Consensual Paranoia: The War Against Terrorism, McCarthyism, and the Case of US Air Force Lieutenant Milo Radulovich

By Carl K. Savich

Introduction: Consensual Paranoia

What causes mass hysteria, fear, and panic? It is the perception of danger and fear that is the cause. A perception is a sensory or sense impression, or image we create in our own minds. The danger may not be real at all, but illusory. But the perception of danger is what leads to fear, insecurity, and a sense of danger that sets in motion psychological mechanisms.

Fear and panic lead to consensual paranoia, a primordial tribal psychological need to find an enemy or a scapegoat that a tribe seeks to destroy. Invariably, the tribe, society, nation, or government seeks to create a bipolar opposition, that is, a division between US and Them, the Tribe against the Enemy/Other, the Good Us against the Evil Them. This is a primal/fundamental psychological need that is an evolutionary vestige from when man was animalistic in evolutionary development. So while a regressive and infantile orientation, it is nevertheless a basic and primary orientation. We create tribal, societal, and national solidarity by delineating our tribe, the Good Tribe from the Other Tribe, the Evil Tribe, the Tribe of Strangers/Foreigners/Aliens whom we know nothing about.

Ignorance induces fear, xenophobia, induces a sense or perception of danger, induces paranoia, an imaginary or illusory impression of danger or threat. The need to find an Enemy, the need to create a bipolar opposition, Us versus Them, is a primordial animalistic impulse that goes back to when mankind was in a primitive, tribal state. In primeval times, man perceived the unknown and strangers as dangerous and as a threat. This was an almost unthinking reflex or instinct that was motivated by self-preservation. As man evolved, his reasoning faculty evolved to the point where reasoning overrode this primitive reflex.

But governments and political leaders and nations continue to exploit this primitive human psychological orientation to foment war. Aggregations of individuals into crowds, groups, religious groups, nationality and ethnic groups, must be motivated and incited to act. To do this, reason becomes secondary and governments and political leaders resort to the primordial impulses of the herd or tribe or crowd/mob, to a regressive or backward psychological orientation. Fear and insecurity must be engendered in the tribe/clan/nation. Concomitantly to fear and danger and insecurity the impulses of hatred and anger and intolerance are engineered. Governments and political leaders self-induce this irrational fear, paranoia, to advance national objectives. Invariably, a consensual paranoia is fomented and results, creating Outsiders versus Insiders, Us versus Them, the Good versus the Evil, the Free World versus the Communist bloc, "Freedom" versus "the Axis of Evil", Christians versus Jews versus Muslims versus Hindus. The psychological mechanism is the same/identical in every case, consensual paranoia, a paranoia needed to foment hate, racism, bigotry, intolerance, and war, that is, the killing of others. Reason becomes degraded while a primordial paranoia is self-induced.

A perception of danger and of threat leads to intolerance and racism. The perception is what is needed to induce the paranoid orientation needed to kill. The danger or threat may be illusory or imagined, but it is only the sense of danger that is needed, the danger need not be real or present at all. Projection and transference then allow us to project or impute our worst vices onto a chosen enemy or scapegoat. What is the origin of a scapegoat? The term "scapegoat" was coined in 1530 by English religious reformer William Tyndale for a primal worldwide psychological mechanism for expiation of sin and crime. A scapegoat is a group, individual, nation, ethnic group, or religious group upon whom the crimes, sins, mistakes, or guilt of others is placed upon or imputed to. The term is derived from Late Latin caper emissaries, emissary goat, which is a translation of the Hebrew word azazel, name of a desert demon, or ezozel, a goat that escapes or leaves. In Leviticus 16:7-26, the Jewish high priest Aaron confessed the sins of the people of Israel over the head of a goat which was then let loose into the wilderness on the Day of Atonement. Transference or projection whether unto a goat, onto a nation, people, or religious group, or individual, thus serves a psychological function, a primordial and universal function.

The War against Terrorism

The 9/11 attacks on the World Trade Center in New York City and the Pentagon in Washington, DC and the subsequent Anthrax attacks created a panic and hysteria in the US not seen since the surprise Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941. The 9/11 attacks resulted in approximately 3,000 deaths and the destruction of the twin World Trade Center Towers and outlying buildings and areas and considerable damage to the Pentagon building and the downing of a third hijacked plane in Pennsylvania with the loss of all life on board. The attack was an unprecedented assault on the US mainland, perceived as impregnable and immune to attack. The shock the attack caused was massive and deep, resulting in panic and hysteria. The impact was psychological. An emphasis on national security emerged as an overriding focus. A "war on terror" or "war against terrorism" was declared by President George W. Bush. Invariably, individual rights and liberties were sacrificed for national security.

