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In 2020, the American Right is going to go full-bore McCarthyism around the following buzzwords: intersectionality, cultural marxism, (the oldie but goodie) socialism, and its current referent ‘Venezuela.’ theamericanconservative.com/dreher/democra…
This McCarthyite hysteria will give anti-Trump conservatives and center-rightists permission to support Trump in 2020, as a way to “save” America from the supposed abyss.
McCarthyism is deeply rooted in the DNA of American conservatism. Buckley (founder of the National Review) wrote a sympathetic book about McCarthy in the 50s. Trump’s mentor in the 70s and 80s was Roy Cohn, McCarthy’s right hand man in the 50s.
And by McCarthyism I mean two distinct but interrelated things. 1) An obsession with conspiracies for which evidence (beyond the word of a trusted, angry leader) is not necessary and 2) the slippery slope argument that one's opponents pose an existential threat to America.
The conspiracy theories are for the credulous ones in the coalition...the ones who will never leave you, but who perhaps need extra inspiration to go to the polls.
But the slippery slope arguments are for the "intellectuals" in the coalition...for the people who may not fall for conspiratorial hokum, but will deploy their knowledge of Hayek, Rand, D'Souza, & the back issues of the Ron Paul newsletter to inform you that leftism is a cancer.
Here's the NRA's version of this slippery slope argument. Kamala Harris poses an "existential threat" to the country. We all know how the NRA thinks one should respond to a threat to one's existence, right?
In this post from last year I made the case for why slippery slope arguments are inherently anti-democratic, a refusal to see one's political opponents as legitimate. medium.com/@sethcotlar/wh…
Because I teach a course on American conservatism I follow contemporary conservative discourse. It is exceedingly rare to find a contemporary conservative who does not think of progressives as closet totalitarians, and who doesn't regularly warn their audiences about it.
Whether it be the National Review or The American Conservative or The Federalist, it's amazing how difficult it is to find someone who will actually engage with progressive policy ideas beyond just saying "IT'S SOCIALISM! VENEZUELA! HEAD FOR THE HILLS!!!"
The anti-college student (anti-SJW) dimension of this is especially noxious. The anti-SJW discourse developed on far right youtube thanks to InfoWars and other such outlets has now been integrated into "mainstream" American conservatism and even centrism via Haidt and Chait.
I recently listened to two conservative podcast interviews with Noah Rothman, the latest entry into the "college students are going to put us all in gulags and destroy America" sweepstakes. Not a single, actual example was mentioned...it was 100%, evidence-free hyperventilating. 
With the end of the Cold War, you might have thought that American Conservatism would lose some of its apocalyptic edge, that its manichean binaries might soften a bit. But no...it's just found new "others" to define itself against now that the Pinkos are gone.
Whether it be "Creeping Sharia Law" or "the deep state" or "globalism" or "SJWs" or "Fake News enemies of the state"....the story remains the same as it was in the 1950s. "They" are out to get "you" and "they" can not be reasoned with because "they" want to destroy you.
This habit of depicting one's opponents as "a cancer" is part of a conservative (often fascist) genealogy that links Steve Bannon to the John Birch Society to Oswald Spengler.
