This isn't absolutely literal. Witch-hunt was a word used to describe McCarthyism, for example. And Communists certainly existed and some of them were working for Stalin. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soviet_espionage_in_the_United...).

McCarthyism has a section on its wiki page called "Victims of McCartheyism" and mentions hundreds imprisoned and thousands of people losing jobs. It was hunting a soviet threat to America which didn't actually exist, and doing tremendous damage while doing so. The article you link on the actual spies is listing maybe tens of names.

And under that section are listed names like Dalton Trumbo, who was literally a member of the Communist Party USA, which was effectively a Soviet puppet organization. The Soviet threat absolutely existed, and has been validated by both US counterintelligence records that have been declassified since the Cold War and Soviet records that came to light as well.

None of this is meant to excuse or justify the excesses of McCarthyism, but rather to explain exactly what McCarthyism was. The Hollywood blacklist were, by and large, a group of people who were “deplatformed” for being enthusiastic supporters of Joseph Stalin. That’s not inherently far off from what a lot of people would favor today.

> The Hollywood blacklist were, by and large, a group of people who were “deplatformed” for being enthusiastic supporters of Joseph Stalin.

I think it’s more accurate to say that there were people enthusiastic about communism, rather than Stalin. Your statement is akin to stating that all republicans are enthusiastic about Trump. The Lincoln Project would suggest otherwise.

By that time, the international communist movement had been splintered between Stalinist and Trostskyite factions for a couple of decades. The CPUSA was not only Stalinist but actually funded and directed from Moscow.

... which begs the question: was Stalinism ever really a serious threat global capitalism? For me, part of the answer comes from looking into the reasons for the split between the Stalinists and Trotskyites, and how successful the US was in economically isolating the USSR and its allies.

As I stated, I'm not in favor of political repression, but Stalinism was an ideology that led directly to tens of millions of murders, so I'm inclined to take it seriously as a threat to basic human rights.

Accusing members of a Communist party of being Communists isn't fairly described as a witch hunt. That is just run of the mill political repression.

I would agree. That’s actually part of the point I’m making—unlike witches, communists actually exist.

I would further state that I’m, in general, opposed to political repression, even if the intent is to repress totalitarian ideologies that entail violence and mass murder such as communism.

> There is something wrong with that quote - the point of calling things a witch hunt is that witches don't exist and that the people finding 'witches' are harming a community who haven't done anything.

10 years ago I would've agreed with you. The problem is Trump called investigations "witch hunts" despite them proving the existence of dozens of witches.

The term in OP is used in this recent context, where witches do exist, despite the witches' protests.