Bishop warns of ‘new McCarthyism’

The Catholic Church leader slams politicians who engage in witch-hunts and scaremongering to divert attention from their woes.

PETALING JAYA: Catholic Church leader Bishop Paul Tan has lashed out at politicians who engage in witch-hunts and scaremongering as diversions from their sinking popularity.

The president of the Catholic Bishops’ Conference of Malaysia also warned of the rise of a “new McCarthyism” in Malaysia.

Tan was responding to the allegations that Christian groups were out to undermine the status of Islam as the official religion.

“The last time a calumny like this was visited on Malaysian Christians was in the early 1970s when a past president of PAS described us as a greater national security threat than the Communists,” he said.
“Fortunately, that was a lone instance and reflected one individual’s fevered imagination.

“But now we see various groups of politicians intent on resurrecting this bogey to divert attention from the problem of their slumping popularity,” he added.

Tan said instead of dealing with the obvious causes of their sinking popularity, like widespread corruption, racism and intolerable economic inequities, these politicians engage in witch-hunts against assorted scapegoats.

“It appears their flavor of the month is the Christians whom these scaremongers have rounded on and perhaps now regard as a soft target,” he added.

The Bishop warned that Christians would not be daunted by the “rise of this new McCarthyism in Malaysian society” where everyone else was blamed except those most culpable for the worrisome situation.

“In the face of demagogic threats to their loyalty to the country and the Federal Constitution, Christians must renew their determination to join people of goodwill to tackle the country’s manifold problems which have arrived at a level responsible citizens find deeply unsettling,” he asserted.

He urged Christians to make fidelity to the Federal Constitution a touchstone of their faith in the country and its future.

McCarthyism explained

According to the Merriam-Webster dictionary, it is a mid-20th century political attitude characterized chiefly by opposition to elements held to be subversive and by the use of tactics involving personal attacks on individuals by means of widely publicized indiscriminate allegations especially on the basis of unsubstantiated charges. Wikipedia says it was originally coined to criticize the anti-communist pursuits of US Senator Joseph McCarthy, ‘McCarthyism’ soon took on a broader meaning, describing the excesses of similar efforts. The term is also now used more generally to describe reckless, unsubstantiated accusations, as well as demagogic attacks on the character or patriotism of political adversaries