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Many Nordic countries use the “Ghent” unemployment system, where unions rather than the state administer benefits. Some on the Left have applauded this approach — but leftists in the US would do well to avoid it.

A technician performs maintenance to a wind turbine in Sweden. (Charlie Chesvick / Getty Images)

In the United States, unemployment benefits are financed by employer-side payroll taxes and then administered by state agencies. The benefit amounts are earnings-related, meaning they are designed to replace a percentage of an individual’s prior earnings up to a point. There is technically a minimum unemployment benefit level that eligible recipients cannot fall below, but it is very low, and eligibility for this benefit does not extend to all unemployed people, only unemployed people with a sufficient work history.

Overall, the US unemployment system is quite bad, both in its design and in its practical functioning. This naturally raises the question of whether other countries do it better and, if so, whether we should copy them.

One alternative approach to unemployment benefits is called the Ghent system. Broadly speaking, in this system, unemployment benefits are managed by unions and financed by union member dues. This system originated in Ghent, Belgium, but has taken its most prominent form in the Nordic countries.

Although the Ghent system is broadly understood as union-run unemployment benefits, the actual operation of unemployment insurance (UI) in Ghent countries is more complicated than that. In the three Nordic countries that have some version of the Ghent system — Finland, Sweden, and Denmark — the state is still heavily involved in unemployment benefits in three main ways:

State transfers, not union dues or unemployment insurance premiums, finance the vast majority of the union-administered unemployment benefits.
The state directly provides a basic unemployment allowance — either through a specific unemployment benefit or through a more general social assistance benefit — for unemployed individuals who are not eligible for the union-administered unemployment benefits.
The state, through regulation, mostly dictates the parameters of the unemployment benefits provided by the unemployment funds.

These aspects of actually existing Ghent systems are important for understanding how they work. They also provide insight into some of the flaws of the system, which are the same flaws that pop up every time a country tries to organize a welfare benefit through a voluntary private insurance scheme.

When the Ghent system began in the late nineteenth century, unions attempted to run them as purely voluntary schemes that were fully financed by member dues. This led to an adverse selection problem where individuals that were less likely to experience unemployment abstained from membership to avoid paying UI premiums. This also led to risk-pooling problems because each union’s membership was concentrated in one sector and so, if an economic shock hit that sector specifically, the union’s unemployment fund would quickly run out of money. These two issues frequently left union unemployment funds insolvent and therefore unable to actually provide members with insurance against unemployment.

In order to fix this problem, the state had to step in and begin funding the benefits through public appropriations. In the below graph, we can see what this looks like in contemporary Finland, where the government finances 94 percent of the union-administered UI program (unemployment insurance payments are what we call “payroll taxes”). The voluntary member UI premiums only cover the remaining 6 percent of the cost.

Government funding resolves the adverse selection problem by making contributions effectively compulsory and by bringing the out-of-pocket premiums down so low that abstaining from fund membership because you have a low risk of unemployment does not make financial sense. The funding also diversifies risk across the entire economy because the taxation is applied economy-wide instead of in each sector.

Government funding is able to fix the solvency problems of the initial regimes, but it is not able to fully fix their nonparticipation problems. The government subsidies make it very financially unwise to not participate in an unemployment fund, but insofar as people still have to actively sign up well in advance of becoming unemployed to participate, the scheme has administrative burdens that result in some nonparticipation.

For example, in Finland, around 15 percent of the workforce is not enrolled in one of the unemployment funds. These workers are disproportionately young and concentrated in lower-paying jobs. Some of these workers may be making a financial calculation that even the tiny out-of-pocket premiums are not worth the insurance, but others probably just lack familiarity with the system and do not understand how or why they should sign up.

In Sweden, around 30 percent of the workforce is not enrolled in one of the unemployment funds.

In order to fix this problem, the governments directly administer a basic unemployment benefit to people not eligible for benefits from an unemployment fund. This benefit is sometimes administered explicitly as an unemployment benefit. Other times, it is administered as a general “social assistance” benefit. But in each case, the benefit is not tied to prior earnings and is offered as a flat amount. This resolves the problem of large minorities of the workforce not participating in an unemployment fund, but it does not provide the same kind of protection as those funds do. These workers effectively make contributions to unemployment funds through taxes but don’t receive benefits because they failed to enroll.

