Posted on 06/30/2003 1:43:31 PM PDT by kattracks
It is one of the most enduring lies created by leftists: that all Hollywood trembled in fear over the persecution allegedly launched against Tinseltown by Sen. Joe McCarthy.
Along with the infamous Hollywood 10, actors, actresses, directors, producers and even the guys who swept the studio floors were allegedly writhing in agony, fearing they’d become victims of McCarthyism, and driven into unemployment and poverty.
There are just a few things wrong with this – to begin with it’s not true, Ann Coulter writes in her best-selling new book, "Treason: Liberal Treachery From the Cold War to the War on Terrorism."
Nowadays, nobody bothers to point out that the phrase "McCarthyism" first appeared in the pages of the Communist Party’s organ in the U.S., the Daily Worker, which got it directly from the bowels of the NKVD’s Moscow headquarters at 3 Dzerzinski Square, where it was coined by the Stalinist disinformation experts in the belief that leftist useful idiots in the U.S. would adopt it as their own. Which of course they did, eagerly, and continue to do so even today.
The hysterical cry of the terrible consequences of blacklisting – of McCarthy depriving honest hardworking Hollywood celebrities of an opportunity to ply their trade, was based on a lie. But as Coulter observes, everything we know about Joe McCarthy is a lie.
The fact is that the so-called blacklisting began when the House Committee on Un-American Activities held hearings to determine the extent of communist penetration of the film industry, which was extensive.
Witnesses known as the Hollywood 10, acting under orders from their communist bosses, refused to admit under oath that they were members of the Communist Party. For this contempt of Congress they went to jail for a brief of time.
The Supreme Court refused to hear their appeals. And these so-called victims of the McCarthyite reign of terror, instead of being deprived of their civil liberties, "had the benefit of legal counsel, trial by jury, and proof beyond a reasonable-doubt standard," Coulter writes. "Still the cosseted, overpampered Hollywood elites were shocked to discover they could be held responsible for anything they did, and vowed that the rest of the country would never hear the end of it.
"At about the same time – under the legal system Communists revered, Stalin executed, starved, exiled or imprisoned more than ten million people."
Coulter writes: "Ten Hollywood scribblers who subscribed to an ideology responsible for the murder by the million refused to admit their membership in the Communist party to a House Committee," which McCarthy had absolutely nothing to do with.
As Coulter repeatedly points out, McCarthy was a senator, not a member of the House of Representatives, where the committee did its work. He concentrated on communist infiltration into the U.S. government, which the evidence from the Venona intercepts now clearly shows to have been massive.
Recoiling in fear of being labeled employers of traitors, courageous Hollywood film moguls canned all 10 and refused to use them, at least not under their real names. As a result some of them were simply allowed to work under false names and kept on writing films and getting well paid.
Over and over we are told that the so-called blacklist created a reign of terror in Tinseltown, with everybody in filmdom cringing in fear.
Couler reveals the terrible exile endured by one of the blacklistees: Norma Barzman, who was forced to flee not to Devil’s Island, but instead to gay Paree, where, in her own words, she suffered such grievous punishment as having "dinner with Picasso every Tuesday night when we were at our country house in Provence. Yves Montand and Simone Signoret, Jacques Prevert were our friends. Plus we got to work with all the amazing European directors including Vittorio De Sica and Constantin Costa-Gavras. It was hard, but was also the time of my life."
Oh, the horrors of it all!
"Meanwhile," Coulter notes, "back in the country they preferred [the U.S.S.R.], people were being whisked off to Soviet gulags in the dead of night. They were being sentenced to work in forced labor camps. They were sent to Siberia for five years. They were being shot execution-style after being forced to confess to absurd diabolical conspiracies."
But there was a real Hollywood blacklist you never hear leftists talking about. As NewsMax.com reported in The Left’s Lies That Never Die, conservative anti-communists in Hollywood were denied work because of their beliefs. Men such as Bruce Cabot, Ward Bond, Adolph Menjou and many other members of John Wayne’s anti-communist Motion Picture Alliances were blacklisted and found work only in Wayne’s movies.
In "Treason" Ann Coulter proves her point again and again: Everything you think you know about Joe McCarthy is a lie.
Read more on this subject in related Hot Topics:
Certainly not by a direct and violent revolution. Think back to 1949 and what would the communist goals have been for the next 50 years? Perhaps: They would slowly start to infiltrate into all levels of government. School districts. Unions. bureaucrats at all levels. Their progress would be slow and deliberate. Pretty soon they would have us accepting as standard things like income redistribution, soaking the rich for 85% of our taxes, our children would be indoctrinated in government controlled "free" public schools, prescription drug programs for the elderly, a guaranteed 'living wage' for all, Free medical treatment for everyone. Big business would be the new enemy of the people. The power of the 'few' would hold power over the many. Special rights would be given to certain favored citizens, but denied to the affluent.
Not too far off are they?
"Do you really believe that these movie people posed a serious threat to the United States?" --- How would one know the extent of the threat w/o investigating it?
"While I would certainly support investigating someone who was actively seeking to overthrow the government, I do not support interrogating those who simply considered themselves communists."--- By what method is that determination to be made? Certainly there were those who were simply "communists". They were also known as "useful" idiots. They were the pawns, and we were looking for the hierarchy.
In a 1950 speech, McCarthy entered the public spotlight by claiming that communists had "infested" the State Department, dramatically waving a sheet of paper which purportedly contained the traitors' names. A special Senate committee investigated the charges and found them groundless. Unfazed, McCarthy used his position to wage a relentless anti-communist crusade, denouncing numerous public figures and holding a series of highly confrontational hearings. With little if any proof of his charges, McCarthy relied on accusation, slander and innuendo to tarnish his opponents' reputations (a practice now known as "McCarthyism"). In 1954, televised hearings allowed millions to view McCarthy's methods for the first time, sparking a public backlash and official censure. He died at the age of 49 of complications related to alcoholism.
SOURCES: Cambridge Dictionary of American Biography; Encyclopedia of American Biography.
Yes. Boris Morros worked for the Soviets from 1934 until 1947. His production company was used extensively by the Soviets as a cover for their agents overseas. The Communist Party USA was not just another political organization. In 1920, John Reed was given over $1 million by Lenin to fund the party. From that year until the end of the Cold War, the CPUSA was funded and directed by the Soviet Union. Those who were members knew that. They believed in and worked for a regime far worse, in the number of people it murdered, than Nazi Germany.
It's interesting that they were ashamed to do so. If I were a member of a political movement that killed tens of millions of people, I would be ashamed, too.
The thread being about TREASON (the book) obviously you did'nt read it.. The book OR the thread...and judging from you post your nightmare is Ann Coulter....
McCarthy was very kind to those who testified. He bent over backwards to warn them not to lie, to tell the truth or to take the Fifth. He told one man, who knew the committee had information about his homosexuality, not to worry, that if he cooperated or not, no one would ever make his private life public. In another case, an MIT professor who had been a member of the CPUSA, was told no one would ever know. And they weren't. Until last May when the transcripts were made public.
Btw...anyone wants excerpts from the just released testimony, send me a private reply.
What did he do? Be specific. Name names. Tell us what was "unacceptable." We've heard this vague statements for decades from the left. Explain exactly what the McCarthy Committee did which was wrong. Tell us how it was any different from what the McCormack/Dickstein Committee did.
Btw...anyone wants excerpts from the just released testimony, send me a private reply.
Yes, I would like to see the excerpts that backup your statements. And proof that the person McCarthy was telling he wouldn't release info on his homosexuality was actually a homosexual. Also proof that the MIT professor was a member of the CPUSA.
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