Communism and the 'good victim'

It's a shame that the lead character was changed from a Communist to an 'innocent' (a)political liberal.

According to the Trivia section Abraham Polonsky, the film's writer who had himself been blacklisted, was disgusted by this revision and asked to have his name removed from the credits because he was tired of seeing another film about an 'innocent man accused' and wanted to see something that was true to the actual events, particularly in his case.

I agree. The film should not have shied away from portraying some of the victims of the McCarthy witch-hunts as true American-Communists. By fudging the matter the film seems to almost be implicitly endorsing the witch-hunts for where the accused is 'guilty'. It reminds me of those 'anti-death penalty' films where the accused is innocent, old TV movies about HIV where the victim is a 'good victim' who has contracted the disease through an innocent blood transfusion, or film about the horrors of sexual assault where the victim is a sweet, unflirtatious, virginal type. Sure, those stories should be told too, but the particular focus in these instances detract from the message that the death penalty is wrong in all cases, anyone who contracts AIDS unknowingly is an innocent victim, and that no one, no matter how seemingly provocative, asks to be raped.

The same applies here. Whatever one thinks of Communism (and I am not a pro-Communist or even a particular Communist-sympathiser) these men and women did not deserve to have their careers destroyed for their personal political views. The whole point of being a democrat and positioning oneself against political extremism, including Fascism and Communism, is that you accept the rights of others within a society to harbour different viewpoints to oneself. Also, not all of these American Communist Party supporters wanted to replicate the type of Communism practiced by Stalin and later Castro.