McCarthyism stalked my family. Its paranoia contains a lesson for Trump's second term | Richard Sennett

Contributing sentiments towards policy:

58% : Some connections between McCarthy and Trump are straightforward, both having been charismatic performers with a base of willing believers, both exploiting patriotism, both making up "facts" on the spur of the moment.
51% : Or rather, I should say, this is true of Trump the politician.
47% : Cohn suggested to McCarthy, for instance, to wave lists of hundreds of foreign infiltrators and communist spies in front of a gullible press - lists that proved to be blank sheets of paper.
37% : Trump the businessman was "transactional" in the way Cohn counselled him to become, taking up and dropping others according to whether they proved useful or not.
35% : This is not at all the case with Trump.
34% : Cohn was an expert in the techniques of public humiliation, of firing people and of surveilling private lives.
32% : Cohn counselled Trump on how to bribe and intimidate New York politicians when the young property mogul encountered rough weather in business.
27% : For Trump the politician, the past is always present - not only his loss in 2020, but older slights by Barack Obama and Nancy Pelosi.
27% : I don't think the ideology Trump stands for will fade after he passes on.
14% : Both McCarthy and Trump rose to power as demagogues who fed on the American public's fear of "enemies within".
4% : Trump's eerily familiar evocations of the 'enemy within' may be harder to shake off than the man who targeted my parentsThe rise of Donald Trump aroused in me an old fear of Senator Joseph McCarthy.

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