COMMUNISM IN THE UNITED STATES
THROUGH THE YEARS
DISCLAIMER: OPINIONS ON THIS PAGE ARE THE OPINIONS OF THE ORIGINATOR
AND NOT THE EDITOR OF THIS ARTICLE
9-14-15 - I HAD FOUR IDENTICAL DREAMS.
I was editing a document on a computer. I was told to put the cursor in front of every sentence that started with
"For the ...
The sentence was then separated from the rest of the text.
In dream one, I thought the sentence said "For the reason of
In dream two, I thought the sentence said "For the people ....
In dream three, I thought the sentence said. "For the sense of.....
In dream four. I thought the sentence said, "For the ones who .....
After I woke up, I had the sudden idea, this was about communism.
NOTE: We have had communism in the United States for many years, and still have an active Communist Party.
LISTEN: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XUwUp-D_VV0 LITTLE BOXES by PETE SEEGER
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N43Cm6ra0hY WHICH SIDE ARE YOU ON? by PETE SEEGER
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pete_Seeger
In the 1960s, he re-emerged on the public scene as a prominent singer of ..... In 1936, at the age of 17, Pete Seeger joined the Young Communist League (YCL), ...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XaI5IRuS2aE THIS LAND WAS MADE FOR YOU AND ME by WOODY GUTHRIE
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jKVnur5DkdI TEAR THIS FASCIST DOWN by WOODY GUTHRIE
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Woody_Guthrie
Throughout his life Guthrie was associated with United States Communist groups , though he ..... Arlo followed in his father's footsteps as a singer-songwriter.
BLACKLISTING HOLLYWOOD
Members of the Hollywood Ten and their families in 1950, protesting the impending incarceration of the ten
The Hollywood blacklist—as the broader entertainment industry blacklist is generally known—was the mid-20th-century practice of denying employment to screenwriters, actors, directors, musicians, and other U.S. entertainment professionals because of their suspected political beliefs or associations. Artists were barred from work on the basis of their alleged membership in or sympathy with the Communist Party USA and refusal to assist investigations into the party's activities. Even during the period of its strictest enforcement, the late 1940s through the late 1950s, the blacklist was rarely made explicit or verifiable, but it directly damaged the careers of scores of individuals working in the film industry.
The first systematic Hollywood blacklist was instituted on November 25, 1947, the day after ten writers and directors were cited for contempt of Congress for refusing to testify to the House Committee on Un-American Activities. A group of studio executives, acting under the aegis of the Motion Picture Association of America, fired the artists—the so-calledHollywood Ten—and made what has become known as the Waldorf Statement.
On June 22, 1950, a pamphlet entitled Red Channels was published. Focused on the field of broadcasting, it identified 151 entertainment industry professionals in the context of "Red Fascists and their sympathizers." Soon most of those named, along with a host of other artists, were barred from employment in most of the entertainment field.
The blacklist lasted until 1960, when Dalton Trumbo, an unrepentant communist and member of the Hollywood Ten, was credited as the screenwriter of his highly successful film Exodus, and later publicly acknowledged by actor Kirk Douglas for the movie Spartacus. A number of those blacklisted, however, were barred from work in their professions for years afterward.
The Hollywood blacklist was rooted in events of the 1930s and the early 1940s, encompassing the height of the Great Depression and World War II. Two major film industrystrikes during the 1930s increased tensions between the Hollywood producers and the unions, particularly the Screen Writers Guild.
The American Communist Party lost substantial support after the Moscow show trials of 1936–38 and the German-Soviet Nonaggression Pact of 1939. The U.S. government began turning its attention to the possible links between Hollywood and the party during this period. Under then chairman Martin Dies, Jr., the House Committee on Un-American Activities (HUAC) released a report in 1938 claiming that communism was pervasive in Hollywood. Two years later, Dies privately took testimony from a former Communist Party member, John L. Leech, who named forty-two movie industry professionals as Communists. After Leech repeated his charges in supposed confidence to a Los Angeles grand jury, many of the names were reported in the press, including those of stars Humphrey Bogart, James Cagney, Katharine Hepburn, Melvyn Douglas andFredric March, among other well-known Hollywood figures. Dies said he would "clear" all those who cooperated by meeting with him in what he called "executive session". Within two weeks of the grand jury leak, all those on the list except for actress Jean Muir had met with the HUAC chairman. Dies "cleared" everyone except actor Lionel Stander, who was fired by the movie studio, Republic Pictures, where he was contracted.
In 1941, producer Walt Disney took out an ad in Variety, the industry trade magazine, declaring his conviction that "Communist agitation" was behind a cartoonists and animators' strike. According to historians Larry Ceplair and Steven Englund, "In actuality, the strike had resulted from Disney's overbearing paternalism, high-handedness, and insensitivity." Inspired by Disney, California State Senator Jack Tenney, chairman of the state legislature's Joint Fact-Finding Committee on Un-American Activities, launched an investigation of "Reds in movies". The probe fell flat, and was mocked in several Variety headlines.
The subsequent wartime alliance between the United States and the Soviet Union brought the American Communist Party newfound credibility. During the war, membership in the party reached a peak of 50,000. As World War II drew to a close, perceptions changed again, with communism increasingly becoming a focus of American fears and hatred. In 1945, Gerald L. K. Smith, founder of the neofascist America First Party, began giving speeches in Los Angeles assailing the "alien minded Russian Jews in Hollywood". Mississippi congressman John E. Rankin, a member of HUAC, held a press conference to declare that "one of the most dangerous plots ever instigated for the overthrow of this Government has its headquarters in Hollywood ... the greatest hotbed of subversive activities in the United States." Rankin promised, "We're on the trail of the tarantula now". Reports of Soviet repression in Eastern and Central Europe in the war's aftermath added more fuel to what became known as the "Second Red Scare". The growth of conservative political influence and the Republican triumph in the 1946 Congressional elections, which saw the party take control of both the House andSenate, led to a major revival of institutional anticommunist activity, publicly spearheaded by HUAC. The following year, the Motion Picture Alliance for the Preservation of American Ideals (MPA), a political action group cofounded by Walt Disney, issued a pamphlet advising producers on the avoidance of "subtle communistic touches" in their films. Its counsel revolved around a list of ideological prohibitions, such as "Don't smear the free-enterprise system ... Don't smear industrialists ... Don't smear wealth ... Don't smear the profit motive ... Don't deify the 'common man'... Don't glorify the collective".
On July 29, 1946, William R. Wilkerson, publisher and founder of The Hollywood Reporter, published a "TradeView" column entitled "A Vote For Joe Stalin". It named as Communist sympathizers Dalton Trumbo, Maurice Rapf, Lester Cole, Howard Koch, Harold Buchman, John Wexley, Ring Lardner Jr., Harold Salemson, Henry Meyers, Theodore Strauss, and John Howard Lawson. In August and September 1946, Wilkerson published other columns containing names of numerous purported Communists and sympathizers. They became known as "Billy's List" and "Billy's Blacklist." In 2012, in a 65th anniversary article, Wilkerson's son apologized for the newspaper's role in the blacklist. He said that his father was motivated by revenge for his own thwarted ambition to own a studio.
In October 1947, drawing upon the list named in the Hollywood Reporter, the House Committee on Un-American Activities subpoenaed a number of persons working in the Hollywood film industry to testify at hearings. It had declared its intention to investigate whether Communist agents and sympathizers had been planting propaganda in U.S. films.
The hearings opened with appearances by Walt Disney and Ronald Reagan, then president of the Screen Actors Guild. Disney testified that the threat of Communists in the film industry was a serious one, and named specific people who had worked for him as probable Communists. Reagan testified that a small clique within his union was using "communist-like tactics" in attempting to steer union policy, but that he didn't know if those (unnamed) members were communists or not, and that in any case he thought the union had them under control. (Later his first wife, actress Jane Wyman stated in her biography with Joe Morella (1985) that Reagan's allegations against friends and colleagues led to tension in their marriage eventually resulting in their divorce). Actor Adolphe Menjou declared, "I am a witch hunter if the witches are Communists. I am a Red-baiter. I would like to see them all back in Russia."
In contrast, several leading Hollywood figures, including director John Huston and actors Humphrey Bogart, Lauren Bacall, and Danny Kaye, organized the Committee for the First Amendment to protest the government's targeting of the film industry. The group came under attack as being naive or foolish. Under pressure from his studio,Warner Brothers, to distance himself from the Hollywood Ten, Bogart negotiated a statement that did not denounce the committee, but said that his trip was “ill-advised, even foolish.” At a Committee for the First Amendment meeting, Bogart shouted at Danny Kaye, “You fuckers sold me out.” Billy Wilder told the group that “we oughta fold.”
Many of the film industry professionals in whom HUAC had expressed interest—primarily screenwriters, but also actors, directors, producers, and others—were either known or alleged to have been members of the American Communist Party. Of the 43 people put on the witness list, 19 declared that they would not give evidence. Eleven of these nineteen were called before the committee. Members of the Committee for the First Amendment flew to Washington ahead of this climactic phase of the hearing, which commenced on Monday, October 27. Of the eleven "unfriendly witnesses", one, émigré playwright Bertolt Brecht, ultimately chose to answer the committee's questions.
The other ten refused, citing their First Amendment rights to freedom of speech and assembly. The crucial question they refused to answer is now generally rendered as "Are you now or have you ever been a member of the Communist Party?" Each had at one time or another been a member, as many intellectuals during the Great Depression felt that the Party offered an alternative to capitalism. Some still were members, others had been active in the past and only briefly. The Committee formally accused these ten ofcontempt of Congress and began criminal proceedings against them in the full House of Representatives.
In light of the "Hollywood Ten"'s defiance of HUAC—in addition to refusing to testify, many had tried to read statements decrying the committee's investigation as unconstitutional—political pressure mounted on the film industry to demonstrate its "anti-subversive" bona fides. Late in the hearings, Eric Johnston, president of the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA), declared to the committee that he would never "employ any proven or admitted Communist because they are just a disruptive force and I don't want them around." On November 17, the Screen Actors Guild voted to make its officers swear a pledge asserting each was not a Communist.
The following week, on November 24, the House of Representatives voted 346 to 17 to approve citations against the Hollywood Ten for contempt of Congress. The next day, following a meeting of film industry executives at New York's Waldorf-Astoria hotel, MPAA president Johnston issued a press release that is today referred to as the Waldorf Statement.[b] Their statement said that the ten would be fired or suspended without pay and not reemployed until they were cleared of contempt charges and had sworn that they were not Communists. The first Hollywood blacklist was in effect.
The HUAC hearings had failed to turn up any evidence that Hollywood was secretly disseminating Communist propaganda, but the industry was nonetheless transformed. The fallout from the inquiry was a factor in the decision by Floyd Odlum, the primary owner of RKO Pictures, to get out of the business. As a result, the studio would pass into the hands of Howard Hughes. Within weeks of taking over in May 1948, Hughes fired most of RKO's employees and virtually shut the studio down for six months as he had the political sympathies of the rest investigated. Then, just as RKO swung back into production, Hughes made the decision to settle a long-standing federal antitrust suitagainst the industry's Big Five studios. This would be one of the crucial steps in the collapse of the studio system that had governed Hollywood, and ruled much of world cinema, for a quarter-century.
In early 1948 all of the Hollywood Ten were convicted of contempt. Following a series of unsuccessful appeals, the cases arrived before the Supreme Court; among the submissions filed in defense of the ten was an amicus curiae brief signed by 204 Hollywood professionals. After the court denied review, the Hollywood Ten began serving one-year prison sentences in 1950. In September 1950, one of the ten, director Edward Dmytryk, publicly announced that he had once been a Communist and was prepared to give evidence against others who had been as well. He was released early from jail; following his 1951 HUAC appearance, in which he described his brief membership in the party and named names, his career recovered.
The others remained silent and most were unable to obtain work in the American film and television industry for many years. Adrian Scott, who had produced four of Dmytryk's films—Murder, My Sweet; Cornered; So Well Remembered; and Crossfire—was one of those named by his former friend. Scott's next screen credit would not come until 1972 and he would never produce another feature film. Some of those blacklisted continued to write for Hollywood or the broadcasting industry surreptitiously, using pseudonyms or the names of friends who posed as the actual writers (those who allowed their names to be used in this fashion were called "fronts"). Of the 204 who signed the amicus brief, 84 would be blacklisted themselves. There was a more general chilling effect: Humphrey Bogart, who had been one of the most prominent members of the Committee for the First Amendment, felt compelled to write an article for Photoplay magazine denying he was a Communist sympathizer. The Tenney Committee, which had continued its state-level investigations, summoned songwriter Ira Gershwin to testify about his participation in the committee.