Throughout American history, during times of crisis and perceived threats or dangers from outside the country, a patriotic/nationalist hysteria or panic emerged. During the Civil War, Edward Everett Hale published "The Man Without a Country", whose protagonist was Philip Nolan, a man who had forsaken his country. The story extolled the virtues of unity over secession and patriotism over independence. The story was reissued during the Spanish-American War in 1898 to stir up patriotic fervor. Waves of ultra-patriotism and ultra-nationalism were engendered which were manifested in flag waving, the singing of the Star Spangled Banner and America the Beautiful and The Battle Hymn of the Republic and the display of the symbolic colors of red, white, and blue of the American flag. This was a crude form of jingoism. Following 9/11, Irving Berlin's anthem "God Bless America" from 1938 and the World War II period was revived. Moreover, moral superiority was maintained by claiming that justice and morality was on our side and by invoking the slogan that "In God We Trust", that God too was on our side. It was a fight between good, us, and evil, them, between Freedom, and the "Evil" or the "Evil Doers" or "the Axis of Evil". The dichotomy is a primordial archetype of the psychology of enmity. Every nation, people, and country seeks to gain the moral high ground by invoking God. German soldiers, for instance, wore on their belt buckles the slogan "Gott mit uns", God is with us. In all wars, all combatants claim moral superiority over the others.

Fear and insecurity results in consensual paranoia. The Salem Witch Trials resulted from the consensual paranoia and panic caused by fears of a French and Indian attack. Salem was settled by Puritans, who had a rigid and austere moral code. The Salem witch-hunt hysteria began when a slave and two other women were accused of witchcraft. In the ensuing panic and hysteria, hundreds of persons were arrested. Many accused were tried using "spectral evidence", evidence gleaned from voices which the accused and accusers heard. Nineteen were hanged as witches. Then there was the Red Scare of the 1920s, following the establishment of Bolshevik Russia in 1917 and the spread of Marxist/Communist/Socialist movements to the United States. In the North there was legalized racial discrimination and segregation, "separate but equal", as established in Plessy v. Ferguson (1896). In the South, there was Jim Crow and KKK terror enforced by lynchings. There were race riots in Detroit in 1943 and 1967 and in Los Angeles in 1965 and 1992. In 1921 a race riot erupted in Tulsa, Oklahoma in "The Negro Wall Street" whereby 35 districts were burned and looted by white vigilantes and police and National Guard troops which resulted in 36 to 300 people killed and 800 injured. Over 6,000 blacks were interned/held for eight days due to the "Negro uprising". The Tulsa Riots were covered up by the media and government. In times of perceived threat, there have been eruptions of mass hysteria and intolerance and violence.

Whenever there is a perceived threat to the national security of the United States from a foreign source, fear and panic results in patriotic/nationalistic fervor which in turn results in increased governmental powers and a concomitant decrease of individual freedoms and civil liberties, and a lessening of tolerance. A dichotomy emerges between the thesis and the antithesis: patriotism/nationalism/jingoism versus freedom/individual liberty/civil and human rights, big government versus the individual. Samuel Johnson dismissed patriotism: "Patriotism is the last refuge of a scoundrel." In other words, patriotism is manipulated by individuals to advance their own narrow and selfish interests or agenda or to give meaning and purpose to individuals who are failures otherwise and who use patriotism as an excuse to act out on their obsessions and pathologies. Patriotism results from elemental terms, naked, primal fear, and leads to paranoia and mass hysteria. In periods of real or perceived threats from within or from without, the natural reaction or inclination is to return to a form of tribal unity and a return to clan cohesiveness. Unity and uniformity are required. The government, state, nation, leader, chief, become elevated while the individual becomes expendable in the interest of national security, the security and the survival of the tribe or clan is paramount. Individual liberties and freedoms are thereby sacrificed for the greater good of the survival of the nation, state, tribe, or clan. The modern term for this primordial need for clan or tribal unity and cohesiveness during times of crises and threat is "patriotism". We call it patriotism when we do it, but nationalism when our enemy does it. William Shakespeare, in Julius Caesar, III, 2, wrote: "Who is here so vile that will not love his country?" Patriotism becomes a fundamental commitment to country that overrides all others. Byron in The Two Foscari, III,1, wrote: "He who loves not his country, can love nothing." Sallust had this motto: "For country, children, hearth, and home" (Pro patria, pro liberis, pro aris atque focis). Patriotism is seen as advancing liberty and freedom. No sacrifice is considered too great in the name of patriotism. Horace wrote that "to die for one's country is noble and sweet." Sir Walter Scott likewise during the era of romanticism and nationalism of the 1800s glorified and romanticized patriotism. In US history, spasms of patriotic fervor result during times of perceived dangers and threats to national security.

Immediately following the 9/11 attacks on NYC, a panic and mass hysteria seized the US. The Patriot Act was rushed through Congress. An act which curtailed civil liberties and freedoms in favor of national security. American citizens were told that the US was waging a "war on terror", a "war against terrorism" that necessitated a heightened emphasis on "national security" and security and safety on the domestic or home-front.

Historically, when the US is at war, the home-front is a primary focus. Insecurity and fear results in the ostracism of US citizens based on perceived threat. During World War I, American citizens of German background were attacked and ostracized. During World War II, Japanese-Americans were rounded up and interned in detention camps. During the break-up of Yugoslavia, which began in 1991, Serbian-American citizens likewise became the victims of attacks incited by the US government and media. Following the 9/11 attack, Arab-Americans and Muslim Americans became the targets of a blind rage and hatred, of panic and hysteria, of consensual paranoia. Mosques were attacked and damaged. Muslims and Arabs were attacked and killed. In Arizona, a Sikh wearing a turban was murdered because he looked like a Muslim.

