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The following is a full transcript of the testimony by Ayn Rand before the United States House of Representatives’ Committee on Un-American Activities (commonly known as the House Un-American Activities Committee, or HUAC) on October 20, 1947.

Background

The History of HUAC

The House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC) became a permanent (or “standing”) committee of the House in January 1945. It had existed on a temporary basis since 1938. HUAC was supposed to investigate “un-American propaganda” in the United States. Although it also investigated pro-fascist or pro-Nazi activity, HUAC is most widely known for its investigations of suspected Communist influence in the late 1940s and early 1950s. Along with the investigation of Alger Hiss, the investigation of Communist influence in the motion picture industry is one of the defining episodes in the committee’s history. HUAC would continue to exist into the 1960s, but these memorable hearings are its best-known legacy. The committee’s name was changed in 1969, and it was abolished in 1975, when jurisdiction over investigation of foreign influence was transferred to the House Judiciary Committee.

HUAC and Hollywood

The first HUAC investigations of Communism in Hollywood occurred in 1940, when Representative Martin Dies, a Texas Democrat, was chairman of the committee. Dies convened meetings of the committee in Los Angeles and questioned several actors and writers, including actor Humphrey Bogart and writer John Howard Lawson. All denied either being Communists or knowing with certainty that any of their co-workers were Communists. These early hearings ended with Dies finding no credible evidence of Communist activity in the movie industry. Once the United States entered World War II in 1941, the Soviet Union was an ally, and Congress had little interest in exposing any Communist activities in Hollywood.

The end of the war brought increased fear of Communism in the United States. In the 1946 elections, the Republican Party won control of the House of Representatives. As a result, conservative Representative J. Parnell Thomas, a longtime member of HUAC, became its chairman. Thomas initiated a new investigation into Communist influence in Hollywood.

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