(Minghui.org) [Editor's Note] This series is a reprint of The Epoch Times' English translation of the book How the Specter of Communism Is Ruling Our World by the editorial team of Nine Commentaries on the Communist Party.
Table of Contents of the Book
Preface: How the Specter of Communism Is Ruling Our World
Introduction: How the Specter of Communism Is Ruling Our World
Chapter One: The Specter’s Strategies for Destroying Humanity
Chapter Two: Communism’s European Beginnings
Chapter Three: Tyranny in the East
Chapter Four: Exporting Revolution
Chapter Five: Infiltrating the West
Chapter Six: The Revolt Against God
Chapter Seven: The Destruction of the Family
Chapter Eight: How Communism Sows Chaos in Politics
Chapter Nine: The Communist Economic Trap
Chapter Ten: Corrupting the Legal System
Chapter Eleven: Desecrating the Arts
Chapter Twelve: Sabotaging Education
Chapter Thirteen: The Media – The Specter’s Mouthpiece
Chapter Fourteen: Popular Culture – A Decadent Indulgence
Chapter Fifteen: The Communist Roots of Terrorism
Chapter Sixteen: The Communism Behind Environmentalism
Chapter Seventeen: Globalization and Communism
Chapter Eighteen: The Chinese Communist Party’s Global Ambitions
Conclusion: How the Specter of Communism Is Ruling Our World
What is Included in This Part?
Chapter Five, Part I: Infiltrating the West
Introduction
1. Communism via Violence and Nonviolence
2. War of Espionage and Disinformation
3. From the New Deal to Progressivism
4. The Cultural Revolution of the West
5. The Anti-War and Civil Rights Movements
6. The American Marxist
7. The Long March Through the Institutions
8. Political Correctness
9. Socialism Across Europe
10. Falling for the Devil’s Tricks
References
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CHAPTER FIVE, PART I: INFILTRATING THE WEST
Introduction
The 2016 US presidential election was one of the most dramatic in decades. The campaign trail was full of twists and turns that persisted long after the election. The winner, Republican candidate Donald Trump, was besieged by negative media coverage and protests in cities around the nation. The demonstrators held signs emblazoned with slogans such as “Not My President” and declared that Trump was racist, sexist, xenophobic, or a Nazi. There were demands for a recount and threats of impeachment before he even assumed office.
Investigative journalism has revealed that many of these protests were instigated by certain interest groups. As shown in America Under Siege: Civil War 2017, a documentary directed by Florida-based researcher Trevor Loudon, a significant portion of the demonstrators were “professional revolutionaries” with ties to communist regimes and other authoritarian states, such as North Korea, Iran, Venezuela, or Cuba. The film also highlighted the role of two prominent American socialist organizations: the Stalinist Workers World Party and the Maoist Freedom Road Socialist Organization. [1]
Having researched the communist movement since the 1980s, Loudon determined that left-wing organizations have made the United States their primary target for infiltration and subversion. The fields of American politics, education, media, and business have increasingly shifted to the left under the influence of well-placed individuals. Even as people around the globe cheered the triumph of the free world after the Cold War, communism was stealthily taking over the public institutions of Western society, in preparation for the final struggle.
Communism manifests as totalitarian governments in Eastern countries such as the Soviet Union or China, where it conducts mass killing, and the destruction of traditional culture. However, it also has been silently and steadily gaining control over the West through subversion and disinformation. It is eroding the economy, political processes, social structures, and moral fabric of humanity to bring about humanity’s degeneration and destruction.
America is the light of the free world and carries out the divinely given mission of policing the globe. It was the involvement of the United States that determined the outcomes of both world wars. During the Cold War, facing the menace of a nuclear holocaust, the United States successfully contained the Soviet bloc until the disintegration of the Soviet and Eastern European communist regimes. The success of the American experiment with liberty and enlightened governance has thus spared the world from facing even greater destruction.
America’s Founding Fathers applied their knowledge of Western religious and philosophical traditions to write the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution of the United States. These documents recognize as self-evident the rights bestowed upon man by God — starting with the freedoms of belief and speech — and established the separation of powers to guarantee the republican system of government.
The freedom of the West runs directly counter to the goal of communism. While masking itself with beautiful visions of a collective, egalitarian society, communism aims to enslave and destroy humanity.
Since the Communist Party doesn’t hold power in Western countries, it aims to conquer the West through subversion, having its supporters infiltrate all organizations and institutions. There have been at least five major forces driving communist subversion in the West.
The first force of subversion was the Soviet Union, which founded the communist Third International (Comintern) to spread revolution worldwide.
The second was local communist parties, which worked with the Soviet Communist Party and the Comintern.
