When The House Un-American Activities Committee began investigating the Hollywood communists the investigators were and still are decried as alarmists and anti-Jewish bigots. They are still being excoriated in academia as a right-wing, know nothing, persecutor's of innocent people of talent who were not communists. Sean Penn's father, for example, was a communist who went on the blacklist and had to make his living outside of Hollywood, still writing for the Broadway stage if I recall correctly.
The point is that these communists are held up as martyrs, men who were idealists and who were not in thrall to Stalin. The contrary in many cases is the reality.
The historical result of all this is that it is incredibly difficult today to make the case that anyone, (dare I say the name, Barack Obama?) is a communist. This has the effect of insulating much of the green movement and much of the leadership of the European Union from their communist biographies. I do not think it was an accident that Van Jones was removed from the Obama administration not because he was an acknowledged communist but because he was a "truther."
I believe that it would be illuminating to know if these same individuals cynically followed the Soviet line during the time of the pact because it would demonstrate that they were hardly high-minded idealists but down the line ideological, Soviet, communists.
