Things Not to Apologize For

J. P. Freire at Acculturated responds to yet another sniveling apology for the sin of anti-communism and blacklisting in Hollywood.

This way of looking at anti-Communist efforts in tinseltown flatly denies the nature of the American Communist Party, which sought to overtake American institutions and subjugate them to the Kremlin. No big deal, I guess, but worth clarifying: A holocaust is a slaughter on a mass scale. The blacklist made it hard for Kremlin-connected Hollywood actors (sympathetic to Soviet victory in the Cold War) to find work. Not similar. 

While the damage wrought by the Hollywood Reporter’s blacklist was no doubt painful, calling it the “Hollywood Holocaust” continues a long tradition of historical denials that there ever was a Communist threat in Hollywood. It existed. We have the evidence of it. We even elected a president who was famous for fighting it. Not all methods of exposing that influence were just, but that doesn’t mean we should deny it existed. The Hollywood Reporter’s apology is wrong for denying that reality.

It's about time that somebody set straight this myth of the innocent, put-upon writer or actor who was unfairly punished for his harmlessly progressive political views. In the words of Instapundit:

Communists are no better than Nazis. Refusing to hire Communists is on the same moral plane as refusing to hire Nazis. Which is to say: It’s a good and admirable thing, not a sin. Go broke and starve, commies. It’s what you deserve for being eager, willing servants of totalitarianism.