How to Use McCarthyism in a Sentence

McCarthyism

noun
  • What exactly McCarthyism for our times looks like is still in flux.
    — Ali Breland, The Atlantic, 6 Mar. 2026
  • Ditto for the new embrace of McCarthyism.
    — Ali Breland, The Atlantic, 6 Mar. 2026
  • McCarthyism, after years, crashed in defeat.
    — Chris John Amorosino, Hartford Courant, 16 Jan. 2026
  • History shows that nothing good came out of McCarthyism.
    — Chris John Amorosino, Hartford Courant, 16 Jan. 2026
  • The book did represent a change, a somewhat softer brand of McCarthyism.
    — John Williams, Washington Post, 2023-06-14
  • Robeson was only one of dozens of activists whose passports were seized during the era of McCarthyism.
    — Time, 20 Oct. 2025
  • Just as radio and television were used to stir up the fervor of McCarthyism, they were also used to undermine it.
    — Rebecca Jennings, Vox, 2025-01-10
  • Bannon doesn’t see this as a departure from the original McCarthyism.
    — Ali Breland, The Atlantic, 6 Mar. 2026
  • The proposal was an eerie echo of a practice adopted in 1950, as McCarthyism took hold.
    — Time, 20 Oct. 2025
  • Politics, which play a large part in the original — and in nearly all of Mallon’s books — are here stripped down to the greatest hits of McCarthyism.
    — Robert Lloyd, Los Angeles Times, 2023-10-27
  • Released last year, the film explores the meaning of moral courage in the 1950s, when the U.S. was in the grip of McCarthyism.
    — Amanda Foreman, WSJ, 2023-09-16
  • The fear, injustice, and corruption of McCarthyism died because the public, the media, and national leaders spoke out.
    — Chris John Amorosino, Hartford Courant, 16 Jan. 2026
  • Spacey likened his predicament to the experiences of actors of yore, who were swept into the Hollywood blacklist as a result of McCarthyism.
    — Zac Ntim, Deadline, 27 Nov. 2025
  • Spacey likened his predicament to the experiences of actors of yore, who were swept into the Hollywood blacklist as a result of McCarthyism.
    — Natalie Oganesyan, Deadline, 21 Nov. 2025
  • McCarthyism, as the movement became known, ruined the reputations and destroyed the careers of hundreds of innocent people.
    — Chris John Amorosino, Hartford Courant, 16 Jan. 2026
  • Redford’s main tasks are to look just as fabulous as Streisand, gaze upon her adoringly, and make sure his character stays likable despite his McCarthyism.
    — Matt Zoller Seitz, Vulture, 17 Sep. 2025
  • The Lilith Society becomes an escape, particularly as the legacy of McCarthyism hovers over the city.
    — Carly Tagen-Dye, PEOPLE, 4 Feb. 2026
  • In the way that Kleenex has become interchangeable with tissue, McCarthyism, for many, is an eponym for the unjust, reprehensible use of political power.
    — Ali Breland, The Atlantic, 6 Mar. 2026
  • The periods before and after the Civil War spring to mind, along with the corruption of the Gilded Age and the repression of McCarthyism.
    — The Editorial Board, Chicago Tribune, 10 Mar. 2026
  • Einstein’s philosophical battle against McCarthyism began with a letter to a Brooklyn high school teacher named William Frauenglass.
    — Jodie Childers, The Conversation, 20 Nov. 2025
  • That these connections were cemented during McCarthyism and the Red Scare — a time when the American way was perceived to be under threat — is no accident, Seaton said.
    — Leah Asmelash, CNN Money, 19 Oct. 2025
  • Even the topical songs of the sixties folk movement constituted a revival, a reinvention of the Popular Front-style political art of the thirties and forties, for the waning years of McCarthyism.
    — Mitch Therieau, New Yorker, 7 Feb. 2026
  • While popular memory blames the era’s repressiveness on Wisconsin Senator Joseph McCarthy—hence the moniker McCarthyism—the truth is the push was far broader.
    — Time, 20 Oct. 2025
  • Reiner’s father opposed the Communist hunt of McCarthyism in the 1950s and his mother, Estelle Reiner, a singer and actor, protested the Vietnam War.
    — Jake Coyle, Fortune, 15 Dec. 2025
  • Reiner's father opposed the Communist hunt of McCarthyism in the 1950s and his mother, Estelle Reiner, a singer and actor, protested the Vietnam War.
    — CBS News, 15 Dec. 2025
  • The two-time Oscar winner recalled Hollywood’s stand against McCarthyism, an anti-communist hysteria movement in the 1950s that affected some of the movie industry’s brightest lights.
    — G. Allen Johnson, San Francisco Chronicle, 23 Feb. 2025
  • The Committee for the First Amendment was originally spearheaded by the Oscar winner's father, actor Henry Fonda, to fight McCarthyism.
    — Mekishana Pierre, Entertainment Weekly, 2 Oct. 2025
  • Advertisement Most notably, in 1958, congressional conservatives pushed to rein in the Warren Court for rulings that challenged and undercut the red-baiting that characterized the era of McCarthyism.
    — Time, 14 Nov. 2025
  • While the 2005 film is likely easier to locate than the CNN broadcast, either version of Good Night, and Good Luck is essential viewing in the midst of what seems to be a new horizon for neo-McCarthyism in America.
    — Maureen Lee Lenker, Entertainment Weekly, 18 Sep. 2025
  • Aaron Reichlin-Melnick, a senior fellow at the American Immigration Council, compared the move to McCarthyism in the 1950s, when authorities prosecuted left-wing individuals amid a widespread public panic over communism and its influence on US institutions.
    — Jade Walker, CNN Money, 20 Aug. 2025

Some of these examples are programmatically compiled from various online sources to illustrate current usage of the word 'McCarthyism.' Any opinions expressed in the examples do not represent those of Merriam-Webster or its editors. Send us feedback about these examples.

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