Reds! Curated Comics and Images

Let's start with the images:

These first two relate to the House Unamerican Activities Committee, created in 1938 to deal with Nazi threats. It was responsible for lots of dark areas in American history, such as the Japanese internment and the '50s communist                                                      witch hunts.  More on the committee.

Pre-existing prejudices were largely used to fuel fear and to justify condemnations and accusations. Anyone who disagreed was liable to find themselves at the receiving end of slander and libel; for example, the Illinois American Legion formally condemned the Girl Scouts, because their handbook promoted such "unamerican ideals" as internationality, inter-country friendship and cooperation.

Resist questions?  You must be a communist!  Hollywood, like many other industries, maintained a blacklist of people who had been judged to have "communist tendencies or associations," and were therefore unfit to work.  On the blacklist were ten people (and likely many more) who refused to answer spurious accusations and were therefore considered to be guilty by default.  Of course, actually answering those questions is not necessarily any more pleasant:

A loyalty review board

Loyalty review boards were established for the unofficial trying of people suspected of communist ties. Private agencies were formed to meet the rising demand in various industries to investigate the 'loyalty' of their employees to the American way.

Of course, not everyone believed the accusations that were being made; a few influential people stood up and resisted.  Herb Block, a well-known cartoonist, penned dozens of anti-anti-red cartoons, a few of which are pictured here.  

What connections do you see, both with history and the present, with our different digital concept ideas, with other classes or events?  I have some ideas of my own, but I want to hear yours first.