10 Americans You Won't Believe Were Accused Of Being Communists

Believe it or not the USA, supposedly the beacon of the free world, was one of the most paranoid and overly-suspicious nations on the planet between 1947 and 1957 as the Second Red Scare took hold of the country. So fearful was the US of the rise of Communism and socialism in the post-war world that they investigated any potential leftist sympathisers and even "blacklisted" them throughout "McCarthyism". This period was so-called because US Senator Joseph McCarthy became the figurehead of a decade-long internal struggle in America to root out any supposed Communists in the wake of State Department official Alger Hiss' conviction as a Soviet spy. McCarthy worked alongside the Federal Bureau of Investigation director J Edgar Hoover and the US Houses of Representatives' "House Un-American Activities Committee" to try and establish who the Communist sympathisers were - and it came as no surprise when the Republican Senator started searching within the Democratic Party for socialists. The American government became so fearful of Communism during the Cold War with the USSR that many feared Soviet sympathisers were denied passports, and a Hollywood blacklist was even set up in the mid-1940s to deny certain actors and directors work. Amazingly, two US Presidents, a prominent leader of the Civil Rights Movement and several well-known film actors were among those to be accused of being Communists during the Second Red Scare. So here are 10 Americans you won't believe were accused of being Communists during McCarthyism...