The United States is setting into motion a new era of McCarthyism where every person of Chinese heritage is being targeted as a potential enemy, says Dennis Etler, an American political analyst who has a decades-long interest in international affairs.

Etler, a former professor of Anthropology at Cabrillo College in Aptos, California, made the remarks in an interview with Press TV on Thursday after US senior law enforcement officials identified Beijing as the most serious threat to US national security on Wednesday.

The officials from the FBI and departments of Justice and Homeland Security accused China of using non-traditional espionage methods. They said the Chinese are using ordinary Chinese expatriates instead of spies at universities and businesses, and also involved in intellectual property theft.

Professor Etler said, “The US is setting into motion a new era of McCarthyism directed against people of Chinese heritage. What the US intelligence apparatus proposes is ‘a whole of society response’ to the alleged ‘threat’ of Chinese espionage, cyberattacks and intellectual property theft which is cast in apocalyptic terms as, ‘What hangs in the balance is not just the future of the United States, but the future of the world.’”

‘US setting the stage for a new Red Scare’

“The FBI, and the Departments of Justice and Homeland Security, which have been previously excoriated as sources of disinformation and covert operations by US progressives, are now embraced by all members of the US political establishment, left, right and center, setting the stage for a new ‘Red Scare’ not seen in the US since the height of the anti-Soviet Cold War of the 1950s,” he stated.

“At that time the US was inundated with ominous warnings of Soviet agents infiltrating all aspects of US life, from trade unions, to school rooms and business offices. According to the FBI there was a ‘commie’ under every bed. The hysteria reached epic proportions with movies and TV shows spreading scare-mongering propaganda that led to the stifling of any opposition to the ‘bipartisan’ foreign policy of US imperialism abroad and reactionary social policies at home,” he said.

“At that time however the US and the USSR were isolated from each other with little in the way of commercial or cultural exchange. The two societies were not enmeshed in a network of mutually dependent relations. Such is not the case with the US and the People’s Republic of China. The US and Chinese economies are now intertwined and Chinese students and tourists have flooded the US, contributing valuable talent and resources to the country,” he stated.

“Chinese students’ tuition payments help fund cash strapped US colleges and universities, while Chinese graduate students, well trained by China’s secondary education system, supply the brains and talent that are the mainstay of many university science, technology, engineering and math departments and laboratories. Chinese tourists spend billions of dollars in the US and return to China impressed by the beauty of the country and the hospitality of its people. Many Chinese nationals have settled in the US yet maintain close ties to their homeland with homes in both countries, traveling back and forth on an ongoing basis,” he explained.

‘Yellow peril’

“All of the above should be seen in a positive light. The US and China should be enhancing their co-operation and collaborative efforts economically, scientifically, and culturally. Exchanges between the two nations should be seen as mutually beneficial, not a zero-sum game. But the US has opted to misconstrue Sino-American relations as a one-way street that only benefits China to the detriment of the US. Every person of Chinese heritage is now being targeted as a potential enemy, enlisted by the nefarious Chinese communists to do their bidding. This pernicious anti-China trope relies on century old stereotypes that depict Chinese people as a ‘yellow peril’ that must be rooted out and destroyed to maintain US dominance and superiority,” the commentator said.

“The premise is as ludicrous as it sounds. According to the FBI espionage is a trade that every Chinese person engages in whether wittingly or not. The absurdity of the charge should be self apparent. What sort of information can non-professional ‘spies’ gather that is of any value. To suggest that Chinese students and tourists are acting as a coterie of spies is to disparage and stigmatize a whole people and society with absolutely no evidence to substantiate the charge,” he said.

“But the new McCarthyism, like the old, is not based on fact or logic, but on fear and loathing and is meant to create a climate that will allow the US to wage economic, diplomatic and potentially physical war with China, which will spell disaster for not only the US and China. In fact, what hangs in the balance of US attempts to sabotage and poison relations with China is not just both their futures but the future of the whole world,” the scholar concluded.