Does anyone remember who Senator Joe McCarthy was?
Back in the late 1940s and early 1950s, America went through what was called a “Red Scare” as the House of Representatives and Senator Joe McCarthy of Wisconsin accused thousands of government employees and members of Hollywood elites of being Russian spies and/or Communist sympathizers. McCarthy was able to build up huge public support for this movement, and hearings were eventually held in Washington, D.C.
Meanwhile, in Hollywood, a blacklist was created to remove any suspected Communists from working in the film and television industries to prevent their possibly corrupting Americans’ belief systems via their acting, scriptwriting or directing. Even popular actors like Charlie Chaplin and Orson Welles were forced to flee the U.S. to find work.
Of course, it all turned out to be virtually nonsense, and McCarthy was ultimately discredited, both in Washington and in Hollywood, where actors like Humphrey Bogart, Henry Fonda, Frank Sinatra and Burt Lancaster banded together to fight the studios promoting the blacklist. McCarthy himself died of alcoholism in 1957, and the word “McCarthyism” was subsequently used to describe the censorship (and in some cases self-censorship) that was promoted in that cultural environment. Playwright Arthur Miller famously wrote a stage play called “The Crucible” (later made into a movie) that was ostensibly about the Salem Witch Trials but was an allusion for and warning against the McCarthyism taking place at that time.
Flash forward 55 years later, however, and now it seems Hollywood is caught up in a new anti-Russian hysteria, as certain actors such as Rob Reiner and Morgan Freeman have come together to actually promote accusations of Russia interfering in the American political system — exactly the opposite of what their predecessors did in the 1950s. In fact, there are probably blacklisted scriptwriters and directors (some of whom even committed suicide back then) who are turning in their graves over this new movement, which has now produced a bizarre public service announcement narrated by Freeman.
Watch, as YouTube’s Mark Dice delves into this blatant nonsense.
