![]() But, as Rachel Kranson writes in Ambivalent Embrace (2017), anecdotal evidence suggests that anti-communist investigations at both state and federal level disproportionately focused on Jews. McCarthy’s two sidekicks – Roy Cohn and Gerald Schine – both came from Jewish families, and efforts by McCarthy himself tended to target Protestants, not Jews. Then there was Senator Joseph McCarthy, who, from 1950, gained fame for his accusations of and investigations into communist influence in the United States. For their principles, they were effectively blacklisted. The ten film writers who refused to cooperate with Congress became known as the Hollywood Ten. But this did not deter the authorities: the House Un-American Activities Committee took up the investigation into Soviet propaganda. Wendell Wilkie, an attorney working on behalf of studios, argued that, by “communism,” the senators meant “Judaism”. In the 1950s, America was in the midst of both the Cold War and the Red Scare – a conviction that communism would take over the United States if not stamped out.Īs early as 1941, senators Burton Wheeler and Gerald Nye investigated Hollywood’s role in promoting Soviet propaganda. In all of these ways, the Rosenbergs’ story is as relevant to our times as it was 70 years ago. It is a story in which patriotism and law enforcement tactics were used to thwart justice, and in which power was exploited. The longer version is one of nationalism, deceit, a fractured community, family betrayal, and a bluff by the authorities that went too far.
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