How to Use McCarthyism in a Sentence

McCarthyism

noun

• What exactly McCarthyism for our times looks like is still in flux.
  — Ali Breland, The Atlantic, 6 Mar. 2026
• The book did represent a change, a somewhat softer brand of McCarthyism.
  — John Williams, Washington Post, 14 June 2023
• Robeson was only one of dozens of activists whose passports were seized during the era of McCarthyism.
  — Time, 20 Oct. 2025
• Just as radio and television were used to stir up the fervor of McCarthyism, they were also used to undermine it.
  — Rebecca Jennings, Vox, 10 Jan. 2025
• Bannon doesn’t see this as a departure from the original McCarthyism.
  — Ali Breland, The Atlantic, 6 Mar. 2026
• The proposal was an eerie echo of a practice adopted in 1950, as McCarthyism took hold.
  — Time, 20 Oct. 2025
• Disagreement is democratic The history of McCarthyism shows where this kind of action can lead.
  — Gregory A. Daddis, The Conversation, 26 Nov. 2025
• His role model was Paul Robeson, the singer, actor and activist whose career was derailed by McCarthyism.
  — Emily Mae Czachor, CBS News, 25 Apr. 2023
• Politics, which play a large part in the original — and in nearly all of Mallon’s books — are here stripped down to the greatest hits of McCarthyism.
  — Robert Lloyd, Los Angeles Times, 27 Oct. 2023
• The fear, injustice, and corruption of McCarthyism died because the public, the media, and national leaders spoke out.
  — Chris John Amorosino, Hartford Courant, 16 Jan. 2026
• Spacey likened his predicament to the experiences of actors of yore, who were swept into the Hollywood blacklist as a result of McCarthyism.
  — Zac Ntim, Deadline, 27 Nov. 2025
• Ever since, historians have regarded him as the chief celebrity victim of the national trauma known as McCarthyism.
  — Kai Bird, The New Yorker, 7 July 2023
• McCarthyism, as the movement became known, ruined the reputations and destroyed the careers of hundreds of innocent people.
  — Chris John Amorosino, Hartford Courant, 16 Jan. 2026
• Redford’s main tasks are to look just as fabulous as Streisand, gaze upon her adoringly, and make sure his character stays likable despite his McCarthyism.
  — Matt Zoller Seitz, Vulture, 17 Sep. 2025
• Likewise, the delusional paranoia provoked by McCarthyism was the basis for Cold War aggression.
  — Will Stephenson, Harper's Magazine, 16 Aug. 2023
• After the war the rise of McCarthyism in the 1950s made being a card-carrying communist a problem socially if not legally.
  — Richard Selcer, Fort Worth Star-Telegram, 8 Feb. 2025
• The list inspired similarly divisive reactions, with some accusing the creator of the list of antisemitism and likening it to McCarthyism.
  — Moises Mendez Ii, TIME, 14 May 2024
• Others will grow out of them and regret their youthful indiscretions but will be hurt because in their future careers, as former Communists were during McCarthyism.
  — Alan M. Dershowitz, New York Daily News, 8 Feb. 2024
• The Lilith Society becomes an escape, particularly as the legacy of McCarthyism hovers over the city.
  — Carly Tagen-Dye, PEOPLE, 4 Feb. 2026
• In the way that Kleenex has become interchangeable with tissue, McCarthyism, for many, is an eponym for the unjust, reprehensible use of political power.
  — Ali Breland, The Atlantic, 6 Mar. 2026
• The periods before and after the Civil War spring to mind, along with the corruption of the Gilded Age and the repression of McCarthyism.
  — The Editorial Board, Chicago Tribune, 10 Mar. 2026
• The true horror of Kaufman's Invasion, though, is that acquiescence gives way to McCarthyism; in conformity, old friends become new enemies.
  — Randall Colburn, EW.com, 16 May 2022
• Einstein’s philosophical battle against McCarthyism began with a letter to a Brooklyn high school teacher named William Frauenglass.
  — Jodie Childers, The Conversation, 20 Nov. 2025
• That these connections were cemented during McCarthyism and the Red Scare — a time when the American way was perceived to be under threat — is no accident, Seaton said.
  — Leah Asmelash, CNN Money, 19 Oct. 2025
• It was always taught in a historical sense—the book-burning Nazis, the war propaganda, McCarthyism—something our professional forebears had battled before and firmly defeated.
  — Lisa Bubert, Longreads, 27 Feb. 2024
• Even the topical songs of the sixties folk movement constituted a revival, a reinvention of the Popular Front-style political art of the thirties and forties, for the waning years of McCarthyism.
  — Mitch Therieau, New Yorker, 7 Feb. 2026
• While popular memory blames the era’s repressiveness on Wisconsin Senator Joseph McCarthy—hence the moniker McCarthyism—the truth is the push was far broader.
  — Time, 20 Oct. 2025
• But its juiciest political battles are fought in the 1950s, at the height of McCarthyism, an era of brazen opportunism and fear-mongering that still permeates American electoral politics.
  — Chris Vognar, Los Angeles Times, 6 Aug. 2024
• The new Administration is dismantling the federal government, allying itself with strongmen, and implementing a new McCarthyism.
  — Kyle Chayka, The New Yorker, 26 Mar. 2025
• Reiner's father opposed the Communist hunt of McCarthyism in the 1950s and his mother, Estelle Reiner, a singer and actor, protested the Vietnam War.
  — CBS News, 15 Dec. 2025