A number of nongovernmental organizations participated in enforcing and expanding the blacklist; in particular, the American Legion, the conservative war veterans' group, was instrumental in pressuring the entertainment industry to exclude those of political sympathies it disagreed with. In 1949, the Americanism Division of the Legion issued its own blacklist—a roster of 128 people whom it claimed were participants in the "Communist Conspiracy." Among the names on the Legion's list was that of well-known playwright Lillian Hellman. Hellman had written or contributed to the screenplays of approximately ten motion pictures up to that point; she would not be employed again by a Hollywood studio until 1966.
Another influential group was American Business Consultants Inc., founded in 1947. In the subscription information for its weekly publication Counterattack, "The Newsletter of Facts to Combat Communism", it declared that it was run by "a group of former FBI men. It has no affiliation whatsoever with any government agency." Notwithstanding that claim, it seems the editors ofCounterattack had direct access to the files of both the Federal Bureau of Investigation and HUAC; the results of that access became widely apparent with the June 1950 publication of Red Channels. This Counterattack spinoff listed 151 people in entertainment and broadcast journalism, along with records of their involvement in what the pamphlet meant to be taken as Communist or pro-Communist activities. A few of those named, such as Hellman, were already being denied employment in the motion picture, TV, and radio fields; the publication of Red Channels meant that scores more would be placed on the blacklist. That year, CBS instituted a loyalty oath which it required of all its employees.
Jean Muir was the first performer to lose employment because of a listing in Red Channels. In 1950 Muir was named as a Communist sympathizer in the pamphlet, and was immediately removed from the cast of the television sitcom The Aldrich Family, in which she had been cast as Mrs. Aldrich. NBC had received between 20 and 30 phone calls protesting her being in the show. General Motors, the sponsor, said that it would not sponsor programs in which "controversial persons" were featured. Though the company later received thousands of calls protesting the decision, it was not reversed.
In 1951, with the U.S. Congress now under Democratic control, HUAC launched a second investigation of Hollywood and Communism. As actor Larry Parks said when called before the panel,
Parks ultimately testified, becoming however reluctantly, a "friendly witness", and found himself blacklisted, nonetheless.
In fact, the legal tactics of those refusing to testify had changed by this time; instead of relying on the First Amendment, they invoked the Fifth Amendment's shield against self-incrimination (though, as before, Communist Party membership was not illegal). While this usually allowed a witness to avoid "naming names" without being indicted for contempt of Congress, "taking the Fifth" before HUAC guaranteed that one would be added to the industry blacklist. Historians at times distinguish between the relatively official blacklist—the names of those who (a) were called by HUAC and, in whatever manner, refused to cooperate and/or (b) were identified as Communists in the hearings—and the so-called graylist—those others who were denied work because of their political or personal affiliations, real or imagined; the consequences, however, were largely the same. The graylist also refers more specifically to those who were denied work by the major studios but could still find jobs on Poverty Row: Composer Elmer Bernstein, for instance, was called by HUAC when it was discovered that he had written some music reviews for a Communist newspaper. After he refused to name names, pointing out that he had never attended a Communist Party meeting, he found himself composing music for movies such as Cat Women of the Moon.
Like Parks and Dmytryk, others also cooperated with the committee. Some friendly witnesses gave broadly damaging testimony with less apparent reluctance, most prominently director Elia Kazan and screenwriter Budd Schulberg. Their cooperation in describing the political leanings of their friends and professional associates effectively brought a halt to dozens of careers and compelled a number of artists to depart for Mexico or Europe. Others were also forced abroad in order to work. Director Jules Dassin was among the best known of these. Briefly a Communist, Dassin had left the party in 1939. He was immediately blacklisted after Edward Dmytryk and fellow filmmakerFrank Tuttle named him to HUAC in 1952. Dassin left for France, and spent much of his remaining career in Greece. Scholar Thomas Doherty describes how the HUAC hearings swept onto the blacklist those who had never even been particularly active politically, let alone suspected of being Communists:
When Stander was himself called before HUAC, he began by pledging his full support in the fight against "subversive" activities:
Stander was clearly speaking of the committee itself.
The hunt for subversives extended into every branch of the entertainment industry. In the field of animation, two studios in particularly were affected: United Productions of America (UPA) was purged of a large portion of its staff, while New York–based Tempo was entirely crushed. The HUAC investigation also effectively destroyed families. Screenwriter Richard Collins, after a brief period on the blacklist, became a friendly witness and dumped his wife, actress Dorothy Comingore, who refused to name names. Divorcing Comingore, Collins took the couple's young son, as well. The family's story was later dramatized in the film Guilty by Suspicion (1991), in which the character based on Comingore "commits suicide rather than endure a long mental collapse." In real life, Comingore succumbed to alcoholism and died of a pulmonary disease at the age of fifty-eight. In the description of historians Paul Buhle and David Wagner, "premature strokes and heart attacks were fairly common [among blacklistees], along with heavy drinking as a form of suicide on the installment plan."
For all that, evidence that Communists were actually using Hollywood films as vehicles for subversion remained hard to come by. Schulberg reported that the manuscript of his novel What Makes Sammy Run? (later a screenplay, as well) had been subject to an ideological critique by Hollywood Ten writer John Howard Lawson, whose comments he had solicited. The significance of such interactions was questionable. As historian Gerald Horne describes, many Hollywood screenwriters had joined or associated with the local Communist Party chapter because it "offered a collective to a profession that was enmeshed in tremendous isolation at the typewriter. Their 'Writers' Clinic' had 'an informal "board" of respected screenwriters'—including Lawson and Ring Lardner Jr.—'who read and commented upon any screenplay submitted to them. Although their criticism could be plentiful, stinging, and (sometimes) politically dogmatic, the author was entirely free to accept it or reject it as he or she pleased without incurring the slightest "consequence" or sanction.'" Much of the onscreen evidence of Communist influence uncovered by HUAC was feeble at best. One witness remembered Stander, while performing in a film, whistling the left-wing "Internationale" as his character waited for an elevator. "Another noted that screenwriter Lester Cole had inserted lines from a famous pro-Loyalist speech by La Pasionaria about it being 'better to die on your feet than to live on your knees' into a pep talk delivered by a football coach."
Hollywood communists may have blocked production of some films. The scholar Kenneth Lloyd Billingsley found that Trumbo wrote in The Daily Worker about films which he said communist influence in Hollywood had prevented from being made: among them were proposed adaptations of Arthur Koestler's anti-totalitarian works Darkness at Noon and The Yogi and the Commissar, which described the rise of communism in Russia.
In 1952, the Screen Writers Guild—which had been founded two decades before by three future members of the Hollywood Ten—authorized the movie studios to "omit from the screen" the names of any individuals who had failed to clear themselves before Congress. Writer Dalton Trumbo, for instance, one of the Hollywood Ten and still very much on the blacklist, had received screen credit in 1950 for writing, years earlier, the story on which the screenplay of Columbia Pictures' Emergency Wedding was based. There would be no more of that until the 1960s. The name of Albert Maltz, who had written the original screenplay for The Robe in the mid-1940s, was nowhere to be seen when the movie was released in 1953.
As William O'Neill describes, pressure was maintained even on those who had ostensibly "cleared" themselves:
The group's efforts dragged many others onto the blacklist: In 1954, "[s]creenwriter Louis Pollock, a man without any known political views or associations, suddenly had his career yanked out from under him because the American Legion confused him with Louis Pollack, a California clothier, who had refused to cooperate with HUAC."
During this same period, a number of influential newspaper columnists covering the entertainment industry, including Walter Winchell, Hedda Hopper, Victor Riesel, Jack O'Brian, and George Sokolsky, regularly offered up names with the suggestion that they should be added to the blacklist. Actor John Ireland received an out-of-court settlement to end a 1954 lawsuit against the Young & Rubicam advertising agency, which had ordered him dropped from the lead role in a television series it sponsored.Variety described it as "the first industry admission of what has for some time been an open secret—that the threat of being labeled a political nonconformist, or worse, has been used against show business personalities and that a screening system is at work determining thesp [actors'] availabilities for roles."
The Hollywood blacklist had long gone hand in hand with the Red-baiting activities of J. Edgar Hoover's FBI. Adversaries of HUAC such as lawyer Bartley Crum, who defended some of the Hollywood Ten in front of the committee in 1947, were labeled as Communist sympathizers or subversives and targeted for investigation themselves. Throughout the 1950s, the FBI tapped Crum's phones, opened his mail, and placed him under continuous surveillance. As a result, he lost most of his clients and, unable to cope with the stress of ceaseless harassment, committed suicide in 1959. Intimidating and dividing the left is now seen as a central purpose of the HUAC hearings. Fund-raising for once-popular humanitarian efforts became difficult, and despite the sympathies of many in the industry there was little open support in Hollywood for causes such as the African American Civil Rights Movement and opposition to nuclear weapons testing.
The struggles attending the blacklist were played out metaphorically on the big screen in various ways. As described by film historian James Chapman, "Carl Foreman, who had refused to testify before the committee, wrote the western High Noon(1952), in which a town marshal (ironically played by friendly witness Gary Cooper ...) finds himself deserted by the good citizens of Hadleyville (for which read Hollywood) when a gang of outlaws who had terrorized the town several years earlier (for which read HUAC) returns." Cooper's lawman cleaned up Hadleyville, but Foreman was forced to leave for Europe to find work. Even more famously, Kazan and Schulberg collaborated on a movie widely seen as justifying their decision to name names. On the Waterfront (1954) became one of the most honored films in Hollywood history, winning eight Academy Awards, including Oscars for Best Film, Kazan's direction, and Schulberg's screenplay. The film featured Lee J. Cobb, one of the best known actors to name names. Time Out Film Guide argues that the film is "undermined" by its "embarrassing special pleading on behalf of informers."
After his release from prison, Herbert Biberman of the Hollywood Ten directed Salt of the Earth, working independently in New Mexico with fellow blacklisted Hollywood professionals—producer Paul Jarrico, writer Michael Wilson, and actors Rosaura Revueltas and Will Geer. The film, concerning a strike by Mexican-American mine workers, was denounced as Communist propaganda when it was completed in 1953. Distributors boycotted it, newspapers and radio stations rejected advertisements for it, and the projectionists' union refused to run it. Nationwide in 1954, only around a dozen theaters exhibited it.
A key figure in bringing an end to blacklisting was John Henry Faulk. Host of an afternoon comedy radio show, Faulk was a leftist active in his union, the American Federation of Television and Radio Artists. He was scrutinized by AWARE, one of the private firms that examined individuals for signs of Communist sympathies and "disloyalty." Marked by the group as unfit, he was fired by CBS Radio. Almost alone among the many victims of blacklisting, Faulk decided to sue AWARE in 1957.[54] Though the case would drag through the courts for years, the suit itself was an important symbol of the building resistance to the blacklist.
The initial cracks in the entertainment industry blacklist were evident on television, specifically at CBS. In 1957, blacklisted actor Norman Lloyd was hired by Alfred Hitchcock as an associate producer for his anthology series Alfred Hitchcock Presents, then entering its third season on the network. On November 30, 1958, a live CBS production of Wonderful Town, based on short stories written by then-Communist Ruth McKenney, appeared with the proper writing credit of blacklisted Edward Chodorov, along with his literary partner, Joseph Fields. The following year, actress Betty Hutton insisted that blacklisted composer Jerry Fielding be hired as musical director for her new series, also on CBS. The first main break in the Hollywood blacklist followed soon after: on January 20, 1960, director Otto Preminger publicly announced that Dalton Trumbo, one of the best known members of the Hollywood Ten, was the screenwriter of his forthcoming film Exodus. Six-and-a-half months later, with Exodus still to debut, the New York Times announced that Universal Pictures would give Trumbo screen credit for his role as writer on Spartacus, a decision star Kirk Douglas is now recognized as largely responsible for. On October 6, Spartacus premiered—the first movie to bear Trumbo's name since he had received story credit on Emergency Wedding in 1950. Since 1947, he had written or co-written approximately seventeen motion pictures without credit. Exodus followed in December, also bearing Trumbo's name. The blacklist was now clearly coming to an end, but its effects continue to reverberate even until the present.
