Cutting Her Conscience

Over at TCS Daily, Lauren Weiner crafts an exceptional profile of Lillian Hellman:

In this woman we find a true master: Capitalism was all greed and exploitation yet Hellman, its critic, enjoyed wealth, luxury, and ordering lesser beings around. She believed herself to be original and independent-minded, but in finding capitalism itself fascist, she was not voicing an original thought but parroting the main plank of the Communist Party’s ideological platform.

Read the whole thing. In 1952, Hellman told HCUAA, “I cannot and will not cut my conscience to fit this year’s fashions”. Which is remarkably ironic, and quite possibly knowingly so: nothing was more fashionable (especially in Hollywood), or more likely to change direction on a dime, than communism itself.