Creating fear of “the other,” and directing fear and attention to “those people” have a particular American history as well as a general world history. The magazine The Progressive provides a forum for author Matthew Rothschild that keeps this (particular US variety of the) scapegoating practice in view and places it in some historical perspective.
Author Matthew Rothschild has been with The Progressive since 1983. He keeps a running tally of civil liberties infringements in his McCarthyism Watch.
In the January 2002 issue he wrote about The New McCarthyism saying there, in part: “We’ve been here before. From the Alien and Sedition Acts to Lincoln’s suspension of habeas corpus and his imprisonment of anti-war editors, from the suppression of speech during World War I and the Palmer Raids to the internment of Japanese Americans during World War II and the repression of the McCarthy days, the government has seized upon times of peril to scapegoat immigrants and to suppress liberties.” See that article for background of his series.
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