That term with an agenda "The Committee on Unamerican Activities" sends a chill down my spine. Propagandizing the public for an agenda. Like the "global war on terror", "the war on drugs", "We are the Leader of the Free World.".....Empire needs propaganda to survive.

I agree.

Even now, with the Republicans in the minority, they often consider their policies to be the only real "American" policies.

But wasn't there extensive Soviet infiltration of government at the highest level, including secret military projects?

In a word, no.

And Hollywood writers, actors, and directors would have had little or nothing to do with that anyway.

(or so we think!)

There was by the end of WWII, in the Manhattan project in particular that I know about. But those are scientists, not actors. Can you change peoples minds, their ideals with movies? Yes, I think you can. Is the power afforded media, the way we take it in the vein, something to be concerned about? I think so. Was the paranoia justified? That's the thing about paranoia, it's self-justifying.

I can actually feel pretty nostalgic about what I remember of the end of the cold war. I'll take cold-war spy thrillers over 24 any day.

>> ^schmawy:
There was by the end of WWII, in the Manhattan project in particular that I know about.

I'll take your word for it, but I don't think that had anything to do with the Hollywood blacklist and the shenanigans that McCarthy was pulling.

They were attacking liberals and leftists, branding them as commies.

Can people's minds be changed with film?

Of course.

Should those people have been treated like criminals?

No, because what they did wasn't criminal. All they did was speak and think in ways that opposed the powers that be.