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Jane Fonda at the 2025 SAG Awards.

History’s Lessons for the Second Committee for the First Amendment

Jane Fonda is reviving the Hollywood advocacy group to meet the high-stakes challenges to free expression in the Trump era.
by Ben Schwartz via The Nation on October 20, 2025
Protestors hold anti-communist picket signs outside of a theatre

The Grim Timeliness of “Noir and the Blacklist”

A new Criterion series of McCarthy-era noir films is a timely collection for an era of rising government repression.
by Eileen Jones via Jacobin on May 4, 2025

Making the Movies Un-American

How Hollywood tried to fight fascism and ended up blacklisting suspected Communists.
by Noah Isenberg via The New Republic on July 3, 2018
Hollywood screenwriter Samuel Ornitz speaks before the House Un-American Activities Committee

First Amendment in Flux: When Free Speech Protections Came Up Against the Red Scare

The congressional anti-communist hearings of the 1940s are a reminder that freedom of speech today is even more fragile than it may seem.
by Jodie Childers via The Conversation on November 20, 2025
Joseph McCarthy.

The Red Scare Is American Past and Present

If we want to understand how we arrived in this authoritarian moment in 2025, we need to understand one of the central pathways that brought us here.
by Benjamin Balthaser via Jacobin on October 19, 2025
Hallie Flanagan

On Hallie Flanagan

A woman killed by Congress.
by Susannah Clapp via London Review of Books on August 6, 2025
A still from the Sound of Fury of two men fighting.

Dangerous Work

Cy Endfield, film noir, and the blacklist.
by Imogen Sara Smith via Current [The Criterion Collection] on May 21, 2025
Cartoon drawing with Red Scare history written on New York City buildings.

When the Red Scare Came for Jessica Mitford

A graphic episode from "Do Admit: The Mitford Sisters and Me."
by Mimi Pond via The Nation on May 13, 2025

How the Red Scare Reshaped American Politics

At its height, the political crackdown felt terrifying and all-encompassing. What can we learn from how the movement unfolded—and from how it came to an end?
by Beverly Gage via The New Yorker on March 10, 2025
Actress moves away from a microphone held a red hand.

How the Red Scare Shaped American Television

The fear of communism silenced actors, writers and producers, altering the entertainment industry for decades.
by Carol Stabile via PBS on February 28, 2025
Poster for the WPA theatrical production of "It Can't Happen Here" by Sinclair Lewis

Stealing the Show

Why conservatives killed America’s federally funded theater.
by Charlie Tyson via The Yale Review on June 10, 2024
Bud Schulberg testifying before HUAC.

During the 2023 Writers Strike, This Book Helped Me Understand the Depravities of Hollywood

A 1941 novel by a former Communist Party member about the dog-eat-dog scumbaggery of movie executives and the lying and artless bragging that Hollywood runs on.
by Alex N. Press via Jacobin on December 8, 2023
Nixon examining a roll of microfilm with a magnifying glass.

Microfilm Hidden in a Pumpkin Launched Richard Nixon’s Career 75 Years Ago

On Dec. 2, 1948, evidence stashed in a hollowed-out pumpkin incriminated suspected Soviet spy Alger Hiss and boosted a young Richard Nixon’s political status.
by Gordon F. Sander via Retropolis on December 2, 2023
A still from the 1960 film Spartacus of two Roman gladiators fighting.

How Stanley Kubrick’s Spartacus Broke the Hollywood Blacklists

The 1960 film was penned by two blacklisted Communist writers. Its arrival in theaters was a middle finger to the McCarthyist witch hunt in Hollywood.
by Taylor Dorrell via Jacobin on September 14, 2023
Director Edward Dmytryk and actress Jean Porter.

The 1950s Hollywood Blacklist Was an Assault on Free Expression

The blacklist didn’t just ruin many workers’ careers — it narrowed the range of acceptable movies and contributed to the conservatism of the 1950s.
by Larry Ceplair via Jacobin on May 18, 2023
Screenwriter Dalton Trumbo with his wife Cleo at the House Un-American Activities Committee hearings in 1947. Bertoldt Brecht can be seen in the background.

