[IMC-Editorial] Op-Ed: Elia Kazan: Moral Hero

[The Ayn Rand Institute]

Dear Editor, 

Please consider this Op-Ed submission from the Ayn Rand Institute.

Elia Kazan: Moral Hero
Kazan should be applauded for testifying against Hollywood's
communists

By Robert Tracinski 

Almost without exception, the obituaries of Elia Kazan--while praising
his enormous talent as a director--are critical of his testimony
against Hollywood communists. According to some, Kazan, a former
member of the Communist Party, should never be forgiven for naming
names of fellow party-members before the House Un-American Activities
Committee.

But Kazan deserves to be honored, not despite his testimony, but
because of it. He is worthy of respect and admiration not because we
should separate his politics from his art, but because his politics
helped preserve artistic freedom for everyone in America. Kazan was
the one defending freedom--while it was the Hollywood communists who
were betraying their fellow man.

The search for Hollywood communists was not a hysterical
witch-hunt. There *were* real communists in Hollywood (as numerous
reports, such as Kenneth Lloyd Billingsley's recent book, *Hollywood
Party*, have shown). Thus, the injustice of which Kazan is accused is
not that he made false accusations--but that he was an anti-communist.

Yet there is nothing unjust about exposing the supporters of
dictatorship. The Communist Party was not merely a political
organization like the Democratic or Republican Party. It was a
totalitarian network. Its goal was not to win an electoral majority
but to eliminate free elections and institute a one-party
dictatorship. The Party's charter called for the violent overthrow of
the U.S. government, and its officials took orders from Soviet
despots.
     
With brazen effrontery, however, the Hollywood communists painted
themselves as martyrs for freedom. In an attempt to conceal their
dirty secrets, they claimed that their political rights--the very
rights that had been systematically exterminated in the slave state
they admired and worked for--were being violated by the House
investigations and by the Hollywood "blacklist." And, amazingly
enough, history has believed them.
     
It is perfectly legitimate for Congress to investigate any
organization that declares its active intent to overthrow a free
society on behalf of a foreign dictatorship. It was not the
communists' ideas which were the inquiry's target, but their
actions--or threatened actions.
     
As to the "blacklist," why *shouldn't* private employers, such as
the Hollywood studios, refuse to give platforms to people whose views
they find repugnant? The communists claimed the right to free
association in order to shield themselves from the disapproval of
others. Didn't the studio-owners have the same right not to associate
with advocates of totalitarianism?
     
The morality of congressional investigations and private
blacklists would not be challenged if the targets were, say, the
militia movement or some neo-Nazi group. Such entities would be
clearly recognized as threats to individual freedom. The left would
surely support an anti-Nazi blacklist, but somehow regards an
anti-communist blacklist as unpardonable.
     
Further, "whistleblowers" are hailed today as protectors of our
rights when they disclose that corporations are circumventing minimum
wage laws or Occupational Safety & Health Administration regulations.
Yet a man who blew the whistle on a genuine evil--on a movement bent
on establishing an omnipotent state--is condemned for "selling out."
     
What can explain such perversity, except the belief that
communism is not an evil, but anti-communism is?
     
Kazan's own defense of his testimony provides the most revealing
analogy. His 1954 film, *On the Waterfront*, portrays a young hood who
becomes disillusioned with the gangsters who control the local
longshoreman's union. The rule on the docks, enforced by terror, is
that union members are supposed to be "deaf and dumb"--to pretend they
don't know anything about the gang and to refuse to speak to the
police. The hero of the film is the one man who has the courage to
break this code of silence and testify against the gang. Kazan
intended the film as a metaphor for his decision to testify against
his former comrades in the Party.
     
Almost fifty years later, the sympathizers of leftist
dictatorships still want to cover up the fact that the real defenders
of freedom were not the "martyred" Hollywood Reds but the courageous
men who acted to expose them.
_______________________________________________________________________________

Robert Tracinski is a senior editor at the Ayn Rand Institute
(www.aynrand.org) in Irvine, Calif.  The Institute promotes
Objectivism, the philosophy of Ayn Rand, author of Atlas Shrugged and
The Fountainhead.

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