Thursday, July 07, 2005

The Reds and Hollywood

Martin Peretz reviews a new book on Hollywood.Here's an interesting fact or two:
There is a predictable irony in the initial origins of government investigative committees gone haywire, like the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC), and of repressive legislation like the Smith Act, later smothered by the Supreme Court. The very idea for HUAC began with Samuel Dickstein, a hack Democratic congressman who happened to be a Communist Party agent and was paid for his chores. But, then, the committee was investigating local bully Nazis who also thought history was on their side and--most important to the Soviet Union--also making trouble for the tiny cohort of Trotskyites who had made some pathetic headway in the trade unions. When the Smith Act came up for renewal, the Communists mobilized their Democratic allies in Congress and the party faithful to assure that the statute would survive so that the Trotskyite enemy might continue to be harassed by the feds.
New Republic