Abolish the Fed & Restore the Gold Standard, Stop Polarization of America(Republican vs. Democrat), Replace the IRS with a Constitutional Tax System, Restore American Financial Responsibility, Make computerized voting Illegal in all 50 states, Keep the internet free and out of Corporate/Government Control, Limit Federal Spending: A Roadmap for Constitutional Recovery, A Nation Reborn, Introduce Legislation to Stop a National ID, Make it illegal to implant RFID chips in human beings, Educate Jurors to the Rule of Law that they Must Follow, Stop Globalization, End the Domestic Police State, The Original American Foreign Policy, Returning Accountability to Public Servants, Abolish the Dept of Education & Restore Excellence to the School System, Recind all Executive Orders that are Unconstitutional, THE CONSTITUTIONAL MILITIA, SLAVERY, & CONTEMPORARY “GUN CONTROL, What if They are ALL Corrupt? and more…
January 20th, 2009 at 6:00 pm
Excerpt from Science of Coercion: Communication Research and Psychological Warfare, 1945-1960 by Christopher Simpson (New York: Oxford University Press, 1996 paperback), pp. 48-51:
Scholars Perfect Psychological Warfare Techniques
by Christopher Simpson
The third expression of psychological warfare themes in Public Opinion Quarterly and similar academic literature during the first years after World War II can be seen in the unusually close liaison that some of the journal’s authors and editors maintained with clandestine psychological warfare projects at the CIA, the armed services, and the Department of State. This can be found in both manifest and veiled form in many articles appearing in the journal, and in the composition of POQ’s editorial board. Hans Speier’s emergence as a prominent “private” advocate of expanded psychological warfare shortly after his work with Frank Wisner at the Occupied Areas Division at the State Department, discussed previously, is one example of an informal link between a prominent POQ author and the government’s clandestine warfare programs.
This phenomenon became considerably more widespread, however, though rarely easy to identify. A good example of latent linkages can be seen in Frederick W. Williams’ 1945 article “Regional Attitudes on International Cooperation.”31 On a manifest level, Williams’ study simply reports data gathered by the American Institute of Public Opinion and the Office of Public Opinion Research at Princeton during the winter of 1944-45 concerning popular attitudes on the U.S. role in international affairs, broken out by geographic region of the country. Williams uses the data to strongly advocate “making the United States more international-minded,” as POQ described it.32
In the decades since the article first appeared, it has become clear that Williams’ data had been collected in an ongoing clandestine intelligence program underwritten by Listerine heir Gerard Lambert on behalf of the Roosevelt administration. The U.S. Congress had in those years barred the expenditure of government funds on most types of attitude surveys of U.S. voters, arguing that it was the Congress’ job under the Constitution to represent “public opinion.” Congress’ concern was in part political, because FDR used rival sources of information on public opinion to advance controversial policies, not least of which was the president’s drive toward an “internationalist” foreign policy. Despite the congressional strictures, the White House hired Hadley Cantril and Lloyd Free for “government intelligence work,” as Jean Converse puts it, including clandestine intelligence collection abroad and public opinion surveys in the United States. Cantril and Free in turn engaged Frederick Williams and the American Institute of Public Opinion as field staff for research on behalf of the administration.33
Meanwhile, Public Opinion Quarterly’s board of editors included a substantial number of men who were deeply involved in U.S. government psychological warfare research or operations, several of whom were largely dependent on government funding for their livelihood. The journal’s editorial advisory board during the late 1940s, for example, was made up of twenty-five to thirty individuals noted for their contributions to public opinion studies and mass communication research. Among those on the board with readily identifiable dependencies on government psychological warfare contracting were Hadley Cantril, Harold Lasswell, Paul Lazarsfeld, and Rensis Likert, whose role as government contractors are documented in Chapters 5, 6, 7, and 8 of this study. They were joined on the POQ board by DeWitt Poole, who later became president of the CIA’s largest single propaganda effort of the era, the National Committee for a Free Europe.34 Another prominent board member was CBS executive Frank Stanton, also a longtime director of both Radio Free Europe and the Free Europe Fund, a CIA-financed organization established to conduct political advertising campaigns in the United States and to launder CIA funds destined for Poole’s National Committee for a Free Europe.35 The journal’s editor during 1946 and 1947 was Lloyd Free, a wartime secret agent on behalf of the Roosevelt administration who some years later was destined to share a million-dollar CIA research grant with Hadley Cantril.36
This pattern appears to have been repeated at several other important academic journals of sociology and social psychology of the era, although quantitative studies of their content remain to be done. The American Sociological Review (ASR), published by the American Sociological Society, overlapped so frequently in its officers and editorial panels with those of Public Opinion Quarterly and its publisher, the American Association for Public Opinion Research, that board members sometimes joked that they were unsure which meetings they were attending.37 While ASR published articles about a considerably broader range of sociological subjects than did POQ, the ASR articles and book reviews concerning communication remained confined to a group of fewer than a dozen authors who were simultaneously the dominant voices in POQ. The range of views concerning communication and its role in society remained similarly circumscribed.
