The (Soviet) Patriot

Noting the local release of the hagiographic documentary Trumbo, DCist writes that while he may "not necessarily [be] a household name when it comes to American patriots, novelist and screenwriter Dalton Trumbo earned the title." Oh brother. Perhaps the commenters can debate what it means to be "a patriot," but I suspect that we can all agree that shilling for Joseph Stalin isn't a necessary qualification. No need for to revisit Trumbo's love affair with totalitarianism when historian and Red Star Over Hollywood author Ron Radosh recently did it for us. There are so very many terrific examples of his lazy and dishonest Stalinophilia, but this seems a good place to start:

Trumbo also bragged about his role in keeping anti-Communist films from being made. He had defended Stalin as "one of the democratic leaders of the world," and was proud to have helped keep Hollywood from filming Trotsky's "so-called" biography of Stalin, as well as books by James T. Farrell, Victor Kravchenko, and Arthur Koestler—all of which he called "untrue" and "reactionary." In 1954 he wrote a fellow blacklisted writer of the Communist party's "fine tradition .??.??. that whenever a book or play or film is produced which is harmful to the best interests of the working class, that work and its author should and must be attacked in the sharpest possible terms."

Read Radosh's entire review of Trumbo here.