Remnant of "Red Scare" repealed.

[Tiki Tom]

One of the less appealing aspects of the early cold war was the hunt for "reds" hiding under every bed. This included the House Committee on Un-American Activities, McCarthyism, etc. Some called it a "mockery of the Bill of Rights", others were a bit too quick to question a person's patriotism if they raised such concerns. At any rate, apparently vestiges of the "red scare" still exist and one of them is in the process of being dismantled in California:

"Being a communist would no longer be a fireable offense for California government employees under a bill passed Monday by the state Assembly. Lawmakers narrowly approved the bill to repeal part of a law enacted during the Red Scare of the 1940s and '50s when fear that communists were trying to infiltrate and overthrow the U.S. government was rampant. The bill now goes to the Senate. It would eliminate part of the law that allows public employees to be fired for being a member of the Communist Party. Employees could still be fired for being members of organizations they know advocate for overthrowing the government by force or violence."​

http://www.sacbee.com/news/nation-world/article149393519.html

Friendly reminder: This historical topic treads perilously close to the "no politics" dress code around here. Please be appropriately mindful. Bartender: feel free to delete this thread if it starts to get out of hand. Looking forward to Lizzie's comments.

 

[LizzieMaine]

Many such laws trace back to the federal McCarran Act, passed in 1950 over the veto of President Truman. Although it didn't ban the CPUSA outright, it did require all members to register with the federal government, and it also allowed for the detention or removal from Federal employment, without due process, of any individual suspected of "being likely to act upon" proscribed political beliefs. Two years later, the McCarran-Walter Act built on the foundation of the original law to impose political tests on immigrants entering the US, and prevent the movement beyond US borders of American citizens who held proscribed political beliefs. The result, between these federal Acts and their various state-level knockoffs, gave authorities free rein to, basically, lock up or restrict the movements of anyone they wanted -- by the mid-1950s, political prisoners in the US included not just Communists and suspected Communists, but also "communist inspired" civil rights advocates, labor organizers, and supporters of Puerto Rican independence.

Truman, in his veto, denounced the original law as "a mockery of the Bill of Rights," but the Act had sufficient bipartisan support to override. "McCarran" was Democratic senator Patrick McCarran of Nevada, and among those strongly supporting the bill was Maine Republican Margaret Chase Smith, whose much-celebrated "liberal conscience" was nowhere in evidence at this particular moment -- a time when the total membership of the CPUSA was a fraction of what it had been in the 1930s, and a time when the US military and intelligence communities were freely importing unregenerate "ex-Nazis" into the US, with such men as Klaus "The Butcher of Lyon" Barbie on the US payroll. All such being the case, one can legitimately ask exactly who was trying to protect what.

Key elements of the Act have been declared unconstitutional in various cases since the 1960s, and much of it has been repealed as a result of these ruling, while McCarran-Walter was repealed altogether in 1990.

 

[Tiki Tom]

Thanks, Lizzie. I knew I could count on you for a succinct and readable briefing on the subject. (I'm astounded by all the extremely well read and well informed scholars and autodidacts at the Lounge.)

My own interest in the red scare witch hunts is due, in part, to my fascination with the Spanish Civil War. Many Abraham Lincoln Battalion veterans had a hard go of it in later years due to the communist associations that went along with fighting fascists in Spain. (Not all the Abraham Lincoln Battalion members were communist by any means, though certainly a lot were.) One guy I admire, Bernard Knox, wrote an excellent piece about being labeled a "premature anti-fascist" because of his efforts in Spain. The term was an FBI code word for "communist".

http://www.english.illinois.edu/maps/scw/knox.htm

Knox, BTW, was a highly regarded Author, critic, and classical scholar (Yale Professor) who was something of a thinking person's version of Indiana Jones; he led a gallant life filled with ideas and action. OSS dropped him behind enemy lines in WWII. What a fascinating character.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/obi...bituaries/8007546/Professor-Bernard-Knox.html

 

[LizzieMaine]

It wasn't even just people who actually fought in Spain who were suspect. Accusations that you had collected pennies on behalf of Spanish refugee children in 1937 was enough to get you fired from your job in 1950 -- and that's not an exaggeration. It actually happened, on just that slight a bit of "evidence."

The fascist Franco, by the 1950s, was considered a "staunch friend and ally" of the US, which is not surprising given how much money, equipment, and fuel American companies, directly and thru fronts, had funneled his way during his rise to power. The NAM and its various fronts were great friends of "the gallant Christian gentleman" in Madrid. And the Roosevelt Administration itself didn't have clean hands, either -- it banned sales of any resources to the democratically-elected government of Republican Spain, forcing them to turn to the USSR for aid.

