This past Tuesday, Cliff Kincaid held his National Press Club conference, America’s Enemies in Hollywood Then and Now. Cliff’s guests included Allan Ryskind, long-time editor of Human Events; Lawyer, author, and 9-11 survivor Deborah Weiss, who describes the breadth of CAIR’s malevolent machinations, including influence operations in Hollywood; and Trevor Loudon, the intrepid researcher from New Zealand who has exposed much of what we know today about Obama’s radicalism.

Kincaid led off remarks, including a discussion of his latest book, Blood on His Hands: The True Story of Edward Snowden, and called for resurrection of a new HUAC to investigate ongoing subversion within the U.S. that has, if anything, gotten worse. Cliff reminded us of America’s almost incomprehensible ignorance about Stalin’s aggressive effort to subvert Hollywood. For example, Senator Joseph McCarthy, who investigated communist subversion within the U.S. government, especially the Army and State Department, from his position as chairman of the Senate Committee on Government Operations, is almost invariably conflated with HUAC’s investigation of Hollywood. Cliff cites an on-air exchange between The Factor’s Bill O’Reilly, and commentator Ann Coulter:

O’Reilly charged, “He [McCarthy] demonized people who didn’t deserve to be demonized.” Coulter said, “Name one.” O’Reilly replied, “Dalton Trumbo.” Coulter shot back: “He had nothing to do with Dalton Trumbo.” To which O’Reilly replied, “Sure he did. It was the House of Un-American Activities Committee. And who was overseeing that?” Coulter responded, “He was known as Senator McCarthy. He was in the Senate not the House.”

Kincaid contrasted the real Edward Snowden and the recent film about him, Citizenfour. Kincaid has long argued that Snowden is no civil libertarian but a traitor, whose disclosures have done enormous damage to national security. For example, Kincaid cites former NSA Deputy Director Chris Inglis, who has said that Snowden leaked information revealing “U.S. cyber defenses, military operations and proficiencies, codes, partnerships, alliances, cooperative foreign nationals, special-collection capabilities, and domestic defense systems,” as described in a Breitbart News report. This information has allowed ISIS to better evade American targeting, and made America more vulnerable to direct assault by ISIS, has emboldened Putin’s actions in the Ukraine, and facilitated Communist Chinese cyber attacks against the United States.

Cliff observed that Obama invited Russian FSB director Alexander Bortnikov to his recent “Countering Violent Extremism” summit. (The FSB is the main KGB successor). Bortnikov announced subsequently that the U.S. and Russia may share intelligence about ISIS. Kincaid concluded, “So we are going to provide intelligence to a regime that is protecting a defector from the NSA who has made the rise of ISIS and the Russian invasion of Ukraine possible. This is not a Hollywood film but reality in Washington today.”

Snowden and Citizenfour producers are now being sued. Horace Edwards, a retired naval officer and former secretary of the Kansas Department of Transportation, says that Snowden’s activities damaged national security, the film violates Snowden’s confidentiality agreement with the U.S. government and that the filmmaker is culpable for “aiding and abetting the theft and misuse of stolen government documents.” Edwards’ lawyers also protested that the film was not eligible for an Oscar because it did not satisfy the rules for documentaries.

Allan Ryskind

Allan Ryskind has been with Human Events in some capacity since 1959. Allan has written a new book, Hollywood Traitors: Blacklisted Screen Writers, Agents of Stalin, Allies of Hitler. I have a copy and highly recommend you read it. Allan’s father was Morrie Ryskind, famed Broadway musical producer and Hollywood screenwriter for the Marx Brothers and others. As a political activist he helped found William F. Buckley’s National Review. Along with Ronald Reagan, John Wayne, Walt Disney, Roy Brewer, Ayn Rand and others, he also led the charge against Stalin’s Communists in Hollywood. Growing up in Hollywood, Allan got the inside track on the whole story.