The third was the economic crisis and social upheaval that encouraged many Western governments to adopt socialist policies in the past few decades, resulting in a steady shift to the left.
The fourth was those who sympathized with and supported the Communist Party and socialism. These fellow travelers have served communism as a fifth column of “useful idiots” within Western society, helping to destroy its culture, sow moral degeneracy, and undermine legitimate governments.
The Chinese Communist Party (CCP) is a fifth force. After the Chinese communists implemented economic reform, which started in the 1980s, the CCP established political, business, and cultural exchanges that gave it an opportunity to infiltrate the West.
Given communism’s opaque and circuitous nature, it is beyond the scope of this work to provide a comprehensive account of communist infiltration in the West. However, by understanding the broad strokes, readers can start to see how evil operates and learn to see through its layers of deception. For the sake of brevity, this chapter offers a general overview of communism’s reach in the United States and Western Europe.
1. Communism via Violence and Nonviolence
In the popular imagination, the Communist Party is synonymous with violence, and with good reason. The fact that the communist regimes of Russia and China took power through violent revolution and used violence as a tool of repression drew attention away from communism’s less visible forms. In The Communist Manifesto, Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels wrote: “The Communists disdain to conceal their views and aims. They openly declare that their ends can be attained only by the forcible overthrow of all existing social conditions.” [2]
According to Marx, communist revolution would begin in advanced capitalist countries, but Vladimir Lenin believed that socialism could be built in Russia, which was comparatively backward in its economic development. Lenin’s other significant contribution to Marxism was his doctrine of party-building, which consisted of adopting the techniques of coercion, deception, and violence found in criminal organizations and animating them with Marxist socioeconomic theory. According to Lenin, the working class is incapable of developing class consciousness or demanding revolution on its own and thus must be rallied to action by an external force. The agents of revolution would be organized in a highly disciplined proletarian “vanguard” — the Communist Party.
The British Fabian Society, founded in 1884, a year after Marx’s death, took a different path in the struggle to impose socialism. The society’s original coat of arms depicted a wolf in sheep’s clothing, and its name is a reference to Quintus Fabius Maximus Verrucosus, the ancient Roman general and dictator, who earned fame for his delaying tactics in the war against Carthage. The first pamphlet produced by the group included a note that read, “For the right moment you must wait, as Fabius did most patiently, when warring against Hannibal, though many censured his delays; but when the time comes you must strike hard, as Fabius did, or your waiting will be in vain, and fruitless.” [3]
To gradually bring about socialism, the Fabian Society invented the policy of “permeation” to infiltrate politics, business, and civil society. The society encourages its members to advance socialist aims by joining suitable organizations and ingratiating themselves with important figures, such as cabinet ministers, senior administrative officials, industrialists, university deans, and church leaders. Sidney Webb, a core member of the society, wrote:
As a Society, we welcomed the adhesion of men and women of every religious denomination or of none, strongly insisting that Socialism was not Secularism; and the very object and purpose of all sensible collective action was the development of the individual soul or conscience or character. … Nor did we confine our propaganda to the slowly emerging Labour Party, or to those who were prepared to call themselves Socialists, or to the manual workers or to any particular class. We put our proposals, one by one, as persuasively as possible, before all who would listen to them — Conservatives whenever we could gain access to them, the churches and chapels of all denominations, the various Universities, and Liberals and Radicals, together with the other Socialist Societies at all times. This we called “permeation’” and it was an important discovery. [4]
Both the Fabian Society’s nonviolent communism and Lenin’s violent communism had the same ultimate aim. Lenin’s violent communism did not reject nonviolent means. Lenin, in his book “Left-Wing” Communism: An Infantile Disorder, criticized the communist parties of Western Europe that refused to cooperate with what he called the “reactionary” labor unions or to join the “capitalist” national parliament. Lenin wrote in his book: “For a Communist, with a correct understanding of his own ends, the art of politics lies in correctly calculating the conditions and the moment when the proletarian vanguard can take over power successfully. He must decide when, after this assumption of power, that vanguard will be able to obtain adequate support from sufficiently inclusive strata of the working-class and non-proletarian laboring masses, and when it will be able to maintain, consolidate and extend its supremacy, educating, training and attracting ever widening circles of the laboring masses.” [5]
Lenin repeatedly stressed that communists must hide their real intentions. In the pursuit of power, no promise or compromise would be ruled out. In other words, to achieve their goals, they must be unscrupulous. Both Russia’s Bolsheviks and the Chinese communist movement made liberal use of violence and deception on their way to gaining power.
