Guilt By Association Quotes
This is a proverb reflecting a major difference between Arab traditions of justice and that of most Western societies where guilt is not to be vested upon family and friends of a person who commits a crime. While Western jurisprudence recognizes harboring a fugitive as a crime, it is always considered a less heinous crime than the original murderer, robber or whatever. However, in the Bedouin tradition the befriender of the criminal is guilty of the same crime and deserves the same punishment as the criminal. Ironically, Arabs are not the only people with this notion. Sephardic Jews (whose roots and origins are from Spain and the Middle East and who spent many generations in Arab dominated and controlled lands tended to use a different standard from the traditional European Jews with regard to retaliation for acts of terrorism and often used the principle illustrated by this proverb to justify bulldozing the homes of terrorists even after they were dead and attacking associates of leaders of terrorist organizations.
The reason that this is a noteworthy quotation is that it illustrates how the immoral political tactics of the junior senator from Wisconsin, Joseph P. McCarthy, was turned into a noun and used to describe a type of unethical political behavior the world over. Even in South Africa, labeling political tactics as McCarthyism is an effective accusation. Senator McCarthy himself was censured by the Senate for his tactics of claiming people were communists when he had no evidence of same and claiming that he had long lists of communists in the government when he did not have them.
Hoover gave this report to President Lyndon Johnson. It was 11 pages long and provided no data or proof of the many accusations. Hoover viewed the entire Civil Rights Movement as part of the Communist initiative to weaken and undermine the United States. There were no Black FBI agents and Hoover himself was an inveterate racist. The FBI worked hand in hand with local police in the South and most agents supported legal racial segregation. Hoover’s definition of a Communist varied from time to time. Johnson worked closely with King after he had read this report and discussed it with some of his staff, so it may have been that Johnson didn’t believe the conclusions. Later historical analysis showed that there were two key people that were close to King who had early communist connections earlier. Both were active socialists at the time but neither was then involved with the Russian controlled American Communist party. The Official Position of the Communist Party was a strong anti-segregation program, and Hoover and most Southern Segregationists believed that all opponents of legal segregation—including demonstrators and marchers--were Communists or were organized and Controlled by the Communists.
This is a classic example of one of the many politicians of the 20th and 21st century who would call anyone a communist who opposed anything that he regarded as American. In actuality, there were some very conservative economists and shareholders who did not think that the funding of celebrations had little or no value for shareholders. Many on the left were concerned that the celebration was in great part paid for by all Americans because of the tax deduction that was allowed. However none were communists.
