Rep. Hamilton Fish: No Free Speech for Alien Radicals
In a telegram to ACLU Director Roger Baldwin, Rep. Hamilton Fish, (R–New York), one of the most vocal anti-communist and anti-radical members of Congress, said he did not believe alien radicals were entitled to freedom of speech.
He added that radical aliens who promote “strikes, riots,” and other forms of “unrest” should be deported and their jobs given to “loyal American citizens.”
Fish chaired a special committee of the House of Representatives that investigated radical political activities (see December 15, 1930), and that committee became the model for the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC), which was created on May 26, 1938. Over the next thirty-seven years, HUAC led one of the most devastating assaults on freedom of belief and associating, focusing almost exclusively on leftists and liberals, pillorying them because of the politics. HUAC was finally abolished on January 14, 1975.
Read about HUAC: Thomas Doherty, Show Trial: Hollywood, HUAC, and the Birth of the Blacklist (2018)
Watch a documentary on the history of HUAC: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U1Z5aYU6x0o
Learn more: Larry Ceplair, Anti-Communism in the Twentieth Century America: A Critical History (2011)
Learn more about HUAC: http://www.history.com/topics/cold-war/huac