ENGAGE draws our attention to “The new McCarthyism“, the Claudia Jones Memorial Lecture recently delivered by Liz Fekete of the Institute of Race Relations, which describes the new McCarthyism against Muslims sweeping across Europe and calls for a campaign against racism and Islamophobia in the media.

Fekete asks: “Could it be that we, too, are living in a world that is being shaped by a new form of McCarthyism? Only today the ‘Islam scare’ is replacing the ‘red scare’? Could it be that whereas once Communists were treated as a dangerous ‘fifth column’ subject to ‘foreign allegiance’, such fears are now being transferred onto those European citizens and residents who happen to be Muslim? Could it be that just as the media in the US carried out its own ‘hunt for subversives’, the media in Europe are contributing to the ‘Islam scare’.”