McCarthyism is Back, Baby

An investigative analysis and forensic report by Dissent in Bloom regarding the U.S. attempt to make political dissent a crime again.

Dissent in Bloom🌼

Sep 17, 2025

223

126

In 1954, Senator Joseph McCarthy held up a list of names and claimed communists had infiltrated the government.

He didn’t need proof. He just needed fear.

Seventy years later, it’s happening again. Only now, the names professors who shared a petition. Palestinian activists who protested at Columbia. Federal workers who once tweeted support for Black Lives Matter losing their jobs. A teacher who shared a meme about Charlie Kirk. All branded as “radical leftists.”

These watchlists aren’t just quietly circulated among MAGA’s ideological foot soldiers. They’re being echoed by government officials and legitimized by the White House.

Senators like Tom Cotton call for people to “take matters into their own hands”, turning private citizens into public targets. The Attorney General pressures employers to fire dissenters. The Vice President fuels a mass doxxing campaign against Americans. This is no fringe movement. It’s a government strategy now.

But the lists didn’t start with Kirk dying. They didn’t start with Project 2025.

And they sure as hell didn’t start this week.

McCarthyism has been alive and well in America, and it’s now backed by executive power. Like so many before you, you won’t know you’re on one of their lists until it’s already too late.

The Watchlists Are Already Becoming State Policy

The lists were never secret. They buried them in bureaucracy and patriotic slogans. We didn’t see the danger until it reached our door. Until our names were already there.

Campus Watch, launched in 2002 to monitor “unpatriotic” professors. Discover the Networks in 2004, mapping out “leftist influence.” Canary Mission in 2014, naming and shaming Palestinian activists. Kirk had his own list, too, the “professor watchlist.”

These sites are still live. Don’t search your name. Don’t search your friend’s. If you must visit, use a VPN and private browser. They track you. They log keystrokes. Canary Mission has worked with ICE & Marco Rubio to revoke visas and lock people up. Protect yourself. Curiosity isn't worth the risk.

Then came the “American Accountability Foundation” — A dark-money operation that’s spent years compiling entire dossiers on civil servants, educators, and activists they call too ‘woke’ for government work. The same dossiers used as part of the ideological employee purge in the U.S. government earlier this year.

Stefanie Anderson (CDC), Noelle Sharp (DHS immigration judge), Shelby Guillen Dominguez (HHS), and Kiana Atkins (NIH) were all named on right-wing watchlists like those from the American Accountability Foundation. Each faced ‘consequences’ ranging from harassment and administrative leave to being fired.

And that’s only a handful of the names.

Thousands more have already been flagged, tracked, or purged — quietly & methodically. That’s not a coincidence. It started with federal jobs, but it won’t end there. The lists are growing. One goes down, and two more come up. The government has the names, the net is widening, and if you think you’re safe, you haven’t been paying attention.

Dissent in Bloom is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.

This started earlier this year. When we first saw the collaboration between ICE and the far-right machine. The moment ‘immigration enforcement’ became an ideological weapon.

Guided by the lists from Canary Mission and BETAR US, the American Stasi was born. What they did to these students — that is the blueprint for what is coming — pay attention.

Why Stasi? The original Stasi tracked, harassed, and disappeared so-called “undesirables,” compiling massive dossiers, banning travel, purging universities, and turning citizens into informants. Just like the U.S. is doing now.

Mahmoud Khalil was locked in a Louisiana detention center for 104 days and forced to miss the birth of his son, Yunseo Chung nearly lost her residency for sitting on a library floor, and Rümeysa Öztürk was surrounded by masked men, thrown in a van and dragged off, denied her inhaler, and smeared as a terrorist sympathizer after her visa was revoked. None of them were violent. None were criminals. Their only “crime” was speaking out. Using their first amendment rights.

Marco Rubio tried to deport them all under a Cold War law. Said they were “National Security” threats.

