Posted on 01/21/2014 8:50:27 PM PST by Viennacon
The orchestrated attack on Diana West’s important book, American Betrayal, has been brutal and unseemly, but in one respect at least it has served a useful purpose.
This lone positive angle--counter-intuitive at first glance--is that her iconoclastic Cold War history has sparked a barrage of charges about “McCarthyism” and the senator from Wisconsin who gave his name to a decisive epoch in America’s long death struggle with the Kremlin.
As is well-known, “McCarthyism” was an alleged focus of political evil in the 1950s: accusations of Communist taint, without any factual basis; bogus “lists” of supposed Communists who never existed; failure in the end to produce even one provable Communist or Soviet agent, despite his myriad charges of subversion.
Such is the standard image of “McCarthyism” set forth in all the usual histories and media treatments of the era. Such is the image relied on by the critics of Ms. West to discredit her book and dismiss her as a crackpot and “conspiracy theorist.” By arguing that pro-Red elements in our government exerted baleful influence on US policy to suit the aims of Moscow, it is said, she becomes “McCarthy’s heiress,” reprising the evils of the fifties.
All of which, from my standpoint, has one beneficial feature--though it doesn’t make things less unpleasant for Ms. West. It pushes the issue of McCarthy and McCarthyism to the forefront, where it ought to be, and where it is now possible to view his cases in ways not feasible years ago when the relevant data were not open to the public.
(Excerpt) Read more at breitbart.com ...
And pea-brains like Meryl Streep are STILL going after Disney.
The Hollywood "blacklist" was by anti-commie studio heads, like you said.
Joe McCarthy had absolutely NO power over Hollywood in the 50s
Even then the notion that a republican could tell leftist Hollywood anything is laughable.
Don't forget that Ronald Reagan was a liberal democrat at the time, and once he got a good look at the Reds up close, he switched parties.
The pinkos threatened him, physically.
It makes me wonder just WHY today's stars are roughly 98% hard left.
My theory is that there is either some real "dirt" on them, or they've been threatened otherwise.
Probably some big names were "gay for play" and there is photographic evidence that makes them toe the line, lest they become unbankable.
I’ve read that Fidel has dirt on a number of celebrities who came down to the workers’ paradise for some ‘fun’.
“I always wanted to read her book The Grown Up Male....”
This one?
NEED I MENTION THAT MCCARTHY WAS PROVEN CORRECT!
The so-called Hollywood blacklist wasn't even from a list circulated by McCarthy. It was a private interest group that compiled the list where it was read by programmers like Ed Sullivan. And some of those who were on the list were outraged at being boycotted from bookings on his show. Yet the evidence was there.
It's one thing to claim that you were erroneously on the list. It is quite another to claim that Communists didn't have a radical agenda in play, sometimes in concert with manipulations by the Soviet Union (knowingly or unknowingly).
Hollywood has a blacklist today of conservatives and there are no peeps of outrage from filmmakers, academics, or playwrights.
Such clandestine tricks were employed to pull one over on the general public and investors, not those involved in the productions.
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