Funding most of the cost of the unemployment funds while also catching the workers that fall through the cracks of the system still leaves a potential problem when it comes to the specific parameters of the benefits offered by the funds. The benefit rules cannot be left totally up to the funds themselves both because those rules matter for macroeconomic management and because the government needs to make sure that its financing of the benefits actually achieves the goal of providing the desired level of protection against unemployment.

So the government has to step in and set most of the unemployment benefit rules for the various funds. The funds do differ in what they charge and how much they pay, but, by and large, they are very similar because of the state regulations.

Overall, this scheme actually looks a bit like the Obamacare health insurance exchange scheme we have in the United States. In that scheme, people enroll in a health insurance plan with the financing for that plan mostly coming from government subsidies and with the rules for that plan being mostly dictated by the government. The subsidies are necessary to get people to sign up, and the rules are necessary to ensure the plans actually provide the desired level of protection against ill health.

But even with all of this, a large chunk of people eligible to sign up for a subsidized exchange plan simply do not do so, including many who are eligible for a premium-free plan. Unlike with the nonparticipants in the unemployment funds discussed above, our government has no backup plan for these nonparticipants, and they simply go uninsured.

Given these flaws, you may be wondering why the Nordic countries, which are generally known for their relatively pristine welfare designs, run their unemployment benefits this way.

In answering this question, it’s worth noting initially that not all of them do. Norway does not use the Ghent system and instead runs both the earnings-related and basic allowance components of their unemployment scheme through the centralized welfare institution. Unions play no role.

For the others, the reason is that it is widely believed, and there is very good evidence to suggest, that the unemployment funds system increases union membership. This is not because you actually have to be a member of a union to sign up for a fund. The precise situation differs across the countries, but generally speaking, there exist unemployment fund options that are not run by unions or are run by fake unions, and you can sign up for unemployment benefits without also paying member dues. But the norm is to sign up as a union member while enrolling in an unemployment fund, and so it still nudges more people into membership than the alternative.

This is beneficial to unions from a financial perspective because they can get more dues-paying members than they would otherwise. And certainly, better financing probably makes them more effective as unions. But union power is ultimately rooted in the genuine willingness of workers to participate in strike actions, not how many paper members they have. Norway’s union membership numbers are lower than the surrounding Nordics that have a Ghent system, but they are still quite high internationally speaking, and their ability to pull off union actions, which, again, is not strictly related to the size of their membership, seems fairly similar.

Overall, then, I do not find the Ghent system to be all that tempting. Insofar as union strength is absolutely essential to the creation of an egalitarian society, I can understand why the Nordic countries that use the Ghent system may decide that more robust unions are worth the cost of a nonideal unemployment benefits system. And of course, their unemployment system is still far better than what the United States has. But I’d rather have a fully centralized unemployment system like Norway has than the Ghent systems of its Nordic neighbors.

“The broad strategy is their focus of activity. They take their time, and do not expect instant results like we do. They are working systematically to build this.”

By Yaakov Lappin, TPS

On Tuesday, Israel’s Channel 12 cited a senior Israeli political source as claiming that Iran, disappointed by Palestinian Islamic Jihad’s performance during “Operation Shield and Arrow,” is plotting to strike at Israelis overseas.

However, according to professor Col. (res.) Gabi Siboni, an expert on military strategy and technology at the Jerusalem Institute for Strategy and Security, while Tehran may indeed be disappointed with PIJ, the Islamic Republic is in it for the long haul.

“They are trying to build an entire axis and make it ready for the day the order is given,” said Siboni, a former Israel Defense Forces division chief of staff. While it is plausible that Iran was surprised by the lack of effectiveness of PIJ’s rocket fire, it is likely a marginal issue for Tehran, he added.

Iran’s goal, he said, was to establish an axis comprising Hezbollah and Shi’ite factions in Syria.

“It would not object to gaining a foothold in Jordan, and promotes terrorism in Judea and Samaria as much as it can, as well as Hamas and PIJ in Gaza,” said Siboni, adding that it also sought influence among Arab Israelis.

However, he continued, “The broad strategy is their focus of activity. They take their time, and do not expect instant results like we do. They are working systematically to build this.”

Should they succeed in establishing a nuclear umbrella, he said, they would then feel bold enough to activate their proxies against Israel more freely.