John Henry Faulk finally won his lawsuit in 1962. With this court decision, the private blacklisters and those who used them were put on notice that they were legally liable for the professional and financial damage they caused. This helped to bring an end to publications such as Counterattack. Like Adrian Scott and Lillian Hellman, however, a number of those on the blacklist remained there for an extended period—Lionel Stander, for instance, could not find work in Hollywood until 1965. Some of those who named names, like Kazan and Schulberg, argued for years after that they had made an ethically proper decision. Others, like actor Lee J. Cobb and director Michael Gordon, who gave friendly testimony to HUAC after suffering on the blacklist for a time, "concede[d] with remorse that their plan was to name their way back to work." And there were those more gravely haunted by the choice they had made. In 1963, actor Sterling Hayden declared,
Scholars Paul Buhle and Dave Wagner state that Hayden "was widely believed to have drunk himself into a near-suicidal depression decades before his 1986 death."
Into the 21st century, the Writers Guild pursued the correction of screen credits from movies of the 1950s and early 1960s to properly reflect the work of blacklisted writers such as Carl Foreman and Hugo Butler. On December 19, 2011, the guild, acting on a request for an investigation made by his dying son Christopher Trumbo, announced that Dalton Trumbo would get full credit for his work on the screenplay for the 1953 romantic comedy Roman Holiday, almost sixty years after the fact.
The following people were cited for contempt of Congress and blacklisted after refusing to answer HUAC questions about their alleged involvement with the Communist Party:
In late September 1947, HUAC subpoenaed 79 individuals on the claim that they were subversive elements and the supposition that they injected Communist propaganda into their films. Although never substantiating this claim, the investigators charged them with contempt of Congress when they refused to answer the questions about their membership in the Screen Writers Guild and Communist Party. The Committee demanded they admit their political beliefs and name names of other Communists. Nineteen of those refused to cooperate, and due to illnesses, scheduling conflicts, and exhaustion from the chaotic hearings, only 10 appeared before the Committee. These men became the Hollywood Ten.
Technically belonging to the Communist Party did not constitute a crime and the Committee's right to investigate these men was questionable in the first place. These men relied on the First Amendment's right to privacy, freedom of speech, and freedom of thought, a move that ultimately failed and consequently, later defendants would not replicate.
The Hollywood Ten took a bold stance and acknowledged the potential punishments they faced, but that did not stop them from acting indignantly during their trials. They yelled at the Chairman and treated the Committee with open indignation, emanating negativity and discouraging outside public favor and help. Upon receiving their contempt citations, they believed the Supreme Court would overturn the rulings. They were wrong. As a result, they received $1,000 fines and a six-month to one-year prison term.
Although HUAC did not treat the men with respect either, refusing to allow most of them to speak for more than a few words, while the friendly witnesses who cooperated with the Committee, like Ayn Rand, spoke in length.
This legal strategy failed in part because it was a time of paranoia, but also because the First Amendment’s right of free expression could be used to protect the rights of the accuser, not the victim. After witnessing the ineffectiveness of the Ten’s defense, later defendants chose to plead the Fifth.
Support for the Ten wavered and the public was never really sure what to make of them. Some of these men later wrote about their experience as part of the Ten. John Howard Lawson, the unofficial leader, wrote a book that attacked Hollywood for appeasing HUAC. Though he mostly criticizes the studios for their weakness, he also defends himself and the Ten while criticizing Edward Dmytryk for being the only one to recant and cooperate with HUAC.
In his 1981 autobiography, Hollywood Red, screenwriter Lester Cole stated that all of the Hollywood Ten had in fact been Communist Party USA members. Other members of the Hollywood Ten, such as Dalton Trumbo and Edward Dmytryk, have also admitted to being Communists at the time the Committee questioned them.
However, when Dmytryk wrote his book, he denounced the Ten and attempted to justify his decision to work with HUAC. He claimed to have left the Communist Party before he was even subpoenaed. He condemns the Ten's legal tactic and regrets staying with the group for as long as he did.
(an asterisk after the entry indicates the person was also listed in Red Channels)
(see, e.g., Schrecker [2002], p. 244; Barnouw [1990], pp. 122–24)
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McCarthyism is the practice of making accusations of subversion or treason without proper regard for evidence. It also means "the practice of making unfair allegations or using unfair investigative techniques, especially in order to restrict dissent or political criticism." The term has its origins in the period in the United States known as the Second Red Scare, lasting roughly from 1950 to 1956 and characterized by heightened political repression against communists, as well as a campaign spreading fear of their influence on American institutions and of espionage by Soviet agents. Originally coined to criticize the anti-communist pursuits of Republican U.S. Senator Joseph McCarthy of Wisconsin, "McCarthyism" soon took on a broader meaning, describing the excesses of similar efforts. The term is also now used more generally to describe reckless, unsubstantiated accusations, as well as demagogicattacks on the character or patriotism of political adversaries.
During the McCarthy era, thousands of Americans were accused of being communists or communist sympathizers and became the subject of aggressive investigations and questioning before government or private-industry panels, committees and agencies. The primary targets of such suspicions were government employees, those in the entertainment industry, educators and union activists. Suspicions were often given credence despite inconclusive or questionable evidence, and the level of threat posed by a person's real or supposed leftist associations or beliefs was often greatly exaggerated. Many people suffered loss of employment and/or destruction of their careers; some even suffered imprisonment. Most of these punishments came about through trial verdicts later overturned, laws that were later declared unconstitutional, dismissals for reasons later declared illegal or actionable, or extra-legal procedures that would come into general disrepute.
The most notable examples of McCarthyism include the speeches, investigations, and hearings of Senator McCarthy himself; theHollywood blacklist, associated with hearings conducted by the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC); and the various anti-communist activities of the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) under Director J. Edgar Hoover. McCarthyism was a widespread social and cultural phenomenon that affected all levels of society and was the source of a great deal of debate and conflict in the United States.
The historical period that came to be known as the McCarthy era began well before Joseph McCarthy's own involvement in it. Many factors contributed to McCarthyism, some of them extending back to the years of the First Red Scare (1917–20), inspired by Communism's emergence as a recognized political force. Thanks in part to its success in organizing labor unions and its early opposition to fascism, the Communist Party of the United States (CPUSA) increased its membership through the 1930s, reaching a peak of about 75,000 members in 1940–41. While the United States was engaged in World War II and allied with the Soviet Union, the issue of anti-communism was largely muted. With the end of World War II, the Cold War began almost immediately, as the Soviet Union installed Communist puppet régimes across Central and Eastern Europe, while the United States backed anti-communist forces in Greece and China.
Although the Igor Gouzenko and Elizabeth Bentley affairs had raised the issue of Soviet espionage as far back as 1945, events in 1949 and 1950 sharply increased the sense of threat from Communism in the United States. The Soviet Union tested an atomic bomb in 1949, earlier than many analysts had expected. That same year, Mao Zedong's Communist army gained control of mainland China despite heavy American financial support of the opposing Kuomintang. In 1950, the Korean War began, pitting U.S., U.N., and South Korean forces against Communists from North Korea and China. The following year also saw several significant developments regarding Soviet Cold War espionage activities. In January 1950, Alger Hiss, a high-level State Department official, was convicted of perjury. Hiss was in effect found guilty of espionage; the statute of limitations had run out for that crime, but he was convicted of having perjured himself when he denied that charge in earlier testimony before the House Un-American Activities Committee. In Great Britain, Klaus Fuchs confessed to committing espionage on behalf of the Soviet Union while working on the Manhattan Project at Los Alamos National Laboratory during the War. Julius and Ethel Rosenberg were arrested in 1950 on charges of stealing atomic bomb secrets for the Soviets and were executed in 1953.
There were also more subtle forces encouraging the rise of McCarthyism. It had long been a practice of more conservative politicians to refer to progressive reforms such aschild labor laws and women's suffrage as "Communist" or "Red plots." This tendency increased in the 1930s in reaction to the New Deal policies of President Franklin D. Roosevelt. Many conservatives equated the New Deal with socialism or Communism, and saw its policies as evidence that the government had been heavily influenced by Communist policy-makers in the Roosevelt administration. In general, the vaguely defined danger of "Communist influence" was a more common theme in the rhetoric of anti-Communist politicians than was espionage or any other specific activity.
Joseph McCarthy's involvement with the ongoing cultural phenomenon that would bear his name began with a speech he made on Lincoln Day, February 9, 1950, to the Republican Women's Club of Wheeling, West Virginia. He produced a piece of paper which he claimed contained a list of known Communists working for the State Department. McCarthy is usually quoted as saying: "I have here in my hand a list of 205—a list of names that were made known to the Secretary of State as being members of the Communist Party and who nevertheless are still working and shaping policy in the State Department." This speech resulted in a flood of press attention to McCarthy and established the path that made him one of the most recognized politicians in the United States.
The first recorded use of the term McCarthyism was in a political cartoon by Washington Post editorial cartoonist Herbert Block (aka Herblock), published on March 29, 1950. The cartoon depicted four leading Republicans trying to push an elephant (the traditional symbol of the Republican Party) to stand on a teetering stack of ten tar buckets, the topmost of which was labeled "McCarthyism". Block later wrote that there was "nothing particularly ingenious about the term, which is simply used to represent a national affliction that can hardly be described in any other way. If anyone has a prior claim on it, he's welcome to the word and to the junior senator from Wisconsin along with it. I will also throw in a set of free dishes and a case of soap.”
A number of anti-Communist committees, panels, and "loyalty review boards" in federal, state, and local governments, as well as many private agencies carried out investigations for small and large companies concerned about possible Communists in their work force.
In Congress, the primary bodies that investigated Communist activities were the House Committee on Un-American Activities, the Senate Internal Security Subcommittee, and the Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations. Between 1949 and 1954, a total of 109 investigations were carried out by these and other committees of Congress.
On December 2, 1954, the United States Senate voted 65 to 22 to condemn Joseph McCarthy for "conduct that tends to bring the Senate into dishonor and disrepute".
In the federal government, President Harry Truman's Executive Order 9835 initiated a program of loyalty reviews for federal employees in 1947. It called for dismissal if there were "reasonable grounds ... for belief that the person involved is disloyal to the Government of the United States." Truman, a Democrat, was probably reacting in part to the Republican sweep in the 1946 Congressional election and felt a need to counter growing criticism from conservatives and anti-communists.
When President Dwight Eisenhower took office in 1953, he strengthened and extended Truman's loyalty review program, while decreasing the avenues of appeal available to dismissed employees. Hiram Bingham, Chairman of the Civil Service Commission Loyalty Review Board, referred to the new rules he was obliged to enforce as "just not the American way of doing things." The following year, J. Robert Oppenheimer, scientific director of the Manhattan Project that built the first atomic bomb, then working as a consultant to the Atomic Energy Commission, was stripped of his security clearance after a four-week hearing. Oppenheimer had received a top-secret clearance in 1947, but was denied clearance in the harsher climate of 1954.
Similar loyalty reviews were established in many state and local government offices and some private industries across the nation. In 1958, it was estimated that roughly one out of every five employees in the United States was required to pass some sort of loyalty review. Once a person lost a job due to an unfavorable loyalty review, it could be very difficult to find other employment. "A man is ruined everywhere and forever," in the words of the chairman of President Truman's Loyalty Review Board. "No responsible employer would be likely to take a chance in giving him a job."
The Department of Justice started keeping a list of organizations that it deemed subversive beginning in 1942. This list was first made public in 1948, when it included 78 items. At its longest, it comprised 154 organizations, 110 of them identified as Communist. In the context of a loyalty review, membership in a listed organization was meant to raise a question, but not to be considered proof of disloyalty. One of the most common causes of suspicion was membership in the Washington Bookshop Association, a left-leaning organization that offered lectures on literature, classical music concerts and discounts on books.
