Hm, Reagan’s birthday? What to write about… So many choices… Ah!Despite coming from a
Hm, Reagan’s birthday? What to write about… So many choices… Ah!Despite coming from a liberal Democrat family that held a very high opinion of President Franklin Roosevelt, in the 1940s as Reagan became increasingly conversative, he became fixated on the amount of perceived communists within Hollywood.To this end, he used his position in the Screen Actors Guild to leak information to the FBI, who gave him the codename T-10. In this position, he shared information regarding suspected communists, and in 1947 while president of the union, he forced people who wished to be members to sign affidavits saying that they were not Communists before they could be eligibleto join. Many of the people whom he named were added to watchlists and were blacklisted from potential acting gigs.Some folks point to his testimony before the House of UnAmerican Activities Committee, where he stated that there were “communist elements“ within SAG that were aiming to steer union policy, he didn’t actually name names, per se, UNLIKE WALT DISNEY WHO 100% DID.However, the reason why Reagan didn’t actually name anyone like Walt was that he’d already named everyone who he suspected of being left-leaning to the FBI already. So it wasn’t so much him making a somewhat noble stand for free speech like some folks I’ve seen have stated, but more he’d done all of his snitching in quiet as he abused his position within his union.SIDE-FACT: Reagan met his second wife, Nancy Davis, when she came to him in November 1949 to complain about how she had been blacklisted for potentially being a communist. Considering her actual politics, ie she’s often cited as the person who pushed Reagan from being a right-leaning conversative to being REAGAN, this is actually kind of hilarious. -- source link
#irregular incidents#american history#film history#history