Guilt by association let denunciations by relatives and ex-communists drive HUAC investigations of artists.

Evidence

In 1947 two friends of Horkheimer and Adorno, Hanns Eisler and Bertolt Brecht, were caught up in it. Both were victims of a typical principle of the witch-hunt: guilt by association. Hanns Eisler was summoned to appear before the HCUA because he was the brother of Gerhart Eisler, who had been denounced by two apostate communists, Louis Budenz, former editor of The Daily Worker and the real leader of the American Communist Party, and by his own sister, Ruth Fischer. — Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School, 413

Categorization

• XREF: Directly links the Frankfurt School circle (Horkheimer, Adorno) to the American witch-hunt through Eisler and Brecht. — connects to: Targeted Southern Democrats carried anti-union lawmaking to Congress and HUAC — Daryl Levinson and Benjamin I. Sachs, Political Entrenchment and Public Law, 226