Further, an informal comparison of articles published during the 1950s concerning mass communication and public opinion in POQ and the prestigious American Journal of Sociology (AJS) shows that its articles in this field were just as rooted in psychological warfare contracts as were those appearing in POQ. The 1949-50 volume of AJS, for example, featured eight articles on various aspects of mass communication and public opinion. At least four of these stemmed directly or indirectly from ongoing psychological warfare projects, including work by Hans Speier and Herbert Goldhamer (both of RAND Corp.), Samuel Stouffer (from the American Soldier project), and Leo Lowenthal (then the director of research for the Voice of America, whose political odyssey is discussed in Chapter 6).38
In sum, the data show that Public Opinion Quarterly — and perhaps other contemporary academic journals as well — exhibited at least three important characteristics that linked the publication with the U.S. government’s psychological warfare effort during the first decade after World War II. First, POQ became an important advocate for U.S. propaganda and psychological warfare projects of the period, frequently publishing case studies, research reports, and polemics in favor of expanded psychological operations. Second and more subtly, many POQ articles articulated U.S. propaganda themes on topics other than psychological warfare itself. Examples include the magazine’s editorial line on U.S.-Soviet relations and on the Italian election of 1948.
Finally, data suggest that some members of the journal’s editorial board and certain of the authors maintained an unusually close liaison with the clandestine propaganda and intelligence operations of the day. The traces of these relationships can be found in several articles mentioned in this chapter and in the composition of POQ’s editorial board, at least one member of which — POQ’s founder DeWitt Poole — was a full-time executive of a major propaganda project organized and financed by the CIA.
This influence over the editorial board and editorial content of the field’s most prestigious academic journal was only a symptom of a deeper and more organic bond that is discussed in the next chapter. Money became one of the most important links between the emerging field of mass communication studies and U.S. military, intelligence, and propaganda agencies. Precise economic figures cannot be determined because of the lack of consistent reporting from the government, the continued classification of some projects, and the loss of data over the years. Even so, the overall trend is clear.
“The primary nexus between government and social science is an economic one,” write Albert Biderman and Elisabeth Crawford of the Bureau of Social Science Research. It is “so pervasive as to make any crisis of relations with the government a crisis for social science as a whole.”39
31. Frederick W. Williams, “Regional Attitudes on International Cooperation,” 9, no.1 (Spring 1945): 38-50.
33. Jean Converse, Survey Research in the United States (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1987), pp. 152-54, 165. Converse also notes an earlier example of the role of these confidential surveys in shaping the president’s highly controversial strategy for promoting U.S. support for England in the years leading up to Pearl Harbor.
34. For background on Poole, see Who Was Who, Vol. 3, p. 692; Sig Mickelson, America’s Other Voice: The Story of Radio Free Europe and Radio Liberty (New York: Praeger, 1983), pp. 24, 41, 60; and Christopher Simpson, Blowback (New York: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1988), pp. 134, 217-34 passim. See also Harwood Childs, “The First Editor Looks Back,” 21, no.1 (Spring 1957): 7, for Child’s recollections on Poole’s role in the founding of Public Opinion Quarterly.
35. For source material on Stanton’s role with Radio Free Europe, see Mickelson, America’s Other Voice, p. 124; and U.S. General Accounting Office, U.S. Government Monies Provided to Radio Free Europe and Radio Liberty, report no.173239, May 25, 1972, p. 79.
36. On Free’s wartime career, see Converse, Survey Research in the United States, pp. 152-54; on his Central Intelligence Agency grant, see John Crewdson and Joseph Treaster, “Worldwide Propaganda Network Built by CIA,” New York Times, December 26, 1977.
37. Association officers or editorial panel members who served with both groups included Samuel Stouffer, John W. Riley, and Leonard Cottrell.
38. Herbert Goldhamer, “Public Opinion and Personality” (p. 346), Hans Speier, “Historical Development of Public Opinion” (p. 376), Samuel Stouffer, “Some Observations on Study Design” (p. 355), and Leo Lowenthal, “Historical Perspectives of Popular Culture” (p. 323); each in American Journal of Sociology 56, no.1 (January 1950). Lowenthal specifically cites his Voice of America work in support of his thesis; see p. 324.
39. Albert Biderman and Elisabeth Crawford, Political Economics of Social Research: The Case of Sociology (Springfield VA: Clearinghouse for Federal Scientific and Technological Information, 1968), p. 5.
Christopher Simpson is an assistant professor at the School of Communication at American University.
COMMUNIST PSYCHOLOGICAL WARFARE (BRAINWASHING)
Consultation with
EDWARD HUNTER
AUTHOR AND FOREIGN CORRESPONDENT
COMMITTEE ON UN-AMERICAN ACTIVITIES
HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES, EIGHTY-FIFTH CONGRESS
SECOND SESSION
MARCH 13, 1958
Printed for the use of the Committee on Un-American Activities
United States Government Printing Office
Washington 1958
This document is copied from the Congressional record. The introductory information about the Congressional Committee has been placed at the end of this page.
