McCarthyism: Does it exist in Australia?

Hi and welcome back to the Snapchat channel. If you like our news and our podcasts, please like and subscribe. So today's topic, McCarthyism. What is it and does it actually exist in Australia? So basically you might have heard this term, it has been thrown around and it has been in the news since probably predominantly since 2018 when Australian government introduced new laws to essentially address what has been dubbed as an unprecedented scale of foreign interference. So this was said to be by the then previous ASIO Director General Duncan Lewis who sounded alarm bells to the presence of this foreign interference within our country. In ASIO's 2017 and 18 report he noted that espionage and foreign interference represent a serious threat to Australia's sovereignty and security. He went on to say that such interference also influences the diaspora, ethnic communities, media, government officials. At this point it is crucial to make a distinction between foreign influence and foreign interference. Foreign influence is the legitimate business and culture exchange of a foreign country. Whereas foreign interference may represent unlawful actions by foreign governments and or their agents to interfere with Australia's sovereignty. So there is of course a fine line between the two and that will lead us into our discussion today. So China has been labelled as one of the regions that has displayed an unprecedented level of foreign interference in Australia. This has been widely reported in the news with numerous cases coming to the surface in the last few years. In saying that though some commentators have accused these incidents as Australia government being racist towards the Chinese or that this is displaying McCarthyism and some of these critics were quite well known such as the former New South Wales Premier Bob Carr or the Australian PM Kevin Rowe. So in 2016 Labor Senator Sam Dastyari was involved in a hugely reported case of a scandal involving Quan Ching Mo's political donations and that essentially ended Dastyari's career in politics. At the time the former Foreign Minister and New South Wales Premier and also then the Director of the Australia-China Relations Institute at the University of Technology Bob Carr publicly called the Australian media's criticism of the Chinese Communist Party as a revival of McCarthyism. Kevin Rowe well he too has tuned in he repeatedly criticised the current government's response to the Chinese foreign interference with the label of McCarthyism. Of note he strongly criticised Liberal Minister Andrew Hastie's accusations of the CCP's conduct saying that Australia may fall into the era of McCarthyism. Similar rhetoric has also surfaced more recently in October of 2020 during a parliamentary hearing where Liberal Senator Eric Abetz publicly asked three Chinese Australian citizens whether they would be willing to unconditionally condemn the Chinese Communist Party dictatorship. The three individuals refused to do so and later accusations of racism and McCarthyism emerged yet again. The Chinese media were very quick to pick up these comments and they spread wildly across the state-run media such as Xinhua and other mouthpieces. However the comments in the media about McCarthyism have been rather vague. What exactly is it? So McCarthyism was named after US Senator Joseph McCarthy who was most vocal about the spread of communism and communist elements across the US society and institutions. It emerged soon after the end of World War II when it was most acutely felt and the espionage was most feared as the Soviets occupied Europe, the occupation of Berlin, the Berlin blockade as well as the end of the China civil war. People have always thought that the left-leaning Truman administration at the time were in fact on the side of the Chinese nationalist government but that was not the case. Due to the misjudgment and the fact that they didn't pay enough attention perhaps at the time, in fact the Chinese Communist Party was able to take complete control of China and as a result became the still one-party state that we know it today. They then fought against the US ally South Korea in the Korean War and the United States had no choice really but to join the fight against the CCP regime at cost. And only then did the US intelligence realise just how prevalent the Communist Party's influence was in America at the time. In his 1950 speech McCarthy severely criticised the communist infiltration particularly the infiltration of the US military. He accused US authorities of ignoring the harmfulness of the communist espionage and eventually causing the US to lose China and having to fight against China. Now McCarthy pointed his finger at the four China hens who all happened to be named Johns so they also became known as the four Johns. They were essentially highly influential individuals who dictated the US-China policy at the time. Levelling the accusations of communist espionage against these heavyweights in the US was one of the reasons of McCarthy's ultimate failure. McCarthy's appeal did however awaken a lot of people in this America at the time who became a lot more aware of the dangers and pitfalls of communism and the communist ideologies. However of course at the time it also angered a lot of the left-leaning pro-communists who were top-level influencers within the US government and US military. As a result a large number of pro-communists were suspected of being communist party members and a lot of people lost their jobs, they were cast out of society and essentially as a result the powerful leftists within the society and within the official levels accused McCarthy of going too far, creating a crisis out of nothing, causing a human rights crisis, causing social unrest and called the phenomenon a far-right McCarthyism movement. In the end in 1953 when General Dwight Eisenhower became the President of the United States, the conflict between McCarthy and the US military intensified even further until eventually the accusation of McCarthy of mass infiltration of the United States by communists was completely condemned by the Senate. Since then this incredibly controversial argument of the US government, why there was a loss of China, was no longer discussed. Combating McCarthyism has become an ideological political correctness. Nevertheless from Truman to Eisenhower there have been attempts in the US to create a patchwork of bills that would weaken the influence of the communist forces in America. However as for McCarthy himself, history is still rather inconclusive. According to some reports in the 1950s he certainly did make quite accurate accusations of certain officials and members of the military who were linked with espionage forces at the time. Therefore the emergence of McCarthyism did come at a special time in history at the time where the risk of espionage was incredibly high and the merits of McCarthy himself remain questionable depending who you speak and which side of the fence you're sitting on. So McCarthyism did come at a special time in history when espionage alert and threat was incredibly high and McCarthy's own merits can be judged or lack of merits depending who you speak to and which side of the politics you sit on. However it is unquestionable that his fierce opponent Fairbank, who was one of the key influential heads of China studies and who helped to form US-China policies in the 50s, he was touted undoubtedly as the hero of the CCP who helped to build that connection with the Chinese regime and also helped the regime seize power at the time due to his positioning and his comments. Here in Australia Clive Hamilton, who's a well-known left-leaning academic in Australia, believes that the accusations of McCarthyism in recent years here is not accurate. So McCarthyism sought to exclude communists from various institutions, from Hollywood, from the trade unions, but instead devolved into a witch hunt in the United States. George Christensen, who's a right-wing Liberal Party member in Australia, said that criticism of McCarthyism in the past was due to the fact that the attacks were of imaginary enemies with lack of proof. However here in Australia there is no lack of proof and in fact the CCP influence is wildly obvious and it is known and has been uncovered in recent years and it undermines Australian values and sovereignty. Professor Feng Chong-Yi of the University of Technology who studied Chinese history believes that although McCarthyism did have inherent flaws, it did warn people and it did guide people to have certain safeguards against communism. He says that here in Australia some people intentionally maintain a thinking of more than 60 years ago, believing that investigating people who advance the CCP's values violate human rights. So due to Australia's sound legal system and a multicultural society, here in Australia even if the CCP's influence did exceed that of the United States in the 1950s, we have not had a McCarthy here, let alone McCarthyism itself. However we do seem to have plenty of fair banks on our shores. So do you think McCarthy was a hero or a villain? Do we have McCarthyism here in Australia or is it all just being a little bit blown out of proportion? Leave your comments, like and subscribe and we'll see you soon. Take care.