Iranian disappointment

Ely Karmon, a senior research scholar at the International Institute for Counter-Terrorism at Reichman University, said Iran’s real disappointment with regard to the recent fighting with PIJ was the terror group’s isolation.

PIJ needed over 24 hours to recover from Israel’s opening strike on May 9, which he described as a local “shock and awe” operation, but the real failure for Iran was that Lebanon and Syria remained on the sidelines.

“PIJ is strong in Syria. It tried to attack the Golan Heights from there in recent months, and lives in symbiosis with the Assad regime. [PIJ chief] Ziad al-Nakhalah is always in Beirut as a guest of Nasrallah. Yet PIJ did nothing from the north,” he noted.

With regard to Iran seeking to harm Israelis abroad, Karmon said that while this was true, it also had little to do with the recent round of hostilities.

“Iran is constantly trying to target Israelis overseas.” he said. “Iran is doing this constantly. It takes mercenaries with other nationalities and forms terror cells with them, which are led by Iran. This has happened in South America, Cyprus, Greece and Turkey, and elsewhere,” he added.

In March, Greek police arrested two Pakistanis on suspicion of planning terror attacks on Israelis in Athens under Iranian direction.

As far as PIJ’s effectiveness during the fighting, Iran has no real cause for disappointment, said Karmon.

“Iran itself tried to attack Israel out of Syria and Iraq, with drone strikes, and did not succeed, so why would a smaller terror organization, under Israeli observation, be successful?” he said.

“Of course the Iranians had expectations, but they understood from the moment Israel eliminated the commanders of PIJ’s rocket division that PIJ wouldn’t be able to do very much,” he argued.

PIJ fired nearly 1,500 projecties at Israel during the escalation, of which some 20 percent fell in Gaza. Two civilians were killed in Israel by PIJ rocket fire, one of whom was a Gaza resident. Israel’s Iron Dome air defense system intercepted over 95% of rockets heading for built-up areas, according to the Israeli military.

Looking ahead

Looking ahead, Siboni said that Israel’s objective should be to undermine Iran’s multi-arena strategy by taking every available opportunity to degrade the capabilities of Iran’s proxies and partners. “This should be our path to wrecking the Iranian strategy–by harming its proxies,” he said.

He thus questioned Israel’s attempt to differentiate between Hamas and PIJ during the last escalation.

“This was wrong, because Hamas is enjoying quiet in Gaza while working to undermine security in Judea and Samaria,” he stated.

“I’m not saying we need to conquer Gaza, but if Hamas rules there, then it should not enjoy quiet as it builds capabilities against us in Lebanon and Judea and Samaria. We are playing Hamas’s game by allowing it to act freely in Judea and Samaria and Lebanon without extracting a price from it in Gaza,” he added.

Karmon, too, believes Israel should have targeted Hamas, adding that the attempt by Israeli decision makers and the defense establishment to differentiate between it and PIJ was driven by fear of a wider escalation, with Jerusalem Day coming up.

“Israel did not want complications and an extended escalation,” he said.

Furthermore, he said, for Israel to come out on top against an organization such as PIJ was nothing to brag about.

“It is true that operatively, Israel won against PIJ—but PIJ did not have huge capabilities,” he said, noting that it had also kept some of its “strategic,” longer-range rockets in reserve.

As the dust settles, PIJ will resupply its rocket stockpiles with Iranian funds, and perhaps seek to build new drones, too, said Karmon.

Israel’s decision to intercept two PIJ projectiles using the newer David’s Sling air defense system, designed for longer-range threats, was also a signal to Hezbollah and Iran, saying that Israel is prepared for their threats with defenses that go beyond Iron Dome, he said.

The post Iran is playing the long game against Israel, experts warn appeared first on World Israel News.

Florida’s GOP-controlled legislature just sent Gov. Ron DeSantis a bill that would put more state pension money in the hands of his prospective Wall Street donors. The bill could put DeSantis on the wrong side of a long-standing anti-corruption rule.

Florida governor Ron DeSantis listens to a speaker at a press conference at the American Police Hall of Fame & Museum in Titusville, Florida. (Paul Hennessy / SOPA Images / LightRocket via Getty Images)

As Florida governor Ron DeSantis positions himself for a presidential bid, his state’s Republican-controlled legislature just sent him a bill that could enrich prospective Wall Street donors he may need to finance his campaign. That includes a GOP mega-donor who DeSantis recently met with as the bill advanced.