What happened after 9/11 had antecedents. During the McCarthy Red Scare witch-hunts, the bugaboo was Communism, while after 9/11 the bogie is terrorism/Islam. Serbian-American Milo Radulovich was a victim of the McCarthy witch-hunts because of his supposed "close and continuing relationship" with suspected Communists or Communist-sympathizers, his father and sister, who were allegedly "pro-Soviet". Milo Radulovich noted this similarity between 1953 and 2001: "I can't help but observe certain parallels to my case." Radulovich anticipated a xenophobic attack on all Arabs and Muslims and anyone who looked in appearance like an Arab/Muslim or who even was associated or was connected with an Arab/Muslim. He stated his reaction when he first became aware of the 9/11 attacks as follows:

All I could think of was, ‘Oh boy, what's going to happen in Dearborn?'…I can't help but think of what we did to the Japanese during World War II, interning thousands of them in what were really, not death camps, but concentration camps.

Dearborn is a suburb of Detroit which has the largest Arabic population outside of the Middle East. The Dearborn area is predominantly made up of Arabs/Muslims.

In reaction to the internal or domestic threat to the security of the US, Congress immediately passed the so-called U.S.A. Patriot Act (Provide Appropriate Tools Required to Intercept and Obstruct Terrorism Act of 2001, H.R. 2975. RH). The Act made surveillance of telephone and Internet communications by the government easier and allowed for secret searches. An executive order established military tribunals to try suspected terrorists while another order allowed the government to eavesdrop on conversations between a defendant and his or her counsel. Non-citizens, particularly those from the Middle East, became the targets of investigations and secret hearings.

The US government focused its investigations on immigrants and non-citizen residents and aliens from the Middle Eastern Arab and Muslim countries. Rabih Haddad, 41, a Muslim community leader in Ann Arbor, Michigan, was denied bond and held without bond after a closed-door two hour INS hearing in Detroit. Haddad was arrested on December 14, 2001 when the Bush Administration froze the assets and raided the charity organization, Global Relief, which was suspected of terrorist links. INS counsel Marsha Nettles argued that Haddad was a danger to the community. U.S. Rep. John Conyers, D-Detroit, was denied entry to the closed hearing. Conyers stated: "John Ashcroft has made a mockery of our criminal justice system. No public hearings, no oversight, no charges. This sounds more like a dictatorship than America." U.S. Rep. Lynn Rivers, D-Ann Arbor, supported Haddad as well. Haddad, a Lebanese Muslim, was the chairman of the board of Trustees of Global Relief Foundations which he co-founded in 1992. The Group was on a White House terrorist watch list in 1999. US District Judge Nancy Edmunds ruled that secret and closed INS hearings were unconstitutional and ordered that the Haddad hearings be opened to the public, a ruling the government appealed. Chief US Immigration Judge Michael Creppy issued an order mandating secret and closed hearings for "special interest" detainees who were arrested for alleged connections to the 9/11 terrorist attacks. The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) and the Detroit Free Press sued to have the hearings open to the public.

The Justice Department disclosed that 1,200 persons had been detained nationally, that 752 were detained by the INS, and 611 were subjected to secret hearings. The persons detained have not been charged with any crime but were held in connection with investigations allegedly linking them to terrorism, the "terror-probe". The Justice Department argued that secret, closed hearings are necessary to protect the privacy of the detainees and to safeguard the ongoing terrorism investigations. Civil rights advocates have attacked this procedure because it creates two systems of justice. The detainees, moreover, are denied due process. Immigrants, even illegal immigrants, in criminal prosecutions, have the same constitutional protections as non-citizens. They only lack the right to have counsel provided to them at no cost.

Haddad was held for alleged minor visa violations while the government has not shown any link by his charity group to terrorism. Nabil Almarabh, a trucker from Detroit, was held because the government alleged he had "strong ties to the Al-Qaeda terrorist network." But none could be shown and instead he was charged with minor visa violations and deported, which is usually the pretext used to detain. Imad Hamad, a regional director of the Arab-American Anti-Discrimination Committee noted: "It turned out these people are not criminals, they are not terrorists." Secret or closed hearings prevent public scrutiny or public oversight.

In any war, there must be propaganda. In addition to creating a new Department of Homeland Security, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld advocated the creation of the Office of Strategic Influence which would be run by the "military public-affairs community." The Office of Strategic Influence would be an information or propaganda bureau set-up specifically for the "war against terrorism". It would be nothing less that the US version of Joseph Goebbels' Office of Propaganda and Enlightenment or the Orwellian Ministry of Truth. Rumsfeld scuttled the project after objections: "The office is done. It's over." John MacArthur noted that "the war on terrorism justifies almost anything." Then the ends justify any means, any means whatsoever. A totalitarian police state emerges. In George Orwell's 1984 Oceania it was termed "reality control" or "doublethink". In George Bush's New World Order it is called "spin" or "spin –doctored". Same difference. Orwell defined "doublethink" as follows:

To know and not to know, to be conscious of complete truthfulness while telling carefully constructed lies…to use logic against logic, to repudiate morality while laying claim to it…to forget whatever it was necessary to forget, then to draw it back into memory again at the moment when it was needed, and then promptly to forget it again…

