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How Should Ex-communists Cooperate? (1980-12-04)
About this film
Is naming one's former associates in a subversive enterprise the least one can do to make reparation? Or is it the sort of thing only a tyrant would ask? Heat, but also light, on the reasons for congressional investigations of Communist activity, and the reasons many non-Communists opposed them. WFB: "You can't just say, 'Oops, I'm sorry that I was supporting Stalin during the period that he killed fifteen million people.' ... I want to prove I'm sorry by cooperating with efforts to spread the word, and the most concrete way to do that is to show that you are willing to identify... the other members of the Ku Klux Klan, the other members of the Nazi Bund, the other members of the Communist Party." ... VSN: "To my way of thinking, totalitarian societies are the ones that are supposed to say, 'In order to demonstrate your loyalty to the state, you are required to demonstrate your disloyalty to your friends.' During the Soviet purges, the first two questions they would ask anybody were: 'Who recruited you?' and 'Whom did you recruit?' That's not something we, in a democratic society, are supposed to do."
Directors & creators
Southern Educational Communications Association
Subjects
public broadcasting, AAPB, Firing Line with William F. Buckley Jr., United States, Communism, Informers
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