The brutality of the Soviet and Chinese communist regimes has drawn attention away from the nonviolent communism found in the West. The Fabian Society specialized in disguise. It chose Bernard Shaw, an Irish playwright, to cover up the true aims of nonviolent socialism with prosaic rhetoric. But the brutality remains, just below the surface. Shaw wrote, on the final page of his book The Intelligent Woman’s Guide to Socialism and Capitalism: “I also made it quite clear that Socialism means equality of income or nothing, and that under socialism you would not be allowed to be poor. You would be forcibly fed, clothed, lodged, taught, and employed whether you like it or not. If it were discovered that you had not character enough to be worth all this trouble, you might possibly be executed in a kindly manner.” [6]
Just as a Leninist regime may sometimes find it expedient to scale back the overt brutality of its rule, Western communist parties and their various front organizations are not above employing violence and other criminal acts when doing so advances their political agenda.
2. War of Espionage and Disinformation
Communism holds the nation to be an oppressive construction of class society, so it aims to do away with the concepts of patriotism and national loyalty. In The Communist Manifesto, Marx and Engels proclaim that “working men have no country.” The manifesto ends on the note, “Workers of all countries, unite!”
Under Lenin’s leadership, the Bolsheviks founded the world’s first socialist regime and immediately established the Comintern to instigate socialist revolution around the globe. The goal of the Soviet Union and the Comintern was to overthrow the legitimate regimes of every nation on earth and establish a socialist world dictatorship of the proletariat. In 1921, the Comintern’s Far East branch set up the CCP, which would take over China in 1949.
Communist parties around the world sought guidance from the Comintern and accepted its funds and training. With the resources of a vast empire at its disposal, the Bolsheviks recruited activists around the world and trained them to carry out subversive operations in their own countries.
Founded in 1919, the Communist Party USA (CPUSA) was one such organization that followed the Comintern and the Bolsheviks. Though the CPUSA itself never became a major political force, its influence on the United States was nevertheless significant. The CPUSA colluded with activists and activist organizations to infiltrate workers’ and student movements, the church, and the government.
In the late 1950s, Fred Schwarz, a pioneer of American anti-communist thought, told the US House Un-American Activities Committee: “Any attempt to judge the influence of Communists by their numbers is like trying to determine the validity of the hull of a boat by relating the area of the holes to the area which is sound. One hole can sink the ship. Communism is the theory of the disciplined few controlling and directing the rest. One person in a sensitive position can control and manipulate thousands of others.” [7]
It is now known that Soviet operatives were active within the US government during World War II. Despite this and the anti-communist efforts of Sen. Joseph McCarthy, the facts were hidden or obscured from the public by leftist politicians, academics, and the left-wing media.
In the 1990s, the US government declassified the Venona files, a collection of Soviet communications that were decoded by American intelligence during World War II. These documents showed that at least three hundred Soviet spies were working in the US government, including high-ranking officials in the Roosevelt administration who had access to top-secret information. Other agents used their positions to influence American policymaking and statecraft. Among those found to be Soviet spies were US Treasury official Harry Dexter White, State Department official Alger Hiss, and Julius and Ethel Rosenberg, the couple who were executed by electric chair for transmitting military and atomic secrets to the Soviet Union.
The communications intercepted and decrypted by the Venona project were just the tip of the iceberg; the full extent of Soviet infiltration into the US government remains unknown. As high-ranking American officials, some of the Soviet operatives had opportunities to influence important political decisions.
Hiss, who served as the director of the State Department’s Office of Special Political Affairs, played a key role as President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s adviser during the Yalta Conference at the end of World War II. He helped determine postwar territorial arrangements, draft the United Nations Charter, decide prisoner exchanges, and the like.
White was a trusted aide to Secretary of the Treasury Henry Morgenthau Jr. He helped create the 1944 Bretton Woods international financial agreement and was one of the architects of the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank. White encouraged the Chinese Nationalist Party (Kuomintang) to enlist underground CCP member Yi Zhaoding in the Chinese Ministry of Finance. Taking up the post in 1941, Yi was the architect of disastrous currency reforms that damaged the Kuomintang’s reputation and benefited the CCP’s rise. [8] Some historians argue that the influence of Soviet spies and their left-wing sympathizers in US foreign policy led the United States to end military aid to the Kuomintang during the Chinese Civil War after World War II. Mainland China was consequently lost to the CCP. [9]
Whittaker Chambers, a Soviet informant and CPUSA associate who later defected and testified against other spies, said: “The agents of an enemy power were in a position to do much more than purloin documents. They were in a position to influence the nation’s foreign policy in the interest of the nation’s chief enemy, and not only on exceptional occasions, … but in what must have been the staggering sum of day to day decisions.” [10]
Yuri Bezmenov, a KGB agent who defected to the West in 1970, discussed Soviet methods of subversion in his writings and interviews. According to Bezmenov, the James Bond-style spies of popular culture who blow up bridges or sneak around stealing secret documents couldn’t be further from reality. Only 10 to 15 percent of the KGB’s personnel and resources were allocated to traditional spy operations, with the rest going to ideological subversion.
