In 1954, during the era of small black-and-white televisions, sock hops, and the 48 states of America, two men sought control over the American political narrative. This is their story.
#Murrow #PoliticalOpportunist #CrusadingJournalist #McCarthyism #AmericanHistory #History #USHistory #AmericanPolitics #USPolitics
https://medium.com/@rwarwriter/mccarthy-vs-murrow-c45fb38f9386
#McCarthyism
Roy Justus takes on McCarthyism and its bullying tactics, May 1954 - Randall Stephens
https://bsky.app/profile/randalljstephens.bsky.social/post/3m6mfohimdc2g
What's old is new again. Can't believe so many of my fellow Americans have allowed our country to slip backwards into a dark moment in history again.
"Jane Fonda is relaunching the Committee for the First Amendment, the McCarthy-era committee founded by her father Henry Fonda with such stars as Lucille Ball, Humphrey Bogart and Lauren Bacall to protect against attacks on free speech."
House Passes Resolution Condemning Socialism Ahead of Mamdani White House Visit
Rashida Tlaib said the vote shows lawmakers “feel threatened” by those “willing to take on the billionaire class.”Over 600 Were Fired or Punished as White House Whipped Up Charlie Kirk Crackdown
Hundreds of Americans lost their jobs or faced discipline at work for making comments about far right activist Charlie Kirk after his death in September, new reporting finds, as the Trump administration whipped up a frenzied crackdown against Kirk’s critics. According to an investigation by Reuters, at least 600 Americans were fired, suspended, placed under investigation…
This post has been syndicated from Truthout, where it was published under this address.
New Florida Curriculum on Communism is a “Dangerous Recasting” of McCarthyism – PEN America
New Florida Curriculum on Communism is a “Dangerous Recasting” of McCarthyism
Education Should Champion Diverse Perspectives, Not Impose a Rigid Set of Beliefs
Educational Censorship U.S. Free Expression
November 17, 2025
(MIAMI)— PEN America today criticized Florida’s new social studies standards that established a unit on “The History of Communism” for grades 6-12, calling it a “dangerous recasting” of McCarthyism as patriotism.
PEN America Florida Director William Johnson said: “This new unit is a dangerous recasting of McCarthyism as patriotism and dissent as ‘un-American.’ Florida’s new standards impose a single, rigid set of beliefs such as criticizing communism, when education should champion the exploration of diverse perspectives. A classroom should be a place where ideas meet, not where ideology reigns.”
The Florida Department of Education, which adopted the standards last week, had said the new unit on communism was a response to a “resurgence of communist ideologies across the United States and throughout the world,” noting “it is more important than ever for students to understand the catastrophic failures and human suffering caused by communist regimes.”
Historians quoted in the Tampa Bay Times called this new standard “skewed,” “highly biased,” and reflecting a resurgence of Cold War-era propaganda.
The new social studies standards stem from state Senate Bill 1264, “History of Communism,” passed in 2024. PEN America has described bills like this one as “delineating what viewpoints must be taught in such a manner as to potentially restrict educators’ professional discretion, and impose an ideological constraint on the freedom to learn.” Given Governor DeSantis’s prior statements about the “evils of communism,” these standards are likely to chill the speech of educators and compel them to only discuss certain viewpoints.
In 2023, the state Board of Education approved African American history standards that required educators to teach that enslaved people “developed skills which, in some instances, could be applied for their personal benefit.” The standards were widely criticized as a defense of slavery.
Editor’s Note: The featured image at top by WP AI.
Continue/Read Original Article Here: New Florida Curriculum on Communism is a “Dangerous Recasting” of McCarthyism – PEN America
#communism #curriculum #dangerous #educationalCensorship #florida #mccarthyism #noRigidBeliefs #notDiverse #penAmerica #socialStudies #uSFreeExpression
#Education #Florida #McCarthyism
From AP News.com: She was blacklisted during McCarthyism. Now she's speaking out against Florida's teaching standards
A quotation from Eleanor Roosevelt
In our country we must trust the people to hear and see both the good and the bad and to choose the good. The Un-American Activities Committee seems to me to be better for a police state than for the USA.
Eleanor Roosevelt (1884-1962) First Lady of the US (1933-45), politician, diplomat, activist
Column (1947-10-29), “My Day”
More info about this quote: wist.info/roosevelt-eleanor/80…
#quote #quotes #quotation #qotd #eleanorroosevelt #America #freedomofthought #inquiry #marketplaceofideas #mccarthyism #RedScare #society #trust #huac #unamerican
:florida: **What to know about how Florida will teach McCarthyism and the Cold War**
"_McCarthy and the House Committee on Un-American Activities are painted as champions of anti-communism, rather than the more commonly accepted interpretation that they fomented one of the most repressive chapters in modern American history._"
#History #Histodons #McCarthyism #Education #Learning #Florida
#Image attribution: U.S. Government, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons. Page URL: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Joseph_McCarthy_studio_portrait.jpg.
A quotation from Eleanor Roosevelt
What is going on in the Un-American Activities Committee worries me primarily because little people have become frightened and we find ourselves living in the atmosphere of a police state, where people close doors before they state what they think or look over their shoulders apprehensively before they express an opinion.
