HUAC origin story

low-brow Encyclopedia | House Un-American Activities Committee

In 1938, the U.S. House of Representatives established the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC). With communist and fascist regimes posing threats to the security of European countries, Congress decided to investigate the potential of danger in the United States. HUAC had the responsibility of investigating un-American propaganda and activities that might threaten national security. It focused mostly on communist and fascist organizations. Its guidelines, however, were vague enough that many people who simply disagreed with [US] government policy found themselves under scrutiny by the committee.

Defining A Purpose

Because HUAC was led by U.S. representative Martin Dies Jr. (1900-1972) of Texass, it was also called the Dies Committee.

Sponsors of the motion to establish HUAC expected it to reduce the potential threat of foreign agents and subversive activities  by communist and fascist interests. Under the leadership of Dies, however, the term "un-American" gained a broader definition, and many without communist or fascist ["]ties["] were investigated. HUAC investigations became a means to suppress any dissent, often with the effect of undermining the freedoms of speech, press, and assembly. Liberals, intellectuals, artists, labor leaders, immigrants, Jews, and African Americans found themselves targets of HUAC investigations.
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Founded in 1938 as the House Special Committee to Investigate Un-American Activities and chaired by a conservative Texas Democrat, Martin Dies, HUAC became a standing committee of the House in 1945. In 1969 it announced a new focus, domestic terrorism [!], and received a new name, the House Internal Security Committee. Six years later, in the wake of Vietnam and Watergate, the full House abolished the committee.

ENTER House Select Committee on Intelligence (1975), House Premanent Select Intelligence Committee (HPSIC) 1977, then Herr Field Marshal Rev. Mr Chairmen Devin Nunes (R), 2015-2019; Adam Schiff (D), 2019-present RUSSIAGATE! PUTIN twitter-bot FARA indictment 'PEACHMENT purge proceedings.

East Texass History | Martin Dies, Democrat

In 1938, Dies created and secured appointment as the first chairman of the House Un-American Activities Committee, which was tasked with investigating subversive groups within the United States. Initially, the committee focused on domestic extremism and the Ku Klux Klan. Over time, however, the committee re-oriented its attention to suspected communists and civil rights supporters. Many critics of the committee complained that its members violated the rights of suspects and publicly ruined the careers of many good people for political reasons....

DeLeon, "Martin Dies Jr., the House Un-American Activities Committee, and Racial Discrimination in Mid-Century America," long form (2019), 71 pp

Despite Dies' promises to conduct fair and impartial hearings, his House Committee on Un-American Activities (HUAC) has long been regarded as a problematic, even dangerous, detour into demagoguery and extremism. In an October 1938 poll taken during the first months of Dies' chairmanship, a pair of New York Daily News columnists found that only two of the eighteen reporters who regularly covered the hearings thought they were fair; eleven said they were unfair, and other reporters were unwilling to take a stand. The Communist Party USA called the Committee an "outfit of storm troopers" in its newspaper, The Daily Worker, and liberal critics at the New Republic and the Nation agreed [!].3 As one recent critic has noted, "Dies regularly accused the U.S. government of employing Communists, showcased ex-Communist and anti-Communist witnesses brandishing long lists of names, practiced guilt by association, and attempted to intimidate and bully unfriendly witnesses."4

Although civil libertarians condemned Dies and his investigatory tactics, the general public seemed to approve of his efforts. In a Gallup Poll taken in December 1938, 74 percent of those who were familiar with the Special Committee approved of its work. Many respondents said that it helped to "keep our eyes open in the midst of all this world trouble," and to "weed out those who want to overthrow the American system."
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In 1968, Walter Goodman released an even more comprehensive book, The Committee: The Extraordinary Career of the House of on Un-American Activities, which discussed the various stages of HUAC from the 1930s to the 1960s. Goodman argued that Nazism, fascism, and communism were the initial investigation targets, but that it was communism that became the committee's consistent focus. He discussed how different committee members directed attacks at various organizations, with Hollywood's supposed connection to communism being a favorite subject for several of the investigators.12
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The most comprehensive scholarly treatment of Dies and his work was done by Dennis Kay McDaniel. In his 1988 University of Houston dissertation entitled Martin Dies of Un-American Activities: His Life and Times, McDaniel argued that Dies' personal views and prejudices shaped his efforts with HUAC. Dies' views were not only from his home congressional district, however, but also from his father who had been in the House of Representatives two decades prior. Martin Dies father, Martin Dies Sr., McDaniel argued, was extremely ["]nativist["] and suspicious of anything ["]progressive["]. Furthermore, using here-to-fore unavailable congressional records, McDaniel illustrated how Dies' father fought to defend white supremacy, something Dies Jr. did as well, especially when it came to his stance on racial segregation.13

Since the fall of the Soviet Union, Cold War scholars have divided into two opposing camps on the role of government leaders fighting communism. ...