If you aren’t willing to say the Pledge of Allegiance with the words “Under God” in it , you just might be a communist
If I’ve said it once, I’ve said it a thousand times, “Seinfeld” has all the answers to life’s perplexities:
(emphasis mine)
Happy
If you can get shoes in any color you want, as long as it’s beige… you might be a Communist.
If your neighbor lives in a mansion and drives an Italian sports car, and you live in a hovel and ride a bike to work, but you think you’re equal because your paychecks are the same… you might be a Communist.
Does anyone have an actual list of the people “hauled before” HUAC and their actual affiliations? (Given that the primary method of HUAC was to call on people who had known connections and demand that they name others, it stands to reason that the majority of people they called “were or had ever been a member of the Communist Party.” However, the notion that it was legitimate to call them up for confessions is absurd.)
The overwhelming majority of the 80,000 or so members of the Communist Party in the 1930s had never believed in or accepted the concept of the overthrow of the U.S. For most, it was simply a political protest group–one which shrank by about 80% of its membership the moment that the U.S.S.R. signed the non-aggression pact with Nazi Germany.
How many had been members of the party for a few months months or a year or two in the 1930s, and had no “red” associations for 10 or 20 years before they were called in?
I also find the “fellow travellers” reference interesting, in that it means nothing more than that a person might, at some time in their life, have been a friend of someone else who had joined the Communist Party or who had, at some time in their life, taken a position that was viewed as “bad” by the extreme Right, regardless of their actual views. While HUAC never went after Steinbeck, he was often cited by “anti-communist” witch hunters for his “red” social views. Arthur Miller was called before HUAC twice, even though his only contact was to have attended a few meetings for writers that were sponsored by a CP-funded organization and none of his works could be remotely considered pro-Communist.
As noted, above, the best way to be identified as a Communist was to have actually spoken to one at some time in your life.
Yes, it was a witchhunt reference. Not that there’s anything wrong with being a witch…
You just give him 50 IQ points or so.
<rimshot>
I don’t know where you’re from, but it certainly was in the US. In 1949, the entire executive committee of the US Communist Party was tried and convicted of sedition, and sentenced to long prison terms and hefty fines. The prosecution introduced no evidence that the executive members were actively planning to overthrow the government by means of force. Rather, they simply interpreted the Party’s declaration of principles as such and used it to infer a conspiracy for seditious activity. Though the convictions were overturned several years later on appeal, in the interim, there was technically nothing stopping the law enforcement and judicial systems from rounding up the rank-and-file members of the Party as well. That wasn’t necessary in practice, because imprisoning the Party leadership was enough to scare the general membership and new converts out of remaining affiliated or joining in the first place. In short, the trials had had their intended effect.
In some other jursdictions, such as Quebec, laws were passed which, while not overtly banning the Communist Party, effectively made public assembly for the purposes of discussing communism illegal. Kind of hard to have a political organization when you’re not allowed to talk to the other members, isn’t it? In yet other (nominally democratic) jurisdictions, certain political parties, including the Communist Party, are altogether banned. I believe this is true for many of the former Soviet-bloc countries.
As others have pointed out, if you speak out about any kind of discrimination, try to organize people to improve their lives, speak out and organize against war, you’re gonna get the tag. It doesn’t matter if you have a red card in your pocket or not.
This is why red-baiting and anti-communist witch hunts are so damaging to a society. People simply have to stop working for social progress under these conditions or risk their lives and careers.
By the way, have you heard that people in the US are generally afraid to speak out against the war on their jobs. Imagine that. In the land of Thomas Paine and Thomas Jefferson.
Shame.
In his 1950s best seller I Led 3 Lives, Herbert Philbrick included an appendix which gave advice on how to distinguish a liberal (Philbrick was politically liberal, and first came into contact with Communists by being active in civil rights efforts in the Boston area in the late 1930s).
It makes for interesting reading for two reasons. First, Philbrick discusses, from first-hand experience, actual habits of Communist organizers of his time with regard to speech, association, etc. Second, he patiently explains to the reader that holding opinions such as that Jim Crow laws are wrong does not make you a Communist. In so doing, he gives a good guide to the prevailing prejudices of his time.
