 And now we are going to go back, Emily, to Ed Rumpel. And Ed Rumpel is an LA-based, full-time freelance writer and author. He was named after legendary CBS broadcaster Edward R. Murrow. He has written for many major publications. Rumpel currently covers LA's art scene for the Hollywood Progressive. And I want to say that, you know, we were ending out the program on international scope. And so we're going back to Hollywood right now. But I want, you know, we've heard the depth of what we've done around the world. And it's some ideas in the chat on what to do about this. Thank you. Today is the 70th anniversary of the second wave of the Hollywood blacklist. A U.S. government and private business organized attack against freedom of speech in the motion picture industry. Before actor Larry Parks was badgered into portraying himself and others on March 21, 1951. This assault on free expression systematically began in October 1947, when the first of the Hollywood 10 testified before the House Un-American Activities Committee, or HUAC. Those hearings resulted in the imprisonment and finding of the 10 filmmakers in the land of the free, largely for refusing to answer congressional committee questions about the political and union affiliations of themselves and others. The 1947 HUAC hearings also resulted in an expanding blacklist in Hollywood, with studios increasingly denying employment to writers, directors, actors, etc. This is how the inquisition in Hollywood worked. The panelists was appointed to testify before Washington witch hunters were asked the $64,000 question. Are you now, or have you ever been a member of the Communist Party? They were also bullied to incriminate others as seat peers and or supporters of various left wing causes. It wasn't enough to confess one's own political sins. Penitents also had to denounce other heretics for their political associations and court crimes. The cooperative friendly witnesses who informed on themselves and named names of others to a congressional committee, the studio cheese, and or certain private entities would generally allow to crawl back to work in the movie industry. However, unfriendly witnesses who refused to cooperate and rat out others were forbidden from making pictures. This auto defa wasn't limited to those in the movie colony who joined the Communist Party or CP. How a non-communist like actors, Marsha Hunt and John Barfield had their employment curtailed because they wouldn't name others to save their own skin. More than 300 La La Land professionals lost jobs due to this motion picture purge. Hollywood black lists consequences extended far beyond the ability of casts and crews to earn a living. This act of blatant censorship also adversely impacted upon American culture. The U.S. experience from roughly 1947 to 1960 was a coordinated campaign to subvert and undermine the First Amendment by J. Edgar Hoover's FBI and the House U.S. House of Representatives acting in league with studio moguls. In 1950, Senator Joe McCarthy joined the anti-communist crusade and chaired the Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations, focusing on purported reds in the U.S. government and army. But McCarthy did call some prominent artists to testify, including poet Langston Hughes, writer Dashiell Hammett, composer Aaron Copeland, and novelist Howard Fast. After World War II, America emerged as a nuclear-armed superpower and tried to impose global hegemony. To do this, Washington had to suppress dissent in the homeland. With Huac and McCarthyism, the U.S. ruling class brought the Cold War home. To become the world's policeman, U.S. imperialists had to police America, too, and badgering, tyrannizing celebrities attracted publicity and also warned ordinary people that they better be obedient. Today, right-wingers howl against political correctness and wokeness. Huac and McCarthyism really were Cold War-canceled culture. With congressional and intelligence entities collaborating with industrialized, industrialists, the movie moguls, to impose their propagandistic version of politically correct arts and entertainment on Americans. This conservative-canceled culture, which censored, stifled, punished, and policed domestic dissent, was an essential part of the Cold War's ideological holy war. The 1950s is widely seen as a dreary era of conformity, which explains why so many reactionaries yearn to return to it. Let's take a look at what the Hollywood blacklist and McCarthyism actually denied to American culture. The witchhands are popularly portrayed as reds under the bed's anti-communist hysteria, but as a film historian who thoroughly researched this period, I have a different viewpoint. There were in fact a significant number of communists, plus many fellow travelers and independent leftists, in Hollywood from the 30s until the Huac purges. Injecting progressive content, they made the movies better. Let's look at some other films that exemplify the cultural contributions of Communist Party and leftist talents. What beloved movie, from Hollywood's golden age, most embodies America's democratic values. In 1939's iconic Mr. Smith Goes to Washington, Jimmy Stewart stars as an idealistic young senator who does battle with congressional corruption. Frank Capra directed this popular classic, which received 10 Academy Award nominations, but when the Grand Inquisitors returned to Tinseltown in 1951, he was subpoenaed to testify. Refusing to name names, Bookman was blacklisted, fined, and found guilty of contempt of Congress. Capital Hill finally exacted its revenge on the screenwriter who critiqued the Senate in Mr. Smith. In 1936, Charlie Chaplin stood up for factory workers, strikers, and the unemployed during the Depression in modern times. In 1940, as Nazis conquered Europe, Chaplin satire the great dictator, bravely mocked Hitler and defended the Jews. What was Chaplin's reward? When Charlie sailed to London in 1952, British citizens' re-entry permit to America was revoked. Charlie, never a sepiae, spent the rest of his life in exile. Despite their 13-year inquisition, Tinseltown's turkey mothers were turkeys who never formally charged a single US-born artist with espionage and or treason. And despite the persecution of abused, unemployed North American-born talents, not one defected to the Iron Curtain. The blacklist also launched the political careers of two US presidents, actor Ronald Reagan, who testified to HUAC, which Congressman Richard Nixon served on. When today's right-wingers squeal about the new McCarthyism, we mind them about the old McCarthyism, about the Cold War canceled culture unleashed against leftists in the 40s and the 50s, by House and Senate committees, the FBI and the entertainment industry. And, oh, of course, there's direct link from real McCarthyism to Donald Trump. Joe McCarthy's chief counsel, the scum of the earth, Roy Cullen, was, of course, the Donald's attorney. In the USA, from the Pomeranian to the First Red Scare, to the Cold War, to HUAC, to McCarthyism, to Cullen-Tail-Pro, to Trumpism and beyond, political repression and the national security surveillance state have primarily targeted leftists. And it has done so at a great cost to American culture and our political discourse. Thank you. Bravo. Thank you, Ed. Thank you for your testimony. Thank you, Ed. And again, he was, he's our first project. We're talking about putting on a Cold War film festival, definitely.