The objective or goal of spin or doublethink is identical: To preclude thought. Orwell stated: "There will be no thought…. not thinking---not needing to think." In Oceania the major "thoughtcriminal" was Emmanuel Goldstein; in Bush's New World Order, Ossama bin Laden and Saddam Hussein and Slobodan Milosevic are the primary thoughtcriminals. Goldstein was a phantom and an illusion created by Big Brother. The same could be said with regard to Ossama bin Laden, Hussein, and Milosevic. They are the creations of US/NATO propaganda. But spin or infowar makes "thoughtcrime" impossible because it has the same objective as Newspeak, "to narrow the range of thought." Repetitive slogans or catch-phrases are disseminated by the government: "regime change", "axis of evil", "evil doers", ‘weapons of mass destruction", "crimes against humanity", ‘war against terrorism", "war on terror", "freedom under attack", "an attack on freedom". Orwell predicted the dichotomy between Us and Them and the depiction of the Enemy as "evil": "The enemy of the moment always represented absolute evil, and it followed that any past or future agreement with him was impossible." Bush censored the fact that Ossama bin Laden was an ally and client of the US during the mujahedeen campaigns in Afghanistan in the 1980s and again during the Bosnian civil war when the US helped Laden gain entry to Bosnia. In 1984, Oceania is waging a war against Eurasia which earlier had been an ally of Oceania. But the Ministry of Truth now censored that fact. Orwell foresaw the Television Age and the Information/Manipulation Age with his concept of the "telescreen" as the instrument of mass indoctrination and manipulation. He foresaw this in 1949. How prescient was Orwell? Slogans, needless to say, are essential in propaganda or infowar or in psyop campaigns. Slogans narrow thought, indeed, they preclude thought. That is why they are indispensable to the propagandist. But why is there no criticism when used by the US government and media?

Needless to say, the Office of Strategic Influence was rejected. But was it really needed? The Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty (RFE/RL) network and the media outlets and news services in the NATO countries provide a much more effective propaganda/information bureau/office. Indeed, the so-called mainstream media in the US is the most effective "office of strategic influence". Rumsfeld, not surprisingly then, concluded that news or information dissemination would be through "regular channels", through subcontractors, through the mainstream media. The mainstream media would orchestrate and conduct the Two Minute Hate. Of course, an Office of Strategic Influence is totally superfluous and unnecessary as the US media and press are for all intents and purposes government-run and government-controlled and are functionally like an ad hoc Office of Strategic Influence. But Rumsfeld knew this. He had to. The device is similar to that used in the Edgar Allan Poe detective short story "The Purloined Letter " (1845): Make it so obvious and blatant that it blends in with the environment. Who needs something we already have?

McCarthyism

The September 11 attacks against the World Trade Center and Pentagon by 19 Muslims, consisting of 15 from Saudi Arabia and one with a Bosnian passport, created a wave of mass panic, hysteria, and fear, not seen since the "Red Scare" Communist witch-hunts of the Joseph McCarthy era. During the 1950s McCarthy era, the bugaboo or bogeyman was global Communism, an international conspiracy that aimed at the destruction of the United States as a nation, the overthrow of the US government, and the destruction of the American way of life. The USSR, a global superpower, challenged US hegemony and interests throughout the globe. In 1948 the Soviet Union consolidated its control of Eastern Europe, sought to drive out the US/France/Britain from Berlin with a blockade of the city and subsequent Airlift, and in 1950 backed North Korea in its invasion of South Korea. In 1949, mainland China, with the world's largest population, became a Communist state. These events set the stage or back-drop for the witch-hunt hysteria launched by Joseph McCarthy. The perceived threat of international Communism to US interests and to the US itself caused mass hysteria and panic. The precursor and historical precedent and antecedent for the War Against Terror by the President George W. Bush Administration is the McCarthy "red scare" witch-hunts of the 1950-1954 period, the period in American history known as the era of McCarthyism.

The Red Scare hysteria was fomented by the US Congress, a branch of the US Government. In other words, the Communist witch-hunts were organized and orchestrated by the US Government itself. But junior Senator from Wisconsin Joseph McCarthy (1908-1957) became the focal point, the front, of the witch-hunts because he was the ring-leader. But this is misleading. McCarthyism was fomented by the US Government itself. Joseph McCarthy was merely a front, the figure-head of the Communist panic induced by the US Government and military-industrial complex to maintain a credible threat. Joseph Biden, Joseph Lieberman, and Robert Dole are contemporary versions of Joseph McCarthy, self-appointed government demagogues with hidden agendas and motives. So McCarthy is the window-dressing and the front. Behind McCarthy the phony straw man was the actual source of the Communist witch-hunts and Communist hysteria, the US Government.

The US Government began to address the danger or threat from foreign infiltration and subversion with the establishment of the Dies Committee in 1938, headed by chairman Martin Dies of Texas. The Dies Committee would become the House Committee on Un-American Activities (HUAC), which would be in existence from 1938 to 1975. The HUAC became the House Internal Security Committee in 1969. In 1945, the HUAC became a permanent committee set up to investigate "subversive" and "un-American" activities, persons, organizations, or groups in the US. The HUAC conducted over 230 hearings from 1945 to 1957, hearing the testimony of over 3,000 persons, over 100 of which were found to be in contempt.

