Not to be all “well aktually,” but McCarthy headed the second Red Scare. You’re absolutely right that there is a pattern of using the government to suppress the left, I just thought it was worth pointing out that it’s been going on for as long as there has been an organized left in the US.

From Wikipedia:

The Overman Committee was a special five-man subcommittee of the U.S. Senate Committee on the Judiciary chaired by North Carolina Democrat Lee Slater Overman. First charged with investigating German subversion during World War I, its mandate was extended on February 4, 1919, just a day after the announcement of the Seattle General Strike, to study “any efforts being made to propagate in this country the principles of any party exercising or claiming to exercise any authority in Russia” and “any effort to incite the overthrow of the Government of this country”. The Committee’s hearings into Bolshevik propaganda, conducted from February 11 to March 10, 1919, developed an alarming image of Bolshevism as an imminent threat to the U.S. government and American values. The Committee’s final report appeared in June 1919.