When watching the movie, Trumbo, I was amazed how the antics of the rabid anti communists matched the antics of the left today.
“That’s a nice business/career you have there. It would be a shame if something were to happen to it.”
Except for the fact that there WAS indeed a communist infiltration into our government from the Thirties into the early Fifties, and there is little to no institutionalized racism in our systems today.
Truth is an absolute defense, IMO.
I get the feeling you view Communists in less of a Manichean fashion than I do. I don’t condemn you for that, by the way. I wish I could swing that, but...I have never been able to do so. I just feel much more polarized on the issue of communism.
I do think a lot of the people who were communists back in the Thirties and Forties weren’t “bad people with bad ideas” as described below, I think many of them were simply people with bad ideas. I felt there were a huge number of them who didn’t have an anti-American animus towards our Republic, many were just ignorant useful idiots who didn’t understand communism.
I felt some sympathy with the likes of Humphrey Bogart and Lauren Bacall who appeared at a HUAC hearing to protest, and were openly being used as Useful Idiots and didn’t realize it. From all accounts, it was something they regretted and wished they had never done.
Even today, you still see people talking on this subject who equate HUAC and Joseph McCarthy as one and the same.
I readily admit I have never been much to stick up for communists, because personally, I view them as a threat and always have...Dan Bongino often says that we look at Leftists as people with bad ideas, and Leftists view conservatives as bad people with ideas. I have always viewed Communists and Marxists as bad people with bad ideas. I have always felt at the core, being American was completely incompatible with being a Communist and should be treated as much.
Pretty much the same way I view Marxists and now Leftists of all stripes today. Their goal is the overthrow of our government and our country
The other thing that is 100% true is when you read “Witness” by Whittaker Chambers, the politics of personal destruction practiced on him by the Left are EXACTLY the same thing they do on the Left today.
Exactly the same.
They hypothesized publicly that he had homosexual attractions to his brother who had died by a self inflicted gunshot wound, that he (Whittaker Chambers) had spent time in a mental institution...all Soviet style tactics.