‘Russiagate’ and the New McCarthyism

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Last month, former Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton told interviewers that she believes Tulsi Gabbard, a current candidate for the Democratic nomination, is being groomed by the Russians. The former Secretary of State believes Gabbard will run as a third-party candidate if she loses the race for the Democratic ticket, thereby drawing away left-leaning voters and helping to elect President Trump for a second term. (Rep. Gabbard has firmly ruled out a third-party run.)

Gabbard is a sitting Representative in Congress and a major in the Hawaii National Guard with a record of service in the Iraq War. Secretary Clinton provided no evidence to support her claims, though they appeared to be in response to Rep. Gabbard’s outspoken criticism of American interventionism and her willingness to engage in dialogue with dictators like Bashar al-Assad of Syria. Gabbard responded to the accusations forcefully, calling Clinton ‘the queen of warmongers, embodiment of corruption, and personification of the rot that sickened the Democratic Party for so long’, and in the end, the public feud actually resulted in a swell of support for the Representative.

But the fact that Ms Clinton felt comfortable making the accusations — and the unfortunate tendency of certain American liberals to elevate similar such conspiracies — speaks to the state of discourse in America. McCarthyist fearmongering is now very much back in vogue.

This time Democrats, rather than Republicans, are leading the charge. This latest rash of Russophobia, best encapsulated by the term ‘Russiagate’, began in earnest during the 2016 campaign for the presidency, during which candidate Donald Trump spoke fondly of Russian president Vladimir Putin and appeared to encourage the strongman to expose unfavourable information about Hillary Clinton. Reacting to a hysterical deluge of news stories on everything from British spy Christopher Steele’s infamous (and unverified) ‘dossier’ on Trump’s shadowy dealings with Russian elements to the dense, cautious assertions of the Mueller report, American liberals have consistently painted Mr Trump as either in league with Russia or as an outright pawn of Mr Putin. 

While many prominent Russian officials (including Mr Putin himself) have gone on record as saying that they wanted Mr Trump to defeat Ms Clinton, there is no conclusive evidence of ‘collusion’ between the two parties, either before or after the election. The Mueller report itself largely sunk any such claims, and veteran journalists such as Bob Woodward — of Watergate fame, and no friend of the President — have cast serious doubt on the Steele dossier.

Yet this has not stopped Clinton from suggesting that the Russians have ‘kompromat’ on the President or that 2016 Green Party candidate Jill Stein was likewise a ‘Russian asset’. Nor has the complete lack of evidence to support these claims stopped Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi (D.-CA) from angrily questioning why ‘all roads lead to Putin’ when it comes to Mr Trump’s foreign policy, referencing his decision to pull American troops out of Syria earlier this year. This past summer, she referred to Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnel (R.-Ky) as ‘Moscow Mitch’, taking a queue from his critics who made the nickname popular online. 

To be sure, most reliable evidence points to the fact that Russian intelligence organisations did interfere in the 2016 election by hacking Democratic National Committee computer networks and sharing damaging information with WikiLeaks. (The result of this interference is said by some to be significant, but naturally, this is still a matter of much debate.) This fact has often been incorrectly conflated with the ‘Russiagate’ affair, which is centred around the accusation that President Trump colluded directly with Russia in order to damage Secretary Clinton.

Now the snake seems to be eating itself. Trump and his Republican allies are not the only targets of the new Russophobia; even Democrats who are seen to hold views too far out of the mainstream or who criticise American interventionism are quickly finding themselves accused of collusion. 

To be sure, Clinton’s remarks were not random. Leading US intelligence agencies have repeatedly warned of increasing Russian (and Iranian and Chinese) attempts to interfere in the 2020 election; and this time, the intelligence agencies say, the interference will likely come in the form of the manipulation of social media through the use of bots and trolls. But to openly accuse a sitting Representative of aiding and abetting these actions is still an astonishing political development. Buoyed by favourable media coverage and an electoral base eager to see Mr Trump torn down by any means whatsoever, once-respectable figures on both sides of the aisle are embarking on a slippery slope towards McCarthyism. 

Fortunately, most current candidates vying for the top office are unwilling to touch Ms Clinton’s accusations with a ten-foot pole. Asked about the comments on a recent Sunday talk-show, Mayor Pete Buttigieg of South Bend, India, a leading candidate for the Democratic nomination, prevaricated slightly before telling the interviewer: ‘Statements like that ought to be backed by evidence.’ Politically concerned citizens would be wise to remember those words as another heated election campaign grinds on.