See also Brainwashing and “Education Reform”
Home
SYNOPSIS
Communist psychological warfare is now winning such extensive victories in the United States that the Red bloc will not need to employ direct military force against us in order to win the total war, which they are waging, with this country the principal target. Edward Hunter, American expert on Communist brainwashing, warned in a consultation with the staff of the Committee on Un-American Activities.
Mr. Hunter, whose career as a foreign correspondent, author, editor, world traveler, and specialist in propaganda warfare, qualifies him as an authority on Communist propaganda techniques, stated:
“I spent 30 years, a little bit more perhaps, in countries under various forms of Communist pressure and attack. What I am witnessing in America is no different from what I saw in those other countries. I am often referred to as someone who has made phenomenal predictions that proved correct on things to come. Actually, I have never made a prediction as such in my life. I have only predicted in the manner that one predicts the total of 4 after seeing the figures 2 plus 2.
“I have been watching developments under communism in other parts of the world, and now I see exactly the same developments here in America.”
These developments, he continued, “include, first of all, the penetration of our leadership circles by a softening up and creating a defeatist state of mind. This includes penetration of our educational circles by a similar state of mind, in addition to one other thing—the long-range perspective of the professor who is above anything that is happening here and now, and considers himself as an objective spectator in a long, long vista of history.
“I see, primarily, as part of this softening up process in America, the liquidation of our attitudes on what we used to recognize as right and wrong, what we used to accept as absolute moral standards. We now confuse moral standards with the sophistication of dialectical materialism, with a Communist crackpot Communist crackpot theology which teaches that everything changes, and that what is right or wrong, good or bad, changes as well. So nothing they say is really good or bad. There is no such thing as truth or a lie; and any belief we actually held was simply your being unsophisticated. They don’t say this in so many words, except to those who are already indoctrinated in communism.
“What they do say to the rest of us is to be objective; and then they twist that word ‘objective’ into meaning what they mean by dialectical materialism.”
“War has changed its form,” Mr. Hunter declared. “The Communists have discovered that a man killed by a bullet is useless. He can dig no coal. They have discovered that a demolished city is useless. Its mills produce no cloth. The objective of Communist warfare is to capture intact the minds of the people and their possessions, so they can be put to use. This is the modern conception of slavery that puts all the others in the kindergarten age.
“The United States is the main battlefield in this Red war. I mean specifically the people and the soil and the resources of the United States.
“It should be obvious to anyone who has observed the so-called cold war that the United States is its principal target. We need only read what the Communists themselves say, but we refuse to do so, exactly as we could not believe that Hitler meant what he said in Mein Kampf.
“The first battles in this total war have already been won by the forces of international communism in the United States. These victories are identical to those they have won in every country which they have ultimately taken over. They have succeeded in softening up a large element of the American population, particularly among those to whom we look for guidance, our so-called intellectuals and our so-called liberal circles. They have succeeded in making the United States think and talk of a coexistence period, as if that were an end in itself; while in other parts of the world, as in India, the Reds frankly explain that this coexistence is merely intended to give the Americans an easy way to choose their road toward communism.
“This is strategy. The Kremlin is merely giving the United States a choice in surrendering by voluntary change of attitude, to avoid more destructive ways of surrender. Unfortunately, in the United States, large elements, mainly among our non-Communist population, have been softened up into believing that if we can just stall on this situation, it will take care of itself. The Reds have succeeded in inducing business communities to look to Soviet trade as a means of restoring prosperity. Large business elements, with all their financial and other resources, are now being used to help the Communist objective of softening up America for recognition and acceptance of Red China, for instance.”
The Communists are being abetted in their brainwashing program in the United States, Mr. Hunter declared, by the collapse of traditional American ideals of self-reliance and individual integrity.
“The Communists have been in operation for a full generation, taking strategic advantage of the American principles, exploiting the best sides in our characters as vulnerabilities, and succeeding for a generation in changing the characteristics of Americans. I remember when I was a young man, every personnel department was looking for leadership qualities. What was sought was a man’s capacity as an individual to achieve new things. Today that is not even considered by personnel departments in their employment policies. They ask, instead, if the man ‘gets along’ with everybody. They do not ask what is his individuality; they ask how he conforms. When we raise a young man to believe that at all costs he must get on with everyone, we have put him into a state of mind that almost guarantees, if he falls into the hands of an enemy such as the Communists, that he will react as he had been raised, to try ‘to get on,’ because he must not be ‘antisocial.’
“Being ‘antisocial’ has become the cardinal sin in our society. We have to again go back to characteristics of ours which made us, as individuals, say that what is right is right, and whether or not it is antisocial, makes no difference. The young man who broadcast for the Red Chinese was simply ‘getting along’ as he had been taught to do by our educators.”
