Clint Esatwood's new J. Edgar Film- Communists

[The Young Pioneer]

This is probably a VERY ignorant question but who better to ask than RevLeft? I'm not well versed in the history of communism in the United States but I just saw this film J. Edgar. (DiCaprio's very good, btw.)

I realise Hoover was very "Commie Paranoid" or whatnot but the beginning of the film depicts communists blowing up the homes of US government officials in the 1920s. Did this actually happen? I'm assuming something to that effect happened but was it truly the communist party that killed people? The film specifically credits "Bolshevik Revolutionaries," and depicts some pamphlets that were apparently in circulation to spread the "communist propaganda."

So to those of you who know more about this- What went down and is there any truth to the way the film portrays it? If so, how did the communists justify this and where does the party stand on that bit of their history today?

Thanks in advance.

[Blake's Baby]

Possibly refers to this: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wall_Street_bombing - which was apparently carried out by Anarchists rather than Marxists. I don't know anything about terrorist attacks on the homes of officials, but there were some violent disputes going on, the Seattle General Strike and such like.

[Sasha]

Probably refers to this: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wall_Street_bombing - which was apparently carried out by Anarchists rather than Marxists.

Almost, right group, wrong bombing, its about their 1919 July campaign: http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/1919_United_States_anarchist_bombings

[The Young Pioneer]

Both sources are helpful, thank you! :)

The movie made it sound like this was carried out directly by the newly formed CPUSA when apparently it was actually anarchists who followed Galleani?

Either way, CPUSA members were later accused and 500-some even deported thanks to the FBI. Great man, Hoover! ;)

Thanks again- If anyone else has seen the film I'd love opinions of the portrayals. Unfortunately I think the movie as a whole leans towards anti-Communism just as J. Edgar himself did.

[x359594]

...Either way, CPUSA members were later accused and 500-some even deported thanks to the FBI....If anyone else has seen the film I'd love opinions of the portrayals. Unfortunately I think the movie as a whole leans towards anti-Communism just as J. Edgar himself did.

I haven't seen J.Edgar yet, but there's a terrific bio-film by the radical Larry Cohen called The Private Files of J.Edgar Hoover (1977.) The movie was hated by liberals and conservatives since Cohen spares no one in his indictment of Hoover. Unfortunately it's not available in any home video format.

About the deportations, the Attorney General A. Mitchell Palmer was behind those, and they weren't confined to members of the Communist Labor Party (as the CPUSA was then called) but included foreign born and naturalized anarchists and socialists as well as communists.

[Comrade Funk]

Part of the Red Scare from 1919-1920. Hoover and Palmer basically destroyed thousands of American's civil liberties during the time. Palmer, who was Attorney General and a Democratic nominee for president in 1920, actually believed a communist revolution would occur in the U.S on May Day 1920. Needless to say, he was laughed at after the revolution never came to fruition.