Eleanor Roosevelt (1884-1962) First Lady of the US (1933-45), politician, diplomat, activist
Column (1947-10-29), “My Day”
More about this quote: wist.info/roosevelt-eleanor/80…
#quote #quotes #quotation #qotd #eleanorroosevelt #chillingeffect #fear #freespeech #freedomofspeech #freedomofthought #mccarthyism #policestate #RedScare #selfcensorship #tyranny
Shocking, but not surprising.
#Nonprofits
#McCarthyism
"Right-wing pundit Michael Knowles, who in 2023 called for the “eradication of transgenderism,” painted a picture of progressive organizations as “organized left-wing crime,”".
nonprofitquarterly.org/senate-gop-r...
Senate GOP Ramps Up Attacks on...
McCarthyism & Trumpism
These two movements could have been interconnected into a strong political movement. For some reason, they were not.
https://tiereddemocraticgovernance.org/blog_details.php?blog_cat_id=21&id=472
@jaykuo
I never understood why young voters would fall for an old, lazy slob that is both sexist and highly reactionary - and whose taste for music somewhen stopped accepting fresh inputs in the 70ies.
What's supposed to have been so much fun about the 50ies? Kids should go and ask their grandparents if the era of #McCarthyism did the #UnitedStates any good. Speaking of witch hunts and such.
Or was it all about keeping TicToc online? I really do not hope so.
Fired for “Crime” of Speaking at Socialism Summit, Texas Professor Speaks Out
Professor Tom Alter is appealing to Texas’s Board of Regents after being temporarily reinstated and then fired again.
The New #McCarthyism: How the #Culture Wars Replaced the Function of Our #Government
Interview with Seth Cotlar on Trump’s censorship agenda
The agenda is the fulfillment of what far-right Republicans have wanted for 70 years, as exemplified by Joe McCarthy & his proponent William F. Buckley.
Buckley’s love of censorship should be more widely known, especially because the anti-freedom agenda they had for America is being enacted by Trump today.
https://plus.flux.community/p/trumps-mass-censorship-is-what-far
#Censorship #Trump #McCarthyism #Autocracy #USPol #Europol .
Nearly 80 years after McCarthyism, Jane Fonda relaunches Committee for the First Amendment: ‘The stakes are too high’ -CNN
Entertainment• 3 min read
Nearly 80 years after McCarthyism, Jane Fonda relaunches Committee for the First Amendment: ‘The stakes are too high’
By Elizabeth Wagmeister, 14 hr ago
Jane Fonda at the 78th annual Cannes Film Festival at Palais des Festivals in Cannes, France on May 24. Vittorio Zunino Celotto / Getty ImagesEight decades after Hollywood legends like Henry Fonda, Lucille Ball, Humphrey Bogart, Frank Sinatra and Judy Garland launched the Committee for the First Amendment to stand up to McCarthyism, Jane Fonda is bringing back the organization at a time she calls “the most frightening moment of my life.”
The younger Fonda issued a plea to her Hollywood community in a letter shared with CNN, asking her peers to join the relaunched committee, writing, “I’m 87 years old. I’ve seen war, repression, protest, and backlash. I’ve been celebrated, and I’ve been branded an enemy of the state. But I can tell you this: this is the most frightening moment of my life.”
“When I feel scared, I look to history,” Fonda wrote. “I wish there were a secret playbook with all the answers – but there never has been.” She went on to underscore the value of solidarity and “binding together, finding bravery in numbers too big to ignore, and standing up for one another.”
“That’s why I believe the time is now to relaunch the Committee for the First Amendment – the same Committee my father, Henry Fonda, joined with other artists during the McCarthy era, when so many were silenced or even imprisoned simply for their words and their craft.”
More than 550 Hollywood figures have joined Fonda’s fight, adding their names as supporters of her newly relaunched committee, with signatories include including Aaron Sorkin, Barbra Streisand, Glenn Close, Gracie Abrams, JJ Abrams, John Legend, Julia Louis-Dreyfus, Julianne Moore, Kerry Washington, Larry David, Lily Tomlin, Natalie Portman, Nikki Glaser, Patti LuPone, Pedro Pascal, Quinta Brunson, Rob Reiner, Rosie O’Donnell, Sean Penn, Spike Lee, Viola Davis, Wanda Sykes, Winona Ryder, Whoopi Goldberg and more.
Continue/Read Original Article Here: Nearly 80 years after McCarthyism, Jane Fonda relaunches Committee for the First Amendment: ‘The stakes are too high’ | CNN
#2025 #America #CNN #CommitteeForTheFirstAmendment #DonaldTrump #Education #FirstAmendment #FreedomOfSpeech #Health #HerFather #History #JaneFonda #Libraries #Library #LibraryOfCongress #McCarthyism #Opinion #Politics #Reading #Resistance #Science #Trump #TrumpAdministration #UnitedStates
@janefonda.com has restarted her father's #CommitteeForTheFirstAmendment b/c we live in an era of New #McCarthyism with the US Government actively punishing citizens for their speech.
(Different from popular grassroots backlash AKA #canceling, & different from private corps enforcing T&Cs)
Committee for the First Amendm...
“The Committee for the First Amendment was first created in 1947 during the McCarthy Era in an effort to defend free speech and oppose government activity. At the time, the committee was met with backlash for its suspected ties to the Communist Party, which many of its famous Hollywood members balked at.”
#fascism #McCarthyism https://www.cnn.com/2025/10/01/entertainment/jane-fonda-relaunches-committee-first-amendment
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