Bezmenov said subversion happens in four stages: demoralization, destabilization, crisis, and “normalization.” The first step focuses on using one generation to subvert the perception of reality of and demoralize the enemy country; the second creates social chaos; the third instigates a crisis that leads to a civil war, revolution, or invasion from another country; culminating in the fourth and final stage of bringing the country under the control of the Communist Party. This is called normalization.
Bezmenov, alias Tomas Schuman, listed three fields of subversion, or demoralization, under the first stage: ideas, structures, and life. Ideas cover religion, education, the media, and culture. Structures include government administration, the legal system, law enforcement, the armed forces, and diplomacy. Life encompasses families and communities, health, and relations between people of different races and social classes.
As an example, Bezmenov explained how the concept of equality was manipulated to create unrest. Agents would promote the cause of egalitarianism, making people feel discontent with their political and economic circumstances. Activism and civil unrest would be accompanied by economic deadlock, further exacerbating labor and capital relations in a worsening cycle of destabilization. This would culminate in revolution or invasion by communist forces. [11]
Another defector, Ion Mihai Pacepa, the highest-ranking intelligence officer to defect from the Soviet bloc, escaped to the United States in 1978. He further exposed how communist regimes adopted strategies of psychological warfare and disinformation against Western countries to bring about the first stage. According to Pacepa, the purpose of disinformation was to alter people’s frame of reference. With their ideological values manipulated, people would be unable to understand or accept the truth even when presented with direct evidence. [12]
Bezmenov said the first stage of ideological subversion usually took fifteen to twenty years — that is, the time needed for the education of a new generation — while the second stage took two to five years and the third stage, only two to six months. In an interview he gave in 1984, Bezmenov said the first stage had been accomplished to a greater extent than even Soviet authorities had expected.
The accounts of many Soviet spies and intelligence officials and declassified documents from the Cold War suggest that infiltration and subversion tactics were the driving forces behind the counterculture movement of the 1960s.
In 1950, McCarthy began to expose the extent of communist infiltration across the US government and society. But four years later, the Senate voted to censure him, and the government’s initiative to rid itself of communist influence was brought to a halt. Today, McCarthyism is synonymous with political persecution — an indication that the left wing has successfully established dominance in the ideological struggle.
Communist infiltration hasn’t lessened since the collapse of the Soviet Union and the end of the Cold War. The left wing fights tooth and nail to protect adulterers, abortionists, criminals, and communists, while supporting anarchy and opposing civilization.
3. From the New Deal to Progressivism
On October 24, 1929, panic set in at the New York Stock Exchange and a record 12.9 million shares were traded. The crisis spread from the financial sector to the entire economy, and the ensuing Great Depression spared neither the industrialized nor the developing nations of the world. The US unemployment rate, which was three percent in 1929, shot up to a quarter of the labor force by 1933. Industrial production in major industrial countries, apart from the Soviet Union, dropped by an average of 27 percent. [13]
In early 1933, within one hundred days of Roosevelt’s inauguration, many bills were introduced around the theme of solving the crisis. The policies increased government intervention in the economy, with Congress passing major reforms, including the Emergency Banking Act, Agricultural Adjustment Act, National Industrial Recovery Act, and Social Security Act. Though Roosevelt’s New Deal essentially petered out upon the outbreak of World War II, many of the institutions and organizations that emerged during that period have continued to shape American society to the present day.
Roosevelt issued more executive orders on average per year than the total number of such decrees issued by all presidents in the twentieth century. Nevertheless, the unemployment rate in the United States did not fall below double digits until 1941 and the war was underway. The New Deal’s real effect was to set the US government on a trajectory of high taxation, big government, and economic interventionism.
In his 2017 book The Big Lie: Exposing the Nazi Roots of the American Left, conservative thinker Dinesh D’Souza argued that the National Industrial Recovery Act, which formed the centerpiece of Roosevelt’s New Deal, essentially meant the end of the US free market. [14]
According to FDR’s Folly, a 2003 book by historian Jim Powell, the New Deal prolonged the Great Depression rather than ending it: The Social Security Act and labor laws encouraged further unemployment, while high taxes encumbered healthy business, and so on. [15] Economist and Nobel Prize Laureate Milton Friedman praised Powell’s work, saying: “Truth to tell — as Powell demonstrates without a shadow of a doubt — the New Deal hampered recovery from the contraction, prolonged and added to unemployment, and set the stage for ever more intrusive and costly government.” [16]
President Lyndon Johnson, who assumed office after the assassination of President John F. Kennedy in 1963, declared an “all-out war on human poverty and unemployment” in his 1964 State of the Union address and then launched the Great Society domestic programs. In a short period of time, Johnson issued a series of executive orders, established new government agencies, reinforced the welfare state, raised taxes, and dramatically expanded the government’s authority.
