0 relating to a practice in the US in the 1950s of accusing someone of being a Communist, which often led to that person losing their job or sometimes being put in prison; involving a practice similar to this in which someone is accused of being a particular thing and is avoided or not trusted because of this : --
He led a McCarthyite witch hunt against homosexuals.
1 someone who takes part in McCarthyite activities or similar activities against a group of people who are not trusted because of their views: --
McCarthyites decried the work as "foreign, communistic and alien to American values."
In the 1940s and '50s, for example, McCarthyites purged virtually all the China experts from the State Department because they were insufficiently anti-communist.
He was a stalwart McCarthyite but she was blacklisted for her left-wing views.
There is something McCarthyite in hauling journalists before a panel asking them, in effect, "Are you now or have you ever been a racist?"
He was a champion of McCarthyist Communist-hunting.
The film caused waves at a time when the US was recovering from its McCarthyite anti-communist witch-hunts.