Not one of these students was violent. Not one was a criminal. They only cared enough to resist and the U.S. government tried to erase them for it..

And what were they resisting? Well, did you know that since October 2023, Israel has killed over 20,000 children in Gaza? That’s a child every hour.

The real number is estimated to be much higher, but that’s what we know. Plus there are fifty thousand more are seriously injured or disabled kids. And that’s just the children — the adults are dying, too. All so your local congressman can have money, power, and control.

And tens of thousands more are starving, **their bodies wasting away because food and medicine are blocked at the border**. Children are shot down at so-called U.S. “aid distribution sites,” where thousands have died just trying to eat.

Congress won’t stop, because Israel keeps America’s boot on the Middle East and the money keeps flowing back to defense contractors and AIPAC-backed politicians — these politicians are given millions of dollars from Israel every year to keep voting to give them more money — it’s never been about doing what’s right.

The point is, ICE has become a weapon against constitutional free speech and the same machinery is now aimed at all of us.

It is the oldest fascist tactic, and it’s coming straight from the Nazi playbook.

Charlie Kirk is America’s Horst Wessel

Charlie Kirk didn’t die in a battlefield. He wasn’t a soldier. He wasn’t a victim of genocide. But the Trump administration is already turning him into a sacred symbol. He was a a political martyr, carefully sculpted and weaponized. Just like the Nazis did with Horst Wessel.

In the year 1930, three years before the full takeover of Germany, Adolf Hitler had found found a martyr in Horst Wessel after Wessel wrote a song, got shot, and Joseph Goebbels (the propagandist) turned him into something much bigger. Wessel was a minor SA officer who was killed in a street dispute.

But that didn’t matter. By the time Goebbels was done, If you didn’t revere him, you were the enemy. His song became the Nazi anthem. His image, a rallying cry. His name, a justification for bloodshed.

This is exactly what the Trump Regime is doing with Charlie Kirk

Kirk’s wife is posting photos on Instagram of his body and video of his military farewell ceremony. Complete with flags, rifles, military marches, commemorative coins with bald eagles on them. A whole spectacle.

Side Note: How much taxpayer money was spent flying Charlie Kirk’s body on Air Force Two and giving him a military funeral? I don’t know. But I filed FOIA requests with the Secret Service, the Department of Defense, and the Air Force on 9/16/2025 — because someone should. I can’t promise they’ll answer, but I’ll keep my subscribers and followers in the loop if they do.

It didn’t matter that he never served. It didn’t matter that this was stolen valor, authorized by the same President who dodged the draft by crying, ‘bone spurs.’

They’re turning Charlie Kirk into a symbol.

Trump was the the first to announce Kirk’s death, but within hours, President Donald Trump took to Truth Social to call him a “warrior” whilst immediately simultaneously naming the “left” and leftist rhetoric as the cause of his death. Kash Patel said he’d see Kirk in Valhalla, the Viking afterlife reserved for those who die in battle.

Meanwhile,

Attorney General Pam Bondi is using the DOJ to target dissenters. After purging the Civil Rights Division, she’s going after an Office Depot worker who wouldn’t print Charlie Kirk vigil flyers calling it a civil rights violation and “propaganda” from the left.
Vice President J.D. Vance announced to employers nationwide that anyone without a state approved opinion? Well, “they should all be fired.”
- And people were. Multiple people across multiple sectors were fired.

Of course, it wasn’t long after that Bondi declared that the “era of normalizing political violence is over.”

Echoing every authoritarian regime in history. What she really meant is that dissent will be criminalized.

It doesn’t matter that Trump himself pioneered stochastic terrorism, but it has never been considered a problem when it comes from the right. Their violence is always written off as a lone wolf every time it happens — over and over. We’ve become so desensitized to political violence from the far-right that it barely registers. It happens so often it feels ordinary. Background noise. Acceptable.

That is why in a single night, they manipulated the public into believing the left was evil because they didn’t mourn Trumps martyr. Because it was so rare to us.

