Tag: Red Scare

Oppenheimer’s Posthumous Exoneration

When AEC hearings that ended the physicist’s security clearance were declassified, historians were amazed they contained virtually no damning evidence against him, writes Robert C. Koehler.

The Grimmer Story Behind ‘Trumbo’

Exclusive: After World War II, the Red Scare built the careers of redbaiters like Joe McCarthy and Richard Nixon while undermining the legacy of Franklin Roosevelt’s New Deal and stifling prospects for progressive politics in America, a tale touched on by the movie,…

Ayn Rand v. ‘It’s a Wonderful Life’

During the Red Scare of the late 1940s, novelist Ayn Rand and other right-wing zealots targeted Hollywood for supposedly subversive messages, like the criticism of bankers and the praise of community in Frank Capra’s “It’s a Wonderful Life,” as Michael Winship recalls.