First of all, it can’t possibly be bad epistemics for Congress to form the House Un-American Activities Committee[1]. Whatever you think was bad about this, it wasn’t epistemics, since epistemics is about having correct beliefs. Taking an ill-advised action isn’t bad epistemics (no matter how bad it may be in other ways).
In any case, I was responding to the part of your comment which I quoted in mine. There is, perhaps, some very literal and very generous interpretation of the words “nation-spanning network of terrorist organizations that target minorities/homosexuals/etc” under which the KKK (and associated groups) qualifies. But under any common-sense reading of the words, the claim just does not fit the facts.
Insofar as there is a continuum of how justified is the response to some threat, judged only on the basis of how serious the threat itself is, the justification of social justice by the alleged threat of the KKK is, indeed, more plausible than the justification of the Satanic Panic by the alleged threat of child-sacrificing devil worshippers, since, as you say, there were none at all of the latter. Yet compare both of these things to the justification of HUAC by the threat of Soviet espionage, and it’s clear that both of the former pale into utter insignificance; if one is “actually entirely unjustified” and the other is “almost entirely unjustified”, that is a distinction such as makes no difference.
It’s worth noting that “blacklist[ing] people from working in television for supporting labor unions” was not HUAC’s function; the blacklist was a measure taken by the Hollywood film studios, and had no legal force whatsoever.
First of all, it can’t possibly be bad epistemics for Congress to form the House Un-American Activities Committee[1]. Whatever you think was bad about this, it wasn’t epistemics, since epistemics is about having correct beliefs. Taking an ill-advised action isn’t bad epistemics (no matter how bad it may be in other ways).
In any case, I was responding to the part of your comment which I quoted in mine. There is, perhaps, some very literal and very generous interpretation of the words “nation-spanning network of terrorist organizations that target minorities/homosexuals/etc” under which the KKK (and associated groups) qualifies. But under any common-sense reading of the words, the claim just does not fit the facts.
Insofar as there is a continuum of how justified is the response to some threat, judged only on the basis of how serious the threat itself is, the justification of social justice by the alleged threat of the KKK is, indeed, more plausible than the justification of the Satanic Panic by the alleged threat of child-sacrificing devil worshippers, since, as you say, there were none at all of the latter. Yet compare both of these things to the justification of HUAC by the threat of Soviet espionage, and it’s clear that both of the former pale into utter insignificance; if one is “actually entirely unjustified” and the other is “almost entirely unjustified”, that is a distinction such as makes no difference.
It’s worth noting that “blacklist[ing] people from working in television for supporting labor unions” was not HUAC’s function; the blacklist was a measure taken by the Hollywood film studios, and had no legal force whatsoever.