In Many Are the Crimes: McCarthyism in America, historian Ellen Schrecker calls the FBI "the single most important component of the anti-communist crusade" and writes: "Had observers known in the 1950s what they have learned since the 1970s, when the Freedom of Information Act opened the Bureau's files, 'McCarthyism' would probably be called 'Hooverism'." FBI director J. Edgar Hoover was one of the nation's most fervent anti-communists, and one of the most powerful.
Hoover designed President Truman's loyalty-security program, and its background investigations of employees were carried out by FBI agents. This was a major assignment that led to the number of agents in the Bureau being increased from 3,559 in 1946 to 7,029 in 1952. Hoover's extreme sense of the Communist threat and the politically conservative standards of evidence applied by his bureau resulted in thousands of government workers losing their jobs. Due to Hoover's insistence upon keeping the identity of his informers secret, most subjects of loyalty-security reviews were not allowed to cross-examine or know the identities of those who accused them. In many cases they were not even told what they were accused of.
Hoover's influence extended beyond federal government employees and beyond the loyalty-security programs. The records of loyalty review hearings and investigations were supposed to be confidential, but Hoover routinely gave evidence from them to congressional committees such as HUAC.
From 1951 to 1955, the FBI operated a secret "Responsibilities Program" that distributed anonymous documents with evidence from FBI files of Communist affiliations on the part of teachers, lawyers, and others. Many people accused in these "blind memoranda" were fired without any further process.
The FBI engaged in a number of illegal practices in its pursuit of information on Communists, including burglaries, opening mail and illegal wiretaps. The members of the left-wing National Lawyers Guild were among the few attorneys who were willing to defend clients in communist-related cases, and this made the NLG a particular target of Hoover's. The office of this organization was burgled by the FBI at least fourteen times between 1947 and 1951.
Among other purposes, the FBI used its illegally obtained information to alert prosecuting attorneys about the planned legal strategies of NLG defense lawyers.
The FBI also used illegal undercover operations to disrupt Communist and other dissident political groups. In 1956, Hoover was becoming increasingly frustrated by Supreme Court decisions that limited the Justice Department's ability to prosecute Communists. At this time he formalized a covert "dirty tricks" program under the name COINTELPRO. COINTELPRO actions included planting forged documents to create the suspicion that a key person was an FBI informer, spreading rumors through anonymous letters, leaking information to the press, calling for IRS audits, and the like. The COINTELPRO program remained in operation until 1971.
The House Committee on Un-American Activities - commonly referred to as the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC) - was the most prominent and active government committee involved in anti-Communist investigations. Formed in 1938 and known as the Dies Committee for Rep. Martin Dies, who chaired it until 1944, HUAC investigated a variety of "activities," including those of German-American Nazis during World War II. The Committee soon focused on Communism, beginning with an investigation into Communists in the Federal Theatre Project in 1938. A significant step for HUAC was its investigation of the charges of espionage brought against Alger Hissin 1948. This investigation ultimately resulted in Hiss's trial and conviction for perjury, and convinced many of the usefulness of congressional committees for uncovering Communist subversion.
HUAC achieved its greatest fame and notoriety with its investigation into the Hollywood film industry. In October 1947, the Committee began to subpoena screenwriters, directors, and other movie industry professionals to testify about their known or suspected membership in the Communist Party, association with its members, or support of its beliefs. It was at these testimonies that what became known as "the $64 question" was asked: "Are you now or have you ever been a member of the Communist Party of the United States?" Among the first film industry witnesses subpoenaed by the Committee were ten who decided not to cooperate. These men, who became known as the "Hollywood Ten", cited the First Amendment's guarantee of free speech and free assembly, which they believed legally protected them from being required to answer the Committee's questions. This tactic failed, and the ten were sentenced to prison for contempt of Congress. Two of the ten were sentenced to six months, the rest to a year.
In the future, witnesses (in the entertainment industries and otherwise) who were determined not to cooperate with the Committee would claim their Fifth Amendmentprotection against self-incrimination. While this usually protected them from a contempt of Congress citation, it was considered grounds for dismissal by many government and private industry employers. The legal requirements for Fifth Amendment protection were such that a person could not testify about his own association with the Communist Party and then refuse to "name names" of colleagues with Communist affiliations. Thus many faced a choice between "crawl[ing] through the mud to be an informer," as actor Larry Parks put it, or becoming known as a "Fifth Amendment Communist"—an epithet often used by Senator McCarthy.
In the Senate, the primary committee for investigating Communists was the Senate Internal Security Subcommittee (SISS), formed in 1950 and charged with ensuring the enforcement of laws relating to "espionage, sabotage, and the protection of the internal security of the United States." The SISS was headed by Democrat Pat McCarran and gained a reputation for careful and extensive investigations. This committee spent a year investigating Owen Lattimore and other members of the Institute of Pacific Relations. As had been done numerous times before, the collection of scholars and diplomats associated with Lattimore (the so-called China Hands) were accused of "losing China," and while some evidence of pro-communist attitudes was found, there was nothing to support McCarran's accusation that Lattimore was "a conscious and articulate instrument of the Soviet conspiracy". Lattimore was charged with perjuring himself before the SISS in 1952. After many of the charges were rejected by a Federal Judge and one of the witnesses confessed to perjury, the case was dropped in 1955.
Joseph McCarthy himself headed the Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations in 1953 and 1954, and during that time used it for a number of his Communist-hunting investigations. McCarthy first examined allegations of Communist influence in the Voice of America, and then turned to the overseas library program of the State Department. Card catalogs of these libraries were searched for works by authors McCarthy deemed inappropriate. McCarthy then recited the list of supposedly pro-communist authors before his subcommittee and the press. Yielding to the pressure, the State Department ordered its overseas librarians to remove from their shelves "material by any controversial persons, Communists, fellow travelers, etc." Some libraries actually burned the newly forbidden books.
McCarthy's committee then began an investigation into the United States Army. This began at the Army Signal Corps laboratory at Fort Monmouth. McCarthy garnered some headlines with stories of a dangerous spy ring among the Army researchers, but ultimately nothing came of this investigation. McCarthy next turned his attention to the case of a U.S. Army dentist who had been promoted to the rank of major despite having refused to answer questions on an Army loyalty review form. McCarthy's handling of this investigation, including a series of insults directed at a brigadier general, led to the Army-McCarthy hearings, with the Army and McCarthy trading charges and counter-charges for 36 days before a nationwide television audience. While the official outcome of the hearings was inconclusive, this exposure of McCarthy to the American public resulted in a sharp decline in his popularity. In less than a year, McCarthy was censured by the Senate and his position as a prominent force in anti-communism was essentially ended.
On November 25, 1947 (the day after the House of Representatives approved citations of contempt for the Hollywood Ten), Eric Johnston, President of the Motion Picture Association of America, issued a press release on behalf of the heads of the major studios that came to be referred to as the Waldorf Statement. This statement announced the firing of the Hollywood Ten and stated: "We will not knowingly employ a Communist or a member of any party or group which advocates the overthrow of the government of the United States[...]" This marked the beginning of the Hollywood blacklist. In spite of the fact that hundreds would be denied employment, the studios, producers and other employers did not publicly admit that a blacklist existed.
At this time, private loyalty-review boards and anti-communist investigators began to appear to fill a growing demand among certain industries to certify that their employees were above reproach. Companies that were concerned about the sensitivity of their business, or who, like the entertainment industry, felt particularly vulnerable to public opinion made use of these private services. For a fee, these teams would investigate employees and question them about their politics and affiliations. At such hearings, the subject would usually not have a right to the presence of an attorney, and as with HUAC, the interviewee might be asked to defend himself against accusations without being allowed to cross-examine the accuser. These agencies would keep cross-referenced lists of leftist organizations, publications, rallies, charities and the like, as well as lists of individuals who were known or suspected communists. Books such as Red Channels and newsletters such as Counterattack and Confidential Information were published to keep track of communist and leftist organizations and individuals. Insofar as the various blacklists of McCarthyism were actual physical lists, they were created and maintained by these private organizations.
Efforts to protect the United States from the perceived threat of Communist subversion were particularly enabled by several federal laws. The Alien Registration Act or Smith Act of 1940 made it a criminal offense for anyone to "knowingly or willfully advocate, abet, advise or teach the [...] desirability or propriety of overthrowing the Government of the United States or of any State by force or violence, or for anyone to organize any association which teaches, advises or encourages such an overthrow, or for anyone to become a member of or to affiliate with any such association". Hundreds of Communists and others were prosecuted under this law between 1941 and 1957. Eleven leaders of the Communist Party were convicted under the Smith Act in 1949 in the Foley Square trial. Ten defendants were given sentences of five years and the eleventh was sentenced to three years. The defense attorneys were cited for contempt of court and given prison sentences. In 1951, twenty-three other leaders of the party were indicted, including Elizabeth Gurley Flynn, a founding member of the American Civil Liberties Union. Many were convicted on the basis of testimony that was later admitted to be false. By 1957, 140 leaders and members of the Communist Party had been charged under the law, of whom 93 were convicted.
The McCarran Internal Security Act, which became law in 1950, has been described by scholar Ellen Schrecker as "the McCarthy era's only important piece of legislation" (the Smith Act technically predated McCarthyism). However, the McCarran Act had no real effect beyond legal harassment. It required the registration of Communist organizations with the U.S. Attorney General and established the Subversive Activities Control Board to investigate possible Communist-action and Communist-front organizations so they could be required to register. Due to numerous hearings, delays and appeals, the act was never enforced, even with regard to the Communist Party of the United States itself, and the major provisions of the act were found to be unconstitutional in 1965 and 1967. In 1952, the Immigration and Nationality, or McCarran-Walter, Act was passed. This law allowed the government to deport immigrants or naturalized citizens engaged in subversive activities and also to bar suspected subversives from entering the country.
The Communist Control Act of 1954 was passed with overwhelming support in both houses of Congress after very little debate. Jointly drafted by Republican John Marshall Butler and Democrat Hubert Humphrey, the law was an extension of the Internal Security Act of 1950, and sought to outlaw the Communist Party by declaring that the party, as well as "Communist-Infiltrated Organizations" were "not entitled to any of the rights, privileges, and immunities attendant upon legal bodies". The Communist Control Act never had any significant effect, and was perhaps most notable for the odd mix of liberals and conservatives among its supporters. It was successfully applied only twice: in 1954 it was used to prevent Communist Party members from appearing on the New Jersey state ballot, and in 1960 it was cited to deny the CPUSA recognition as an employer under New York State's unemployment compensation system. The New York Post called the act "a monstrosity", "a wretched repudiation of democratic principles," while The Nation accused Democratic liberals of a "neurotic, election-year anxiety to escape the charge of being 'soft on Communism' even at the expense of sacrificing constitutional rights."
McCarthyism was supported by a variety of groups, including the American Legion and various other anti-communist organizations. One core element of support was a variety of militantly anti-communist women's groups such as the American Public Relations Forumand the Minute Women of the U.S.A.. These organized tens of thousands of housewives into study groups, letter-writing networks, and patriotic clubs that coordinated efforts to identify and eradicate what they saw as subversion.
Although far-right radicals were the bedrock of support for McCarthyism, they were not alone. A broad "coalition of the aggrieved" found McCarthyism attractive, or at least politically useful. Common themes uniting the coalition were opposition to internationalism, particularly the United Nations; opposition to social welfare provisions, particularly the various programs established by the New Deal; and opposition to efforts to reduce inequalities in the social structure of the United States.
One focus of popular McCarthyism concerned the provision of public health services, particularly vaccination, mental health care services and fluoridation, all of which were deemed by some to be communist plots to poison or brainwash the American people. At times, the anti-internationalist aspect of McCarthyist literature took on an anti-Jewish tone. (See flier at right: Rabbi Spitz in the American Hebrew, March 1, 1946: "American Jews must come to grips with our contemporary anti-Semites; we must fill our insane asylums with anti-Semitic lunatics.") Such viewpoints led to major collisions between McCarthyite radicals and supporters of public health programs, most notably in the case of the Alaska Mental Health Bill controversy of 1956.
William F. Buckley, Jr., the founder of the influential conservative political magazine National Review, wrote a defense of McCarthy,McCarthy and his Enemies, in which he asserted that "McCarthyism ... is a movement around which men of good will and stern morality can close ranks."
