Why did American communism need suppressing?
Why did Hoover and other fascists feel that that cause warranted the subversion of the Constitution?
§« The Sleep of Reason Produces Monsters. »§
Well, I never understood why the irony never hit them over the head so hard that their skulls caved in from it!
We can only have true freedom in America when we vigorously suppress the freedom of those saying things we don't want to hear!
We call ourselves a 'free' nation and demand that corporations have 'freedom of speech' - but then go on witch hunts for communists and anyone else to the left of Bill Clinton. My dad was a communist during the Great Depression. He was proud of it, and I'm proud of him for it. I don't agree with communism, but they have the same right to political speech and assembly as anyone else. Hoover was pretty much in step with the rest of American government then or now - anyone with 'different' opinions must be watched, hunted down, and suppressed.
shareThe U.S. and the majority of its citizens have always had a disdain for communism (more so historically). Communism goes against the ideals of Capitalism that the U.S. was founded upon.
The years that this movie is set (1919-1970s) is a key to understanding Hoover's hatred of Communism and what he called subversive groups. In 1917, the Bolshevik communists overthrew the Romanov dynasty in Russia and the country plunged into chaos (not that things weren't chaotic in Russia before the Revolution). In the U.S. many feared that a similar "revolution" would occur and that the government would be "overthrown" by foreign Communists. This is the First Red Scare.
Also - many European immigrants that came to the U.S. found jobs in factories and back then working conditions were deplorable. These laborers formed unions and went on (sometimes violent) strikes disrupting the country at times.
Hoover's mindset was common at the time.
I'm not defending nor am I praising him but he did centralize the F.B.I. and made it into what it is today instead of the backwards institution it was back then.
The above message is very perceptive.
The repression unleashed by Hoover was both terrible and totally Un-American. Yet equally frightening to me is this knee-jerk defense of Soviet-style communism you see expressed here (and many other places too).
Because the Soviet system was horrible! It's sometimes called the 'other' great holocaust of the 20th century and for good reason. Any of you ever read Gulag Archipelago? The story by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn about the Soviet forced labor camp system. One story in that book always stays with me.
This was just after the Soviets "collectivized" the farms with the result there was a widespread famine. Millions starved to death. Anyway, there was an awards dinner in one of the rural provinces. A farmer who had actually managed to EXCEED his quota was honored. He'd grown a huge amount of wheat or corn or whatever. Now, the way the Soviet system worked was, first everything he'd grown was immediately taken from him and in return the farmer and his family were "allotted" barely enough grain to survive on over the long brutal Russian winter.
Upon accepting his award the farmer meekly asked if, instead of a plaque, could his family be "awarded" a bag of grain? "That's possible, isn't it?" he asked.
For that implied SLANDER against the Soviet system the farmer was immediately arrested and sentenced to twenty years hard labor.
Do you understand why people hated and feared that system?
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Reportedly there were about 3,000 Americans who volunteered to go to Spain to fight for the democratically elected government against rebels forces led by General Francisco Franco. The Soviet Union supplied a lot of weaponry to the government forces and their allies. Ironically Joseph Stalin signed a non-aggression pact with Nazi Germany -- a strong supporter of Franco's -- in 1939, thus sealing Spain's fate.
What was scary then -- and what is kind of scary about the previous message -- was the unqualified support many of these young idealists gave to the Soviet Union. How they turned a blind eye to the brutal human rights violations already taking place in the USSR. The purges, the show trials, the summary executions, the mass jailings, the young idealists ignored all this evidence of Soviet inhumanity. Instead they clung to the notion that the Soviet Union -- because of the ideals it professed to believe, but only honored in the breach -- was a paradise of social justice. This while millions of Russians were brutally slaughtered by their own government.
This stubborn refusal to see reality, this clinging to self-delusion, was very scary to people who feared it could happen here.
And it could've. No one can say it couldn't have.
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It did happen in the USA. The genocide of the Native Americans, Slavery, Countless war crimes and human rights violations to this day.
shareI am no great fan of Stalin and USSR. But the timeline in your mail is surely wrong. The Nazi-Soviet pact was signed on August 23rd 1939 (when Stalin realized that GB and France are not interested in doing the same with him). The fate of Spain was sealed some months before.
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