House Committee on Un-American Activities

Some famous victims
Some actors like Charlie Chaplin (anti-war, anti-Nazi and a lefty), Orson Welles (N/A), Paul Robeson (commy and Black rights), Yip Harburg (lefty and Yiddish) and David Hilberman (lead 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 there 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 which-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"

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