In addition, as Richard Rovere points out, many ordinary Americans became convinced that there must be "no smoke without fire" and lent their support to McCarthyism. In January 1954, a Gallup poll found that 50% of the American public supported McCarthy, while 29% had an unfavorable opinion of the senator. Earl Warren, the Chief Justice of the United States, commented that if theUnited States Bill of Rights had been put to a vote it probably would have been defeated.
Those who sought to justify McCarthyism did so largely through their characterization of Communism, and American Communists in particular. Proponents of McCarthyism claimed that the CPUSA was so completely under Moscow's control that any American Communist is a puppet of the Soviet and Russian intelligence services. This view is supported by recent documentation from the archives of the KGB as well as post-war decodes of wartime Soviet radio traffic from the Venona Project, showing the CPUSA as having been completely controlled from Moscow. J. Edgar Hoover commented in a 1950 speech, "Communist members, body and soul, are the property of the Party." This attitude was not confined to arch-conservatives. In 1940, the American Civil Liberties Union ejected founding member Elizabeth Gurley Flynn, saying that her membership in the Communist Party was enough to disqualify her as a civil libertarian. In the government's prosecutions of Communist Party members under the Smith Act (see above), the prosecution case was based not on specific actions or statements by the defendants, but on the premise that a commitment to violent overthrow of the government was inherent in the doctrines of Marxism–Leninism. Passages of the CPUSA's constitution that specifically rejected revolutionary violence were dismissed as deliberate deception.
In addition, it was often claimed that the Party did not allow any member to resign, so a person who had been a member for a short time decades previously could be considered as suspect as a current member. Many of the hearings and trials of McCarthyism featured testimony by former Communist Party members such as Elizabeth Bentley, Louis Budenz, and Whittaker Chambers, speaking as expert witnesses.
Various historians and pundits have discussed alleged Soviet-directed infiltration of the U.S. government and the possible collaboration of high U.S. government officials.
It is difficult to estimate the number of victims of McCarthyism. The number imprisoned is in the hundreds, and some ten or twelve thousand lost their jobs. In many cases simply being subpoenaed by HUAC or one of the other committees was sufficient cause to be fired. Many of those who were imprisoned, lost their jobs or were questioned by committees did in fact have a past or present connection of some kind with the Communist Party. But for the vast majority, both the potential for them to do harm to the nation and the nature of their communist affiliation were tenuous. After the extremely damaging "Cambridge Five" spy scandal (Burgess, Maclean, Philby, Blunt, et al.), suspected homosexuality was also a common cause for being targeted by McCarthyism. The hunt for "sexual perverts", who were presumed to be subversive by nature, resulted in thousands being harassed and denied employment. Many have termed this aspect of McCarthyism "The Lavender Scare".
Homosexuality was classified as a psychiatric disorder in the 1950s. However, in the context of the highly politicised Cold War environment, homosexuality became framed as a dangerous, contagious social disease that posed a potential threat to state security. As the family was believed to be the cornerstone of American strength and integrity, the stigmatisation of homosexuals as "sexual perverts" meant that they were both unable to function within a family unit and presented the potential to poison the social body. This era also witnessed the establishment of widely spread FBI surveillance intended to identify homosexual government employees.
The McCarthy hearings and according "sexual pervert" investigations can be seen to have been driven by a desire to identify individuals whose ability to function as loyal citizens had been compromised. Joseph McCarthy began his campaign by drawing upon the ways in which he embodied traditional American values in order to become the self-appointed vanguard of social morality. Paradoxically, accusations of alleged homosexual behaviour marked the end of McCarthy’s political career.
In the film industry, more than 300 actors, authors and directors were denied work in the U.S. through the unofficial Hollywood blacklist. Blacklists were at work throughout the entertainment industry, in universities and schools at all levels, in the legal profession, and in many other fields. A port security program initiated by the Coast Guard shortly after the start of the Korean War required a review of every maritime worker who loaded or worked aboard any American ship, regardless of cargo or destination. As with other loyalty-security reviews of McCarthyism, the identities of any accusers and even the nature of any accusations were typically kept secret from the accused. Nearly 3,000 seamen and longshoremen lost their jobs due to this program alone.
In 1953, Robert K. Murray, a young professor of history at Pennsylvania State University who had served as an intelligence officer in World War II, was revising his dissertation on the Red Scare of 1919–20 for publication until Little, Brown and Company decided that "under the circumstances ... it wasn't wise for them to bring this book out." He learned that investigators were questioning his colleagues and relatives. The University of Minnesota press published his volume, Red Scare: A Study in National Hysteria, 1919–1920, in 1955.
The nation was by no means united behind the policies and activities that have come to be identified as McCarthyism. There were many critics of various aspects of McCarthyism, including many figures not generally noted for their liberalism.
For example, in his overridden veto of the McCarran Internal Security Act of 1950, President Truman wrote, "In a free country, we punish men for the crimes they commit, but never for the opinions they have." Truman also unsuccessfully vetoed the Taft-Hartley Act, which among other provisions denied trade unions National Labor Relations Board protection unless union leaders signed affidavits swearing they were not and had never been Communists. In 1953, after he left office, Truman criticized the current Eisenhower administration:
On June 1, 1950, Senator Margaret Chase Smith, a Maine Republican, delivered a speech to the Senate she called a "Declaration of Conscience". In a clear attack upon McCarthyism, she called for an end to "character assassinations" and named "some of the basic principles of Americanism: The right to criticize; The right to hold unpopular beliefs; The right to protest; The right of independent thought". She said "freedom of speech is not what it used to be in America", and decried "cancerous tentacles of 'know nothing, suspect everything' attitudes". Six other Republican Senators—Wayne Morse, Irving M. Ives, Charles W. Tobey, Edward John Thye, George Aiken, and Robert C. Hendrickson—joined Smith in condemning the tactics of McCarthyism.
Elmer Davis, one of the most highly respected news reporters and commentators of the 1940s and 1950s, often spoke out against what he saw as the excesses of McCarthyism. On one occasion he warned that many local anti-Communist movements constituted a "general attack not only on schools and colleges and libraries, on teachers and textbooks, but on all people who think and write [...] in short, on the freedom of the mind".
In 1952, the Supreme Court upheld a lower court decision in Adler v. Board of Education of New York, thus approving a law that allowed state loyalty review boards to fire teachers deemed "subversive". In his dissenting opinion, Justice William O. Douglaswrote: "The present law proceeds on a principle repugnant to our society—guilt by association.[...] What happens under this law is typical of what happens in a police state. Teachers are under constant surveillance; their pasts are combed for signs of disloyalty; their utterances are watched for clues to dangerous thoughts."
One of the most influential opponents of McCarthyism was the famed CBS newscaster and analyst Edward R. Murrow. On October 20, 1953, Murrow's show See It Now aired an episode about the dismissal of Milo Radulovich, a former reserve Air Force lieutenant who was accused of associating with Communists. The show was strongly critical of the Air Force's methods, which included presenting evidence in a sealed envelope that Radulovich and his attorney were not allowed to open. On March 9, 1954, See It Now aired another episode on the issue of McCarthyism, this one attacking Joseph McCarthy himself. Titled "A Report on Senator Joseph R. McCarthy", it used footage of McCarthy speeches to portray him as dishonest, reckless and abusive toward witnesses and prominent Americans. In his concluding comment, Murrow said:
This broadcast has been cited as a key episode in bringing about the end of McCarthyism.
In April 1954, Senator McCarthy was also under attack in the Army–McCarthy hearings. These hearings were televised live on the new American Broadcasting Company network, allowing the public to view first-hand McCarthy's interrogation of individuals and his controversial tactics. In one exchange, McCarthy reminded the attorney for the Army, Joseph Welch, that he had an employee in his law firm who had belonged to an organization that had been accused of Communist sympathies. In an exchange that reflected the increasingly negative public opinion of McCarthy, Welch rebuked the senator: "Have you no sense of decency, sir? At long last, have you left no sense of decency?"
In the mid- and late 1950s, the attitudes and institutions of McCarthyism slowly weakened. Changing public sentiments heavily contributed to the decline of McCarthyism. Its decline may also be charted through a series of court decisions.
A key figure in the end of the blacklisting of McCarthyism was John Henry Faulk. Host of an afternoon comedy radio show, Faulk was a leftist active in his union, theAmerican Federation of Television and Radio Artists. He was scrutinized by AWARE, Inc., one of the private firms that examined individuals for signs of communist "disloyalty". Marked by AWARE as unfit, he was fired by CBS Radio. Almost uniquely among the many victims of blacklisting, Faulk decided to sue AWARE in 1957 and finally won the case in 1962. With this court decision, the private blacklisters and those who used them were put on notice that they were legally liable for the professional and financial damage they caused. Although some informal blacklisting continued, the private "loyalty checking" agencies were soon a thing of the past. Even before the Faulk verdict, many in Hollywood had decided it was time to break the blacklist. In 1960, Dalton Trumbo, one of the best known members of the Hollywood Ten, was publicly credited with writing the films Exodus and Spartacus.
Much of the undoing of McCarthyism came at the hands of the Supreme Court. As Richard Rovere wrote in his biography of Joseph McCarthy, "[T]he United States Supreme Court took judicial notice of the rents McCarthy was making in the fabric of liberty and thereupon wrote a series of decisions that have made the fabric stronger than before." Two Eisenhower appointees to the court—Earl Warren (who was made Chief Justice) and William J. Brennan, Jr.—proved to be more liberal than Eisenhower had anticipated, and he would later refer to the appointment of Warren as his "biggest mistake".
In 1956, the Supreme Court heard the case of Slochower v. Board of Education. Harry Slochower was a professor at Brooklyn College who had been fired by New York City for invoking the Fifth Amendment when McCarthy's committee questioned him about his past membership in the Communist Party. The court prohibited such actions, ruling "...we must condemn the practice of imputing a sinister meaning to the exercise of a person's constitutional right under the Fifth Amendment.[...] The privilege against self-incrimination would be reduced to a hollow mockery if its exercise could be taken as equivalent either to a confession of guilt or a conclusive presumption of perjury."
Another key decision was in the 1957 case Yates v. United States, in which the convictions of fourteen Communists were reversed. In Justice Black's opinion, he wrote of the original "Smith Act" trials: "The testimony of witnesses is comparatively insignificant. Guilt or innocence may turn on what Marx or Engels or someone else wrote or advocated as much as a hundred years or more ago.[...] When the propriety of obnoxious or unfamiliar view about government is in reality made the crucial issue, [...] prejudice makes conviction inevitable except in the rarest circumstances."
Also in 1957, the Supreme Court ruled on the case of Watkins v. United States, curtailing the power of HUAC to punish uncooperative witnesses by finding them in contempt of Congress. Justice Warren wrote in the decision: "The mere summoning of a witness and compelling him to testify, against his will, about his beliefs, expressions or associations is a measure of governmental interference. And when those forced revelations concern matters that are unorthodox, unpopular, or even hateful to the general public, the reaction in the life of the witness may be disastrous."
In its 1958 decision in Kent v. Dulles, the Supreme Court halted the State Department from using the authority of its own regulations to refuse or revoke passports based on an applicant's communist beliefs or associations.
The political divisions McCarthyism created in the United States continue to make themselves manifest, and the politics and history of anti-Communism in the United States are still contentious. Portions of the massive security apparatus established during the McCarthy era still exist. Loyalty oaths are still required by the California Constitution for all officials and employees of the government of California (which is highly problematic for Quakers and Jehovah's Witnesses whose beliefs preclude them from pledging absolute loyalty to the state), and at the federal level, a few portions of the McCarran Internal Security Act are still in effect. A number of observers have compared the oppression of liberals and leftists during the McCarthy period to recent actions against suspected terrorists, most of them Muslims. In The Age of Anxiety: McCarthyism to Terrorism, author Haynes Johnson compares the "abuses suffered by aliens thrown into high security U.S. prisons in the wake of 9/11" to the excesses of the McCarthy era. Similarly, David D. Cole has written that the Patriot Act "in effect resurrects the philosophy of McCarthyism, simply substituting 'terrorist' for 'communist.'"
From the opposite pole, conservative writer Ann Coulter devotes much of her book Treason to drawing parallels between past opposition to McCarthy and McCarthyism and the policies and beliefs of modern-day liberals, arguing that the former hindered the anti-Communist cause and the latter hinder the War on Terrorism. Other authors who have drawn on a comparison between current anti-terrorism policies and McCarthyism include Geoffrey R. Stone, Ted Morgan, and Jonah Goldberg.