But if DeSantis does try to make a fundraising play off the new pension investment bill, it could put him on a collision course with federal regulators — if those regulators decide to enforce a long-standing anti-corruption rule that has previously hindered other governors considering a White House bid.

At issue is a new bill empowering the Florida State Board of Administration — which is run by DeSantis and two other Republican officials — to move an additional $18 billion of the state’s pension fund out of traditional stocks and bonds and into hedge funds, private equity, venture capital, and real estate firms. Such “alternative investment” firms often charge high fees and deliver weak returns — while many of their executives make big political campaign donations. The legislation passed even as other states’ pension funds are considering pulling back on such investments in the face of potential losses.

The GOP-controlled legislature sent the bill to the governor’s desk on Tuesday, shortly after DeSantis reportedly met with Republican financier Steve Schwarzman, whose private equity firm already manages — and reaps fees off — more than $800 million of Florida pension money.

That includes a new $150 million tranche that Florida officials delivered to a Blackstone green-energy fund one day before DeSantis signed a bill to block state pension money from going to companies that prioritize environmental considerations in their investments.

“There Is No Way Around It and There Are No Loopholes”

Schwarzman’s meeting with DeSantis generated headlines because of the billionaire’s subsequent decision to not financially back the governor’s presidential bid, which was cast by the political press corps as a no-confidence vote in his prospective candidacy.

But that decision may have been due to something much more legalistic: donating directly to DeSantis could violate the Securities and Exchange Commission’s (SEC) long-standing pay-to-play rule, which was designed to restrict campaign contributions from financial executives to state officials who control pension investment decisions.

As one of three Republican officials overseeing Florida’s $180 billion pension fund, DeSantis is explicitly covered by the rule.

Republican private equity donors have so far been able to get around the rule by donating to the Republican Governors Association (RGA), a group serving all GOP governors, which then siphoned some of the cash into a political committee that boosted DeSantis’s election bids. In doing so, they have relied on SEC regulators refusing to enforce the rule’s anti-circumvention provision prohibiting “acts done indirectly, which, if done directly, would violate the rule.”

On Tuesday, The Lever reported that $1 billion in Florida pension money had been directed to firms whose executives donated to the RGA, which spent more than $21 million supporting DeSantis’s reelection campaign in 2022.

But in a presidential bid, circumvention might be more difficult. Wall Street donors seeking Florida pension investments could give to a DeSantis-focused super PAC, but they would be daring regulators to ignore circumvention through a candidate-specific group — a far more brazen move than giving to a general party committee.

“It is not without risk that the SEC could consider a particular super PAC, whose sole purpose is to support a covered official, not truly independent and therefore an election committee for that official,” wrote Steptoe & Johnson attorney Jason Abel, a former US Senate staffer, in 2015. “Therefore, a contribution to such an election committee would then run the risk of triggering the rule.”

This isn’t a theoretical problem — about a decade ago, New Jersey governor Chris Christie and Texas governor Rick Perry both faced the same fundraising obstacle in their own GOP presidential campaigns. At the time, Christie’s top adviser admitted that “there is no way around it and there are no loopholes.”

Indeed, the SEC rule proved so strict that it reportedly deterred Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney from putting Christie on the ticket in 2012, because Romney knew it would complicate his Wall Street fundraising.

Soon after, state Republican parties tried to get the rule thrown out in court — but the GOP’s case was unsuccessful.

DeSantis and SEC Could Be Headed for Game of Chicken

The X-factor for DeSantis and donors seeking Florida pension cash will be the SEC itself — and whether the agency will finally start enforcing the rule’s anti-circumvention provisions.

Of late, SEC chairman Gary Gensler has been delivering speeches raising alarms about private equity firms’ relationships with institutional investors such as pension funds, and he is pushing new proposals to require more transparency. The commission has also recently charged a handful of firms for violating the pay-to-play rule.

A DeSantis presidential campaign could create a conundrum for major Wall Street firms. Seeking influence in a future White House, they could funnel cash to his campaign — but then would run the risk of SEC sanctions. Will that deter them from donating?

If it doesn’t, then it could be a high-profile game of chicken. Who would blink first — the Florida governor and his Wall Street donors, or the nation’s top securities regulator?

And what happens to the Florida pensioners whose savings are at stake?

You can subscribe to David Sirota’s investigative journalism project, the Lever, here.

