Your tax dollars at work
Posted by Charles II on August 30, 2012
Allison Flood, The Guardian:
Ray Bradbury was investigated by the FBI during the 1950s, with government agents interviewing his peers and putting him under surveillance before concluding that despite being critical of the US government in his writing, the celebrated writer was never a member of the Communist party.
The 40-page cache of the late science fiction author’s FBI files was obtained by the Daily Beast following a Freedom of Information request, and shows the extent to which the FBI had Bradbury in its sights in 1959. “Raymond Douglas Bradbury, a freelance science fiction, television and motion picture scenario writer … has been described as being critical of the United States Government,” the FBI wrote on 8 June 1959, before laying out its issue with Bradbury’s classic collection of short stories, The Martian Chronicles. The stories “were connected by the repeated theme that earthmen are despoilers and not developers”, according to the FBI.
…
[An informant said] “the general aim of these science fiction writers is to frighten the people into a state of paralysis or psychological incompetence bordering on hysteria which would make it very possible to conduct a Third World War which the American people would seriously believe could not be won since their morals had been seriously destroyed”.
Look, there’s a pretty simple line that any police agency should follow. If something is a crime, it should be investigated. If it’s unpopular, leave it the f— alone. Criticizing the government or, for that matter, membership in any political organization is not a crime.
One Response to “Your tax dollars at work”
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Mercury Rising 鳯女 
Phoenix Woman said
This just shows you how much J. Edgar Hoover and his billionaire buddies feared the idea that economic democracy might actually become the main economic system in America. People who never noticed the long stretch of centuries where the boyars and czars called for pogroms and other forms of mass slaughter of anyone who wasn’t of the nobility, suddenly put a strong focus on every misdeed of the state-sponsored capitalists who took over from the boyars — and made sure to watch any Americans who might be taking notes.