As an example of the success the Communists are achieving, Mr. Hunter cited statistics on American prisoners of war in Korea.
“Never before in history had so many captured Americans gone to the aid of the enemy. John McCain?
“For 2 years the services studied the records of the prisoners. What they found was not pretty.
MaximusPublius
Copyright 2009 Judson Rainey
All Rights Reserved
TM
THE SOVEREIGN CITIZEN’S HANDBOOK
Synopsis
Chapter 14
“A total of 7,190 Americans were captured. Of these, 6,656 were Army troops, 263 were airmen, 231 Marines, 40 Navy men.
“In every war in American history some men have managed to escape. Korea was the exception.
“Roughly 1 of every 3 American prisoners collaborated with the Communists in some way, either as informants or as propagandists.
“In the 20 prison camps, 2, 730 of the 7,190 Americans died, the highest morality rate among prisoners in United States history. Many of them died unnecessarily. They either did not know how to take care of themselves of they just lay down and quit. Some sick or wounded died of malnutrition abandoned by their comrades.
“Discipline among Americans was almost nonexistent. It was a case of dog eat dog for food, cigarettes, blankets, clothes.
“For the first time in history, Americans — 21 of them — swallowed the enemy’s propaganda line and declined to return to their own people.”
Mr. Hunter declared that in the struggle with the Soviet Union, “we are losing so fast that unless we put a very drastic end to it, the question of who is winning will be academic in a decade.”
“People at lectures and elsewhere,” he declared, “frequently ask that of me, as if begging me to say that we are winning. I wish I could, but one only has to think of the position of the United States at the end of the war and compare it to now. We only have to look at the map of the world as it was when signed the peace on the battleship Missouri and compare it to the map now. Great areas with enormous populations have fallen into the hands of the Reds, not through any approximation to the democratic process, but through sheer power pressures, by psychological warfare.”
Even an ultimate superiority in military weapons may not be sufficient to guarantee the survival of the United States, Mr. Hunter cautioned.
“In Korea, we had atomic weapons, but lost the war and were unable to use those weapons because of a political and psychological climate created by the Communists. The Kremlin today is fighting total war, and this means total, not with weapons of physical destruction alone, but mental destruction, too. The new weapons are for conquest intact, of peoples and cities. The future Pearl Harbor sputnik will be used if the situation demands it. But not unless the Kremlin has first succeeded in conquering the character and minds of a large enough element of the American people so that it will be fitting itself into the desires and needs of the Communist apparatus, no matter whether they think of themselves as Red or anti-Communist.”
Mr. Hunter continued: “The most deadly misconception of all, that requires a softening up in our thinking before we can make it, is the idea that there are different kinds of communism, and that besides international communism there is something called national communism, which fundamentally differs. There is nothing of the sort. We are again interpreting, on the basis of wishful thinking, what the Communists themselves are plainly saying. We base this national communism conception on Titoism. Tito at no time disowned or expressed doubt in any of the fundamental tenets of communism, and he is today expending all the time he can in trying to tell the world that he believes in communism, intends Communist objectives to win out in the long run all over the world. Communism in this, too, has been able, as always, to get the help it needs from the non-Communist and principally the anti-Communist world.
“Each time there has been a crisis in Soviet Russia, it could depend on the outside world for help. Today, under the theory that there are different forms of communism, and some Communist forms are not really Communist, or are less Communist than others, we are giving through aid programs and such propaganda assists as so-called exchange scholarships, the help and sustenance that these Communist countries require to survive. I have heard that under certain technical requirements of the law, completely fantastic statements have come from the White House and the State Department that communism in Yugoslavia really isn’t communism any more, and that communism in Poland is not real communism. I thought we had learned our lesson in China. We said that the communism of China, the communism of Mao Tse-tung was not really communism. We said it was not the communism of Moscow. Mao Tse-tung was saying it was the same communism, exactly as Tito says that the Communist ideology is basically the same everywhere, and that the objective for a Communist world is identical.”
COMMUNIST PSYCHOLOGICAL WARFARE
(BRAINWASHING)
Tuesday, March 13, 1958
United States House of Representatives,
Committee on Un-American Activities
Washington, D. C.
CONSULTATION
The following consultation with Edward Hunter, author and foreign correspondent, was held at 10 a.m., March 13, 1958, in room 226, Old House Office Building, Washington, D. C., pursuant to the authorization of the Committee on Un-American Activities composed of:
Francis E. Walter, Pennsylvania, Chairman
Morgan M. Moulder, Missouri Bernard W. Kearney, New York
Clyde Doyle, California Donald L. Jackson, California
Edwin E. Willis, Louisiana Gordon H. Scherer, Ohio
William M. Tuck, Virginia Robert J. McIntosh, Michigan
Staff members present: Richard Arens, staff director, and William F. Heimlich, consultant.
