1945-1991: Cold War world Wiki
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The committee

House Committee on Un-American Activities.
Category. Statistic.
Operated in. USA.
Founder(s). In 1938, Hallie Flanagan, Joe Starnes, Martin Dies Jr. (WW2 variant, known as the Dies Committee) and Edward J. Hart (the House Committee on Un-American Activities as we know it).
Founded in. 1938. Several entities had occurred over the years before, starting with anti-German/anti-Bolshevik 1919 Overman Committee.
Disbanded in. It was absorbed into House Judiciary Committee in 1975.
Political alignment. Officially the American government, but probably itself or the American far right in reality.
Activity. Show trials, witch hunts, spying, secret arrests, secret policing via implants in the CIA and FBI, public blacklisting, smear campaigns, political motivated jailing, political motivated sacking and political motivated exiling.
Online Links. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/House_Un-American_Activities_Committee, http://spartacus-educational.com/USAhuac.htm, http://www.gwu.edu/~erpapers/teachinger/glossary/huac.cfm, http://www.history.com/topics/cold-war/huac, http://www.infoplease.com/encyclopedia/history/house-un-american-activities-committee.html, http://history.house.gov/Historical-Highlights/1901-1950/The-permanent-standing-House-Committee-on-Un-American-Activities/ and http://peteseeger.net/HUAC.htm.

Some famous victims

Some actors like Charlie Chaplin (anti-war, anti-Nazi and a lefty), Orson Welles (N/A), Paul Robeson (commie and Black rights), Yip Harburg (lefty and Yiddish) and David Hilberman (led the 1941 Disney strike) left the U.S or went underground to find work after being black listed for questioning the then (in 1947) USSR-phobic, blood thirsty, war-wacky, fascist, monetarist, nuke obsessive and for the most part white supremacist ideals of the time. Laurel (N/A) and Hardy (N/A) were suspected at one point, but the case collapsed since it was so dumb it would be worthy of one of their comedy film plots!

Political fallout

As this went on they still feigned being a fair and open democracy when the only thing that mattered was who could persecute who out of office. The Soviets took this as empirical proof that the USA was as repressive as they were and thus a hypocrite for slagging them off over Stalin's paranoid purges of the 1930s, 1940s and 1950s. The committee's name to the "House Committee on Internal Security" in 1969. When the House abolished the committee in 1975, its functions were transferred to the House Judiciary Committee.

It became one of the world's keynote issues about America of the  late 1940's to early 1960s as both a warmonger and a hypocrite in respect to condemning the Nazis and calling the Soviets repressive, then acting even worse than the latter and nearing the attitude of the prior. Thankfully JFK managed to sort things out, end the excessive predatory behavior and calmed the witch hunters down after the political and military fright of the Cuban Missile Crisis.

Also see

  1. NSC-68
  2. Stalin's purges
  3. Threat construction
  4. "Reds under the bed"
  5. Politically Communist and/or Socialist
  6. The (Jewish) Rothschild Family conspiracy theory

Links

  1. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/House_Un-American_Activities_Committee
  2. http://spartacus-educational.com/USAhuac.htm
  3. http://www.gwu.edu/~erpapers/teachinger/glossary/huac.cfm
  4. http://www.history.com/topics/cold-war/huac
  5. http://www.infoplease.com/encyclopedia/history/house-un-american-activities-committee.html
  6. http://history.house.gov/Historical-Highlights/1901-1950/The-permanent-standing-House-Committee-on-Un-American-Activities/
  7. http://peteseeger.net/HUAC.htm
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