalisation programme in decades with American citizens being sent to a Gitmo-like torture camp in a foreign nation.
If history teaches us anything, it’s that political purges never stay confined. In the 1950s, it started with communists and swept up civil rights leaders, labour organisers and artists.
In the 2000s, the so-called War on Terror began with Muslims and spread through the dark corridors of the Patriot Act. And today, the crackdown on Palestinian solidarity is only the beginning.
Already, the campaign is expanding beyond immigrants. Visa revocations, ICE raids and visa denials are happening at alarming rates. But it would be naive to believe it ends there.
Naturalised citizens are next. Their citizenship, already treated as conditional by some in power, is now being actively re-examined.
Broader suppression
For those born in the United States, the path is already being paved. Expanded "foreign terror affiliation" laws, guilt-by-association tactics, and pressure on employers and universities are setting the stage for broader suppression.
To those cheering this crackdown because they oppose the Palestinian cause: beware. You are helping to build the very infrastructure that will repress you tomorrow
Social media histories are being used as evidence. Student groups are being banned. New legislation is being proposed to criminalise categories of dissent altogether.
To those cheering this crackdown because they oppose the Palestinian cause: beware. You are helping to build the very infrastructure that will repress you tomorrow.
This is how authoritarianism spreads. It starts with the most vulnerable. It tests its tools on those with the least protection. It normalises fear. And then it turns on everyone else.
The people being punished are not criminals or extremists. They are students, doctors, humanitarians and professors. They are the ones standing against genocide, apartheid and mass starvation. And for that, they are being punished, not in spite of their principles, but because of them.
Meanwhile, the real machinery of violence continues unchecked. Children continue to be slaughtered in Gaza with American weapons. Journalists are being assassinated. Entire families are being erased from the civil registry. And it is the people sounding the alarm who are being silenced.
Zio-McCarthyism is not just about Palestine. It is about what kind of country the United States is becoming.
The last act
Americans have to choose whether or not they want to live in a society where dissent is criminalised. Where peaceful protest is treated as a national security threat because a foreign war criminal doesn’t like it. Where even domestic policy is dictated not by the interests of the American people, but by loyalty to a foreign regime.
What we are witnessing is not panic by the corrupt powers that be because they can no longer suppress a cause that has finally broken through decades of media distortion and political censorship.
The movement for Palestinian liberation is growing. And with it, so is the desperation of those who have profited from Palestinian dispossession.
But repression is not strength. It is the epitome of weakness and insecurity. It is the last act of a system that knows it's losing control of the narrative.
And just as McCarthyism collapsed under its own paranoia, so too will this campaign.
But the question is: how many more lives will be destroyed before it does? How many more voices of conscience will be silenced? How far down this dark path will America go before it can still salvage any semblance of the values it claims to hold sacred?
The views expressed in this article belong to the author and do not necessarily reflect the editorial policy of Middle East Eye.
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