MR. ARENS: The session today is the first in a series of consultations on the subject of the Communist psychological warfare which the Committee on Un-American Activities has inaugurated.
We are pleased to welcome to the consultation today Mr. Edward Hunter, whose distinguished career as foreign correspondent, author, editor, world traveler, and specialist in psychological warfare eminently qualifies him to speak authoritatively on the subject at hand.
MR. ARENS: How would you characterize the Communist Party in the United States?
MR. HUNTER: It is superficially a joke; but behind the façade are the real Communist operators. They know exactly what they are doing, and they adapt exactly what they are doing to the requirements and strategy of world communism. The Communist Party of America is simply one of the fingers on the two hands of world communism, and operates just as obediently to the mind of communism.
We are again engaging in doubletalk when we talk of the Communist “Party.” There is no such thing as a Communist Party, if by party we mean what our dictionaries call a party. It is a communist conspiracy, a Communist psychological warfare organization. The Communists derive their strength in America from their unity with world communism, and from their ability both in clandestine and overt circles to pull the strings for the non-Communists alone. Communists have never been able to achieve anything without a front. The communism that wins is always the communism that makes the non-Communist its ally; by non-Communist I don’t necessarily mean fellow travelers. I mean non-Communists who allow themselves to be trapped by Communist strategy. We see that operating today in official and business circles, which are essentially anti-Communist.
The business circles that do so have the false hope that there will be tremendous trade available, that the entire automobile industry of America will find great new markets in Red China, and that two families of nations, Communist and non-communist, can work together. That is merely a restoration under different terminology of what was so disastrous to us at the end of World War II when we were told that Mao Tse-tung and the Communists of China were not really Communists, but only agrarian reformers, sort of Chinese New Dealers, who thought and reacted the same as we.
MR. ARENS: On the basis of your background and experience, please tell us what part of this total warfare is psychological?
MR. HUNTER: Since man began, he has tried to influence other men or women to his way of thinking. There have always been these forms of pressure to change attitudes. Atrocities were the simplest changes through which people were forced in the old days to change their minds. Often they didn’t change their minds, but acted as if they did, which had the same result, and, as time went on, the new thoughts often actually came to be believed. There has been a remarkable difference developing in the last 30 years or so, which makes this as different from modern psychological warfare as the airplane is from the canon; it merely brings a shell a longer distance before dropping it somewhere. That is sheer sophism. The moment we discovered how to rise and remain above the earth, we had achieved something fundamentally new. It was no longer a cannon. It was an airplane. The same is true with modern psychological warfare. We discovered in the past 30 years a technique to influence, by clinical, hospital procedures, the thinking processes of human beings.
(The basis for the modern psychological warfare, which makes it different from whatever was done in the past, are the findings of the Russian physiologist, Pavlov. He is not a Communist. He had completed his most important discoveries before the Communists took power. His first discovery was the effectiveness of using a living animal in experiments, rather than a dead animal. His second great discovery was that the instincts of an animal, that we call reflexes, were of two kinds. One was the reflexes which the animal was born with, its unconditioned reflexes. The other was its conditioned reflexes, which man can train into the animal. Most of us have heard of Pavlov’s experiments with dogs and lights. He first provided a bowl of food and turned on a light of a certain color, then an empty bowl and turned on a different colored light. After he had done this a number of times, he turned on the light that accompanied the food, but presented an empty bowl to the animal, and the dog deposited just as much saliva as when the bowl was full. When he presented a bowlful of food with the wrong light, the animal did not eat. After he switched the lights and bowls of food, the animal became neurotic, barked, was driven into a state, which among human beings we call insanity.) —————————————————————————————————————————————–
When the Communist hierarchy in Moscow discovered that it was unable to persuade people willingly to follow communism, when they found that they could not create what they wanted, the “new Soviet man” in which human nature would be changed, they turned to Pavlov and his experiments. They considered people the same as animals anyway, and refused to recognize the role of reason or divinity in a human being. They took over the Pavlovian experiments on animals and extended them to people. They did so with the objective of changing human nature and creating a “new Soviet man.” People, they anticipated, would react voluntarily under Pavlovian pressures, in the way the dog does, to Communist orders, exactly as ants do in their collectivized society.
The Alien Registration Act passed by Congress on 29th June, 1940, made it illegal for anyone in the United States to advocate, abet, or teach the desirability of overthrowing the government. The law also required all alien residents in the United States over 14 years of age to file a comprehensive statement of their personal and occupational status and a record of their political beliefs. Within four months a total of 4,741,971 aliens had been registered.
The main objective of the Alien Registration Act was to undermine the American Communist Party and other left-wing political groups in the United States. It was decided that the House of Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC), that had been set up by Congress under Martin Dies in 1938 to investigate people suspected of Nazi sympathic, unpatriotic behavior, would be the best vehicle to discover if people were trying to overthrow the government.
