Chip Gibbons Discusses Trump’s McCarthyism on Left Reckoning Podcast

Defending Rights & Dissent Policy Director Chip Gibbons joined the Left Reckoning podcast Tuesday to discuss the Trump administration crackdown on dissent and its echoes of past McCarthyite repression.

In conversation with hosts Matt Lech and David Griscom, Gibbons expounded on his Truthout article, “The State’s War on the Left Didn’t Begin With Trump — But He’s Escalating It”, where he argues that Trump is blending the “war on terror” legal framework with Cold War-era attacks on political activism on the left to form a New McCarthyism for the modern era. 

Gibbons broke down NSPM-7, Trump’s presidential memo outlining his blueprint for the crackdown on left-wing ‘domestic extremism.’ He explained how the administration’s war on ‘antifa’ makes use of the existing counterterrorism apparatus–including the FBI’s Joint Terrorism Task Forces–to weaponize the federal government to investigate and spy on Trump’s adversaries, along with the McCarthy-era tactic of guilt-by-association to cast aspersions on activist groups’ funding sources and to smear political dissent as a potential threat to national security.

Watch the full discussion here: 

Gibbons is the author of a new critical history of the FBI and its attacks on activism and dissent, The Imperial Bureau, The FBI, Political Surveillance, and the Rise of the U.S. National Security State, forthcoming from Verso Books in February 2027.