https://www.bing.com/images/search?q=iran+1970s&qs=MM&form=Q...
That changed literally overnight in 1979.
In the US, we had McCarthyism.
Estimating the number of victims of McCarthy is difficult. The number imprisoned is in the hundreds, and some ten or twelve thousand lost their jobs.[81] In many cases, simply being subpoenaed by HUAC or one of the other committees was sufficient cause to be fired.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/McCarthyism#Victims_of_McCarth...
Some weeks back, I started to watch a movie about McCarthyism and didn't make it very far in. It's not really a history we talk that much about, perhaps because it's too disturbing.
Americans like to think that sort of thing happens elsewhere, in "bad" places like Russia, not here. But it did happen here and not that long ago and it could happen again -- here or anywhere.
Milgram's famous experiments were intended to show that what happened in Nazi Germany was due to some weird character quirk or defect of Germans and couldn't happen elsewhere. His experiment proved the opposite. It proved that a high percentage of people will just do as they are told, up to and including potentially killing someone for no real reason.
Milgram suspected before the experiment that the obedience exhibited by Nazis reflected a distinct German character, and planned to use the American participants as a control group before using German participants, expected to behave closer to the Nazis. However, the unexpected results stopped him from conducting the same experiment on German participants.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Milgram_experiment
In order to take an ethical stand at some risk to themselves, people generally need to both feel very clear what is right and wrong in a particular situation and have compelling reason to stick their neck out.
People who foment evil generally do all they can to instill doubt of various sorts and deny people full disclosure, which tends to be shockingly easy. Even if the information is available, it can take a great deal of time and effort for a person to adequately educate themselves about a particular thing and this can take too long to act in a decisive and timely fashion to avert an ugly slippery slope.
McCarthy might have been a pivotal figure in McCarthyism (obviously ;-) but he had nothing directly to do with the HUAC because he was a senator.
He sat on what is now the Senate committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs. It was the Senate Committee on Government Operations then, which had an enormously broad remit and gave him his ability to harass and persecute anyone who worked for the US federal government. He was also more able to resist pressure because of it.