Report listing RT guests ‘illustrates new McCarthyism in US’ – Colin Powell’s ex-chief of staff
A recent report targeting RT’s on-air guests reveals the new McCarthyism in the US, which is dangerous due to the lack of strong leadership in Washington, Larry Wilkerson, former chief of staff to US Secretary of State Colin Powell, told RT.
Wilkerson was among the 2,300 experts stigmatized in a report last week by the ‘European Values Think-Tank’ for sharing their views on RT.
The Czech institute, funded from the US and other Western governments, called RT’s guests “useful idiots” – a term Russian Communist leader Vladimir Lenin is credited with coining.
“Such actions as this illustrate a new McCarthyism in America,” Wilkerson said in an email to RT, referring to US Senator Joseph McCarthy, who headed the ‘witch hunt’ against alleged Soviet spies and sympathizers between 1947 and 1956.
Those who ordered and compiled the report also employed “the Karl Rove strategic technique,” he added.
“Very simply stated, that technique is to accuse your opponents of doing what you are doing in order to get the spotlight removed from what you are doing. You do it loudly, constantly, and repeatedly, until you have overwhelmed your opponents, dulled the minds of the ignorant and apathetic, and generally made your points – the points people accept and believe,” Wilkerson explained.
“Karl Rove was very successful at it – as was Joseph McCarthy for a time and, for that matter, Joseph Goebbels [Nazi propaganda minister] for a time,” he added.
Rove was an influential figure in the George W. Bush administration, occupying the positions of senior adviser and deputy chief of staff.
Wilkerson expressed hope that the actions of those behind the report “eventually are seen for what they are, as were McCarthy’s.”
READ MORE: 'Report listing RT’s guests is designed to intimidate'
“However, in McCarthy’s time there were Eisenhowers and Achesons and others of high character and ability. Today, there are very few such men and women. So, it is very much more dangerous today,” he warned.