McCarthyism also attracts controversy purely as a historical issue. Through declassified documents from Soviet archives and Venona project decryptions of coded Soviet messages, it has become known that the Soviet Union engaged in substantial espionage activities in the United States during the 1940s. It is also known that the Communist Party USA was substantially funded and its policies controlled by the Soviet Union, and there are accusations that CPUSA members were often recruited as spies. In the view of some contemporary commentators, these revelations stand as at least a partial vindication of McCarthyism. Some feel that there was a genuinely dangerous subversive element in the United States, and that this danger justified extreme measures. Others, while acknowledging that there were inexcusable excesses during McCarthyism, argue that some contemporary historians of McCarthyism underplay the depth of Soviet espionage in America or the undemocratic nature of the CPUSA, the latter concern being shared by some Trotskyites who felt that they, and anti-Stalin socialists in general, were persecuted by the CPUSA. The opposing view holds that, recent revelations notwithstanding, by the time McCarthyism began in the late 1940s, the CPUSA was an ineffectual fringe group, and the damage done to U.S. interests by Soviet spies after World War II was minimal. Historian Ellen Schrecker, herself criticised for pro-Stalinist leanings, has written, "in this country,McCarthyism did more damage to the constitution than the American Communist Party ever did."
Since the time of McCarthy, the word McCarthyism has entered American speech as a general term for a variety of practices: aggressively questioning a person's patriotism, making poorly supported accusations, using accusations of disloyalty to pressure a person to adhere to conformist politics or to discredit an opponent, subverting civil rightsin the name of national security, and the use of demagoguery are all often referred to as McCarthyism. McCarthyism can also be synonymous with the term witch-hunt, both referring to mass hysteria and moral panic.
The 1952 Arthur Miller play The Crucible used the Salem witch trials as a metaphor for McCarthyism, suggesting that the process of McCarthyism-style persecution can occur at any time or place. The play focused on the fact that once accused, a person had little chance of exoneration, given the irrational and circular reasoning of both the courts and the public. Miller later wrote: "The more I read into the Salem panic, the more it touched off corresponding images of common experiences in the fifties."
The 1976 film The Front dealt with the McCarthy-era Hollywood blacklist.
There is no racism in the Soviet Union. … I am at home in the Soviet Union.
~ Paul Robeson, Daily Worker Interview, Jan. 15, 1935
Whenever I speak in public, one of the most frequent questions I’m asked is this: “Ellis, how can the majority of black people vote for the Democratic Party for over 50 years and at 96-98 percent for Obama in 2008 and 2012?”
Moviemaker Joel Gilbert, in his outstanding film, “Dreams from my Real Father,” exposes the systematic brainwashing of black America in historical terms:
“In 1930s Chicago, CPUSA recruited journalists to help spread Soviet influence in American public opinion. Frank Marshall Davis was one of them. A graduate of Kansas State Journalism School, Frank Marshall Davis joined the Communist Party and began writing for The Chicago Star. He was a colleague of journalist Vernon Jarrett, father-in-law of Obama confidant Valerie Jarrett. Davis also taught at Chicago’s Abraham Lincoln School, a Communist-run training school run by CPUSA. …”
In the late 1920s, Paul Robeson introduced Davis to a Marxist/socialist worldview when they first met in Chicago.
Who was Paul Robeson? Professor Paul Kengor’s revelatory new book, “The Communist,” in a Chapter 4 section subtitled “Paul Robeson’s Red Carpet,” tells us:
Born in April 1898 in Princeton, New Jersey, Paul L. Robeson was the son of a Protestant minister. He attended Rutgers University, where he was a standout athlete. … He went on to attend Columbia Law School.
Columbia was the worst possible choice for Robeson. The university was the single most radical school in America, with a disturbingly strong communist presence. A young man like, for example, Whittaker Chambers, could enter Columbia a devout traditional Republican and leave a raving leftist atheist who ended up a Soviet spy at the center of the most dramatic Cold War case of the 20th century.
Robeson arrived about the same time as Chambers, yet his hard turn left came a decade later, in the 1930s, as many progressives stood in rapturous awe at the Soviet experiment. Among them, George Bernard Shaw is credited with having helped prompt Robeson, asking him during a 1928 lunch what he thought of socialism. Robeson innocently conceded he had “never really thought about socialism.”
Not long after that, Robeson began thinking quite a bit about socialism. After publicly denouncing the “modern white American,” Robeson found himself suddenly invited to the USSR, and earnestly accepted. He made the pilgrimage in December 1934.
Robeson’s voyage came amid Stalin’s notorious famines and Great Purge, but the political pilgrim was carefully shielded from such misery. His gracious hosts rolled out the red carpet, regaling Robeson with (in his words) … “nights at the opera,” “gala banquets,” “private screenings,” “trips to hospitals, children’s centers,” and “factories” – “all in the context of a warm embrace.”
It was the typical charade. When communist propagandists find a target, they do not easily relent, whether it is a target they want to demonize or one they want to canonize. In Robeson, they saw usefulness in the latter. And so, that December 1934, the Soviets held a reception in Robeson’s honor, at which he was hailed by the emcee with this magnificent introduction: “This is Paul Robeson, the greatest American singer!”
The comrades clapped enthusiastically, as Robeson blushed and bowed. The boys back-slapped and drank until 2 a.m. It was a night to remember, a political romance to never forget.
Kengor refers to Robeson as a “Potemkin Progressive” who, like many famous American progressives in the mid-1930s, had severe misunderstandings of things Soviet and Stalin and effectively used their public notoriety to increase their misinformation to a grand, diabolical extent. Separate from Potemkin Progressives like John Dewey, George Bernard Shaw, the Columbia faculty and countless numbers of other deceived leftists, Robeson would be the most significant deceiver in the life, philosophy and vocation of Frank Marshall Davis. Robeson accepted the Stalinist line so completely that he went to his grave as a fervent agent of communism.
When Stalin died in March 1953, Robeson was moved to tears – and verse. He wrote an emotional and poetic eulogy to Stalin titled, “To You Beloved Comrade.”
Frank Marshall Davis effectively met Robeson shortly after arriving in Chicago in 1927 where the two men became fast friends, and Frank frequently extolled the socialist virtues of Robeson in his newspaper columns. Later it was Robeson by Frank’s own account that prompted him to relocate thousands of miles to Hawaii in 1948 where the Kremlin found Davis work as a propagandist for the Honolulu Record.
Why has the majority of black America voted for the Democratic Socialist Party for the past 60-70 years? During the 1920s black leaders like Marcus Garvey, A. Phillip Randolph, W.E.B. Dubois, Langston Hughes and the Harlem Renaissance writers, musicians and artists, including Paul Robeson, one of the most celebrated black leaders of the 20th century, were all what Lenin called “useful idiots.” These pawns, through the CPUSA infiltration of black newspapers, radio and later TV, willingly helped lead black America to embrace socialism.
All evidence indicates that Barack Obama was raised and indoctrinated three times a week during his formative years (ages 9-18) by his apparent biological and ideological father, Frank Marshall Davis, a Communist Party agent. Davis was converted to a socialist worldview by Paul Robeson and trained by the Soviet Kremlin. All evidence indicates that Davis almost succeeded in organizing the Communist-controlled ILWU (union) in a failed effort to take over the Hawaiian government in 1949.
And all evidence indicates that for his entire life Barack Obama followed the dreams from his real Communist father. Yet, not a dream but an existential nightmare is for Obama to forsake Christianity, capitalism and truth in exchange for a forced imposition of a classic Stalinist/Marxist agenda upon America at home and abroad. And what is the history of Marxism? Marxism leads to economic destruction and the biological ruin of populations and societies.
(THE FIRST STEP IS TO DISARM ALL SENIOR CITIZENS AND DISABLED PEOPLE OF ALL AGES, NO MATTER WHAT THEIR DISABILITY IS)
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Current Communist Countries: China, Cuba, Laos, North Korea, and Vietnam.
Formerly Communist countries (by current name):
Cuba's Communist government has survived more than 50 years of US sanctions intended to topple veteran leader Fidel Castro. It also defied predictions that it would not survive the collapse of its one-time supporter, the Soviet Union.
Since the fall of the US-backed dictatorship of Fulgencio Batista in 1959, Cuba has been a one-party state led by Mr Castro and - since February 2008 - by his chosen successor and younger brother, Raul.
Fidel Castro exercised control over virtually all aspects of Cuban life through the Communist Party and its affiliated mass organisations, the government bureaucracy and the state security apparatus.
Exploiting the Cold War, Fidel Castro was for decades able to rely on strong Soviet backing, including annual subsidies worth $4-5 billion, and succeed in building reputable health and education systems. But, at least partly because of the US trade sanctions, he failed to diversify the economy.
The disappearance of Soviet aid following the collapse of the USSR forced the government to introduce tight rationing of energy, food and consumer goods. The economy soldiered on with the help of Canadian, European and Latin American investments, especially in tourism.
Controls were relaxed in the 1990s, with companies allowed to import and export without seeking permission and a number of free trade zones opening up.
Some of these economic reforms were later rolled back, with Fidel Castro denouncing what he called the "new rich".
However, after Fidel Castro was succeeded as president by his brother Raul, the pace of economic reform picked up once more.
Cuba has forged closer ties with China and with oil-producing Venezuela. The latter supplies cheap fuel, while the former is helping Cuba to develop its own oil industry.
But the money sent home by Cubans living abroad - many of them in the US city of Miami - is still crucial to the economy. Hardships have led to an increase in prostitution, corruption, black marketeering and desperate efforts to escape in search of a better life.
Cuba has fallen foul of international agencies, including the UN's top human rights forum, over rights abuses. The UN's envoy has urged Havana to release imprisoned dissidents and to allow freedom of expression.
The US leases the Guantanamo Naval Base on the eastern tip of the island under a 1903 treaty, and continues to send Cuba payment for it. Cuba under the Castros disputes the lease, saying that it was concluded under duress, and has refused to cash any of the cheques since the early days of the revolution.
Relations with the US showed signs of a thaw following the election of President Barack Obama. In December 2014 Mr Obama said the US and Cuba would end more than 50 years of hostility and were talking about restoring diplomatic ties. He said the policy of isolating Cuba had failed. President Castro said the island would not give up its socialist principles.
Russia has also taken steps to revitalise ties with its Soviet-era ally, and has signed agreements to explore Cuba's offshore oil deposits.
US and Cuba launch moves to re-establish relations in 2014
BOTH CUBA AND THE UNITED STATES OPENED UP EMBASSIES IN EACH OTHER'S COUNTRIES IN 2015.
www.greatdreams.com/blog-2012-2/dee-blog279.html
Aug 30, 2012 ... Ayn Rand's classic Novel (now a two-part film), Atlas Shrugged, shows the classic struggle between the forces of Socialism and Capitalism in ...
www.greatdreams.com/blog-2013-2/dee-blog493.html
May 12, 2013 ... AYN RAND QUOTE. Dee Finney's blog. start date July 20, 2011. today's date 5- 12-13. updated 5-19-13 - Stefan Molyneux - bottom of page.
www.greatdreams.com/blog-2013-2/blog-2013-2.html - Similarto DEE FINNEY's BLOG INDEX - 2013-2 - MAY, JUNE, JULY, AUGUST
updated 5-19-13 updated 12-18-13. WHAT IS THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN ANARCHISM AND CAPITALISM? JOHN GALT, AYN RAND, STEFAN MOLYNEUX ...
www.greatdreams.com/nwo_good.htm - Similarto THE NEW WORLD ORDER - A GOOD THING?