It is interesting to note the similarities between Johnson’s administrative measures and the goals outlined in communist literature at the time. Gus Hall, a former general secretary of the CPUSA, said: “The Communist attitude towards the Great Society can be summarized in an old saying that two men sleeping in the same bed can have different dreams. … We support these measures because we dream of socialism.”
Hall’s “same bed” refers to Johnson’s Great Society policies. Although the CPUSA also supported the Great Society initiative, the intention of the Johnson administration was to improve the United States under the democratic system, whereas the Communist Party’s intention was to ease the United States into socialism.
The most serious consequences of the Great Society and the War on Poverty were threefold: They increased dependence on welfare, discouraged people from working, and damaged the family structure. Welfare policies favored single-parent families, thus encouraging divorce and out-of-wedlock childbearing. According to statistics, the rate of children born out of wedlock in 1940 was 3.8 percent; by 1965, this figure had increased to 7.7 percent. In 1990, twenty-five years after the Great Society reform, the figure was at 28 percent and subsequently rose to 40 percent by 2012. [17] These policies disproportionately affected minorities, particularly African Americans.
The disintegration of the family brought with it a series of widespread consequences, such as an increased financial burden for the government, a soaring crime rate, the decline of family education, generational poverty, and a mentality of entitlement, which led to a higher rate of voluntary unemployment.
A quote attributed to Scottish historian and jurist Lord Alexander Fraser Tytler says: “A democracy cannot exist as a permanent form of government. It can only exist until the majority discovers that it can vote themselves largesse from the public treasury. After that, the majority always votes for the candidate promising the most benefits from the public treasury, with the result the democracy collapses because of the loose fiscal policy ensuing, always to be followed by a dictatorship, then a monarchy.” [18] A form of this quote is also sometimes attributed to French historian Alexis de Tocqueville.
As the Chinese saying goes, “From thrift to extravagance is easy; from extravagance to thrift is hard.” After people develop a dependence on welfare, it becomes nearly impossible for the government to reduce the scale and types of benefits. The Western welfare state has become a political quagmire for which politicians and officials have no solution.
In the 1970s, the extreme left gave up the revolutionary terms that kept the American people on guard and replaced them with the more neutral-sounding “liberalism” and “progressivism.” People who have lived in communist countries are no strangers to the latter, as “progress” has long been used by the Communist Party as a quasi-synonym for “communism.” For example, the term “progressive movement” referred to the “communist movement,” and “progressive intellectuals” referred to “pro-communist individuals” or underground members of the Communist Party.
Liberalism, meanwhile, is not substantially different from progressivism, as it carries the same connotation of high taxes; expansive welfare; big government; the rejection of religion, morality, and tradition; the use of “social justice” as a political weapon; “political correctness”; and the militant promotion of feminism, homosexuality, sexual perversity, and the like.
We do not intend to point fingers at any individual or political figure, for it is indeed difficult to make correct analyses and judgments in the midst of complex historical developments. It is clear that the specter of communism has been at work in both the East and the West since the beginning of the twentieth century. When violent revolution succeeded in the East, it spread the influence of communism to the governments and societies of the West, shifting them ever leftward.
Following the Great Depression, the United States has adopted increasingly socialist policies, such as the welfare state, and atheism and materialism have eroded the moral fabric of American society. People have grown distant from God and traditional morality, weakening their resistance to deception.
4. The Cultural Revolution of the West
The 1960s, a watershed moment in modern history, saw an unprecedented counterculture movement sweeping from East to West. In contrast to the CCP’s Cultural Revolution, the Western counterculture movement appeared to have multiple points of focus or, rather, a lack of focus.
From the mid-1960s to mid-‘70s, the mostly young participants of the counterculture movement were motivated by various pursuits. Some opposed the Vietnam War; some fought for civil rights; some advocated for feminism and denounced patriarchy; some strove for homosexual rights. Topping this off was a dazzling spectacle of movements against tradition and authority that advocated sexual freedom, hedonism, narcotics, and rock ‘n’ roll music.
The goal of this Western Cultural Revolution was to destroy the upright Christian civilization and its traditional culture. While apparently disordered and chaotic, this international cultural shift stemmed from communism. Youthful participants of the movement revered “the Three M’s” — Marx, Marcuse, and Mao.
