“In the half-decade following the end of World War II, both McCarthy and Cohn had taken advantage of growing anxieties over social transformations and an uncertain global political situation to secure positions of influence in the emergent national security state. They had portrayed themselves as founts of masculinity, able to undertake the urgent task of defending the United States from enemies foreign and domestic.”

“Hoover, McCarthy, and Cohn, used the media to enhance their own public images while concurrently employing distilled malice to paint their opponents in a negative light, including with a broad brush effeminacy that they themselves feared. By projecting their own “deficiencies” onto others they deflected criticism and lambasted their enemies in one sweeping motion. But their was a danger in the process. The precise tactics that Hoover, McCarthy, and Cohn used to build their own political identities and pillory their enemies were ultimately turned against them, and all three men became targets of distilled malice. The targeting occurred precisely because of the apparent paradoxes they embodies.”

the gloves are off, & the nettle is grasped! Goddamn! Someone’s not playing around in this riveting & shocking powerhouse on one of the ugliest & most rankly offensive episodes of modern American history.

& good grief! – is it timely, considering the prevailing faecal fest & apocalyptic overreach strangling America.

In an incredibly detailed & well-penned delve into the McCarthy, Cohn, Hoover & Schine abhorrence & deception, professor of American History – Christopher Elias – not only meticulously assesses – but expands & defines the uniquely twisted political contortion of McCarthyism & what he defines as “surveillance state masculinity”.

addressed extensively within is the “ultimate hypocrisy”, transferred scapegoating & profound protectionism that this unholy cabal of copromancers cudgelled the living world with via some of the worst political distortions & reductive ideological weaponisation.

Having read the indispensable classics on both Hoover & Cohn – Anthony Summer’s Official Confidential, & Citizen Cohn by Nicholas Von Hoffman – I can assert resoundingly that Gossip Men is a crucial addition & companion to both works.

“It was the beginning of a fifty-three-month period during which McCarthy stood as arguably the most influential – and most divisive – politician in the United States. As numerous historians have shown, while McCarthy did not invent the national hysteria that bears his name, he was able to achieve such prominence by exploiting, and seeming to understanding as few did, a rising wave of mania over communist infiltration.”

also bellowing at top decibel is the synergy between today’s “Trumpism” pestilence & the diseased propagandist agitators that mingle with his rot.

The three from $ump’s swamp-sinkhole that bear the closest relation & resemblance to the Cohn-McCarthy, Hoover-Schine bacterium are Steve Bannon (also a closeted homosexual), Jared Kushner & “shadow president” Peter Thiel.

“These methods allowed Cohn to position himself like a matinee cowboy with a vendetta against the Apaches. Such extremism was excused, even encouraged, because communists had replaced Nazis and fascists as the nations most threatening enemy.”

“a national feeling of fear and frustration that could result in national suicide and the end of everything we Americans hold dear.”

what, to this day, still completely blows my mind, & that professor Elias also expounds on, is the spectacular & immeasurable sanctimony that lead this group of hyper-closeted homosexual men (McCarthy was bisexual, & both Cohn & Hoover also developed a penchant for under-age-boys) to engage on such a dogged & persecutory campaign of ultra-homophobia in public.

Indeed, it was so acute & fanatical, that it may have even exceeded the stigma of “communist”.

& yet, yet, in a complete brain-bending postmodernist paroxysm splashed with the ultimate dishonesty & mega hypocrisy, they themselves were homosexuals.

It just defies belief, but you notice that “the depths” of these plague scrapers is just limitless.

“Gossip had become a form of surveillance, with word-of-mouth rumours and tabloid reports enabling society to police behaviours and identities.”

“Conservatives allied with real estate interests noted the “socialist dangers” of public housing at both the federal and local levels, claiming that such plans were part of a communist conspiracy.”

“While Cohn had attended one of New York’s best prep schools and an Ivy League university, his uncouth demeanour was a far cry from the men that populated Washington’s elite.”

it’s also curious to see how this gang of cretins cross-consolidated their identities & standings for the benefit of the others.

McCarthy was frequently accused of antisemitism, but flagged his allegiance with the Jewish Cohn as a point of refutation to such accusations, with Cohn all to happy to argue directly on the matter for McCarthy’s defence.

McCarthy also leant his “working man” origins & manner, along with his military career, to the highly privileged & elite schooled Cohn (Cohn also struggling with physical feebleness & even “effeminacy” issues), with David Schine coming from an even loftier elite lineage.

Much like the “brown Nazi” or “misogynist mom” fad that infects current trends on the dog-shit-right end of the spectrum, getting one of the most lowly, degenerate & morally unmoored wastrels you can dredge to argue against their identity, interests or origins in a political capacity seems to hark back to this terrible strain of corrupt & disingenuous conjecture politics.

Learn from the disasters.

“Cohn went to extraordinary lengths in trying to secure preferential treatment for his friend. He tried to have Schine commissioned as an officer, get him stationed near Washington or New York, and secure him concessions such as extra weekend passes and relief from the more menial tasks of enlisted men. Over nine months, Cohn lobbied army higer-ups through sixty-five phone calls and nineteen meetings.”

“By 1953 those rumors were freely discussed on Capital Hill” and that “ newsmen and even senators joked about ‘the boys’ in McCarthy’s office.” – David Oshinsky

more than anything, its the Lavender Scare that sinks it all, & which remains one of the most fantastical heights of super hypocrisy ever! ever! ever!

Coddled White-collar mothers-boy Roy Cohn would accuse the US military of fabrications of high-ranking homosexuality when they refused to give “preferential treatment” to his illicit, “posh-boy-heir” & gay lover David Schine.

Just think about that.

You will not give me xx because I am x – so I will dishonestly accuse you -viciously – of operating xx & being x.

it proved a bridge too far, & ended in crushing acrimony & public humiliation for the warped gay cabal & their maddening & chronic hypocrisy monster.

McCarthy would be destroyed, but Cohn’s necromancy allowed him to crawl back, sicker & more poisonous than ever.

He would go on to mentor, advise, & legally represent Rupert Murdoch, Roger Stone, & the curse that is Donald Trump along with a slew of the worst “crime families” in New York.

“ – everywhere I hear that McCarthy, Cohn, and Schine are homosexuals. It has been intimated in your column and the Alsops’. Isn’t there anyway in which you can break this story and completely wreck this terrible man?”

“Most importantly, McCarthy and Cohn’s opponents attacked their masculinity with subtle though deliberate suggestions that they were homosexuals. The queering began on the hearings first day, when Stevens identified McCarthy’s and Cohn’s efforts on behalf of Schine as “a perversion of power”.

“McCarthy’s tactics did not accompany him to the grave but became folded into the fabric of American political culture and continue to influence the structure of political discourse to this day.”

$ump & his hell-trawler of freaks & minions are highly vulnerable to the same dynamics, of becoming a victim of their own “weaponised” persecution & projection.

They are, & remain, utterly guilty of that which they persecute others, with that very persecution sometimes being the most ardent proponent of their misrule.

Turn their own tools against/on them & “place” them into their own diatribes & attack lines … they are all-to-frequently more guilty than anyone else.

Christopher M. Elias, 2021, University of Chicago Press, 212 pages