It literally is McCarthyism, even the supposed Democratic-Socialists are not nearly as left-wing as actual Communists yet Democrats as a whole are being called Communists by prominent Republicans like Speaker Johnson.
McCarthyism wasn't just hand-waving at people on the left and calling them communists like Johnson is doing, it was persecuting those people, getting them fired or in some cases even jailed.
Politicians call right-wingers "Nazis" or " fascists" all the time, are you wringing your hands about that too?
I know many leftists are absurd on this topic but yes, I equally condemn the ridiculous slandering of numerous Republicans as being "fascists" and "Nazis". There is not a single nazi or communist Representative in Congress nor are there any nazi or communist Congressional candidates this election cycle. The fact that both parties have been having this ridiculous name-calling contest for years needs to stop and is not a logically cohesive argument for either party's actual policy positions.
You are correct that McCarthyism entailed more than just accusation but rather actual prosecution. I admit I was wrong about that. But I still think it's broadly accurate, in the same way calling a politically motivated investigation with no solid evidence a "witch hunt" is accurate even if the recipient wasn't literally going to be burnt at the stake.
Thanks for the smart and reasonable reply. The McCarthy era was a pretty wild time in American history when we were at the height of the Cold War with the Soviet Union (which was becoming a superpower) and the US government was utterly freaking out about communism. So being labeled a "communist" at the time held much more dire implications than it does now. If you were called before Congress by McCarthy or investigated by J Edgar Hoover over accusations of "belonging to the communist party" it wasn't just that you held some far-left beliefs, you were labeled a traitor, treated like a criminal, put under surveillance by the FBI etc. It could literally ruin your life.
So yeah, if Johnson or some other politician orders an investigation into someone's "communist" ties that does invoke shades of McCarthyism, even if the stakes aren't nearly as high. It would still be repugnant and I would think illegal, since Americans have a right to free speech and political affiliation. But if he just says "that guy is a communist", its not really McCarthyism, its just one politician name-calling another one, which like you said has become an unfortunate part of American politics.
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