Herbert Marcuse was a key member of the Frankfurt School, a group of Marxist intellectuals associated with the Institute for Social Research, first established in 1923 at what was then called the University of Frankfurt. Its founders used the concept of “critical theory” to attack Western civilization and apply Marxism to the cultural sphere.
One of the Frankfurt School’s founders was Hungarian Marxist György Lukács. He stated the school’s purpose was to answer the question “Who shall save us from Western civilization?” [19] Elaborating on this, he deemed the West guilty of genocidal crimes against every civilization and culture it had encountered. American and Western civilization, according to Lukács, are the world’s greatest repositories of racism, sexism, nativism, xenophobia, anti-Semitism, fascism, and narcissism. The road to “political correctness” was paved.
In 1935, the Frankfurt School Marxists relocated to the United States and became affiliated with Columbia University in New York. This gave them an opening to disseminate their theories on American soil. With the assistance of other leftist scholars, they corrupted several generations of American youth.
Combining Marxism with Freudian pansexualism, Marcuse’s theories catalyzed the sexual liberation movement. Marcuse believed that repression of one’s nature in capitalist society hindered liberation and freedom. Therefore, it was necessary to oppose all traditional religions, morality, order, and authority in order to transform society into a utopia of limitless and effortless pleasure.
Marcuse’s famous 1955 work Eros and Civilization: A Philosophical Inquiry into Freud occupies an important place among the vast number of works by Frankfurt scholars for two specific reasons: First, the book combines the thought of Marx and Freud, turning Marx’s critiques on politics and economy into a critique on culture and psychology. Second, the book builds bridges between Frankfurt theorists and young readers, which enabled the cultural rebellion of the 1960s.
Marcuse said that the counterculture movement could be called “a cultural revolution, since the protest is directed toward the whole cultural establishment, including the morality of existing society.” He continued: “There is one thing we can say with complete assurance: the traditional idea of revolution and the traditional strategy of revolution has ended. These ideas are old-fashioned. … What we must undertake is a type of diffuse and dispersed disintegration of the system.” [20]
Few among the rebellious youth could grasp the arcane theories of the Frankfurt School, but Marcuse’s ideas were simple: Be anti-tradition, anti-authority, and anti-morality. Indulge in sex, drugs, and rock ‘n’ roll without restraint. He even coined the phrase “make love, not war.” As long as one said no to all authority and societal norms, he or she would be counted as a participant in the “noble” revolutionary cause. It was so simple and easy to become a revolutionary, it’s little wonder that so many young people were attracted to the movement at that time.
It must be emphasized that although many rebellious youths acted of their own accord, the most radical student leaders at the forefront of the movement had been trained and manipulated by foreign communists. For instance, the leaders of the US student activist organization Students for a Democratic Society (SDS) were trained by Cuban espionage agents, according to FBI reports.
The anti-war student protests were directly organized and instigated by communist groups. One of these groups was the extreme-left organization Weather Underground, which stepped in when SDS collapsed in 1969. In a statement that year, Weather Underground used the following quote: “The contradiction between the revolutionary peoples of Asia, Africa, and Latin America and the imperialists headed by the United States is the principal contradiction in the contemporary world. The development of this contradiction is promoting the struggle of the people of the whole world against US imperialism and its lackeys.”
The quote was written by Lin Biao, then the second-most powerful leader of communist China, in his series of articles “Long Live the Victory of People’s War!” [21]
Just as the Cultural Revolution wrought irreversible damage upon Chinese traditional culture, the counterculture movement caused a titanic upheaval in Western society. First, it normalized many subcultures that belonged to the lower fringes of society or were deviant variations of mainstream culture. Sexual liberation, drugs, and rock ‘n’ roll rapidly eroded the moral values of the youth and turned them into a corrosive force that was against God, against tradition, and against society.
Second, the counterculture movement set a precedent for chaotic activism and fostered a wide range of antisocial and anti-American ways of thinking, setting the stage for the street protests and culture war that would follow.
Third, after the youth of the 1960s ended their activist lifestyles, they entered universities and research institutes, completed their master’s degrees and doctorates, and moved into the mainstream of American society. They brought the Marxist worldview and its values into education, media, politics, and business, furthering a nonviolent revolution across the country.
Since the 1980s, the Left has largely taken over and established strongholds in the mainstream media, academia, and Hollywood. The presidency of Ronald Reagan briefly reversed this trend, only for it to restart in the 1990s and reach a peak in recent years.