Let’s be honest: If Pam Bondi is serious about cracking down on political violence, then expect the same level of outrage and action for the man who shot two Democratic lawmakers just three months ago, killing one of them (along with her husband and dog) in cold blood.

I expect a full investigation into the two men that were just found lynched in Mississippi. In 2025. One a black student, the other houseless.

The first victim was Trey Reed, a 21-year-old Black student from Grenada, Mississippi, just starting his first year at Delta State University. His body was found hanging from a tree near the campus pickleball courts.

I need you to understand that black men do not hang themselves from trees. Not in 1882. Not in 1968. Not in 2025.

The other man who lost his life was Cory Zukatis, a 36-year-old unhoused (‘homeless’) man found hanging from a tree in a wooded area near the Ameristar Casino. Then homeless people were gunned down in encampments in coordinated mass shootings across Minneapolis encampments overnight. Right after Fox host Brian Kilmeade said on live television to, “just kill” the homeless.

That is political violence. That it stochastic terrorism. That is hate-fueled terror. But apparently, the DOJ only sees a problem when dissent comes from ‘the left.’

Not long before that — in an interview on Fox Florida — GOP Rep. Randy Fine openly called for dropping a nuclear bomb on Gaza, saying we should do to the starving children what the U.S. did to Hiroshima.

Fox News is not journalism. Fox News is a domestic terrorist operation with a broadcast license.

Of course it was on Fox that Stephen Miller admitted:

“We are going to dismantle the organized left in this country.”

— Stephen Miller, 2025.

As Deputy Chief of Staff and DHS advisor, Miller vowed to use the full force of the state to "take away their money, take away their power." He didn’t care if it meant RICO charges, asset seizures, or terrorism labels. His only goal is to see the left destroyed.

No matter how much they push that idea, the left isn't organizing mass violence and coordinated attacks. Militant (‘alt-right’) white nationalist violence is the dominant domestic terror threat in this country. It has been for decades. And they know this.

Which is exactly why they buried the government study that proves it:

Far-right extremists have committed 227 ideological attacks since 1990, killing over 520 people. Far-left extremists? 42 attacks. 78 deaths. You can read the original study in the internet archives here.

**January 21, 1935: 15,000 New Yorkers took to 8th Avenue opposing the U.S. participation in the 1936 Berlin Olympics hosted by Nazi Germany under Adolf Hitler.**

Trump followed Millers threats by once again attempting to brand ANTIFA a domestic terrorist organization. He tried this during his first term, too. Turns out he can’t actually do that without violating the first amendment because is not an recognized organization or party.

ANTIFA is a catchall label for the anti-fascist resistance movement. Fascism is a far-right, authoritarian, ultranationalist movement. ANTIFA stands for anti-fascist. That’s it.

The government might not come out and say they’re fascists, but when opposing fascism becomes a crime, you don’t need a confession. You already have your answer.

Now, while ANTIFA is not a recognized domestic terrorist organization — the hate group ACT for America is. And Scott Presler (who is the first to kick off the doxxing list campaign right after Kirk was killed) is part of that. He coordinated the rallies that were saturated with anti-Muslim conspiracy theories and white nationalist propaganda.

Just real domestic terrorists, doing what they do best.

In this regime, saying things like “gay people deserve rights,” “Charlie Kirk said bad things,” “homeless people are human,” “kids should be fed,” and “healthcare is a right” is enough to get you branded an enemy of the state.

That is the ‘radical left rhetoric.’

Meanwhile, the people who stormed the Capitol and beat Capitol police officers to death are working government jobs. Including inside of Pam Bondi’s ‘Weaponization Working Group’ in the DOJ. Yes, J6-ers are purging the government.

Which only exists to purge anyone who ever held Trump accountable. And that’s what it’s been doing. FBI Director Kash Patel recently refused to answer whether the FBI is now politically compromised. His refusal tells us everything we need to know.