In 1947 the House of Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC), chaired by J. Parnell Thomas, began an investigation into the Hollywood Motion Picture Industry. The HUAC interviewed 41 people who were working in Hollywood. These people attended voluntarily and became known as “friendly witnesses”. During their interviews they named nineteen people who they accused of holding left-wing views.
One of those named, Bertolt Brecht, a playwright, gave evidence and then left for East Germany. Ten others: Herbert Biberman, Lester Cole, Albert Maltz, Adrian Scott, Samuel Ornitz,, Dalton Trumbo, Edward Dmytryk, Ring Lardner Jr., John Howard Lawson and Alvah Bessie refused to answer any questions.
Known as the Hollywood Ten, they claimed that the 1st Amendment of the United States Constitution gave them the right to do this. The House of Un-American Activities Committee and the courts during appeals disagreed and they all were found guilty of contempt of congress and each was sentenced to between six and twelve months in prison.
Larry Parks was the only actor in the original nineteen people named. He was also the only person on the list who the average moviegoer would have known. Parks agreed to give evidence to the HUAC and admitted that he had joined the Communist Party in 1941 but left it four years later. When asked for the names of fellow members, Parks replied: “I would prefer, if you would allow me, not to mention other people’s names. Don’t present me with the choice of either being in contempt of this Committee and going to jail or forcing me to really crawl through the mud to be an informer.”
The House of Un-American Activities Committee insisted that Parks answered all the questions asked. The HUAC had a private session and two days later it was leaked to the newspapers that Parks had named names. Leo Townsend, Isobel Lennart, Roy Huggins, Richard Collins, Lee J. Cobb, Budd Schulberg and Elia Kazan, afraid they would go to prison, were also willing to name people who had been members of left-wing groups.
In June, 1950, three former FBI agents and a right-wing television producer, Vincent Harnett, published Red Channels, a pamphlet listing the names of 151 writers, directors and performers who they claimed had been members of subversive organisations before the Second World War but had not so far been blacklisted. The names had been compiled from FBI files and a detailed analysis of the Daily Worker, a newspaper published by the American Communist Party.
A free copy of Red Channels was sent to those involved in employing people in the entertainment industry. All those people named in the pamphlet were blacklisted until they appeared in front of the House of Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC) and convinced its members they had completely renounced their radical past.
Edward Dmytryk, one of the original Hollywood Ten, had financial problems as a result of divorcing his wife. Faced with having to sell his plane and encouraged by his new wife, Dmytryk decided to try to get his name removed from the blacklist. On 25th April, 1951, Dmytryk appeared before the House of Un-American Activities Committee again. This time he answered all their questions including the naming of twenty-six former members of left-wing groups.
Dmytryk also revealed how people such as John Howard Lawson, Adrian Scott and Albert Maltz had put him under pressure to make sure his films expressed the views of the Communist Party. This was particularly damaging to those members of the original Hollywood Ten who were at that time involved in court cases with their previous employers.
If people refused to name names when called up to appear before the HUAC, they were added to a blacklist that had been drawn up by the Hollywood film studios. Over 320 people were placed on this list that stopped them from working in the entertainment industry. This included Larry Adler, Stella Adler, Leonard Bernstein, Marc Blitzstein, Joseph Bromberg, Charlie Chaplin, Aaron Copland, Hanns Eisler, Carl Foreman, John Garfield, Howard Da Silva, Dashiell Hammett, E. Y. Harburg, Lillian Hellman, Burl Ives, Arthur Miller, Dorothy Parker, Philip Loeb, Joseph Losey, Anne Revere, Pete Seeger, Gale Sondergaard, Louis Untermeyer, Josh White, Clifford Odets, Michael Wilson, Paul Jarrico, Jeff Corey, John Randolph, Canada Lee, Orson Welles, Paul Green, Sidney Kingsley, Paul Robeson, Richard Wright and Abraham Polonsky.
It was now decided to use the Alien Registration Act against the American Communist Party. Leaders of the party were arrested and in October, 1949, after a nine month trial, eleven members were convicted of violating the act. Over the next two years another 46 members were arrested and charged with advocating the overthrow of the government. Other high profile spy cases at the time involving Alger Hiss, Julius Rosenberg and Ethel Rosenberg, helped to create a deep fear in the United States that a communist conspiracy was taking place. ——————————————————————————————————————
On 9th February, 1950, Joseph McCarthy, a senator from Wisconsin, made a speech claiming to have a list of 57 people in the State Department known to be members of the American Communist Party. The list of names was not a secret and had been in fact published by the Secretary of State in 1946. These people had been identified during a preliminary screening of 3,000 federal employees. Some had been communists but others had been fascists, alcoholics and sexual deviants. If screened, McCarthy’s own drink problems and sexual preferences would have resulted in him being put on the list.
