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By Root 925 0

direct victims, the mainstream liberals and former New Dealers within the Democratic Party were the indirect ones. Condoning the campaign against communism did not protect them from being denounced for “losing” China or, like Supreme Court Justice Black, for supporting desegregation in the South. Moreover, because the left had been destroyed, when liberals came under attack they had to defend themselves from a more politically exposed position than they would otherwise have occupied. This may seem obvious, but it is a point that needs to be stressed. The disappearance of the communist movement weakened American liberalism. Because its adherents were now on the left of the political spectrum, instead of at the center, they had less room within which to maneuver.48

In the wake of the witch hunts, networks such as CBS forced employees to sign loyalty oaths. Walt Disney and Ronald Reagan, president of the Screen Actors Guild, cooperated in hounding out artists deemed disloyal. Those who refused to cooperate with the witch hunts or who openly defied HUAC instantly became nonpersons. One such resister was Paul Robeson, who went before the committee in June 1956. A celebrated singer and actor, Robeson, who was a communist sympathizer and vocal supporter of civil rights, was banned from commercial radio and television. He would end his life in obscurity. Although an African American, he encountered obstacles to performing afterward in black churches. Established liberal institutions, including the NAACP, the American Civil Liberties Union (where ACLU cocounsel Morris Ernst worked closely with FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover), Americans for Democratic Action, the American Association of University Professors, and the American Committee for Cultural Freedom either were silent or collaborated in the banishment of artists, teachers, writers, performers, scientists, and government officials.

The widespread dismissals of professors, elementary and high-school teachers, and public employees—especially social workers whose unions had advocated on behalf of their clients—were often carried out quietly. The names of suspected “reds” were routinely handed to administrators and school officials under the FBI’s Responsibilities Program. It was up to the institutions,49 nearly all of which complied, to see that those singled out lost their jobs. There were rarely hearings. The victims did not see any purported evidence. They were usually abruptly terminated. Those on the blacklist were effectively locked out of their profession. Schrecker estimates that between ten thousand and twelve thousand people were blackballed through this process.

The fiercely anticommunist AFL-CIO, which subordinated itself to the Democratic Party, was permitted to flourish, while militant unions, including those in Hollywood, were ruthlessly purged or closed. The leadership of the CIO expelled several left-led unions in 1949 after disputes erupted over the party’s initial support for Henry Wallace’s presidential campaign. The CIO used the threat of further expulsions to stifle internal debate and discredit radicals, including anarchists, socialists, pro-Soviet communists, Trotskyists, and others who once played a vital role within the labor movement. Unions, formerly steeped in the doctrine of class struggle and filled with those who sought broad social and political rights for the working class, collaborated with the capitalist class and merged with the liberal establishment. The embrace of fanatical anticommunism was, in essence, an embrace of the suspension of civil liberties, including freedom of speech and the right to organize, values the liberal class claimed to support.

The Taft-Hartley Act, passed in 1948 and the single most destructive piece of legislation to the union movement, was a product of anticommunist hysteria. When it was passed, about half of all American workers belonged to labor unions. That figure has now dropped to twelve percent. The Taft-Hartley Act was devised as a revision of the National Labor Relations Act (NLRB) of 1935, known