Sep 25, 2001 ... ... "moral ambitiousness," (See Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand) because it ... Ayn Rand already did a fine job when she described self-esteem as ...
www.greatdreams.com/survival.htm - Similarto SURVIVAL AND SELF-SUFFICIENCY LINKS
Jul 16, 2015 ... Monetary Disaster - Reads lots of Ayn Rand and believe the Federal Reserve system is evil. Newsletters suggest hard assets of gold & silver ...
www.greatdreams.com/rfid.htm - Similarto RFID - CHIPS IN CLOTHING AND ON KIDS
Ayn Rand would totally have one. After that comes a more tantalizing thought: Can we get a Clear card for everything else? Some pre-Clears (if you'll excuse the ...
www.greatdreams.com/war/rule_2002.htm - Similarto RULE 2002 - Dreams of the Great Earth Changes
Nov 6, 2005 ... FROM: http://www.aynrand.org/site/News2?JServSessionIdr012= vsq17gk9y1. app7a&page=NewsArticle&id=7612&news_iv_ctrl=1223.
www.greatdreams.com/coleman.html - Similarto A PROPHET IN OUR OWN TIME - DR. JOHN COLEMAN
May 25, 2001 ... Dr Coleman traces the thoughts of the :fatal disease" by the people who are causing this goal based on the Communist Manifesto of 1848.
www.greatdreams.com/illuminati_database.htm - Similarto ILLUMINATI - Dreams of the Great Earth Changes
EXPOSING THE LINKS BETWEEN COMMUNISM, THE ILLUMINATI, AND THE ISLAMIC TERRORISM ... The World Marxist/Communist Movement was ...
www.greatdreams.com/1953-aliens.htm - Similarto Extraterrestrial-Aliens.com - The Alien Presence On Earth.
... ALIEN PRESENCE ON EARTH WHY "STAR WARS", THE HUBBEL SPACE TELESCOPE, AND THE SUDDEN FALL OF COMMUNISM? WHAT IS GOING ON ...
www.greatdreams.com/blog-2012-2/dee-blog223.html
May 22, 2012 ... The Communist Party of China (CPC), also known as the ChineseCommunist Party (CCP), is the founding and ruling political party of the ...
www.greatdreams.com/guarding.htm
On Apr. 17, 1961, about 1,500 Cuban exiles landed in the Bahía de Cochinos ( Bay of Pigs) with the aim of ousting the Communist regime of Fidel CASTRO.
www.greatdreams.com/endtimes.htm - Similarto End Times Prophecy at Fatima - Dreams of the Great Earth Changes
The "errors" from Russia that Our Lady of the Rosary at Fatima mentioned in 1917 were not limited merely to "communism". The godless errors of materialism, ...
www.greatdreams.com/pope-death.htm
In communist Vietnam, many of the eight million Catholics who make up the second-largest community in Asia after the Philippines were following news closely ...
www.greatdreams.com/concentration.htm - Similarto CONCENTRATION CAMPS IN THE U.S.?
If this sounds a lot like George Orwell's 1984, Nicolia Ceaucescu's Romania, Hitler's Third Reich or Gorbachev's or Deng Xiaoping's communist "paradises"-it is ...
www.greatdreams.com/4countries.htm
May 13, 2002 ... Great Monarch liberates her from communism driving them back home. The capital is moved to York and Monarch appoints 3 lords to ...
www.greatdreams.com/political/animal_farm.htm - Similarto ANIMAL FARM AND POLITICS - Dreams of the Great Earth Changes
He served as First Secretary of the Kazakh Communist Party from 1989 to 1991. While previously having atheistic views in the Soviet era, Nazarbayev has ...
www.greatdreams.com/atomic.htm - Similarto ON THE BEACH - IT'S JUST A MOVIE - RIGHT?
The scenario of intelligence agencies protecting the Western world from nuclear annihilation by groups of fascists, communists, corporate criminals, terrorists or ...
www.greatdreams.com/blog-2013-2/dee-blog493.html
May 12, 2013 ... The central tendency of anarchism as a social movement has been represented by anarcho-communism and anarcho-syndicalism, with ...
www.greatdreams.com/political/brzezinski.htm - Similarto Zbigniew Brzezinski - Dreams of the Great Earth Changes
The Polish strike and Hungarian Revolution in 1956 lent some support to Brzezinski's idea that the fundamentally non-communist Eastern Europeans could ...
www.greatdreams.com/sacred/PERGAMON.html
Mar 7, 2015 ... Communism did not get the United States into WW1 or WWII.Communism did not force the United Nations on America. Communism did not .
www.greatdreams.com/blog/dee-blog90.html
Dec 20, 2011 ... His failure to show up for the communist nation's 60th anniversary celebrations last week spurred speculation that his condition was serious.
www.greatdreams.com/sacred/miracle_of_the_roses.htm - Similarto MIRACLE OF THE ROSES - Dreams of the Great Earth Changes
Feb 13, 2005 ... Many believe this is a direct prophecy of the spread of communism. "I shall come to ask for the consecration of Russia to My Immaculate Heart," ...
www.greatdreams.com/greatest.htm - Similarto THE GREATEST PROPHECY - Dreams of the Great Earth Changes
Gorbechev spoke of capitalism and communism (another duality). I felt this was related to "The Cold War." In another dream, a big bird came down, who's eyes ...
www.greatdreams.com/trade_blew_up.htm - Similarto HOW THE GOVERNMENT BLEW UP MANHATTAN - 9-11-2001
Sep 11, 2001 ... Actually, they've installed a "new" form of Communism - right here in AMERICA. Thus, it is too easy to focus on the internal threat and neglect ...
www.greatdreams.com/korean.htm
9, 2008 commemorating the communist state's founding 60 years ago. Kim has been absent from public view since mid-August. (AP Photo/Korean Central News ...
www.greatdreams.com/war/bombs-fell-1975.htm
The event marked the end of the Vietnam War and the start of a transition period leading to the formal reunification of Vietnam under communist rule.
www.greatdreams.com/blog-2014/dee-blog656.html
Mar 22, 2014 ... Todor Hristov Zhivkov was the communist head of state of the People's Republic of Bulgaria (PRB) from March 4, 1954 until November 10, ...
www.greatdreams.com/china-quake-2003.htm - Similarto CHINA EARTHQUAKE - FEBRUARY 24, 2003
Feb 24, 2003 ... The earthquake -- according to Xinhua news agency the deadliest to hit Xinjiang since the Communists took power in 1949 -- rocked the dry ...
www.greatdreams.com/economy/banksters-u-s.htm - Similarto THE BANKSTERS OF THE ROMAN EMPIRE
Joseph McCarthy during the anti-Communist Senate investigations of the 1950s, would later become a member of the John Birch Society and a principle figure ...
www.greatdreams.com/political/cabal3.htm - Similarto CABAL OF CABALA - PART III - Dreams of the Great Earth Changes
May 30, 2004 ... The goal of the Jewish Masonic elite is to establish dictatorial IlluministicCommunism and to enslave all of mankind under the thumb of a ...
www.greatdreams.com/trilateral.htm - Similarto Trilateral Commission
It shows Brzezinski to be a classic CFR man - a globalist more than lenient towardCommunism. He declared that 'National sovereignty is no longer a viable ...
www.greatdreams.com/mind.htm - Similarto THE ULTIMATE DREAM - THE ELECTION AND MIND CONTROL
Nov 26, 2000 ... The Birth of Communism 2. The History Behind The League of the Just (a front for the Illuminati) 3. Karl Marx writes the Communist Manifesto ...
www.greatdreams.com/political/voting-rights.htm - Similarto HISTORY OF THE RIGHT TO VOTE IN THE U.S.
Oct 31, 2000 ... After Julius and Ethel had become active in communism, David Greenglass joined the Young Communist League in 1938. Although David was ...
www.greatdreams.com/blog-2012/dee-blog122.html
Feb 1, 2012 ... The biggest threat to Europe in pre-war times was Communism - it was the great fear of Communism that gave birth to the Fascists and the ...
www.greatdreams.com/blog-2012/dee-blog107.html
Jan 12, 2012 ... The biggest threat to Europe in pre-war times was Communism - it was the great fear of Communism that gave birth to the Fascists and the ...
www.greatdreams.com/belarus.htm - Similarto hopes in belarus - a prophecy -but an attack coming on the us?
Even 25 years after the founding of Solidarity, the trade union movement which eventually toppled Communist rule in Poland, he is regarded still as an iconic ...
www.greatdreams.com/smoke_in_the_catholic_church.htm
Mar 31, 2005 ... Since they worked so closely with the new Pope, the communists felt assured they had a victory even though Benelli didn't become Pope.
www.greatdreams.com/blog-2013-3/dee-blog611.html
Dec 20, 2013 ... When the Khmer Rouge overthrew the government of Cambodia in 1975, and established a Communist “utopia” in its place, its first act was to ...
www.greatdreams.com/china/china-astronauts.htm
President Hu Jintao had spoken to the two astronauts by telephone at the weekend, just days after presiding over a top-level Communist Party meeting that spelt ...
www.greatdreams.com/blog-2013-2/dee-blog538.html
Aug 1, 2013 ... Mikhail Gorbachev, the last Communist leader of the Soviet Union, has acknowledged his Christian faith for the first time, paying a visit to pray .
www.greatdreams.com/blog-2013-2/dee-blog495.html
May 18, 2013 ... I hate you and everything you Democrats stand for, you fuckingcommunists. Fuck you. Rage, rage, rage against the lying right. Damn that felt ...
www.greatdreams.com/blog-2012-3/dee-blog414.html
Dec 30, 2012 ... ... are a part of # communist symbolism and their usage indicates an association with communism, a communist party, or a communist state.
www.greatdreams.com/faking.htm - Similarto Physicists, Scientists, Stompers - Dreams of the Great Earth ...
Politically, he is a Social Democrat, part of the American Non-Communist Left through which the CIA channeled funding from large American foundations such ...
www.greatdreams.com/july-2014.html
Jul 2, 2014 ... Communist China alone does more public information broadcasting in ... has made a valuable report--the rising threat of communism in Latin ...
www.greatdreams.com/blog-2012-2/dee-blog279.html
Aug 30, 2012 ... While working in Hollywood, Rand extended her involvement with free-market and anti-communist activism. She became involved with the ...
www.greatdreams.com/blog-2014/dee-blog651.html - Similarto Dee Finney - Dreams of the Great Earth Changes
Further, the report said, the United States could work with Ho to guide his movement away from Communism. State Department officials, however, expressed ...
www.greatdreams.com/death-calls.htm
Sep 26, 2002 ... ... Mehmet Ali Agca shot at Pope John Paul II in May 1981 and 19 years after then Communist leader Todor Zhivkov invited the latter to visit.
www.greatdreams.com/political/1930-bankruptcy.htm - Similarto Taxpayers Still Paying for USA's "Bankruptcy" in 1930 -
Socialist/Communist order under a new governor for America. This act was instituted and established by transferring and/or placing the Office of the Secretary
www.greatdreams.com/blog-2014-2/dee-blog727.html - Similarto Dee Finney's blog August 10, 2014 page 727 CONSPIRACY AND ...
Aug 10, 2014 ... The red-and-black flag is the symbol of the anarcho-syndicalist and anarcho- communist movements. Black is the traditional color of anarchism, ...
www.greatdreams.com/blog-2012/dee-blog127.html - Similarto Dee Finney's blog - February 6, 2012 page 127 - MARILYN MONROE
Feb 6, 2012 ... Called upon to identify communists he was acquainted with, Miller .... with Americans who were identified by the FBI as communists, such as ...
www.greatdreams.com/blog-2014/dee-blog646.html
Feb 22, 2014 ... The World Marxist/Communist Movement was spawned from Illuminati conspiracies. When Lenin, Trotsky, Stalin and their henchmen seized ...
www.greatdreams.com/amndmnts.htm - Similarto the federalist papers - the war of 1812 - constitutional ...
Feb 26, 2001 ... Eliminating Kennedy's softening position on communism, a threat to a wide variety of American business interests overseas,. Slowing the ...
www.greatdreams.com/blog/dee-blog61.html
The Chinese communist government was very quick to reject this and claimed that only they have the authority to select the next Dalai Lama, despite being an ...
www.greatdreams.com/political/kennedy/twilights-last-gleaming.htm
May 19, 2007 ... We were in Vietnam because of the Communist Threat, now we are in Iraq because of the Terrorist Threat, notice the corollary? Kennedy was ...
www.greatdreams.com/climate/apotheosis.htm - Similarto WHAT IS APOTHEOSIS - Dreams of the Great Earth Changes
So, at last, the communists who piled out of the Berlin Wall and into the environmental movement, who took over Greenpeace so that my friends who funded it ...
www.greatdreams.com/maxwell/Jordan-Maxwell-2010.htm - Similarto Project Camelot | Jordan Maxwell: The Takeover of Planet ...