J. Edgar Hoover once issued advice on spotting a Communist. This was quoted in a book called (so nearly as I recall) The Big Brother Book of Lists. His advice mostly focused on spotting people who think they are being followed or otherwise being placed under surveillance. For instance, he said that Communists often stop their cars and look under them as though they are trying to see if they have a tree branch caught under the chassis. This is a technique used to trip up someone who is tailing you in their car.
One might have read Mad Magazine , a “communist pinko rag” being investigate by Hoover. I’ve read some of the concerned letters coming from citizens regarding support of Hoover on it and boy, were those people silly. Mostly grandmothers and boy scout leaders.
My compliments to tommndebb for an insightful post.
To follow up on some other posts: no, it never was illegal to be a Communist. Rather, it was illegal to do pretty much anything while you were one; the FBI successfully maintained a scare for many years that the party in America was well-suited to overthrowing the government, and actively interested in doing the same.
Some indication of the actual threat posed by the party might be gathered from the fact that the General Accounting Office once reported that dues paid by FBI infiltrators were an essential source of the party’s revenue.
I, too, found the “fellow traveller” reference interesting. Accusations of Communist leanings were used as a broad brush with which to smear people with progressive attitudes. In addition to having “associated” (that is known) Communists, one could be tarred as a “fellow traveller” for having such opinions as that lynching should be actively opposed, or that military spending in the country may be excessive; these were, after, all opinions held by Communists.
There were also, I suppose, native Communists who liked rock 'n roll, which may help to account for evangelist Jack Van Impe’s insistence back in the 50s that Elvis Presley was a Communist agent.
During the Korean conflict a California paper–I believe it was the Los Angeles Times–ran an editorial advising that one should not get into an argument with someone if they asked you to sign a petition supporting peace or the U.N.; it was taken for granted that such a person must be a Communist, or at least their dupe, sucker or tool.
Radio comedian John Henry Faulk was blacklisted on the basis of his having spoken at dinners held by progressive organizations. At one of the three dinners cited, the keynote address was given by Eleanor Roosevelt.
Interestingly, while anti-Communist activities ruined the careers (and lives) of a fair number of writers and directors, when Communist hunters in Hollywood actually came up with a prominent on-screen performer who had been a bonafide party member, nothing whatever was done about it. The ex-Communist was Lucille Ball, and she was far too popular–and to valuable–for the industry to wish to persecute her.
The anti-Communist crusade of the 1950s in Hollywood was about money. It began largely as an effort by the International Alliance of Theatrical Stage Employees and Motion Picture Machine Operators to suppress competition from other, more aggressive unions. Studio executives, in turn, saw it as a way to oppose potentially costly union activity generally. Walt Disney, for one, was an active FBI informant, and he appears to have rarely met a person who might cost him more money than he was currently paying who wasn’t, in his opinion, a probable Red. Anti-Communist crusades elsewhere in the country can also be charged with such ulterior motives.
Correction: Lucille Ball was never a member of the Communist Party. At the behest of her grandfather, a diehard socialist, she had registered twice – in 1936 and 1938 – to vote as a Communist.
If you wanted to add floride to the water systems, you were a Communist. This is not an exaggeration of the mind-set at the time. This was a very real issue.
If you defended anyone accused of being a Communist, then you were one too. Not many people spoke up and the fear spread. I credit Edward R. Murrow, a famous and well-respected journalist, for being brave enough to criticize McCarthy. People trusted Morrow’s opinion so much that the “spell” was broken and we could understand what had happened. But the nation has never completely recovered.
I have known three Communists that have felt comfortable enough with me to share their political viewpoints. The things that they had in common – other than political beliefs – were generous hearts, senses of humor and openness.
From Slipster:
There was a much-watched television show by the same name and based on Philbrick’s life. I can remember being spellbound by it as a child.
I thought Simon and Garfunkle already answered this question…