You don't appear to know the history as well as you think you do. The comparison is fair.
Communist witch-hunts were conducted by secret, back-channel, anonymous snitches, and were all about guilt by association. Accusations of sexual harassment put the accuser incredibly out in the open.
It was both. A lot of accusations were made in front of the House Un-American Activities Committee, on public record, and those accusers were very visible. For example you can read through http://historymatters.gmu.edu/d/6458/ and see that Emil Lustig, Robert Burman, Herbert K. Sorrell and a number of others had no doubt about who they were accused by - they were accused by Ronald Reagan and Walt Disney.
There was also accusation by rumor mill, which might or might not ever lead to a public accusation.
I've seen both modes with sexual harassment claims. Indeed it is not infrequent that, as with this case, the public claims only emerge after someone has been tarred and feathered by anonymous accusations in the rumor mill.
They were also largely used as a weapon against the weak and unconnected - people without the resources, or even awareness necessary to fight back against secret blacklists.
Most of the people caught up had little actual power. The same is true today by virtue of the simple fact that most of us have very little actual power. But there were very prominent people affected of accusations of being communists, such as Charlie Chaplin and Aaron Copeland. Which is again no different than today.
Furthermore the THREAT of being called a communist was used against very prominent people. That was the heart of Joseph McCarthy's power - powerful people were sincerely afraid of him.
Not to mention that there is a colossal distinction between blackballing people for being communists, and blackballing them for being sexual harassers.
There is a distinction, but I suspect that it goes the other way from what you think.
Communists stood accused of being covert agents of a hostile foreign power that we were at undeclared war with. Their purported aim was to undermine and destroy our country to ensure the victory of said foreign power. And there really were such covert agents. For example Harold Ware, Julius Rosenberg, and Aldrich Ames - all real people and all actually agents of the USSR who worked to undermine the security of the USA.
Sexual harassers stand accused of a personal crime whose legal status is not dissimilar to burglary or arson. They are clearly bad people but not an existential threat to our country.
Which accusation sounds worse?
And besides, if history's any indication, the latter don't have problem making a living. There's always someone willing to take a chance.
Can you provide stories of accused communists starving to death due to the blacklist?
Communist witch-hunts were conducted by secret, back-channel, anonymous snitches, and were all about guilt by association. Accusations of sexual harassment put the accuser incredibly out in the open.
It was both. A lot of accusations were made in front of the House Un-American Activities Committee, on public record, and those accusers were very visible. For example you can read through http://historymatters.gmu.edu/d/6458/ and see that Emil Lustig, Robert Burman, Herbert K. Sorrell and a number of others had no doubt about who they were accused by - they were accused by Ronald Reagan and Walt Disney.
There was also accusation by rumor mill, which might or might not ever lead to a public accusation.
I've seen both modes with sexual harassment claims. Indeed it is not infrequent that, as with this case, the public claims only emerge after someone has been tarred and feathered by anonymous accusations in the rumor mill.
They were also largely used as a weapon against the weak and unconnected - people without the resources, or even awareness necessary to fight back against secret blacklists.
Most of the people caught up had little actual power. The same is true today by virtue of the simple fact that most of us have very little actual power. But there were very prominent people affected of accusations of being communists, such as Charlie Chaplin and Aaron Copeland. Which is again no different than today.
Furthermore the THREAT of being called a communist was used against very prominent people. That was the heart of Joseph McCarthy's power - powerful people were sincerely afraid of him.
Not to mention that there is a colossal distinction between blackballing people for being communists, and blackballing them for being sexual harassers.
There is a distinction, but I suspect that it goes the other way from what you think.
Communists stood accused of being covert agents of a hostile foreign power that we were at undeclared war with. Their purported aim was to undermine and destroy our country to ensure the victory of said foreign power. And there really were such covert agents. For example Harold Ware, Julius Rosenberg, and Aldrich Ames - all real people and all actually agents of the USSR who worked to undermine the security of the USA.
Sexual harassers stand accused of a personal crime whose legal status is not dissimilar to burglary or arson. They are clearly bad people but not an existential threat to our country.
Which accusation sounds worse?
And besides, if history's any indication, the latter don't have problem making a living. There's always someone willing to take a chance.
Can you provide stories of accused communists starving to death due to the blacklist?