Posted on 09/22/2001 7:41:30 AM PDT by Stallone
His enemies nearly have ceased to argue against the validity of his message in the face of evidence that has emerged during the last decade confirming his message of communist influence and infiltration in the government and culture during the early days of the Cold War.
Why bring this up now? In conjunction with an event the world little noted McCarthy's speech to a Republican women's fund-raiser in Wheeling, W. Va., half a century ago. It was there that the senator from Wisconsin waved a document and proclaimed, "I have here in my hand a list of 205 [State Department employees] that were known to the secretary of state as being members of the Communist Party and who nevertheless are still working and shaping the policy of the State Department."
The Associated Press surveyed some of Wheeling's influential citizens to see if they would be celebrating the anniversary of McCarthy's first mention of what was to become the "Red Scare." Most of those contacted were only too happy to let the event slide by with a minimum of fanfare.
But AP did locate Douglas McKay, who was in the audience when McCarthy spoke. McKay thought the resultant crusade was a good thing because it forced its targets "to defend themselves rather than advance their socialist ideas."
If that is so, and the society and government we have today reflect only the aborted version of those ideas, then conservatives might want to doff their bonnets in a salute to ol' Tailgunner Joe. Things could be worse.
"It was the later HUAC hearings of March 1951 lead by John S. Wood (D- Georgia), and the 1952 Internal Security subcommittee headed my Senator Pat McCarran that the “naming-of-names” became the watch words. By 1951, Joseph R. McCarthy was in full blossom. The entire country, Congress, and the Truman administration share equally in what was to come. It was from these latter hearings in Washington and in Hollywood, that the infamous BLACKLIST evolved. By that time, and as a direct result of these more recent hearings, more than 324 people had been fired by the studios and were no longer permitted to work in the Motion Picture Industry, none more pathetic than actor Larry Parks. Parks literally begged the committee not to force him to his knees."(Source)
Miller and Guthrie aren't mentioned by name, but they are among the 300+ who had their work banned from the entertainment industry as a result of McCarthy's hearings. McCarthy didn't personally fire these people, but then he didn't have to. Osama bin Laden didn't have to hijack the planes himself to kill innocent Americans either. The fear of being label a communist was so strong that it made executives overreactionary. To say that McCarthy had no idea that blacklisting was going on as a result of his actions is naive at best.
If the police in your area were McCarthy fans and you were caught with a copy of The Communist Manifesto, for example, you could get thrown in jail for "subversive activities" or other nonsensical charges. Give me one example of this happening and if it did, what did McCarthy have to do with it?
My source isn't in electronic format, so I'll have to cite the books and page numbers for you later. "What McCarthy had to do with it" was obvious: because of his anti-Communist agenda, some people were not allow to even own books that might be considered "subversive". As it was stated earlier, just because you own a book that might be considered "subversive" doesn't mean you agree with the book's philosophy; in fact, arresting someone for the books they carry is a direct violation of the First Amendment.
Here's my documentation. http://www.nsa.gov/docs/venona/ -- The Venona Documents
The Venona Documents had nothing to do with the people McCarthy was attacking. However, he was an icon of the anti-dissent movement mentioned above, and the media attention he garnered in his witch-hunts gave the movement a lot of its steam. In fact, the movement started with the Republicans winning Congress in 1946 and accusing Truman of being "soft" on communism. Then came the HUAC, Alger Hiss, and then McCarthy a few years later. You can tell me with a straight face that every single one of the 81 people McCarthy listed as communists were Stalin's little secret agents? On the Senate floor during the witch-hunts, here's what he said himself: "I do not have much information on this [Case #40 of 81] except the general statement of the agency [unidentified] that there is nothing in the files to disprove his Communist connections." (Source)
In his own words, this senator was guilty until proven innocent. You don't think that's unconstitutional? To support the things that McCarthy did and caused during this time borders on conservative fanaticism IMO.
First of all, the cross-dressing bit was Soviet disinformation. If anything, Hoover was asexual.
Second of all, I suspect that the FBI made a deal with the Mafia during World War II for services rendered in Sicily and in surrounding areas- I know for sure the Allies made deals with the underworld in Marseilles.
How so? I said it was about the balance of power in the mideast. Oil is simply a means of exchange.
he House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC) became a permanent (or "standing") committee of the House in 1945, having already existed on a temporary basis since 1938. Although it was charged with monitoring possible foreign influences in the United States, including pro-fascist or pro-Nazi activity, HUAC is most widely known for its investigations of suspected Communist influence in the late 1940s and early 1950s. Along with the investigation of Alger Hiss, the investigation of Communist influence in the motion picture industry is one of the defining episodes in the committee's history. Although HUAC would continue to exist into the 1960s, these memorable hearings are its best-known legacy. The committee's name was changed in 1969, and it was abolished in 1975, when jurisdiction over investigation of foreign influence was transferred to the House Judiciary Committee.
In September 1947, HUAC subpoenaed 41 witnesses for its hearings on Communist influence in Hollywood. Of these, 19 were considered "unfriendly" witnesses. The eleven unfriendly witnesses who eventually came to the hearings in October 1947 became the most famous participants in the HUAC hearings. Ten of them -- writers Alvah Bessie, Herbert Biberman, Lester Cole, Ring Lardner Jr., John Howard Lawson, Albert Maltz, Samuel Ornitz, Adrian Scott, and Dalton Trumbo, along with director Edward Dmytryk -- refused to answer questions, denounced the committee, and were held in contempt of Congress. The contempt citations led to brief prison terms for all ten when the Supreme Court refused to reverse their convictions. (The eleventh unfriendly witness, German-born writer Bertolt Brecht, testified he wasn't a Communist and then promptly went back to Europe -- ultimately settling in Communist-controlled East Berlin.)
