Joseph Sobran

"He destroyed many, many lives," says Norma Barzman, a writer who cannot forgive. The "he" she refers to is not Joseph Stalin, but the movie director Elia Kazan.

Kazan recently received an Oscar for his life’s work, but the Hollywood Left protested the honor because Kazan, a former communist, testified before the House Committee on Un-American Activities in 1952 and identified eight of his former comrades. And at 89, he is still impenitent.

His refusal to apologize enrages those who resent Hollywood’s ostracism of a few dozen communists far more than they resent communism’s millions of murders, enslavement of nations, persecution of religion, and denial and violation of every human right. In their eyes, Stalin’s little helpers were "idealists" and "victims." Those who condemned communists and refused to do business with them are guilty of "blacklisting" and "McCarthyism."

Note that "McCarthyism" no longer means false accusations of communist ties; it means perfectly accurate charges. Kazan is being called an "informer," not a "misinformer." As we have been reminded by recent events, the meanings of words have a way of evolving in the mouths of dishonest men, who count on our inability to recall what words used to mean.

Kazan has never been ashamed, because he has nothing to be ashamed of. His great movie On the Waterfront audaciously treated an "informer" — a courageous, tormented witness against a corrupt union — as a hero. At the climactic moment, Terry Malloy (Marlon Brando at his greatest) defiantly yells at the thuggish union racketeer: "I’m glad what I done to you!" That was Kazan’s message to the communists.

The anti-communism of the ’50s forced communism underground. The "progressives" who still sympathized with communism were forced to pretend they agreed with the "goals" of Joe McCarthy but disapproved of his "methods." The truth was just the reverse: They hated his goals and had no particular objection to his methods, which were infinitely milder than the methods of communist purges.

During the Soviet show trials of the late ’30s, communists who had fallen from Stalin’s favor were forced to testify against themselves. Absurdly false confessions were extorted from them — for example, that they had secretly conspired with foreign "fascists."

American communists and many liberals defended the show trials. In his memoir Mission to Moscow, Joseph Davies, Franklin Roosevelt’s ambassador to the Soviet Union, accepted the preposterous confessions as true. At Roosevelt’s urging, Warner Brothers filmed the book. The movie portrayed Stalin as a hero and the show trials as a fully justified effort to root out traitors.

The movie itself illustrated the influence of communists in Hollywood. The "blacklist" was a very gentle, and ironically apt, response to those who had celebrated Stalin and his purges. They deservedly lost their jobs, not their lives and families.

At first the Left pretended that the anti-communist charges were false and hysterical. Over the next generation, though, communism lost its stigma and old Hollywood communists like the writer Dalton Trumbo acknowledged the truth, not to confess their sins but to claim martyrdom. Twenty years ago Woody Allen even made a movie, The Front, about the plight of a poor blacklist victim. It had become downright honorable to have been a communist in the Stalin era.

In every era there are public liars. They are supported by those who spread confusion by pretending to believe them, while accusing those who seek the truth of "McCarthyism" or, in our time, "sexual McCarthyism."

Some of Kazan’s defenders argue that he should be "forgiven" for testifying and honored for his artistic achievements. The truth is that he should be honored for both. He has done nothing for which he needs forgiveness. He told the truth. And he has had the guts never to recant, in spite of the hounding of vicious enemies who have smeared him for decades and prevented him from receiving awards his career richly merits.

Kazan helped rid Hollywood of people who were using movies as a vehicle for communist lies. Personally, I’m glad what he done to them.