On March 20, 1939, US Congressman Howard Smith of Virginia introduced a bill in the House of Representatives in an "effort to suppress this wave of un-American and subversive activities" by the ‘reds'. Smith stated: "I myself am for ‘red baiting'. A little ‘red baiting' by good, patriotic, red-blooded American citizens with the same kind of poison bait that is being used to weaken our system of government meets with my full approbation." The bill would become the Smith Act of 1940 which imposed criminal sanctions against individuals who organized groups or parties which sought to overthrow or replace the US government by use of violence or revolution. The Smith Act made it a crime "to knowingly or willfully advocate, abet, advise, or teach the duty, necessity, desirability, or propriety of overthrowing any government in the U.S. by force or violence…to print, publish, edit, issue, circulate, sell, distribute, or publicly display any written or printed matter advocating, advising, or teaching the duty, necessity, desirability, or propriety" of overthrowing such a government. The Act further made it illegal to organize, belong to, or help organize any organization, or "assembly of persons" who advocated or encouraged the overthrow of the government. The penalties were 10 years in prison and a $10,000 in fines. The targets were Communists and Communism.

In 1947, the Taft-Hartley Act followed which was an "anti-labor" bill sponsored by the national Association of Manufacturers (NAM) section 9(h) of which forced all elected union officials to file yearly affidavits that swore that they were not members of the Communist party.

The McCarran or Internal Security Act of 1950 established internment/detention/concentration camps under Title II in case of national emergencies when the internal security of the US would be endangered. It was not until 1971 that this clause was repealed. The Act was passed to combat a world-wide "Communist conspiracy" that sought to establish a "totalitarian dictatorship in all countries throughout the world." The Act was in response to the Communist regimes that were established in Eastern Europe. The success of Communist regimes in Eastern Europe created a perception of fear in the United States.

The McCarran-Walter or Immigration and Nationality Act of 1952 placed restrictions on aliens and restricted immigration "from nonwhite countries." Those US citizens found to be "subversives" could be denaturalized and deported. Resident aliens could be deported for their political activities if they were deemed subversive or hostile to the US government. Deportation cases were adjudicated in courts set up by the Act, removing them from the court system. Due process was thereby bypassed. In the wake of 9/11, similar measures have been taken by the Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS) against those deemed to be suspected of links to terrorism and terrorist organizations and to Al-Qaeda.

The national security measures of the McCarthy era reached their culmination in the Communist Control Act of 1954, which excluded Communists and members of the Communist Party from the voting ballot and from the court system to enforce contracts. The Act, sponsored by Hubert Humphrey, deprived the Communist Party of "all rights, privileges, and immunities attendant upon legal bodies." Members of "Communist-action" and "Communist-infiltrated" organizations were precluded from holding office or being employed in labor organizations.

During the apex of McCarthyism and the Army-McCarthy hearings, "Communists" and "Communist-sympathizers", so-called fellow-travelers, were not the only ones targeted. Persons who associated with known Communists and fellow–travelers were likewise targeted. These persons were guilty by association. In 1953, a Serbian-American reserve officer in the US Air Force from Michigan was dismissed by the government because he had "a close and continuing relationship" with suspected Communists or pro-Communists, his father and sister. The Radulovich case was instrumental in exposing the excesses of McCarthyism and eventually contributed to discrediting the Communist witch-hunts of the 1950s during a time of mass hysteria and panic.

The Case of US Air Force Lieutenant Milo Radulovich

The precursors to the 2001 Patriot Act (Provide Appropriate Tools Required to Intercept and Obstruct Terrorism Act of 2001, H.R. 2975.RH) were the 1940 Smith Act, the 1947 Taft-Hartley Act, the 1950 McCarran or Internal Security Act, the 1952 McCarran-Walter Act, and the 1954 Communist Control Act. The 1950 Internal Security Act alleged that there was a global Communist conspiracy to establish a "totalitarian dictatorship in the countries throughout the world." Detention or concentration camps were provided for in national emergencies to incarcerate those seeking the overthrow of the US government and the establishment of a Communist regime. J. Edgar Hoover, head of the FBI, kept "roundup lists". The Guantanamo Bay detention camps which house suspected al-Qaeda and Taliban troops is the current parallel to the McCarran Act. The Communist Control Act sought to bar Communists from the ballot and from federal, state, and local governmental bodies.

In Michigan, the Michigan Communist Control Law (Public Act 117 of 1952) was passed. It was an act requiring Communists and knowing members of Communist front organizations to register with the Michigan state police. It provided that neither the names of nominees of the Communist Party nor the names of Communists shall appear upon the ballots in primary or general elections. It provided that probable Communists and knowing members of Communist front organizations shall not hold non-elective positions or jobs, outlawed sabotage, and established criminal penalties. Under section 752.321, Subversive groups and elements in public and private employment and schools, finding; infiltration [M.S.A. 28.243 (11)], Communists or "subversives" in public and private employment had to register with the government. The issue was National Security versus Individual Rights: Which was more primary? In times of crisis, national security becomes paramount and individual liberties and rights become secondary.

Milo Radulovich was described as "the Michigan soldier who helped topple McCarthyism", the "Detroit man helped end McCarthyism", and as "a reluctant hero". The Radulovich case was said to have struck a "fatal blow" to McCarthyism, "the Radulovich case amounted to ‘the turning point' in the struggle to expose McCarthy's dangerous humbug and bring the demagogue down once and for all", was "a seismic event that has entered both television and political history", was "the beginning of the end for the McCarthy era" and played a "key role in the Senator's demise." CBS news reporter Edward R. Murrow, who presented the Radulovich case on See It Now, was described as "a journalist who dared to uphold freedom of thought in a time of McCarthyism" and TV critic John Crosby called Murrow "the St. George of Television".

