Revisiting a Witch Hunt

Revisiting a Witch Hunt

In the preface to Red Scare: Blacklists, McCarthyism, and the Making of Modern America, Clay Risen states his intention to resist “drawing parallels between the past and the present.” Photo: Kate Milford In conversation, that resistance goes by the wayside quickly. “I was struck this summer when [now Vice President] JD Vance was talking about these Haitian immigrants in Ohio who are supposedly eating pets,” said Nashville native Risen, an histor…