If we want to understand how we arrived in this authoritarian moment in 2025, we need to understand one of the central pathways that brought us here: McCarthyism.

In his firsthand account of the 1949 Peekskill Riot, the two-day frenzy of state-sanctioned mob violence against a left-wing music festival headlined by Paul Robeson, writer Howard Fast mostly describes his disbelief. He was invited to help first with the planning and then with the defense of the concert, as mobs of vigilantes with clubs, knives, and guns shut down the performances, violently assaulted many of the attendees, and forced Robeson into hiding. Fast, in the face of mobs shouting racist and antisemitic slogans, believed they could bring Robeson back a week later, with a cordon of United Electrical and Longshoremen uni

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