Are You Now, or Have You Ever Been ... ? - May 24, 2010

s Dissent is as American as apple pie. The Founding Fathers even enshrined the idea in the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution. About 150 years after them (and 72 years ago this week), though, the United States Congress panicked, started seeing threats everywhere they looked, and established the House Un-American Activities Committee, also known as HUAC. The men who ran HUAC had an ... interesting idea of what constituted "un-Americanism." Committee member John Rankin (of Mississippi, it must be said) refused to investigate the Ku Klux Klan -- saying it was "an old American institution."  Meanwhile, the Federal Theatre and such long-dead playwrights as Christopher Marlowe and Euripides were seen as imminent threats to the Republic and democracy. Interning American citizens of Japanese descent in prison camps was just fine, but almost any Communist anywhere had to be rooted out (a notable exception being committee member Samuel Dickstein, who was himself on the payroll of the Soviet Union as a spy). HUAC hit its height (or depth) in the 1940s and '50s, when members became convinced that Hollywood was not only a hotbed of Communist activity, but that writers, directors, and actors were sneaking subliminal messages into films and TV shows that were designed to convert Joe and Jane McDoakes into hardcore Reds.  Thanks to HUAC's relentless hounding, the careers and lives of scores of innocent victims were ruined. When Senator Joseph McCarthy's similar smears were finally recognized for the falsehoods they were, HUAC's influence waned -- to the point where, in the '60s, Yippies Jerry Rubin and Abbie Hoffman openly mocked the committee when subpoenaed to appear. HUAC was finally disbanded in 1975, but left a decades-long legacy of ineffectiveness, destroyed lives, and suicides. Suggested Sites... Wikipedia: House Un-American Activities Committee - overview of HUAC and the men who ran it. A Look Back at the Hollywood Blacklist - history of the Hollywood hearings. Third World Traveler: HUAC and the Rise of Anti-Communism - information about the committee and friendly and unfriendly witnesses. Humphrey Bogart: "I'm No Communist" - Bogie takes to the pages of Photoplay to explain that being anti-HUAC didn't make him anti-American. HUAC and Hollywood - a PBS intriduction to HUAC's Hollywood hearings and the havoc they caused.