They’ve Told Us What Comes Next. Are We Listening?

First they call us ‘ANTIFA’. Then they say we’re terrorists. Then they take our rights and outlaw dissent. We become felons, so we can’t vote them out. The country goes into ‘wartime’ and stops having elections.

This is how it always starts.

In Nazi Germany, Reichstag 1933 was the template. The Reichstag (Germany’s parliament) went up in flames. A ‘communist’ was blamed, but he didn’t do it… We know now that the Nazis set that fire and within hours, civil liberties were suspended. It gave Hitler cover to round up the opposition, crush free speech, and create a one-party state under the lie of “national security.”

And we know what happened from there.

In America, they are searching for that moment. They are waiting for the excuse. They want their version of the Reichstag. A single event to trigger the purge. A “leftist” will be blamed for whatever happens.

Some thought Charlie Kirk’s death would be it. But the public wasn’t ready. That wasn’t the spark.. it was the setup. He was the Horst Wessel, the glorified corpse to fuel the fire.

They will try again. But we don’t have to let them succeed. We must see the playbook before they finish writing it. It’s not just Nazi Germany or Mussolini’s Italy we need to study but our own homegrown fascism.

COINTELPRO was a real FBI program that infiltrated and sabotaged Black leaders, leftists, and anti-war activists by planting extremists and inciting division. Operation Northwoods was a declassified military plan to fake terror attacks on Americans and blame Cuba to justify war.

FYI: These aren’t conspiracy theories. They’re historical facts you can find in the declassified CIA and FBI archives.

Final Thoughts 🌸

There are more of us than there are of them. That has always been true. What they have is power, money, and the illusion of control. What we have is each other our voices, our numbers, our rage, and our hope. Authoritarian regimes only win when people forget their own power.

We fall to fascism when we believe we’re alone. But we’re not. Not even close. But please, I cannot stress something enough…

Don’t take the bait. Don’t pick up the brick.

A brick in your hand becomes the state’s permission slip. They want the photo. They want the footage. They want the excuse. Don’t give it to them. The state wants a reason to crush you.

Someone recently commented that we should “burn down” a place on one of my posts. I deleted it immediately. Why? Because I’ve seen this tactic before. That was some textbook ‘COINTELPRO’ B/S.

Do not be violent. See it for what it is. Do not engage. Speak out with power. Protest with purpose. Post with clarity. They want fear. They want chaos. They want violence so they can justify the crackdown.

Don’t give it to them. Stay sharp. Stay human. There are more of us than there are of them. The only way they win is if we forget who we are.

Thanks for Reading 🌸 A Message from Dissent

Hi, I’m “Dissent.” First of all, let me just say thank you. We may be overwhelmed, but we’re not outnumbered. Thank you for staying awake, staying kind, and staying in the fight.

I started Dissent in Bloom because I was tired of being lied to. Tired of billionaire-run networks handing us half-truths, distractions, and manufactured consent. I don’t have a newsroom or a TV deal.

So, I decided to I was going to build Dissent in Bloom to be the media I wish I had. Independent. Fearless. Rooted in truth, not profits or the goals of the rich and powerful. Authoritarian regimes control people by controlling information. We don’t have to let them. I do not have a team. It’s just me, my computer, a mountain of FOIA requests the government still has not answered, and a ridiculous amount of coffee.

Subscribe for free to stay in the loop. Stay up to date. Get the entire story.

If you’ve got a little extra, a paid subscription helps keep this work going — the research, the records, the receipts. But if you don’t? That’s okay. This work will always be here, because it belongs to all of us. You can’t pour from an empty cup. Take care of yourself first. We’ll fight together.

And if this piece taught you something, or if it stirred something in you, please share it. Restack it. That’s how truth spreads. That’s how we fight back. Together.

You can also toss a few bucks in the Ko-fi donation jar that supplies my coffee funds if that’s more your style.

Either way, thank you for being here. ♥