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 theyd become victims of McCarthyism, and driven into unemployment and poverty.
There are just a few things wrong with this to begin with its 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 Partys organ in the U.S., the Daily Worker, which got it directly from the bowels of the NKVDs 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 Devils 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 Lefts 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 Waynes anti-communist Motion Picture Alliances were blacklisted and found work only in Waynes 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:
Whoa, a little slanted, aren't we? You'd think an encyclopedia would be written a bit more objectively.
Guess not.
Why in the hell would it matter what every member of the communist party thinks? Do you give a damn what every member of the nazi party thinks? What if the nazi's had won the war in Europe and instead of the soviets, America faced nazi Germany in a cold war with nuclear weapons pointed at us.
Now if we had nazi's in the govt and nazi party members producing propaganda in hollywood would this problem be easier for you to understand?
The Chairman. Mr. Kohler, we are checking on the shipment of material from ECA into Austria, into the America Occupied Zones, and the shipment from Austria into Russia. I understand that you were controller at the time of much of the activity that concerns us now, and I think counsel have questions to ask you along that line. I may say, incidentally, that we are interested in the shipment of a sizable amount of material into Austria, and at that time Russia's taking out from Austria a like amount of material. Mr. Kohler, while I understand the staff has material reflecting on your morals, I am not interested in your morals at all, except in so far as it might result in a security risk. I want you to know that regardless of whether you cooperate or fail to cooperate, as far as I am concerned, there is to be no publicity here in anything having to do with your morals or anybody else's.Mr. Kohler. Thank you.
The Chairman. We are, of course, interested in that phase of morals that enters into the question of security, the question of being able to blackmail a man because of something he has done in the past. We know that is a definite threat. With that, we will proceed . . .
The Chairman. You will be excused subject to call. If you care to, you may see your testimony and go over it and we cannot send it to you because it is an executive session, and you would not want it kicking around anyway. If you do want to see the testimony, you can contact Mr. Flanagan, Mr. Surine, or Mr. Cohn and you can come into the office downstairs and read it over. Otherwise, it will be put under lock and key. We have no intention of informing the press that you testified about anything at all today, and so unless you tell the newspapers you are here they will not know it.
Mr. Kohler. I certainly won't tell them.
Mr. Cohn. Have you ever been a Communist?
Mr. Levinson. Yes, I was a Communist.
Mr. Cohn. When did you join the Communist party?
Mr. Levinson. I joined the Communist party in the fall of 1931.
Mr. Cohn. Where did you join?
Mr. Levinson. Boston, Massachusetts.
Mr. Cohn. What were you doing at the time you joined? Mr. Levinson. I was an instructor in mathematics at MIT.
Mr. Cohn. For how long a period of time did you remain in the party?
Mr. Levinson. About eight years, a little less. 1937 to 1945. I think I was all out by the spring of 1945.
The Chairman. Who recruited you into the Communist party?
Mr. Levinson. Well, I sort of went over this a little bit with the FBI. It is pretty complicated and it will sound a little weird. Nobody recruited me. I actually walked into the headquarters of the Communist party of Boston and met Mr. Phil Frankfeld and signed up.
The Chairman. Was there anybody you knew while in the Communist party who is today working for the United States government?
Mr. Levinson. No.
The Chairman. Is there anybody whom you knew in the Communist party who has worked for the Army Signal Corps or any related organization?
Mr. Levinson. No.
The Chairman. Or any laboratory where they might have been doing work on radar or for the Signal Corps?
Mr. Levinson. Let's see. This goes back to the war period. Let's see. Wendell Furry.
The Chairman. Did he have anything to do with radar?
Mr. Levinson. He was in the radiation lab. He was a theoretical physicist.
The Chairman. What is Mr. Furry doing now?
Mr. Levinson. He is a professor of physics at Harvard. He was also before the Velde committee.
The Chairman. Did he testify?
Mr. Levinson. He gave fairly long testimony except on certain questions he invoked the Fifth Amendment.
The Chairman. He is teaching at Harvard now?
Mr. Levinson. That is right.
The Chairman. What did he do in connection with radar?
Mr. Levinson. Well, all the work of the radiation laboratory has been published. He wrote part of the volume of theories of antennas. . . .
The Chairman. Thank you very much. Your name will not be given to the press or anyone else unless you give it to them.
Mr. Levinson. I think that will not only help me but MIT.
Tailgunner Joe--Where Have You Gone, Joe McCarthy? ^ |
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Posted by backhoe On 06/26/2003 4:47 AM CDT with 24 comments various FR links | 06-26--03 | The Heavy Equipment Guy Senator Joseph McCarthy rose from obsurity, flared briefly as a crusader against Communist infiltrators, and died young, villified and rebuked. For years his name has been the ultimate "nuke" from the Left: "MaCarthyism..." And yet... recent revelations seem to show that if anything old "tailgunner Joe" underestimated the numbers infiltrators in the government... what's the truth? http://www.freerepublic.com Joe McCarthy Was RightNewsMax (via email) | June 23, 2003 | NewsMax http://www.freerepublic.com Joe McCarthy Vindicated, Againwww.chuckmorse.com ^ | June 20, 2003, | Chuck Morse http://www.freerepublic.com The Origins of McCarthyismThe Weekly Standard ^ | 06/30/03 | Robert... |
"Huh? Was the Republican Senate that censured McCarthy "crippled" in the manner you describe?"
We all saw this happen with Newt. By the time the liberals were through carving him up in the press, nearly no one could support him.
For an excellent article on this, by M. Stanton Evans, see message number 11 in the McCarthy thread I linked above.
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.
I'd like to second DPB101's request, YN.
Information derived from the VENONA translations shows the KGB's extensive contacts with the American Communist Party. Many of the espionage activities by members of the American Communist Party are reflected in the VENONA translations.
Feel free to go spelunking for specific names; they're in there.
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