 

[BlueTrain]

Most of the time, an accusation is as good as a conviction, although it usually won't get you sent to prison. But under some circumstances, it might be wise to move to a different town.

It doesn't always work, of course, depended on who is being accused and of what. It still boils down to the general belief by most people that, in the complete absence of evidence, someone is well known to be guilty of something, simply because "everybody knows it."

 

[LizzieMaine]

The real lesson, I think, is the extreme ease with which both "history" and "what everybody knows" can be and is manipulated by those with an interest in such manipulation, especially when "history" is largely the product of scholarship funded by politically-aligned think tanks, which often, themselves, receive support from sources desirous that certain conclusions be reached.

There's a reason why so many books on the history of World War II and the runup to that war have been subsidized by the CIA -- the history of Praeger Publishing since 1950, to mention one such firm, is very interesting to examine from that perspective. To quote Mr. Orwell, "Oceania is at war with Eurasia. Oceania has always been at war with Eurasia."

 

[BlueTrain]

Well, I was actually thinking more along the lines of neighborhood gossip, where it counts the most. I doubt anybody ever had to leave New York because of a bad reputation, much less Chicago. But your small town? You have to watch it!

But since I have a relative who recently retired from the CIA, I naturally have to doubt any suspicions cast on that organization. Another family relative is our Middle Eastern expert and is currently living in Kabul (which would be the Greater Middle East, I imagine).

History can be a funny thing. Churchill said history would be kind to him because he intended to write it--and he did, too. Of course, he didn't write all of it. Then, too, so did everyone else who lived long enough. I have a theory about who writes history. At first, it's the generals who write the history. They're the oldest, usually. It's something like 40 or 50 years later that those who were privates get their chance to write a little history. While the generals (and admirals) are writing their histories, the privates are too busy earning a living. But they get their chance, too, in the end.

Another thing about history is that it doesn't all matter to everyone. Much history is totally ignored because it happened a long time ago, it didn't happen to us or it didn't happen here. Or maybe it just doesn't made for a good story even though it effected thousands of people, some still living today. Take for instance, the refugee situation in Europe just after WWII. Ever read anything about it? The stories are there, mostly filed under biographies, but they aren't academic works with fifty pages of footnotes. They're just personal stories.

Another funny thing about history, or I guess it's history, is how the subject matter changes. The number of volumes of books in the library about the actual events of WWII gets smaller, while the number of volumes about child soldiers, women in the armed forces and so on grows. They aren't really histories in the same sense, of course, but they reflect current interests. Either that or what people who go to libraries want to read.

And no, we aren't doomed to repeat history. Sometimes we even improve on things. Germany has invaded France three times, twice successfully.

 

[Fading Fast]

... The number of volumes of books in the library about the actual events of WWII gets smaller, while the number of volumes about child soldiers, women in the armed forces and so on grows. They aren't really histories in the same sense, of course, but they reflect current interests. Either that or what people who go to libraries want to read.....

I've noticed this and have a theory. I think you are right that our culture has shifted to a greater interest in personal stories and less of one about the big-picture / ideological confrontation of WWII or anything for that matter.

Part of that is the cultural shift toward focusing on the individual and part is that the latter - the ideology - is now highly controversial and confrontation (was America a liberator or hegemon...). However, both sides of the political divide care about individual stories of struggles (a soldier who is the 17 year old, only son of a poor farming family in Nebraska who overcomes...can be a gripping WWII book while keeping an arm's length from modern politics), so there is both a wider audience (the left and right) and less negativity around the book.

(I reread my post and think the above is as not-political as it can be, but stills makes [hopefully] a relevant point.)

 

[LizzieMaine]

Well, I was actually thinking more along the lines of neighborhood gossip, where it counts the most. I doubt anybody ever had to leave New York because of a bad reputation, much less Chicago. But your small town? You have to watch it!

You'd be surprised. The New York local of the American Federation of Radio Artists was a festering sinkhole of backstabbing, score-settling, and political retribution in the early 1950s, with the slightest bit of "she read the Daily Worker that one time on the subway in 1943" gossip being used by Professional Patriots in the union to cut the throats of people against whom personal grudges were held. There is probably no time in recent history that brought out the vicious, fascist side of otherwise-respectable Americans than the Red Scare period, and it was at its worst in New York and Los Angeles -- cities where the Hearst press, the most vocal fanner of the panic, was most influential.

 

[BlueTrain]

I agree and I love your expression "Professional Patriots." It's up there with professional veterans.