The witnesses who denounced the committee became known as the "Hollywood Ten," and would be blacklisted from the industry for many years afterward. The blacklist itself was not developed by HUAC, but by a group of studio executives who met shortly after the hearings and adopted a resolution against employing Communists, including the Hollywood Ten. With the exception of Dmytryk, who later changed his position and cooperated with the committee, the Hollywood Ten either did not work on American movies or used pseudonyms for most of the 1950s.
Ayn Rand, on the other hand, was among the "friendly" witnesses who cooperated with the committee. Along with various others -- including studio heads Jack Warner and Louis B. Mayer, and actors Gary Cooper, Robert Montgomery, Ronald Reagan, and Robert Taylor -- Rand agreed to testify about Communist influence on Hollywood movies. Rand's testimony, like that of the other friendly witnesses, was given just prior to the debacle of the "Hollywood Ten."
HUAC's initial investigations of Communists in Hollywood ended after the testimony of the Hollywood Ten. The committee resumed investigations of Communist influence on movies in the early 1950s and continued them for several years. Hearings held in 1952 received some historical attention when director Elia Kazan, who testified before the committee on two different occasions that year, was given an honorary award by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences in 1999. Nonetheless, the 1947 hearings and their immediate aftermath dominate most discussions of the HUAC investigations -- including, ironically, many of the discussions prompted by Kazan's award.
HUAC is sometimes confused with the Senate Committee on Government Operations, which included Senator Joseph McCarthy. The Senate committee's Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations was particularly active in investigating suspected Communists in the 1950s, especially after McCarthy became it's chairman. The House and Senate committees were two separate bodies. McCarthy was not involved in HUAC and never served in the House of Representatives. Although he was a freshman senator in 1947, McCarthy had not yet begun his well-known campaign against communism, which he initiated in February 1950. The later investigations of Hollywood that HUAC began in 1951 might be interpreted as a reaction to the anti-Communist furor raised by McCarthy, but he had no influence on the 1947 hearings at which Rand testified.
Both HUAC and McCarthy's Senate committee were also different from the Senate Internal Security Subcomittee, which was the Senate's direct equivalent to HUAC.
At the time she was called to testify, Rand was already well-known in Hollywood for her opposition to Communism. She originally planned to testify about two movies -- Song of Russia and The Best Years of Our Lives. The former was made during World War II, with the fairly obvious purpose of making Americans feel more comfortable about being allies with the Soviets during the war. The latter was a popular post-war film that had won several Academy Awards, including the Oscar for best picture. Rand was later asked to testify only about Song of Russia. Some members of the committee thought it was too risky to criticize a popular film like The Best Years of Our Lives. Upset by that she was only allowed to discuss one older movie that was obvious propoganda, Rand demanded a chance to give additional testimony. After some argument, the committee chairman eventually offered to recall her later in the hearings, but never did. Her testimony as it stands concerns only Song of Russia.
Asked years later by Barbara Branden about her opinion of the hearings, Rand said that the hearings were "a very dubious undertaking" and "futile" because a government inquiry would not legitimately be able to investigate the ideological penetration of communism into the movies. (cf. The Passion of Ayn Rand, pp. 200-203) It could only show that there were members of the Communist Party working in the industry. She did believe, however, that it was acceptable for the committee to ask people whether they had joined the Communist Party, because the Party supported the use of violence and other criminal activities to achieve its political goals, and investigating possible criminal activities was an appropriate role of government. In any case, she was glad to have had the opportunity to gain media exposure on the subject, and supported the efforts of private employers to reduce the influence of Communists on the movies. As she had put it in an earlier essay she had written on the subject, "The principle of free speech requires ... that we do not pass laws forbidding [Communists] to speak. But the principle of free speech ... does not imply that we owe them jobs and support to advocate our own destruction at our own expense."
snip...........
Go to the link and read her actual testimony before the HUAC. It is most interesting.
Still believe that the hunt was just, too.
People who just lived through the Klinton years should remember his focus and reward of 'celebrity', including sports and movie types.
It is standard operating procedure of Commies to infiltrate every aspect of visible society. They need a controlled message to brainwash the sheeple.
These were the same people (Clinton, China, etc.) who were horrified by Internet freedoms - the message was no longer totally in their control.
The Rats were all over this country.
My intuition is that the 'media portrayal' of the hunt was the real lie.
I didn't catch that before.
I'll give you my PG response - this time.
My advice is to go to the bathroom and look in the mirror.
The unattractive troll looking back at you? Spraying noxious venom.
Whenever you point your finger, AJ, three fingers are pointing right back at you.
It was February 9, 1950. I'm saying that the widespread anti-communist movement began in '46, years before McCarthy. Actual anti-communist monitoring and activity in the govt. (a la Verona) began before that, during WWII. But McCarthy made the movement his modus operandi and gave the movement a lot of its early-50's steam.
Do you have this link? I couldn't find it in your post.
Interesting that ABC just last week on "The Century" reminded us all of the evils of McCarthyism in the wake of the terror attacks - Jennings was a willing mouthpiece, and they had many interviews ex-stars who testified of the "horrors" that Hollyweird suffered in those "bad old days".
Just to warn the sheeple, eh?
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