5. The Anti-War and Civil Rights Movements
In George Orwell’s novel Nineteen Eighty-Four, one of the four main Oceanian ministries is the Ministry of Peace, which oversees the Party’s military affairs. The inverted meaning of its name points to a strategy employed by communists: When one’s strength is inferior to that of the enemy, proclaim one’s desire for peace; extending an olive branch is the best way to hide an imminent attack.
The Soviet Union and other communist countries were and continue to be adept practitioners of this strategy, which is employed to infiltrate the West. Right after World War II ended — with the United States still the only country to produce and successfully employ the atomic bomb — the World Peace Council was formed. Its first chairperson was French physicist Frédéric Joliot-Curie, a member of the French Communist Party.
Having suffered huge losses in the war, the Soviet Union aggressively promoted world peace as a stratagem to stave off pressure from the West. The World Peace Council was directly influenced by the Soviet Committee for the Defense of Peace, an organization affiliated with the Soviet Communist Party. The council ran a worldwide campaign proclaiming that the Soviet Union was a peace-loving nation and condemning the United States as a hegemonic warmonger. The “struggle for peace,” a catchphrase promoted by high-ranking Soviet official and ideological leader Mikhail Suslov, became a fixture of Soviet rhetoric.
“The present anti-war movement testifies to the will and readiness of the broadest masses of the people to safeguard peace and to prevent the aggressors from plunging mankind into the abyss of another slaughter,” Suslov wrote in a 1950 propaganda tract. “The task now is to turn this will of the masses into active, concrete actions aimed at foiling the plans and measures of the Anglo-American instigators of war.” [22]
“World peace” became one of the communist frontlines in the public-opinion war against the free world. The Soviet Union sponsored a multitude of organizations and groups to push communist aims, such as the World Federation of Trade Unions, Women’s International Democratic Federation, International Federation of Journalists, World Federation of Democratic Youth, and the World Federation of Scientific Workers.
Vladimir Bukovsky, a prominent Soviet dissident, wrote in 1982: “Members of the older generation can still remember the marches, the rallies, and the petitions of the 1950s. … It is hardly a secret now that the whole campaign was organized, conducted, and financed from Moscow, through the so-called Peace Fund and the Soviet-dominated World Peace Council.” [23]
Former Communist Party USA General Secretary Gus Hall said, “It is necessary to widen the struggle for peace, to raise its level, to involve far greater numbers, to make it an issue in every community, every people’s organization, every labor union, every church, every house, every street, every point of gathering of our people.” [24]
The Soviets pushed the “struggle for peace” movement in three waves during the course of the Cold War, with the first being in the 1950s. The second wave was the anti-war movement of the 1960s and 1970s. Stanislav Lunev, a former officer of the Soviet GRU (military intelligence) who defected to the United States in 1992, said that “the GRU and the KGB helped to fund just about every antiwar movement and organization in America and abroad.” [25]
Ronald Radosh, a former Marxist and activist during the anti-Vietnam war movement, admitted, “Our intention was never so much to end the war as to use anti-war sentiment to create a new revolutionary socialist movement at home.” [26]
The third major anti-war movement took place during the early 1980s, when the United States strategically placed intermediate-range nuclear missiles in Europe. Anti-war protesters demanded that both the United States and the Soviet Union limit their nuclear arsenals, and in 1987 the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty (INF) was created. Given the lack of free speech and political transparency in the Soviet bloc, the treaty terms could only be effectively guaranteed in the democratic West. Following the Cold War and the onset of the War on Terror, organizations with communist or radical left-wing ties continued to play a major role in steering the US anti-war movement. [27]
Communists also made efforts to hijack the American civil rights movement. As early as the late 1920s, the Communist Workers Party of America believed there to be great potential for revolution among black Americans. [28] A communist propaganda handbook published in 1935, The Negroes in a Soviet America, proposed a racial revolution in the South, including the establishment of a Negro Republic, to be combined with the overall proletarian revolution. [29]
In the 1960s, elements of the civil rights movement received support from the Soviet and Chinese communist parties. The extremist Revolutionary Action Movement and the Maoist Black Panther Party were supported or directly influenced by the CCP. In the summer of 1965, several American cities were torn by race riots. After Leonard Patterson withdrew from the Communist Party USA, he testified that those leading the violent African-American organizations enjoyed the Party’s strong support. Both he and Hall had received training in Moscow. [30]
Whether in terms of its organizational structure or ideological program, the Black Panther Party looked up to the CCP as its role model, using slogans such as Mao’s “political power grows out of the barrel of a gun” and “all power belongs to the people.” Mao’s Little Red Book was a must-read for all members. Like the CCP, the Black Panthers advocated violent revolution. One of the Panthers’ leaders, Eldridge Cleaver, predicted in 1968 a wave of terror, violence, and guerrilla warfare. At many black gatherings, participants waved the Little Red Book, mimicking the Red Guards who were doing the same thing in China. [31]
The civil rights movement successfully brought race relations into public discussion and helped Americans heal some of the nation’s deepest divides through peaceful means, such as legislation, demonstrations, boycotts, and education. However, left-wing revolutionaries have continued to use racial conflict as a springboard for their radical agendas. [32]
6. The American Marxist
When the youth protest movement of the West was in full swing in the 1960s, one radical activist dismissed their naivety, sincerity, and idealism. “If the real radical finds that having long hair sets up psychological barriers to communication and organization, he cuts his hair,” he said. The man was Saul Alinsky, an activist, organizer, and author who became the “para-communist” agitator with the most baneful influence for decades.