McCarthy also began receiving information from his friend, J. Edgar Hoover, head of the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI). William Sullivan, one of Hoover’s agents, later admitted that: “We were the ones who made the McCarthy hearings possible. We fed McCarthy all the material he was using.” ————————————————————————————————————
With the war going badly in Korea and communist advances in Eastern Europe and in China, the American public were genuinely frightened about the possibilities of internal subversion. McCarthy, was made chairman of the Government Committee on Operations of the Senate, and this gave him the opportunity to investigate the possibility of communist subversion.
For the next two years McCarthy’s committee investigated various government departments and questioned a large number of people about their political past. Some lost their jobs after they admitted they had been members of the Communist Party. McCarthy made it clear to the witnesses that the only way of showing that they had abandoned their left-wing views was by naming other members of the party.
This witch-hunt and anti-communist hysteria became known as McCarthyism. Some left-wing artists and intellectuals were unwilling to live in this type of society and people such as Joseph Losey, Richard Wright, Ollie Harrington, James Baldwin, Herbert Biberman, Lester Cole and Chester Himes went to live and work in Europe.
At first Joseph McCarthy mainly targeted Democrats associated with the New Deal policies of the 1930s. Harry S. Truman and members of his Democratic administration such as George Marshall and Dean Acheson, were accused of being soft on communism. Truman was portrayed as a dangerous liberal and McCarthy’s campaign helped the Republican candidate, Dwight Eisenhower, win the presidential election in 1952.
After what had happened to McCarthy’s opponents in the 1950 elections, most politicians were unwilling to criticize him in the Senate. As the Boston Post pointed out: “Attacking him is this state is regarded as a certain method of committing suicide.” One notable exception was William Benton, the owner of Encyclopaedia Britannica, and a senator from Connecticut. McCarthy and his supporters immediately began smearing Benton. It was claimed that while Assistant Secretary of State, he had protected known communists and that he had been responsible for the purchase and display of “lewd art works”. Benton, who was also accused of being disloyal by Joseph McCarthy for having much of his company’s work printed in England, was defeated in the 1952 elections.
In 1952 McCarthy appointed Roy Cohn as the chief counsel to the Government Committee on Operations of the Senate. Cohn had been recommended by J. Edgar Hoover, who had been impressed by his involvement in the prosecution of Julius Rosenberg and Ethel Rosenberg. Soon after Cohn was appointed, he recruited his best friend, David Schine, to become his chief consultant.
McCarthy’s next target was what he believed were anti-American books in libraries. His researchers looked into the Overseas Library Program and discovered 30,000 books by “communists, pro-communists, former communists and anti anti-communists.” After the publication of this list, these books were removed from the library shelves.
For some time opponents of Joseph McCarthy had been accumulating evidence concerning his homosexual activities. Several members of his staff, including Roy Cohn and David Schine, were also suspected of having a sexual relationship. Although well-known by political journalists, the first article about it did not appear until Hank Greenspun published an article in the Las Vagas Sun in 25th October, 1952. Greenspun wrote that: “It is common talk among homosexuals in Milwaukee who rendezvous in the White Horse Inn that Senator Joe McCarthy has often engaged in homosexual activities.”
Joseph McCarthy considered a libel suit against Greenspun but decided against it when he was told by his lawyers that if the case went ahead he would have to take the witness stand and answer questions about his sexuality. In an attempt to stop the rumours circulating, McCarthy married his secretary, Jeannie Kerr. Later the couple adopted a five-week old girl from the New York Foundling Home.
In October, 1953, McCarthy began investigating communist infiltration into the military. Attempts were made by McCarthy to discredit Robert Stevens, the Secretary of the Army. The president, Dwight Eisenhower, was furious and realised that it was time to bring an end to McCarthy’s activities.
The United States Army now passed information about Joseph McCarthy to journalists known to be opposed to him. This included the news that McCarthy and Roy Cohn had abused congressional privilege by trying to prevent David Schine from being drafted. When that failed, it was claimed that Cohn tried to pressurize the Army to grant Schine special privileges. The well-known newspaper columnist, Drew Pearson, published the story on 15th December, 1953.
Dwight Eisenhower also instructed his vice president, Richard Nixon, to attack Joseph McCarthy. On 4th March, 1954, Nixon made a speech where, although not mentioning McCarthy, made it clear who he was talking about: “Men who have in the past done effective work exposing Communists in this country have, by reckless talk and questionable methods, made themselves the issue rather than the cause they believe in so deeply.”
Some figures in the media, such as writers Freda Kirchway, George Seldes and I. F. Stone, and cartoonists, Herb Block and Daniel Fitzpatrick, had fought a long campaign against Joseph McCarthy. Other figures in the media, who had for a long time been opposed to McCarthyism but were frightened to speak out, now began to get the confidence to join the counter-attack. Edward Murrow, the experienced broadcaster, used his television programme, See It Now, on 9th March, 1954, to criticize McCarthy’s methods. Newspaper columnists such as Walter Lippmann and Jack Anderson also became more open in their attacks on McCarthy.
