Unamerican
From The Art and Popular Culture Encyclopedia
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Un-American is a term of US political discourse which is sometimes applied to people or institutions in the United States in an attempt to deny the targets the identity of American. It implies a substantial deviation from US norms and may extend to internal subversion, espionage or treason.
The most famous use is in the title of the House Un-American Activities Committee which was started to combat Nazi and Ku Klux Klan (KKK) activity in the US during World War II and which later investigated the activities of Communists and purported Communists in the US. By 1959, however, former President Harry S. Truman had denounced the House Un-American Activities Committee as the "most un-American thing in the country today.
The use and meaning of the term is by no means uniform in the US. Due in part to these historical associations with political abuses and jingoism, the attitudes of Americans toward the pejorative use of "Un-American" are often critical or suspicious. Moreover, Americans may vary widely in what they believe to be un-American.
See also
- House Un-American Activities Committee
- McCarthyism
- Jingoism
- Hollywood blacklist
- Censorship
- Anti-Americanism
- Hanjian
- Un-Australian