The thing about personal stories is a reflection that the war itself (WWII, that is) is further and further in the past. So much has happened since then that overrides what happened then, although that is not to say what happened was inconsequential. In some places, you realize, the American Civil War is still current events. And the history of the same is still being written and rewritten--and argued about endlessly. One other thing about history is that if you get far enough away from the event, either geographically or in time, the facts become more pliable. You can say anything you want, almost, with little objection. If, for example, a Southerner says he want to make the country white again, he's simply ignoring the fact that some Southern states were majority black and that the rest had a sizeable black minority. But perhaps he doesn't count slaves, not even at three-fifths.

Your comments also suggest that big cities sometimes have small town characteristics. And it used to be that small towns were rather more city-like than they are thought to be today. When my family moved to the country in 1964, and believe me, it was the country, I was considered a "city boy." I was from a town of about 8,000. But I thought it was a city myself.

 

[LizzieMaine]

Another way of looking at it is that communities within cities can be entirely small-town in the way they relate to each other. To use again the example of New York AFRA, because I've known people personally who were part of it at the time, the community of radio actors -- not stars, but jobbing actors -- in the 1940s and early '50s was very much a small town operating within the context of a big city, both literally -- New York -- and figuratively, the broadcasting business in general. Everybody knew everybody else in the little world that was New York AFRA, and everybody knew everybody else's business. There were close personal friendships -- and there were personal hatreds that manifested in vicious professional rivalries.

When the Red Scare fell into the middle of this "small town" -- which, during the war years, had been strongly pro-aid-to-the USSR and pro-Second Front -- it gave certain opportunists among the membership a chance to flex some muscle against people whom, perhaps, they felt were getting more than their fair share of roles. It brought out some embittered, angry bullies who used so-called "patriotism" as a club to beat fellow AFRAns for the sake of personal gain. Not all the red-baiters were like this -- some were absolutely sincere in believing that, for example, the little Russian-born actress who played Mrs. Nussbaum deserved never to work again because she'd had her name in an ad for Russian war relief in 1944. It's hard to decide who was more contemptible, but in both cases it's a good example of the kind of small-town-in-a-big-city mentality that drove a lot of the red-baiting.

 

[BlueTrain]

I understand what you mean, although that was not what I meant at all. I was referring mainly to the way people tended to lived in the same neighborhoods for generations (if in fact that was what happened). But larger cities have the small town aspect in that they're someone's hometown the same way that the little town of 8,000 where I grew up was my hometown. But to say "for generations" is probably stretching the point. But if a lot of your relatives at a given moment all live not so far away in the big city, that's what I'm getting at.

 

[ChiTownScion]

You'd be surprised. The New York local of the American Federation of Radio Artists was a festering sinkhole of backstabbing, score-settling, and political retribution in the early 1950s, with the slightest bit of "she read the Daily Worker that one time on the subway in 1943" gossip being used by Professional Patriots in the union to cut the throats of people against whom personal grudges were held. There is probably no time in recent history that brought out the vicious, fascist side of otherwise-respectable Americans than the Red Scare period, and it was at its worst in New York and Los Angeles -- cities where the Hearst press, the most vocal fanner of the panic, was most influential.

I have an issue with certain factions of my fraternal organization which has lionized a particular member, Burl Ives. The guy attended my college (I graduated: he didn't.) so I suppose that I should recognize some additional kinship with him. I don't. When called before HUAC he named names (including, reportedly, Pete Seeger and Woody Guthrie) and careers and lives were ruined as a result, while his own career did quite well on the 1950's and later. I'll forgo calling him a rat and further demonizing him here, but I really resent it when others hold him up as some sort of stellar individual worthy of emulation.

 

[LizzieMaine]

I think it's safe to say that there were very few people who "named names" who did so because they sincerely believed they were doing the right thing. Some were rank opportunists like one Mr. Kazan, some were people who were desperate to save their own necks and would see their own sister burn, a la David Greenglass, in order to do it, and some were so bludgeoned and blackjacked and brutalized by the political police of the HUAC that they caved in and did whatever groveling was demanded of them. You can put Edward G. Robinson and Clifford Odets in the latter category, and they both regretted it until the day they died.

 

[Stearmen]

Thanks, Lizzie. I knew I could count on you for a succinct and readable briefing on the subject. (I'm astounded by all the extremely well read and well informed scholars and autodidacts at the Lounge.)