Monopolywood: Why the Paramount Accords Should Not Be Repealed

If studios can again harness the income from exhibition, we may see a return of traditional vertical integration.
by Vaughn Joy via Red Pepper on March 13, 2023
A child in the backyard of the Avenel Cooperative.

The Most Dangerous Architect in America

Gregory Ain wanted to create social housing in Los Angeles. Dogged by the FBI, his hope for more egalitarian architecture never came to be.
by Kate Wolf via The Nation on December 21, 2022
Frame from the film Being the Ricardos, features Nicole Kidman as Lucille Ball and Javier Bardem as Desi Arnaz at a screen reading for the "I Love Lucy" show.

The True History Behind 'Being the Ricardos'

Aaron Sorkin's new film dramatizes three pivotal moments in the lives of comedy legends Lucille Ball and Desi Arnaz.
by Meilan Solly via Smithsonian Magazine on December 13, 2021
Joseph McCarthy presenting a map.

The Real Legacy of a Demagogue

A new biography of Joseph McCarthy does not reckon with the devastating effects of anti-communism.
by Dan Kaufman via The New Republic on October 2, 2020
Rebecca West.

Whittaker Chambers Through the Eyes of Rebecca West

West understood more clearly than anyone the allure of Communism for educated Westerners.
by Peter Baehr via National Review on April 2, 2020
Poster from the WPA Federal Theatre Project promoting "The Case of Philip Lawrence"

Making Theatre Dangerous Again

In segregated units set up under the Federal Theatre Project, African American artists took on work usually reserved for whites and wrote radical dramas.
by Kate Dossett via UNC Press Blog on February 26, 2020
partner

McCarthyism at the Oscars

As José Ferrer was being handed his Oscar—making him the first Latino actor to win—he was being investigated by the House Un-American Activities Committee.
by Kristin Hunt via JSTOR Daily on January 30, 2020

Jackie Robinson Was Asked to Denounce Paul Robeson. Instead, He Went After Jim Crow.

His testimony before House Un-American Activities Committee was a turning point for the baseball hero.
by Johnny Smith via Andscape on April 15, 2019

Marc Lamont Hill and the Legacy of Punishing Black Internationalists

CNN's firing of Hill fits into a troubling history of repressing black voices on Palestine.
by Noura Erakat via Washington Post on December 5, 2018
Roseanne Barr
partner

Why Roseanne Barr Paid a Bigger Price For Tweeting Than Donald Trump Has

These days, Hollywood is more democratic than Washington.
by Kathryn Cramer Brownell via Made By History on May 30, 2018
James Comey taking an oath.

The Greatest Hearings in American History

James Comey’s testimony joins the pantheon of dramatic congressional moments.
by Joshua Zeitz via Politico Magazine on June 7, 2017
Malcolm Cowley

The Man Who Helped Make the American Literary Canon

In the early twentieth century, America's literature seemed provincial until Malcolm Cowley championed writers like Kerouac and Faulkner as distinctly American.
by Kevin Lozano via The New Yorker on November 19, 2025
The French battleship Richelieu being maneuvered by tugboats up the East River for repairs and refitting.

A Helluva Town

A new history of New York City during World War II captures the glory, tawdriness, poverty, narcissism, beauty, and grime of this “aggregation of villages.”
by Brenda Wineapple via New York Review of Books on October 9, 2025
Photograph of Jean Muir

Before There Was Jimmy Kimmel, There Was Jean Muir

The "Red Scare" echo in the Kimmel suspension.
by Clay Risen via Politico Magazine on September 20, 2025
Charlie Chaplin stands fearfully in a hall of mirrors.

No Way Out

In broadcasting, the Red Scare turned into a stupid hall of mirrors.
by Julia Barton via Continuous Wave on September 4, 2025
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