The Radulovich case demonstrated the crucial role an independent and free media must play in ensuring and safeguarding individual liberties and freedoms of all American citizens. The case shows the dangers of media collusion with government. The role of the media in the President Bill Clinton and George W. Bush Administrations can best be described as state-run and government-controlled, not unlike media in a totalitarian society. The US media is not free and not independent but is dependent and subservient to the government in a symbiotic relationship. Individual rights and freedoms are endangered when the media and the government are indistinguishable. The media is the watchdog of the government and not its cheerleader. There is a distinction between accurate news reporting and gathering and spin-doctored information warfare and propagandistic psyop techniques.

Milo Radulovich was a second generation Serbian-American whose parents were Serbian immigrants. Milo's father, Jovan or John Radulovich, immigrated to Detroit, Michigan in 1914 from Serbia. Milo, 26 in 1953, a graduate of Cass Technical High School in Detroit, was attending the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor seeking a physics degree to pursue a career in meteorology on the GI Bill. He had a wife, Nancy, and two daughters, Diane and Kathy. He had been in the US Army Air Corps in 1944 becoming a 1st lieutenant. A World War II veteran, he continued as a meteorologist, had top-secret clearance, needed or required to remain in the reserves for security reasons. In September, 1953, while still a University of Michigan student, he was dismissed as a security risk during the height of the "red scare" hysteria and panic, represented by Joseph McCarthy, a junior senator from Wisconsin.

Why was Radulovich dismissed from the reserves? His father had read pro-Communist newspapers from Serbia/Yugoslavia. He also read anti-Communist newspapers. His father did not read or speak English well. So he read Serbian language newspapers to keep up with or abreast of political developments in Serbia/Yugoslavia. Milo's sister Margaret Radulovich Fishman, labeled a Communist, she was alleged to have attended Communist meetings and demonstrations. Margaret had picketed the Book Cadillac Hotel in Detroit because black singer/actor Paul Robeson was denied accommodations based on his race. Radulovich stated: "My sister always believed in the Constitution." Because his sister was deemed a Communist, Milo Radulovich could be attacked for associating with a known Communist or Communist-sympathizer. He was said to have maintained a "close and continuing relationship" with his father and sister. This was guilt by association. In propaganda analysis, the technique is known by the term of art as "name-calling".

The Detroit News ran a series of articles on the Radulovich case in support of his position which stirred debate and controversy. Radulovich could resign "in lieu of elimination from the service" with the stripping of his commission, or he request a hearing, which he did. Many were outraged by the case. Michigan attorney Charles C. Lockwood agreed to represent Radulovich pro bono. He later represented 15 similar cases and won all. Kenneth Sanborn also volunteered to be part of the legal team also pro bono. Radulovich stated: "They restored one citizen's faith in Michigan's legal community." The case is regarded as a Michigal "legal milestone" and the case is commemorated under the title "Milo Radulovich and the Fall of McCarthyism". But the media turned the tide against McCarthy, not the legal system, which abetted the witch-hunts. The case was heard before a three member military tribunal under presiding judge Col. William Doolan at Selfridge Field, situated west of Anchor Bay in Lake St. Clair in eastern Michigan, outside of Mt. Clemens. Selfridge Field is now known as the Selfridge Air National Guard Base. Following a hearing at Selfridge, the three Air Force colonels found Radulovich to be a "security risk". The panel upheld Radulovich's dismissal. The government never presented its evidence openly, but relied on a sealed, top-secret file on the case, secret evidence.

The media in Detroit and Ann Arbor, however, supported Radulovich against the government allegations. The Detroit News ran a front page article on the case. Edward R. Murrow was drawn to the story after reading an October 14, 1953 article in the Detroit News.

The Milo Radulovich case became a key and watershed event in the McCarthy era when it was shown on CBS. The Milo Radulovich case aired on See It Now on October 20, 1953 on CBS. The broadcast was not aired in Detroit but the nation-wide response was massive. Fred W. Friendly, who wrote the Foreward to To Strike at a King: The Turning Point in the McCarthy Witch-Hunts, an analysis of the Radulovich case, described the impact of that program as follows:

That night the face of television documentaries was changed forever…The Milo Radulovich case peeled back the wretched excess of Communist witch-hunts…. The case of Milo Radulovich underscored that the hunt for witches had gone too far…

Murrow, a highly respected journalist known for his coverage of the London bombings in 1940 by the Luftwaffe, wanted to attack what he perceived as the excesses of McCarthyism. But he needed a case, the "little picture", that was so egregiously unjust and blatantly out of control that he would gain popular sympathy. Murrow first became aware of the Radulovich case after reading about it in the Detroit News article. He had been searching for a case or example that would allow him to attack McCarthyism head on. Was this the case he knew he needed to expose the egregious excess of McCarthyite witch-hunts? He needed a case that was so unjust and preposterous that he would have grass roots support. Lacking such a case, he realized that a frontal assault on McCarthy that was premature would lead to disaster and his own ruin. Ralph Waldo Emerson wrote: "When you strike at a king, you must kill him." Murrow convinced Friendly that the Radulovich case was what they had been searching for. Friendly recalled the meeting: "I can still recall Murrow's impish grin as he thrust a Detroit News article my way, during a chance meeting at an elevator."