My own interest in the red scare witch hunts is due, in part, to my fascination with the Spanish Civil War. Many Abraham Lincoln Battalion veterans had a hard go of it in later years due to the communist associations that went along with fighting fascists in Spain. (Not all the Abraham Lincoln Battalion members were communist by any means, though certainly a lot were.) One guy I admire, Bernard Knox, wrote an excellent piece about being labeled a "premature anti-fascist" because of his efforts in Spain. The term was an FBI code word for "communist".

http://www.english.illinois.edu/maps/scw/knox.htm

Knox, BTW, was a highly regarded Author, critic, and classical scholar (Yale Professor) who was something of a thinking person's version of Indiana Jones; he led a gallant life filled with ideas and action. OSS dropped him behind enemy lines in WWII. What a fascinating character.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/obi...bituaries/8007546/Professor-Bernard-Knox.html

It wasn't that cut and dried on the American's that fought in Spain. Quite a few went on to have stellar careers fighting for the US in WWII. Albert Baumler, who became an ace flying for the Republicans, went on to fly over China, where he shot down five Japanese planes, thus becoming the first American to shot down planes from all three Axis powers! He later was called up for the Korean War, where he listened into the Russian pilots on the radio, to try and give our pilots an edge. He joked, that he heard the voices of his former Comrades!

 

[BlueTrain]

All of this stuff about the red scare and McCarthy were totally unknown to us who were in grade school in the early 1950s. I think I started grade school in 1952. So in addition to that, I have no memory of the Korean War and I have no idea when I first heard of it. I remember all the business about fallout shelters, though, and assemblies in school (high school) about air raids or something. I remember one very vividly because it was an emergency assembly and it was a "come as you are" thing. All of those in gym, which included me, had to go in our gym clothes. Gym clothes at the time were quite brief, too. I also remember seeing leaflets at the state fair about fallout shelters and civil defense. It is ironic that in all that one hears about guns these days, you never hear civil defense mentioned.

 

[LizzieMaine]

Quite a bit of Red Scare propaganda seeped into the popular culture of the time -- you had things like the alcoholic pathological liar Matt Cvetic becoming a national celebrity with "I Was A Communist For The FBI," a book, movie, and radio series so full of exaggeration, falsehoods, and nonsense that even J. Edgar Hoover had to publicly repudiate him. Or Captain America being resurrected in the comic books in a new ultra-violent form as "Captain America - Commie Smasher!"

Even the Cincinnati Reds baseball team got in on the act, ostentatiously changing their name to "the Redlegs" so as not to offend right-thinking superpatriotic 100 per cent Americans. So while not all kids were aware of what was going on, there were certainly some who grew up thinking that this was actually the normal state of the world, which is arguably much worse than growing up unaware of it all.

"Civil Defense" is no longer the fashionable term. It's now called "Emergency Management and Homeland Security." The WWII-era triangle-in-a-circle CD logo was officially abolished in 2006.

 

[BlueTrain]

One thing I recall was how the Boys Scouts were always being seen as helping out during civil emergencies by doing things like filling sandbags when there was a flood (and there have always been floods) and things like that. I wonder if that is still done. At any rate, civil emergencies are actually rather common. But somehow the word "security" makes me a little nervous. And I'm not too happy when I see things advertised as "operator." I guess it's intended to appeal to the mercenary fantasy in all of us, or at least the men.

 

[MisterCairo]

I remember watching your civil defence announcements on Buffalo, NY tv stations growing up in the 70s and 80s. Along with emergency broadcast system checks. "This was a test. Had this been an actual emergency announcement, ..."

And having no idea what the hell any of it was about, and why Canada didn't have anything similar!

"Civil Defense" is no longer the fashionable term. It's now called "Emergency Management and Homeland Security." The WWII-era triangle-in-a-circle CD logo was officially abolished in 2006.

 

[LizzieMaine]

EBS was a system designed to provide synchronized emergency broadcasts -- it was sort of an ad-hoc network system that wired stations together in relays so that emergency information could cover as wide an area as possible as quickly as possible. All broadcasters had to run an EBS test once a week, and there was an official list of activation and deactivation codes that would be transmitted over the wire services if the system was to be activated for real. These codes were kept in a sealed red envelope in the studio, and that envelope was only to be opened in the event of an actual EBS emergency.

The two-toned alert signal was designed to trigger an automated relay at the next station on the circuit, and broadcast operators were required to note all such signals received in the transmitter log.

EBS was the direct descendent of Conelrad, "CONtrol of ELectromagnetic RADiation," a system which required all radio stations to cease transmissions on their assigned frequencies and shift to rotating broadcasts on 640 or 1240 kc in the event of an air or missile attack, thus making it more difficult for automated signal-triangulation devices to locate targets using local broadcasting signals as beacons. Regular programming would be suspended in favor of emergency information transmitted on the two designated frequencies. Conelrad is why all radios manufactured in the US from the mid-fifties to the early sixties have little Civilian Defense triangles marking 640 and 1240 on the dial.

I've still got a retired Conelrad relay receiver stored out in my garage, as rescued from the cellar of a station where I used to work. It's basically a rack-mounted reciever that will only tune the Conelrad frequencies, with a plug-in relay to switch rapidly between the two. This would be patched into the studio control board to relay the signal from the previous station on the circuit.