As the writers’ strike continues, we should look back at the Hollywood blacklist. The blacklist didn’t just ruin many workers’ careers — it narrowed the range of acceptable movies and contributed to the conservatism of the 1950s.

Film director and one of the “Hollywood Ten” Edward Dmytrk with actress and wife Jean Porter on May 17, 1948 in New York, New York. (Irving Haberman / IH Images / Getty Images)

Screenwriters have always been the sharpest thorn in the side of movie executives, the motion picture labor union with the greatest propensity to strike. The current walkout is their eighth, not including a threatened strike in 1941 that secured their first collective bargaining agreement with the studios.

The Screen Writers Guild (SWG), founded in the early 1930s, was by far the most activist labor union in Hollywood; constituted the bulk of the membership of the Hollywood Communist Party; stood in the forefront of what was called progressive politics in the ’30s and ’40s; and represented the majority of those blacklisted during the ’40s and ’50s.

The current writers’ guild, Writers Guild of America, though not politically radical, is fierce in defending its financial rights. And its ongoing strike provides a perfect occasion to look back on the blacklist era, which torpedoed the careers of countless workers in Hollywood and indelibly shaped the output of movie studios.

The Basics of the Blacklist

Blacklisting is a venerable weapon in Hollywood. In the 1930s, executives wielded it to weaken the SWG. In the 1920s and 1930s, the International Alliance of Theatrical Stage Employees (IATSE) used it to punish competing unions during brutal jurisdictional contests.

But the most famous motion picture blacklist began in November 1947, when movie executives fired five of the “unfriendly” witnesses under contract and pledged not to rehire them or the other five until they had purged themselves of their Communist taint. This blacklist grew from the famed Ten to nearly three hundred following the early 1950s hearings.

This blacklist grew from the famed Ten to nearly three hundred following the early 1950s hearings.

There was no “list,” per se. The studio bosses derived their information about whom to exclude from three sources: the indices of the hearings transcripts of the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC); a list of over three hundred names collected by the American Legion and distributed to the major studios; and Red Channels, a compilation of 151 names collected by American Business Consultants, the brainchild of three former Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) agents and one of the leading smear-and-clear organizations that mushroomed during the late 1940s. The only way to get off the blacklist was to appear before the HUAC, apologize for joining the Communist Party, laud the committee, and name names.

During the 1950s, one found oneself blacklisted if fingered by an informer (who was coached to name as many names as possible). If the named person did not appear before the committee, or they did appear but invoked the Fifth Amendment, they would be fired or blacklisted in the future. That is, one had to be publicly alleged as a Communist Party member.

Yet the dragnet affected not just Communists or even radicals, but left-leaning figures of all stripes. Liberals feared retribution should their scripts be read as too progressive. One said he was always looking over his shoulder as he sat at his typewriter. Liberals who had been politically active, like Edward G. Robinson, had to turn cartwheels to absolve themselves of their past deeds.

Members of the Hollywood Ten and their families in 1950, protesting the impending incarceration of the Ten. (Wikimedia Commons)

The blacklist was created and policed by executives. Red-hunting government institutions — the FBI, HUAC, Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations (Joseph McCarthy’s subcommittee), and Senate Subcommittee on Internal Security — could only expose and intimidate. (The blacklist should not be conflated with McCarthyism. It preceded and outlasted McCarthy, and he did not concern himself with the media.)

The executives were not ideologically anti-communist; they sought to avoid censorship by the government and boycotts by such organizations as the American Legion and Catholic Church. But the blacklist only ended when the producers became convinced that open hiring of blacklisted people did not negatively impact box office receipts.

The First Hearings

The foundation for the Hollywood blacklist was laid on May 9, 1947, the day when two members of HUAC opened executive sessions at the Biltmore hotel in Los Angeles. The committee had actively participated in Hollywood red-hunting since the late 1930s, with little to show for it. The Cold War, however, reinvigorated the domestic red scare (there had been two previously, 1917–21 and 1939–41).

The committee interviewed fourteen friendly witnesses and studio head Jack Warner, who supplied the congressmen a list of suspected Communists employed by his studio, many of whom were liberals. Though Eric Johnston, the president of the producers’ associations, had pledged the full cooperation of the industry, committee chairman J. Parnell Thomas (R-NJ) publicly expressed his dissatisfaction with the movie executives.  In July, Thomas sent two of his investigators to Hollywood to intimidate the producers into complying. When that did not work, Thomas authorized the serving of subpoenas.