Because of a virtually impenetrable blanket of media propaganda, few Americans are aware that it actually was literally a war for control of Hollywood between Stalinist American Communists and those few but determined patriots who successfully fought them off for a time. While it is routinely smeared in the press, HUAC assisted mightily in this effort. The infamous Hollywood 10, mischaracterized as well-meaning liberals, were to a man, hardcore communist supporters of Stalin and his plan for violent overthrow of the U.S. During the period of the Molotov/Ribbentrop pact, they were also pro-Nazi. Given the way they are portrayed in the media this seems almost impossible to believe, but then again, consider how the media has portrayed Obama. Ryskind emphasized facts about the traitorous Hollywood 10 and their compatriots that repudiate the media narrative:

• They adamantly supported Stalin while he was butchering and starving millions of his countrymen;
• They supported Hitler while he invaded Europe and launched massive bombing raids on England;
• They flipped against Hitler overnight when he “betrayed his pal in the Kremlin and invaded Russia in June of 1941”;[1]
• When CPUSA leader Earl Browder had the gall to suggest there could be a peaceful path to Socialism in America, the Hollywood 10 cheered his ouster;
• They sided with North Korea’s Kim Il-sung when he invaded South Korea in 1950, launching the Korean War, in which almost 40,000 Americans died.

At the conference, Ryskind stated:

…the people I mention as Communists, including the Hollywood Ten, were serious Reds who viewed America as the enemy and whose allegiance was to Moscow and Joseph Stalin. The folks I’m talking about had party cards, worked covertly—and successfully—to penetrate the powerful guilds and the labor unions, filled entire pictures with Soviet propaganda, used their wealth and energy to promote Red activities outside the movie industry and never deviated from the Stalinist line. Never. They were determined to hand Hollywood over to the Kremlin and by 1944 they had come close to achieving their goal… they firmly believed in overthrowing our form of government by force and violence. 

To this day, the Hollywood community continues to heap honors on these screenwriters, showering them with awards and even making pictures praising them as beloved defenders of the U.S. Constitution.  It is mind-boggling, really.

Hollywood has perpetuated the myth of the Hollywood 10 as misunderstood patriots pilloried by the evil HUAC with endless movies elevating them to heroic status. In the 1970s we had Woody Allen’s The Front, wherein Zero Mostel, driven to depression at his inability to find work, takes his own life. (Only one person involved in this controversy committed suicide, and that is widely believed to have been an “assisted suicide” as he was planning to turn states evidence against other communists).

In 2001 we had The Majestic starring Jim Carrey, which imputes freedom-loving, patriotic values to John Howard Lawson, an unrepentant Stalinist to his death. And now we have the upcoming Trumbo, a remake of the 2007 fantasy of the same name. This promises to be another sympathetic rendition but the truth about Trumbo is rather different. As Ryskind said at the conference, Trumbo was in fact “a major apologist for Hitler during the Hitler-Stalin pact period and an enthusiastic supporter of  Kim Il-sung’s North Korea -- insisting, in fact, that North Korea was fighting for its independence when it invaded South Korea in 1950, just the way we fought for our independence from the British.” They say truth is the first casualty in politics, but that is nothing compared to what Hollywood does to it.

Deborah Weiss

Deborah Weiss is a lawyer, 9-11 survivor and founder of the website Vigilance Now (www.vigilancenow.org). She is also the main author and researcher for the book Council on American-Islamic Relations: Its Use of Lawfare and Intimidation. Weiss detailed eye-popping influence operations of the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) in Hollywood and throughout media.

For those unaware, CAIR is a spawn of the Islamic Association of Palestine and HAMAS, both state designated terrorist organizations. CAIR is also an unindicted co-conspirator in the Holyland Foundation trial, the largest trial of its kind ever prosecuted against Islamic terror-supporting organization in the U.S. According to Weiss, CAIR had a hand in making fundamental changes to many prominent movie scripts, including:

• The Sum of All Fears. A nuclear bomb is detonated in Baltimore, destroying the city. In the original storyline, Muslim terrorists are the bad guy. CAIR got the script changed to point the finger at Australian neo-Nazis. The movie starred Islam apologist Ben Affleck.
• True Lies. Produced by 20^th Century Fox about Islamic terrorist with spy who had unfaithful wife. Producer agreed to include disclaimer that the movie was a work of fiction and was not intended to malign any religion.
• Syriana. The movie starring George Clooney (who also produced the film in an Oscar-winning role, blames us foreign policy for conduct of Islamic terrorists. In the end Clooney is killed by a predator drown, along with a progressive Arabian prince whose work is threatening American oil interests.

The UN Alliance of Civilization created a fund that ran between 2008 and 2009 that was supposed to combat Muslim stereotypes. Hollywood backed the fund.