Immediately Murrow and Friendly, the producer of See It Now, sought to contact Radulovich to film a segment of See It Now. CBS reporter Joe Wershba was sent to Dexter, Michigan to interview Radulovich and his family. The show was seen as a controversial one because it was perceived as an attack against the US government. McCarthy was a government official. Therefore any attack or criticism of him was perceived as an attack against the government. CBS executives "distanced" themselves from the show. CBS did not want to promote the show. Murrow and Friendly had to pay $1,500 up front to the New York Times for ads promoting the show. Television advertisers and commercial sponsors of See It Now retracted their ads from the program because it was a "show smearing the government." Alcoa Aluminum, a contractor with the US Air Force, dropped its mid-show commercial. McCarthy was offered a show to respond to the program by CBS but he refused. Instead, he called Morrow "a Communist" and attacked Murrow and the show.

The Radulovich case would show how far national security could be espoused at the expense and detriment of individual rights and freedoms. The showdown was now set between McCarthy and Radulovich/Morrow and American public opinion: "The end of the Red Scare period had begun". Widespread national support was engendered for Radulovich. Murrow emerged as a champion of free speech and the independence of the media from government control. Murrow was called "the St. George of Television". The See It Now television broadcast and the role of the Detroit News and Ann Arbor's Michigan Daily student newspaper of the University of Michigan were instrumental and crucial in this success. Radulovich stated: "I consider myself really lucky. It is only by the grace of public opinion that I was able to carry my fight. If it hadn't been for The Detroit News I don't know where I would be today. Where else but in this country can you find a free press that is willing to express itself to save a little man?"

The case against Radulovich was rationalized on the grounds of "national security" but was seen as "this outrageous miscarriage of justice." Both his father and his sister were regarded as "left-wing sympathizers" by the US government and military. During the witch-hunts, McCarthy explicitly sought to: 1) expose Communist sympathizers; and, 2) protect the country from foreign infiltration. The US Air Force declared Milo Radulovich a poor "security risk" based solely on the fact that his father subscribed to a pro-Communist newspaper that was in the Serbian language. Friendly regards the Radulovich broadcast, "of all the broadcasts…of all the issues…", the case that was "the most controversial broadcast to date in the history of television…"

Usually historians regard Radulovich as a footnote in the McCarthy witch-hunt era, a minor figure at best. But Friendly disagreed with this assessment of the role of the case. He saw the Radulovich case as "playing a key role in the Senator's demise" and that Radulovich "was a major participant" in McCarthyism.

The Radulovich case emphasized the crucial role a media and a press must play in a democracy. The media and the press were critical of the US government and took an unpopular stand against their own government. Can this even be envisaged in the New World Order era of government control of the media and the press? Is the US media ever critical or opposed to the policies of the US government? Isn't the US media and press government-run and government-controlled in the US? The media and the press are in a symbiotic relationship with the US government, in bed with the government, to manipulate and suppress news coverage. The Pentagon hired psyop troops to work for CNN during the Kosovo conflict to manufacture propaganda and information warfare. Pentagon psyop personnel routinely worked with CNN and other news outlets during the Iraqi Persian Gulf War, the Bosnian civil war, the Croatia/Krajina civil war. For all intents and purposes, the US media was state-run and government-controlled. Through the propaganda/infowar techniques of planting and embeds, the US government controlled the US media. An independent and free media and press, however, are essential to maintain individual freedoms and liberties. Without a free press/media, our civil liberties become threatened and endangered by national security imperatives.

A free and critical and independent media and press were decisive in bringing about the fall of Joseph McCarthy. Fred Friendly was a producer of the show and later became a president of CBS News. Don Hewitt, who would later produce 60 Minutes on CBS, worked on the See It Now staff. See It Now was a landmark investigative newsmagazine that set the groundwork for later news shows like 60 Minutes. The Radulovich case was a hallmark and groundbreaking case in establishing investigative journalism on television. Friendly regards the case as the crucial one that set the stage for the downfall of McCarthy and a watershed and defining moment in American journalism. At the Columbia Graduate School of Journalism, Friendly shows the Radolovich/ See It Now program each semester to journalism students. He stated: "I have found no better way to illustrate the role journalism plays in a free and open society than by citing ‘The Case Against Lt. Milo Radulovich.'"

On November 23, 1953, the US Air Force reversed its ruling that declared Milo Radulovich to be a poor security risk and dismissing him as a risk to national security. On November 24, Secretary of the Air Force Harold E. Talbot reversed the findings of the administrative board of three Air Force colonels who had found Radulovich to be a security risk at the Selfridge Field hearing east of Mt. Clemens, Michigan. The case eventually turned the tide on popular opposition to Joseph McCarthy. But Joseph McCarthy was a member of the US government and represented the US government. Politically correct historical analyses of the McCarthy era focus on McCarthy in personal terms, that it was just one individual acting in his own capacity. The Army-McCarthy Hearings were government hearings. McCarthyism was the policy of the US government and the vast majority of the US populace. Joseph McCarthy was merely the "front man" or the mouthpiece for the US government/Army. The McCarthy witch-hunt against Radulovich not only helped to bring about the end of witch-hunts, to the "Red Scare", McCarthyism, but also affected Radulovich's life. "It was the beginning of the end for Sen. McCarthy." Radulovich stated:

There is absolutely no question that it affected my life. It stopped me from achieving some of the goals I wanted to attain. I never got my college degree and that bugs the hell out of me.