Jack Warner, 1955. (Wikimedia Commons)

On September 22, 1947, the Hollywood Reporter divulged the names of forty-two motion picture personnel who had received subpoenas from HUAC. Nineteen were labeled “unfriendly” (unlikely to cooperate) by a few publications. Those nineteen and their lawyers met regularly for the next month to plan a strategy. They decided to challenge the right of the committee to subpoena them or ask them questions about their union and political affiliations. They also decided that each would write a statement to be read when they were called to the stand.

Finally, they made what turned out to be a disastrous decision: they would not refuse to answer any questions, but would use the occasion to attack the committee — that is, they would answer those questions “in their own way.” This tactic obfuscated their core position — the committee was violating their First Amendment rights — and provoked the kind of behavior from some witnesses that gave ammunition to movie executives who wanted to make a show of collaboration.

The solid wall of opposition that the unfriendly witnesses had been told to expect from industry leaders crumbled immediately when the first witness, Warner, the president of Warner Brothers, testified on October 24, the initial day of the hearings. He crawled before his questioners, telling them: “It is a privilege to appear again before the committee to help as much as I can in facilitating its work.”

He claimed that he had been aware for over a decade of Communist working in the industry and that he had fired many of them. Warner then reeled off a list of those he had heard or read were Communists. (Of the fourteen he cited, three were not party members.) Louis B. Mayer, who testified a few days later, insisted that the producers could handle the Communist problem. The last studio boss to testify, Walt Disney, complained about Communist efforts to organize his cartoonists and agreed that there was a Communist threat in Hollywood.

They made what turned out to be a disastrous decision: they would not refuse to answer any questions.

The behavior of some of the unfriendly witnesses, which would provide the producers with grounds for instituting a blacklist, was demonstrated on October 29, 1947, by John Howard Lawson, the first one called to the stand. Set off by Thomas’s interjections and refusal to allow him to read his prepared statement, Lawson grew incensed and argumentative. Thomas ordered the sergeant at arms to remove Lawson from the witness chair.

Though only two of the other ten unfriendly witnesses — screenwriters Dalton Trumbo and Lester Cole — expressed anger, and only Trumbo was ordered to leave the stand, the die had been cast. Johnston followed Lawson to the stand, stating that he welcomed the investigation and hoped that it would expose Communists in the industry.

“Their Actions Have Been a Disservice to Their Employers”

At first, industry leaders masked their concern when the Hollywood Ten were cited for contempt of Congress. Producer Samuel Goldwyn announced: “I believe that the entire hearing is a flop; I think the whole thing is a disgraceful performance.” Paul V. McNutt, an industry counsel, said: “The truth is there are no pictures of ours which carry Communist propaganda and we do not care how many so-called experts the Committee employs to try to find out. The search will be fruitless.”

Eric Johnston, head of the Motion Picture Association of America, told the Ten, “as long as I live, I will never be a party to anything as un-American as a blacklist.” But some producers, like MGM’s Eddie Mannix, had decided that the Ten had to go — not because they might be Communists, but because they “had become of great disservice to the industry.”

One month after the hearings ended, while the members of the House were voting to hold the Ten in contempt of Congress, movie company executives and studio bosses met at the Waldorf Astoria Hotel to decide how to deal with them. Two of the major studios, RKO and Fox, had already opted to fire the three witnesses under contract: Edward Dmytryk, Adrian Scott, and Ring Lardner Jr. MGM was close to doing the same with Trumbo and Cole.

Despite the fact that seven of the Ten were screenwriters, the Screen Writers Guild joined the other talent guilds in cooperating with the executives.

For executives, the big question was how to handle the overall issue of communism in the industry. No transcript of the meeting has come to light, but anecdotal evidence indicates that the majority of those present did not want to inaugurate a blacklist. However, Johnston and the two special counsels, McNutt and James Byrnes, insisted that the only realistic course of action was to publicly announce the firing of the five under contract and to state that none of the ten would be employed until they had purged themselves of their Communist taint. Only Goldwyn, Dore Schary, and Walter Wanger objected to terminating those under contract. Those in favor agreed that they would draw the line at the Ten and institute a policy of self-regulation.

