[75 years ago, the House Committee on Un-American Activities (HCUA), usually referred to instead as the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC), built on its new status as a standing committee in the US House of Representatives and held its first trials. So this week I’ll AmericanStudy a handful of layers to that controversial committee and its influences and legacies, leading up to a weekend post on pop culture representations!]
On
espionage, railroading, and the true complexity of historical nuance.
In one of my
earliest posts for this blog, I used the wonderful Season 2 West Wing episode “Somebody’s Going to
Emergency, Somebody’s Going to Jail” to think about recently revealed details
of the Rosenberg case and the question of historical nuance. In lieu of a new
first paragraph here, I’d love for you to check out that post if you would, and
then come on back here for today’s thoughts.
Welcome
back! The same thorny questions I considered in that post, of how we can
accurately critique McCarthyism (on which more in tomorrow’s post) while
grappling with the apparent truths of the Rosenberg case, certainly seem to
apply to the story of two of HUAC’s most famous targets, Harry
Dexter White and Alger Hiss. In
August 1948, HUAC
subpoenaed Whittaker Chambers, an admitted former Soviet spy now working as
a senior editor at Time; in his
testimony Chambers named names of other alleged Soviet agents in the U.S.
government, including Treasury Department official White and State Department official
Hiss. Both men denied the accusations categorically; White died of a heart attack
a few days later and the question of his
espionage remains entirely unclear, while Hiss was eventually convicted of perjury
(thanks to documents provided by Chambers which contradicted Hiss’ sworn
statements before the committee) and imprisoned for years. Hiss maintained his
innocence until his death in 1996, but recently released Soviet
archival materials seem
to provide proof that he was at least for a time on the Kremlin’s payroll.
There’s a
lot more to say about these cases than I can fit into one more paragraph, but I
want to make three points here. First, it’s important to note that someone
working for the federal government and spying for the Soviet Union is in a far
different and more troubling position than a cultural figure accused of
Communist sympathies (like all those about whom I wrote in yesterday’s post);
if that was indeed the case for Hiss, he deserved at least to lose his job, and
likely to serve time in prison. Second, it’s just as important to note that
lives can be and were destroyed by such accusations regardless of the facts;
Harry Dexter White, one of the 20th
century’s greatest economic minds, is exhibit A in that case. And third, it’s
precisely the job—or at least one central job—of all who seek to explore and
engage our histories to include both those points, among others, in our nuanced
and multi-layered understanding and narrative of the past. We can add our own
emphases and arguments to be sure, and I would argue that HUAC and McCarthy
were more damaging to the US than Soviet spies. But there’s no way to
understand the 1940s and 50s in America without recognizing that both those
communities were problematic parts of our political and social landscape.
Next HUAC
histories tomorrow,
Ben
PS. What do
you think? Other histories or contexts you’d highlight?
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