McCarthy was fiercely anti-communist, but so were most other people at that time. He became famous for alleging large scale infiltration of the US government by communist agents. He couldn't prove it, there are some historians who believe McCarthy was largely correct about the scale of the Soviet activity in the US government. They argue he was effectively 'cancelled' as a consequence of being dangerously correct, and that declassified decrypts released by the NSA decades later prove it. An example of this argument is:
"Cancel culture" is what right-wingers complain about when they've realized left-wingers have rifled through their rhetorical toolbox
Can you give some examples. At least from the perspective of a British person, I cannot recall right wing people ever engaging in "cancel culture" during my life time. Are you thinking of religious people in the USA?
https://www.amazon.com/Blacklisted-History-Senator-McCarthy-...
Another is:
https://archive.org/details/josephmccarthyre00herm/page/5/mo...
A perhaps more accessible writeup in the Washington Post from 1996:
https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/opinions/1996/04/14/w...
"Cancel culture" is what right-wingers complain about when they've realized left-wingers have rifled through their rhetorical toolbox
Can you give some examples. At least from the perspective of a British person, I cannot recall right wing people ever engaging in "cancel culture" during my life time. Are you thinking of religious people in the USA?