The so-called Waldorf Declaration announced that the Ten, by “their actions have been a disservice to their employers and have impaired their usefulness to the industry.” Therefore, “We will forthwith discharge or suspend without compensation those in our employ and we will not re-employ any of the ten until such time as he is acquitted [of contempt] or has purged himself of contempt and declares under oath that he is not a Communist.” Furthermore, “We will not knowingly employ a Communist or a member of any party or group which advocates the overthrow of the Government of the United States by force of by illegal or unconstitutional methods.” Finally, the executives promised to “invite the Hollywood talent guilds to work with us to eliminate any subversives, to protect the innocent, and to safeguard free speech and a free screen wherever threatened.”

Still from the trailer for The Hurricane (1937). (Wikimedia Commons)

Despite the fact that seven of the Ten were screenwriters, SWG joined the other talent guilds in cooperating with the executives. A Motion Picture Industry Council (MPIC), consisting of representatives of the producers, guilds, and trade unions, was created to bring the “Communist problem” to the attention of all studios, publicize the industry’s efforts to purge itself of subversives, “clear” repentant Communists for reemployment, and criticize HUAC witnesses who refused to play ball with Congress.

The blacklist was now in full effect.

More Hearings

There matters stood for three years. Two of the Ten, Lawson and Trumbo, were tried for contempt of Congress. The other eight, to save the expense of multiple trials, agreed to accept whatever verdict was rendered. When Lawson and Trumbo were convicted, they appealed and launched a national campaign to rally support to their cause.

On April 10, 1950, the Supreme Court refused to grant certiorari, and the Ten began turning themselves in to federal authorities to start serving their one-year sentences. (Herbert Biberman and Dmytryk were given six-month terms.)

When HUAC formally announced it was reopening the hearings in March 1951, the producers promised their full cooperation and stated that those witnesses who did not deny their Communist affiliation would find it difficult to get work in the studios. One other thing had changed, to the detriment of those who refused to cooperate: they had no support network.

There was no Committee for the First Amendment (and no support from liberals); the most democratic union in Hollywood, the Conference of Studio Unions (an industrial union that represented several crafts in the industry), had suffered a massive defeat at the hands of IATSE and executives; Congress had passed the virulently anti-union Taft-Hartley Act; the Communist Party in Hollywood had been severely reduced in size; and national party leaders were in jail, on trial, or in hiding.

Mug shot of Dalton Trumbo, Federal Correctional Institution, Ashland, 1950. (Wikimedia Commons)

This time around the committee modified its approach, focusing on Communists rather than communism in the industry. And subpoenaed witnesses, having learned their lesson from the October 1947 hearings, recognized they had only two options if they wanted to avoid a prison sentence: invoke the Fifth Amendment and be fired; or cooperate fully with the committee, admitting to membership in the Communist Party, apologizing for this membership, providing the names of other members, and praising the committee.

Larry Parks, the leadoff witness, who had not been adequately coached, initially refused to supply names; by the time he did so, he had effectively ended his career. The friendly witnesses who followed rattled off hundreds of names. (One screenwriter, Martin Berkeley, provided over 150.) When Dmytryk decided to follow the formula of the Waldorf Declaration and recant, he met with members of the MPIC, who prescribed the path to his return to work: coauthoring a lengthy apology in the Saturday Evening Post, testifying anew before the House committee, naming names.

The May 7, 1948, issue of the Counterattack newsletter. (Wikimedia Commons)

The MPIC also had to contend with a different type of list — the gray list — made necessary by the publication, in 1950, of Red Channels: The Report of Communist Influence in Radio and Television. The book, a compendium of 151 names (mainly actors and actresses) and the “subversive” organizations to which they lent their prestige, was published by three former FBI agents who put out Counterattack, a magazine exposing Communist influence on movies.

Shortly after it appeared, Ronald Reagan, president of the Screen Actors Guild, received permission from the board of directors to enlist the MPIC to protect the actors and actresses named in Red Channels. The MPIC plan allowed any employee under suspicion of subversive activities to write a statement of facts to clarify their position against communism and explain their relationship to any allegedly communist-linked organization. The MPIC would then direct the letter to the producer or studio of the writer’s choice but would not evaluate its quality or credence.

The studio heads stopped making ‘social problem’ films — in August 1948, Variety reported that ‘studios are continuing to drop plans for “message” pictures like hot coals.’