Weiss discussed the Muslim Public Affairs Council’s (MPAC) Hollywood bureau that offers consultations for script approval and connects aspiring writers and actors with Hollywood professionals. MPAC provides media awards honoring “artists, actors, activists and executives for their ‘Voices of Courage and Conscience.’” Past honorees include Alec Baldwin, Michael Moore, George Clooney’s Three Kings, Slumdog Millionaire, and others.

Weiss says that CAIR NY is one of the most extreme branches and attempted to reshape CBS’s broadcast content, claiming that the network aired shows describing Islamic terrorism. In June 2001, CAIR NY initiated an online petition to boycott all CBS TV and radio shows and advertisers and sought to block the network’s broadcasts into the 54 Organization of Islamic Conference countries and the Palestinian Territories. The petition was scrubbed following 9-11, but remained online at other sites nonetheless.

Weiss states that the Islamist propagandists push Hollywood elites to promote messages denigrating Christianity, and rewrite history to mask Islamist influence. They use lawsuits, infiltration, and disinformation, exactly like the organized Left. Weiss calls it a war of ideas and concluded her remarks by challenging the audience to fight for classical liberal ideas. She said it was essential to discuss Islamic terrorism. The media plays major role in shaping world opinion and is not allowing an honest dialog. There needs to be a concerted pushback.

Trevor Loudon

Trevor Loudon’s latest book, The Enemies Within: Communists, Socialists and Progressives in the U.S. Congress, brings the enemy up close and personal. Trevor spent much of his time discussing how easily America’s enemies have been able to penetrate the highest levels of our government. As a former staffer at the Office of Management and Budget, I am very familiar with this. People at the career level with any kind of clearance are subjected to rigorous background checks that span practically their entire lives. Political appointees, and especially members of Congress and their staffs, however, breeze in with impunity.

This reality has allowed genuine enemies of our country to take influential positions that steer the country’s direction. Most importantly, Trevor observes that communists and their sympathizers are taking up posts within Congress, and now the White House, at unparalleled rates. He asserts that the Democratic Party is increasingly under the direct control of American communists. He says “there is not a single policy promoted by the Democratic Party today that cannot be traced back to the CPUSA or the DSA or both.”

This began in earnest, Trevor says, in 1995 when Democratic Socialists of America, (DSA) the largest radical Left organization in the U.S., took over the AFL-CIO. They kicked out the anti-communist Lane Kirkland and took over most of the unions. They changed union rules—in effect since the 1940s -- to allow communists to hold leadership posts. They then mounted a purge within the Democratic Party, getting rid of the conservatives and moderates; Joe Lieberman was the last go. “Now, they own the Party. They’ve got it locked up.” He says.

Trevor says that the CPUSA sets the agenda. Communists control the labor unions and labor unions control the Democratic Party…Whether it is green jobs, the Start Treaty, Cap and Trade, lifting sanctions on Cuba, Obamacare, amnesty or whatever, all are communist policies. The communist make them union policies and the unions make them Democratic policies. “That’s where we are now folks,” he concludes. Trevor agrees with Kincaid that the U.S. Congress needs to resurrect some form of investigative committee like HUAC to expose this to the nation while Republicans still hold Congress. It is a thin reed of hope but one of the few we have left.

Conclusion

It is difficult to capture in a mere column the breadth of information presented at a Kincaid press conference. In addition to the three panelists, Kincaid offered reams of free reports published by his America’s Survival outfit.

For example, he provides an in-depth analysis of Pope Francis, who, it has become more and more apparent, is decidedly leftist, and may even be a Marxist. He has met with Dominican Father Gustavo Gutierrez, generally considered to be the author of Liberation Theology -- i.e. communism adapted to Catholicism -- and Gutierrez has published an article bashing free market capitalism in the Holy See magazine, L’Osservatore Romano. Francis has also joined ranks with the decidedly anti-Catholic President Obama -- another tell -- to promote illegal alien amnesty, calling our approach to immigration “racist and xenophobic.” Finally, just as the Church has begun to recover from its devastating scandals over homosexual priests molesting young parishioners, Francis met with anarcho-Catholic homosexual activist Fr. Michele de Paolis, who opposes the Church positions on homosexuality.

Peruse Kincaid’s site for a gold mine of documents that reflect Cliff’s decades of experience as a premier investigative reporter.