The senate investigations into the United States Army were televised and this helped to expose the tactics of Joseph McCarthy. One newspaper, the Louisville Courier-Journal, reported that: “In this long, degrading travesty of the democratic process McCarthy has shown himself to be evil and unmatched in malice.” Leading politicians in both parties, had been embarrassed by McCarthy’s performance and on 2nd December, 1954, a censure motion condemned his conduct by 67 votes to 22.
McCarthy lost the chairmanship of the Government Committee on Operations of the Senate. He was now without a power base and the media lost interest in his claims of a communist conspiracy. As one journalist, Willard Edwards, pointed out: “Most reporters just refused to file McCarthy stories. And most papers would not have printed them anyway.” Although some historians claim that this marked the end of McCarthyism, others argue that the anti-communist hysteria in the United States lasted until the end of the Cold War.
“INDUBITABLE JUST GROUNDS FOR VIOLENT REVOLUTION”
EMPIRICALLY DEMONSTRATED TO BE NOT ONLY UN-CONSTITUTIONAL, BUT ANTI-CONSTITUTIONAL USURPATION!
Usurpation by The Executive Branch in unjustly seizing dominant power over the Legislative Branch of our government.
Usurpation by The Federal government in unjustly seizing dominant power over the States Rights of our government.
Usurpation by Suffrage an unjust cause for Political Enfranchisement in unjustly seizing dominant power over the Original 98 percent Majority of the informal moral & ethical and intellectual abstract reasoning literate, Protestant Christian Men. and reducing them to 30 percent of the political electorate, thereby Subjugating them by the informal moral & ethical and intellectual abstract reasoning illiterate Secular men & Woman with a 70 percent electorate majority
Usurpation by International Psychological Warfare propaganda of Dialectic Materialism – Revisionism Psychological Warfare induced Cognitive Dissonance against we the people to be seized and dominated with a inverted perceptual reality power over them. And unjustly Persecute them by Unjustly Scientifically Shaming them into Submission.
Usurpation by Federal government Conspiracies to intentionally create an extreme economical crisis in order to seize economic power to further the finalization of the Communist Socialist ideology implementation in America.
Usurpation by The Federal Judicial Branch in seizing dominant power over the Executive and Legislative with intentionally inverted Empirical Self Evident Truth Propositions with Formal Revisionism negatively antithetical Re-interpretations of our U.S. Constitution. And their dissemination into our States and Counties and Cities by Unjust Coercive Federal Enforcement.
Usurpation by Anti-Constitutionally Transforming our Republic into a democratic scientific socialist Democracy form of civil government
Maximus Publius
Copyright 2009 Judson Rainey
All Rights Reserved.
April 17th, 2009 at 1:33 pm
I am a very active, sovereign, “state” citizen, freedom fighting, researcher, activist, and Restore The Republic member/supporter in the Melbourne, Florida state republic/Brevard county, Florida state republic area, who is very knowledgeable on and trying to expose and inform others about issues such as Federal Reserve System Frauds, Unconstitutional Federal Income Tax/IRS and international bankers pocketing every penny, Ron Paul supporter, sovereignty, exposing government corruption, Corporate United States Inc. vs. the united states of America, U.S. Citizens vs. “state” citizens, the Bankruptcy of the United States, Non ownership of property by U.S. citizens, International Bankers, Court System fraud secretly operating under “color of law” under Admiralty/Maritime jurisdiction, 9/11 Conspiracy FACTS, and much more.
There is another Tea Party event taking place at Wickham Park in Melbourne (The Brevard Tea Party – info at: http://www.brevardteaparty.com) on April 19th, this coming Sunday, and I would love to pass out information on the issues we are fighting and also on Restore The Republic to be able to spread the word and inform people of the truth. I have one major problem. I am broke, unemployed, and have been for a while. I have some printed information which I’ve put together myself, but I can’t print hundreds of copies, as paper and printer ink cost money too. I hate to ask people for anything, but if anyone has the ability to order and donate past issues of Republic magazine in bulk, or as many as possible, or they have past issues that they can donate, or even simple things such as bumper stickers, flyers, or anything which I can use to pass out which will inform people of the issues and also give me something to give away to start up conversations on the issues and TRUTH, they would be greatly appreciated and would also help inform a lot more people who may not know the TRUTH. I see that you can order issues 4, 7, and 5 in bulk. I would love to order 100 copies of the best issue or of each, but I see it costs $100 per 100 copies. I f anyone can please help me out in anyway, even if you just have some good flyers or well put together information with websites for more info that they can email to me, or whatever you can afford to do regarding Republic issues, please call me or email me. PLEASE DO NOT SPAM ME WITH JUNK MAIL, OR CALL TO PLAY PRANKS, OUT OF RESPECT!!! I am going to post my phone number and email address. Any help will be appreciated and used to help fight for our freedom and the issues that we know about but others may not know. Thank you all!!!
Sincerely,
Chris
Telephone: (321) 480-1130
Email: freedomfighter81@ymail.com
September 6th, 2011 at 9:17 am
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