McCarthyism's paranoia contains a lesson for Trump's second term Richard Sennett

The rise of Donald Trump aroused in me an old fear of Senator Joseph McCarthy.

Both McCarthy and Trump rose to power as demagogues who fed on the American public's fear of "enemies within". My family had cause to fear on the biggest of these counts: my parents were communists from an early age, although they had quit the party in 1939 after Hitler's pact with Stalin. In the heyday of US power, families such as mine were persecuted for a cause in which they no longer believed. We developed ways to avoid or resist persecution, and I think these help to illuminate the combat that is to come with Trumpism.

Some connections between McCarthy and Trump are straightforward, both having been charismatic performers with a base of willing believers, both exploiting patriotism, both making up "facts" on the spur of the moment. There is a personal bridge between the two men that is perhaps more revealing. The lawyer and fixer Roy Cohn served as McCarthy's chief counsel and later as an adviser to the young Donald Trump. Cohn was an expert in the techniques of public humiliation, of firing people and of surveilling private lives. Cohn counselled Trump on how to bribe and intimidate New York politicians when the young property mogul encountered rough weather in business. The Roy Cohn who later featured in Tony Kushner's play Angels in America was an accurate picture of the combative but self-hating man. Though Cohn died of an Aids-related illness in 1986, he denied to the end that he was gay.