454
PARTISAN REVIEW
If
informing is not immoral in itself and may even on
occasion be a duty, why does Navasky think that the ex–
Communists who cooperated with HUAC -"informers," as he labels
them - did wrong and that most of them even "believed on some
level that they were doing wrong"? Because, he contends, unlike
'James Burnham, William F. Buckley, Jr., and some other
conservative thinkers of the 1950s," they were under no illusions
about the ignorance , political self-seeking, and fundamental
unseriousness of the congressional investigators, nor about the utter
irrelevance of Communists in the movie industry to any genuine
concern over national security. Even if moved by such a concern,
the Committee had no need to seek information from glamorous
movie people in public hearings, for the Los Angeles police and the
FBI already possessed full membership records of all Hollywood CP
members for over a decade past. Thus the examination of witnesses
and the demand that they name former or present Communists
known
to
them served no purpose other than publicity and the
imposition of a loyalty test or penitential ritual on those summoned
before the Committee. Navasky applies the fitting phrase
"degradation ceremony," borrowed from the sociologist Harold
Garfinkel , to the whole rigmarole.
Whatever William F. Buckley, J
r.
may have thought back in
the 1950s, at a recent debate over the "McCarthy years" on a college
campus he replied to a question about Navasky's book by stating his
agreement with its thesis that it was "demeaning" to confront people
with the dilemma of either supplying the names of onetime
Communists already known to the questioners or pleading the Fifth
Amendment and exposing themselves to stigma and loss of
employment. Buckley , of all improbable people , in his /outh a
speechwriter for Joseph McCarthy himself and the author of a book
praising the Senator, here put his finger with admirable precision on
exactly what is most compelling in Navasky's characterization of the
HUAC hearings. Be it noted, however, that this is an assessment of
the Committee's performance rather than of the conduct of those
who made the often painful decision to comply with its demand for
names.
Navasky's main subject is the namers rather than HUAC,
which has few, if any, defenders today, least of all of its Hollywood
adventures. He condemns the namers for betraying, at least
symbolically, their erstwhile comrades and for providing legitimacy
to HUAC. This judgment obviously rests on both moral and