In addition to the blacklist, the movie executives produced nearly fifty anti-Communist movies as a sop to HUAC members who lamented the paucity of such films. And finally, the studio heads stopped making “social problem” films — in August 1948, Variety reported that “studios are continuing to drop plans for ‘message’ pictures like hot coals.”

The Effects of the Blacklist

Blacklisted writers had it somewhat easier than actors or directors: they could write under pseudonyms or behind fronts. But even when screenwriters’ scripts won Academy Awards — The Brave One (1956), Bridge on the River Kwai (1957), and The Defiant Ones (1958) — the producers refused to bend. The blacklist continued through the 1950s, stifling the range of acceptable topics covered in movies and contributing to the conformity and conservatism of the 1950s.

One can count on two hands the movies that challenged United States society and McCarthyism during the 1950s (Bad Day at Black Rock [1955], It’s Always Fair Weather [1955], High Noon [1952], Johnny Guitar [1954], Silver Lode [1954], Storm Center [1956]). Biblical epics, marriage comedies, upbeat musicals, and alien movies predominated. The television industry was even more repressed, featuring family sitcoms and banal Westerns.

The major crack in the ranks occurred in 1960, when, first, Otto Preminger and, subsequently, Universal Studios announced that Trumbo would receive screen credit for Exodus (1960) and Spartacus (1960). One by one, on their own merit, many of the blacklistees returned to work. A significant number, however, found it difficult to regain their footing in the industry.

One can count on two hands the movies that challenged United States society and McCarthyism during the 1950s.

The producers’ associations never stated that the blacklist had ended, because they consistently maintained that there had never been a blacklist in the first place. The producers’ position was voiced in a 1980 interview by Reagan, now the Republican candidate for president. He told journalist Robert Scheer that the industry had responded to Communist domination of several unions and Communist efforts to take over the industry. They had “gotten into positions where they could destroy careers, and did destroy them. There was no blacklist in Hollywood. The blacklist in Hollywood, if there was one, was provided by the Communists.” (This claim, that anti-communists were blacklisted by Communists during the 1930s and 1940s, is demonstrably false.)

In some ways, Hollywood has never recovered from the blacklist era. The writers’ guild, for example, essentially became a dues-collecting, welfare organization rather than a highly politicized union. The militant, democratic Conference of Studio Unions has not been replicated.

Fortunately, the media industries have changed so much that a new blacklist is unlikely. Still, one lesson everyone should have learned is the precariousness of the First and Fifth Amendments when the government announces a national security crisis. Another is the necessity of defending those who come under attack.

If the Saudis can “calm the Yemeni situation down, I think that’s great,” Nides said.

By JNS

The resumption of diplomatic talks between Saudi Arabia and Iran isn’t bad news for the kingdom’s relationship with Israel, says Thomas Nides, the U.S. ambassador to Jerusalem.

“We’re happy when things are calm,” he told i24 News this week. “If the Saudis can have a cold peace with Iran and calm the Yemeni situation down, I think that’s great.”

“This has no impact on the ability for the Saudis to have a bilateral relationship with Israel,” he added. “We are all focused on the Abrahama Accords. We’re all focused on regional security.”

‘Saudi’s rapprochement with Iran ‘has no impact on a bilateral Saudi-Israeli relationship’

In an exclusive interview, @USAmbIsrael discusses Iran, judicial reform, Abraham Accords, and more

Tune in: 8 pm Israel time, 1 pm US EST on #TheRundown with @calev_i24 pic.twitter.com/L6XICDLaBW

— i24NEWS English (@i24NEWS_EN) May 16, 2023

Last March, Professor Eyal Zisser, vice rector of Tel Aviv University and holder of the Yona and Dina Ettinger Chair in Contemporary History of the Middle East, told JNS, “Israel was not a factor in the Saudi decision” to renew ties with Tehran.

“The decision does not have practical implications for Israel, because if Saudi Arabia wants to normalize relations with Israel, it will do so,” he said.

The post US envoy: Riyadh-Tehran détente won’t hurt Saudi-Israel prospects appeared first on World Israel News.

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As explained by an activist for equality between the sexes, the decision to ban women from public life has nothing at all to do with Judaism or halacha (Torah law); rather, it’s a movement led by a minority of extremists.

The post WATCH: Israeli pharmacy erases women’s photos on products, caving to extremists appeared first on World Israel News.

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