Let me preface this: In Glendale, California, in 1967 I was researching Communism for a lecture I was going to give and I went to a World Book Encyclopedia ...
www.greatdreams.com/olympdrg.htm - Similarto THE OLYMPICS AND DRUG TESTING
Former East German sports minister Guenter Erbach and the Communist party's top sports official, Rudolf Hellmann, were convicted several months ago by a ...
www.greatdreams.com/sars.htm - Similarto THE TRUTH ABOUT "SARS" - Dreams of the Great Earth Changes
Communist China' a 'most favored' trading partner with America, is politically allied with several American enemies, including those said to possess weapons of ...
www.greatdreams.com/brigid-11-11.htm - Similarto STRUGGLING WITH 11:11 - Dreams of the Great Earth Changes
... critic, such as Halliday and von Sponeck, "a dupe of Saddam Hussein", there is an echo of the apartheid regime calling a young Hain "a dupe of communism".
www.greatdreams.com/trade_page12.htm
Every corrupt and criminal government has done this - they suppress their own people: Nazi Germany, Communist Russia, Mao Tse-Tung, that's why we have ...
www.greatdreams.com/sacred/Opus_Dei.htm - Similarto Opus Dei Grows in U.S. - Dreams of the Great Earth Changes
In the Polish pope, the group found a champion willing to back its harsh stance against abortion, birth control, its crusade against communism, the push for ...
www.greatdreams.com/nwo.htm - Similarto THE NEW WORLD ORDER -WHAT IS IT?
In 1932 William Z. Foster, then National Chairman of the Communist Party, USA, restated point one of the Communist Manifesto; "The abolition of private ...
www.greatdreams.com/blog-2012/dee-blog195.html - Similarto Dee Finney's blog April 11, 2012 page 195 JESUS CULTS
Apr 11, 2012 ... Kodama served as a chief advisor to the Moon's subsidiary Win OverCommunism, an organization that served as a conduit to protect Moon's ...
www.greatdreams.com/bluebeam-project.htm
force the people to accept communism. The same technical way will be used by the United Nations to implement the new world religion and the New World ...
www.greatdreams.com/33drm.htm
Feb 15, 2002 ... "Now, the question is why does one former communist country [Russia] not have the cash, and [China] the other communist country [does] have ...
www.greatdreams.com/blog-2013-3/dee-blog560.html
Sep 18, 2013 ... Despite the staggering food crisis, hermetic North Korea remains one of the world's few remaining hard-line Communist regimes. In Sept.
www.greatdreams.com/blog-2013/dee-blog474.html - Similarto Dee Finney - Dreams of the Great Earth Changes
Mar 25, 2013 ... Around the time of the exile, the United States will be invaded by a united Russian and Chinese army, aided by additional communist forces.
www.greatdreams.com/blog-2013-2/dee-blog521.html
Our allies in France and Italy are now flirting with Communism. We've recognized the permanent Communist regime in East Germany. We've virtually signed, ...
www.greatdreams.com/trade_day6.htm
Sep 11, 2001 ... The United States actively stirred the Moslem world into battle to save the fundamentalist Afghans from the communist unbelievers. With the ...
www.greatdreams.com/prophecy.htm - Similarto PROPHECY LINKS - Dreams of the Great Earth Changes
DO NOT BELIEVE THAT COMMUNISM IS OVER SCROLL TO THE END OF THE PAGE. GORDON MICHAEL SCALLION · The Risks of Prophecy - a discussion ...
www.greatdreams.com/political/false-flag-heneghan.htm
Oct 11, 2008 ... Read the Sorcha report on RED COMMUNIST Chinese Secret Police in America and Chinese takeover of the U.S. banking system: Chinese ...
www.greatdreams.com/blog/dee-blog37.html
Sep 6, 2011 ... Insurrections against Communist rule sprang up particularly in the northern regions of Tigray and Eritrea. In 1989, the Tigrayan Peoples' ...
www.greatdreams.com/blog-2014/dee-blog634.html - Similarto Dee Finney's blog January 18, 2014 page 634 - 1913 - 1929
Jan 18, 2014 ... The communist leader Vladimir Lenin surrendered to the Germans and then led the “reds” in a civil war against the “whites.” In the end, the ...
www.greatdreams.com/2011/2011-event.html - Similarto 2011 EVENT - Dreams of the Great Earth Changes
During all this time a handy bogeyman was created in the Communist fiend. From the McCarthy era in the fifties to the Kennedy fiasco of the Bay of Pigs attempt ...
www.greatdreams.com/war/1715-war.htm
National security and foreign policy by military experts and top investigative journalists, about international defiance (e.g. communist and rogue/terrorist states) to ...
www.greatdreams.com/can.htm - Similarto CANADIAN WARNING SIGNS - Dreams of the Great Earth Changes
Mar 3, 2008 ... I ask him if Communism is going to regain its control. He answers me that though it is deemed to never happen, tortures as those inflicted by the ...
www.greatdreams.com/china/china-attacking-america.htm - Similarto CHINA AT WAR WITH AMERICA - Dreams of the Great Earth Changes
For the first time in decades, the Chinese government has gone so far as to appoint respected professionals who are not members of the Communist party to run ...
www.greatdreams.com/blog-2012/dee-blog156.html
Mar 3, 2012 ... a Communist if Briebart's people now releae it ? T Lee Buyea - Fla.News Service News with Views. Arizona Sheriff Joe:'Probable cause' ...
www.greatdreams.com/masters/portia.htm - Similarto PORTIA - Dreams of the Great Earth Changes
Let the violet flame roll and crackle as I send it forth to consume division and manipulation by those who are the agents of World Communism and the perversion ...
www.greatdreams.com/security.htm
Apr 10, 2000 ... To establish a "cover story" for this research, the CIA funded a propaganda effort designed to convince the world that the Communist Bloc had ...
www.greatdreams.com/blog-2014-2/dee-blog689.html - Similarto Dee Finney's blog June 1, 2014 page 689 ANOTHER REASON TO ...
Jun 1, 2014 ... Communist hardliners staged a coup against Mikhail Gorbachev 20 ... He had just chased Mikhail Gorbachev, the first and last Soviet president, ...
www.greatdreams.com/blog-2012/dee-blog182.html
Mar 25, 2012 ... These events are said to have influenced his position on Communismthroughout his pontificate. Pope Pius XI labeled the failure to protest and ...
www.greatdreams.com/taxes_database.htm - Similarto TAX DATABASE - Dreams of the Great Earth Changes
worrying about tax-cuts or diversions, they should be thinking about kicking ....Communism did not force the United Stales to adopt graduated income tax.
www.greatdreams.com/blog-2014-2/dee-blog680.html
May 17, 2014 ... The Lao Communist government is notoriously secret and most information about the crash came from officials in neighboring Thailand.
www.greatdreams.com/blog-2012-3/dee-blog337.html
Oct 13, 2012 ... The 1961 botched invasion sought to oust communists with the help of anti- Castro Cuban exiles and veiled U.S. support. More than 100 ...
www.greatdreams.com/war/dien_bien_phu.htm - Similarto THE FALL OF DIEN BIEN PHU - May 1954
The French intercepted radio messages which told of units refusing orders, andCommunist prisoners said that they were told to advance or be shot by the ...
www.greatdreams.com/wwiii_database.htm - Similarto WWIII DATABASE - Dreams of the Great Earth Changes
Nov 6, 2005 ... Both Communist and UN forces fought the Korean War largely with surplus World War II weapons, presumably to help keep it from escalating ...
www.greatdreams.com/bilderbergs.htm - Similarto BILDERBERGS AND MUSIC - Dreams of the Great Earth Changes
The capitalist defeat of the communists leaves a glaring hole. But of course the Bilderbergs aren't fools choosing an enemy for the sake of it, they're aiming at ...
www.greatdreams.com/sacred/faith-vs-flight.htm
Jun 6, 2008 ... Currently, professing Christians are suffering and dying for their beliefs in predominantly Muslim and Communist nations. Though most secular ...
www.greatdreams.com/revelation/another_anti_christ.htm - Similarto ANOTHER ANTI-CHRIST? - Dreams of the Great Earth Changes
Mar 1, 2006 ... Also on the selection committee: Jesus Christ, Mohammed, and Buddha (in addition to several others, including the godless Communists Marx ...
www.greatdreams.com/terrorism_database.htm - Similarto TERRORISM - Dreams of the Great Earth Changes
WASHINGTON'S PICNIC EXPOSING THE LINKS BETWEEN COMMUNISM, THE ILLUMINATI, AND THE ISLAMIC TERRORISM. TEXE MARRS SAYS:. FROM: ...
www.greatdreams.com/political/media02.html - Similarto THE CHANGING OF THE GUARD - Part Two: Illuminati Revealed
Jul 27, 2003 ... Based in Europe, it plans a "world order" that will make its earlier attempts, Nazism and Communism, look like picnics. One other detail: these ...
www.greatdreams.com/popes/popes.htm - Similarto Saint Fracis, The Popes, and Crop Circles
Jun 3, 2014 ... Considering the timing, it seems likely that it is related to the October Revolution of 1917, after which Russia turned to "godless" communism.
www.greatdreams.com/mind_control.htm - Similarto MIND CONTROL DATABASE - Dreams of the Great Earth Changes
Apr 26, 2002 ... America cannot be taken over by the New World Order and their socialist/communist agenda, if Americans are armed, (this is the Thesis, ...
www.greatdreams.com/political/cosmic_blast.htm
I heard a male voice say: Black Communism, be careful. Russian election. I saw C-3 - C-2 communism. I then saw the file roster from my AOL Press. It said: .
www.greatdreams.com/disaster-dreams3.htm - Similarto DISASTER DREAMS - PAGE 3 - Dreams of the Great Earth Changes
The United Nations will be a united communist force, stating that they have come into the U.S. to liberate the Americans from an occupying force. This is their ...
www.greatdreams.com/kent.htm
If one is to follow the traditional horizontal line, the far left is made up of communists, socialists and left anarchists. Communists believe that the wealth created by ...
www.greatdreams.com/political/brzezinski-news.htm - Similarto Zbigniew Brzezinski in the news - Dreams of the Great Earth ...
Jun 18, 2008 ... He taught at Harvard before moving to Columbia University in 1961 to head the new Institute on Communist Affairs. In 1958 he became a U.S. ...
www.greatdreams.com/blog-2012/dee-blog104.html
Jan 9, 2012 ... Heavily armed by the West (mainly the United States) and selected for amenability to foreign domination and zealous anti-Communism, ...
www.greatdreams.com/sacred/time_to_flee.htm - Similarto WHEN WILL IT BE TIME TO FLEE
In 1951, Jones began attending communist meetings and rallies in Indianapolis. Jones became flustered with harassment he received during the McCarthy ...
www.greatdreams.com/world_peace_database.htm - Similarto WORLD PEACE - Dreams of the Great Earth Changes
openly assisted Cuba's boss, Fidal Castro, and held leadership positions in Communistfront groups like the World Peace Council.
www.greatdreams.com/trade_day3.htm
Sep 11, 2001 ... Following the outbreak of communist revolutions across Europe in 1848, Frederic Bastiat, a French champion of free enterprise, took note of the ...
www.greatdreams.com/concentration_camp_plans.htm - Similarto CONCENTRATION CAMP PLANS FOR U.S. CITIZENS
Aug 26, 2007 ... On page 166 the first classification listed is rightists and anti-Communistgroups. The first group on Page 167 on Army surveillance lists the ...
www.greatdreams.com/blog-2014/dee-blog672.html - Similarto Dee Finney's blog April 27, 2014 page 672 - YELLOWSTONE PARK ...
Apr 27, 2014 ... The idea at that time was to bring in communist Chinese, and their families, into 8 different states to set up new communities. There was ...
www.greatdreams.com/taipei.htm - Similarto EARTHQUAKE - TAIPEI, TAIWAN - 9-20-99
Sep 20, 1999 ... The order was only the fourth since the Republic of China retreated to Taiwan in 1949 after losing a civil war to communist forces on the ...
www.greatdreams.com/blog/dee-blog80.html
We have to design a path out of and around the Communist style tyranny that even the common man can see forming before his eyes a full blown Police State!
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