Radulovich eventually worked for the National Weather Service. He moved from Michigan to Sacramento, California, where he retired.

Radulovich stressed the importance of the media in his case:

This compensates me for nearly everything I lost. There are probably a lot of guys floating around now washing garbage cans who were involved in the same period. And there might have been a lot more. I consider myself really lucky. It is only by the grace of public opinion that I was able to carry my fight. If it hadn't been for the Detroit News I don't know where I would be today. Where else but in this country can you find a free press that is willing to express itself to save a little man?

The Radulovich case demonstrates the dangers of having a media and a press that are in a symbiotic relationship of collusion with the government. The media and press must be independent and free from government control. Only a free and independent media and press can adequately safeguard and protect individual rights and freedoms and ensure civil liberties. In periods of crisis and threats to national security, individual freedoms are the first to be threatened. Consensual paranoia is the real danger or threat, which endangers and threatens us all.

Conclusion

Consensual paranoia results when there is a perceived threat or danger to national security. Individual rights and liberties are endangered. Consensual paranoia is a reversion to a primordial psychological orientation that creates a schizophrenic dichotomy between the Tribe and Outsiders or Others, between Us and Them. Tribal unity, conformity, uniformity, and cohesiveness are paramount. The individual is sacrificed for the good of the Tribe, Clan, or Nation. Invariably, national security necessitates an expanded government with increased and greater powers. During crises and periods of real and perceived dangers and threats to national security, abuses and excesses result from the ensuing hysteria and panic. Such was the case during the 1950s era of McCarthyism. Serbian-American Milo Radulovich was a victim of the McCarthy witch-hunts. But because of a media and press that dared to oppose and confront the government, Radulovich was able to overturn his dismissal and to aid in the eventual downfall of the McCarthy Red Scare pandemonium and hysteria.

Following the 9/11 attacks and the subsequent Anthrax attacks, the US Congress enacted measures and passed legislation that severely curtailed individual rights and freedoms and expanded the power of the government to monitor and to spy on its own citizens. The so-called U.S.A. Patriot Act of 2001 gave the government sweeping new powers. The Act expanded the power of the government to engage in secret searches thus bypassing the Search and Seizure requirements of the Fourth Amendment to the US Constitution. The government has greater power in eavesdropping and in wiretapping telephone communications thereby bypassing the federal wiretap statute. The government also has increased power to intercept and monitor Internet transmissions and communications. Citizens can be more easily investigated while non-citizens are subject to secret hearings, and open-ended detention and investigation.

Many of the measures enacted for national security in the war against terrorism exceed even the excesses and abuses of the McCarthy era. An executive order created special military tribunals or courts to try non-citizens suspected of terrorism. The US government has manipulated the distinction between combatants and non-combatants to hold suspected "terrorists" or those with ties or links to terrorists indefinitely and without due process. A military tribunal created to try civilian non-combatants is unprecedented and controversial.

Finally, an executive order allowed the government to eavesdrop on any conversation between a suspect and his or her attorney/counsel thereby bypassing attorney-client confidentiality requirements of US law. Such a power vitiates the constitutional right to counsel of the 6th Amendment. Counsel cannot represent an accused adequately and competently when the conversations/discussions between counsel and defendant are not confidential. This measure is a serious danger and threat to fundamental and inherent civil liberties and freedoms and undermines the whole legal framework or system of American jurisprudence. National security becomes overriding and paramount, superceding even the Constitution. These are serious threats to individual liberties guaranteed under the Constitution.

National security imperatives have resulted in the erosion of constitutional protections and safeguards of civil liberties and freedoms. We gain security but lose our freedom. Consensual paranoia imprisons us in our own delusional fears thereby incapacitating and debilitating us. This is the ultimate threat we face.

Bibliography

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Fariello, Griffin. Red Scare: Memories of the American Inquisition: An Oral History. NY: W.W. Norton, 1995.

Hodges, Michael H. "The reluctant hero: The Michigan soldier who helped topple McCarthyism tells why he took a stand." The Detroit News. April 22, 1997.

Jung, Carl. Archetypes and the Collective Unconscious. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1968.

Keen, Sam. Faces of the Enemy: Reflections of the Hostile Imagination. The Psychology of Enmity. San Francisco: Harper & Row, 1986.

LeBon, Gustave. The Crowd: A Study of the Popular Mind. NY: Macmillan, 1896.

Lessenberry, Jack. "Current atmosphere has parallels to McCarthyism of the ‘50s." The Oakland Press. November 25, 2001.

Morris, Julie. "The Man Who Fought McCarthy's Red Smear." Rearview Mirror: Michigan at the Millennium. The Detroit News. April 17, 2000.

Ranville, Michael. To Strike at a King: The Turning Point in the McCarthy Witch-Hunts. Troy, Michigan: Momentum Books, Ltd., 1997.

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