"After the indictment of the Ten, the Reds invoked the Fifth Amendment. Instead of proudly admitting their Communist views and affiliations—and facing the consequences of doing so—they denied they were Communists and argued they were being persecuted because of their fight for peace and democracy. They avoided going to jail, but their mendacity was so obvious that they wound up suffering an even more serious political penalty. Thus the Ten denied their own beliefs, lest their enemies be proven correct. When they were called Communists, they countered with the charge of redbaiting—the ultimate sin. The great irony, of course, is that, while they were vociferously denouncing the Hollywood blacklist, they were busy putting their own blacklist into action, working hard to isolate those within their own ranks who showed any signs of ideological wavering. In fact, what one had in Hollywood was a concerted attempt to prevent the airing of any negative views about the Communists or Communism. For an intellectual, it was more dangerous to speak up against Stalinists than to keep silent before HUAC: the latter might lead to a temporary loss of income; the former would once and forever lead to the loss of longtime friends and one’s entire affinity group. “Unfriendly witnesses,” Schwartz notes, “were hailed as heroes of unfettered thought, while those whose testimony reflected a real attempt to understand Communism were defamed as liars.” A snitch meant something to the average American; a Stalinist meant little outside the ranks of the beleaguered group of anti-Stalinists. In her mendacious memoir, Lillian Hellman referred to the 1950s as a “scoundrel time.” Is it not time to look back and gain some judgment about who the real scoundrels were, and to hold them accountable?
Posted on: Mon, 05 Aug 2013 17:17:14 +0000
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