Informers and Other Villains

Nations annually celebrate historic victories over past injustices and remember other historic events they do not celebrate. These are the recurrent nightmares that follow victories over tyranny and unjust social orders; those periods in which freedom must be defended but when it is not clear who is friend and who is foe, or, indeed, whether they are separable into such neat categories. Artists, scholars, and journalists continually return to these events and we read about them because we sense that the nightmares have something significant to tell us about our political institutions and lives.

They arose early in our history and have reappeared in various guises; the last great convulsion occurred after World War II and was marked by the investigations of the House Committee on Un-American Activities (HUAC) and Joe McCarthy. These irruptions are obviously related to the strains existing in the larger world—McCarthyism and HUAC are hardly understandable except by reference ...