A few nights ago I watched Clooney's movie Good Night, and Good Luck - a bit late perhaps considering that it came out in 2005 but still very interesting. If you haven't seen it, do so as it will remind you of the red scare hunt in the US in the 50s under Senator McCarthy's insane reign. And for a historian like me, who loves to make correlations between old insanities and more current ones (and other things than insanities of course), this communist hunt in the 50s reminds me a lot of the similar hunt on anyone that might be a terrorist in the US following 9/11.
In a book I just finished on a completely different subject, was mentioned the story of this man from Bali who had been living in the US for years without problems, was married to an American woman since a while back but hadn't come around to apply for a regulation of his situation - hence the marriage was for love and not to get the right to stay. Following 9/11 and the fright for anything Muslim or anyone from a Muslim country in the US, all people from certain countries including Indonesia were asked to go and register with the authorities. And this Christian man from Bali followed this decree and went with his wife. He was called back for an individual meeting in the afternoon, and asked to neither bring his wife nor a lawyer, and in a naive stupid way he followed the order - just to be sent off to a camp without any news to anyone about his whereabouts (his wife only managed to track him down after several days). He was kept there for some months and then shipped off back to Indonesia with his hopes of ever being allowed back to the US close to a minimum - although being married with an American! His crime? Being born in Indonesia and therefore was accorded no trial, no lawyers and not even the right to inform.
Witch hunts seem to come and go, only the subjects of imagined terror changes.
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