Alinsky is best termed a para-communist because, unlike the Old Left (political leftists) of the 1930s and the New Left (cultural leftists) of the 1960s, Alinsky refused to affirmatively describe his political ideals. His overall view was that the world has “the haves,” “the have-a-little-want-mores,” and “the have-nots.” He called upon the “have-nots” to rebel against “the haves” by any means and to seize wealth and power in order to create a completely “equal” society, destroying the existing social system. He has been called the Lenin and the Sun-Tzu of the post-communist Left. [33]
Alinsky not only lavished praise on communist dictators such as Lenin and Fidel Castro, but also declared his allegiance to the devil. In his book Rules for Radicals, published in 1971, one of the epigraphs says, “Lest we forget at least an over-the-shoulder acknowledgment to the very first radical: from all our legends, mythology, and history (and who is to know where mythology leaves off and history begins — or which is which), the first radical known to man who rebelled against the establishment and did it so effectively that he at least won his own kingdom — Lucifer.”
In Rules for Radicals, Alinsky systematically set forth his theory and methods of community organizing, which use unscrupulous means to achieve goals and gain power. These rules include “a tactic that drags on too long becomes a drag”; “keep the pressure on”; “the threat is usually more terrifying than the thing itself”; “ridicule is man’s most potent weapon”; and “pick the target, freeze it, personalize it, and polarize it.” [34]
The true nature of Alinsky’s seemingly dry rules becomes clear when they are applied in the real world. In 1972, during the Vietnam War period, then-US Ambassador to the United Nations George H. W. Bush gave a speech at Tulane University. Anti-war students at the university sought advice from Alinsky, who said that protesting with the usual methods would likely result in their simply being expelled. He thus suggested that they don Ku Klux Klan garb and, whenever Bush defended the war, cheer and stand up with placards that say, “The KKK Supports Bush.” The students did so, and it became a masterful example of deceptive propaganda. [35]
In 1964, Alinsky concocted a plan to get 2,500 activists to occupy the toilets in Chicago’s O’Hare International Airport, one of the busiest in the world, to bring the airport’s service operations to a grinding halt. The plan was leaked to Chicago authorities, who were thus forced to negotiate, and the protest never took place. [36]
In order to force Kodak, the major employer in Rochester, New York, to recognize community organization FIGHT as the official representative of the Rochester black community, Alinsky had a similar idea. Seizing on an important cultural tradition in the city — an upcoming performance of the Rochester Philharmonic Orchestra — Alinsky planned to purchase one hundred tickets for his activists and provide them with a pre-show banquet of baked beans so they could ruin the performance with flatulence. This plan also didn’t come to fruition, but Alinsky’s tactics eventually forced Kodak to comply with his demands.
Alinsky’s books and interviews leave the impression of a charismatic but ruthless and calculating individual. His “community organizing” was really a form of gradual revolution. However, he differed from his forerunners in several ways. First, both the Old and the New Left were at least idealistic in their rhetoric, while Alinsky stripped “revolution” of its idealistic veneer and exposed it as a naked power struggle. When he conducted training for “community organizations,” he would routinely ask the trainees, “Why organize?” Some would say that it was to help others, but Alinsky would roar back, “You want to organize for power!” The training manual that Alinsky’s followers went by said: “We are not virtuous by not wanting power. … We are really cowards for not wanting power,” because “power is good … [and] powerlessness is evil.” [37]
Second, Alinsky didn’t think much of the rebellious youth of the ’60s who were publicly against the government and society. He stressed that, whenever possible, one should enter the system and bide one’s time for opportunities to subvert it from within.
Third, Alinsky’s ultimate goal was to subvert and destroy, not to benefit any group. Thus, in implementing his plan, it was necessary to conceal his true purpose with localized or staged goals that were seemingly reasonable or harmless by themselves. When people were accustomed to being mobilized, it was relatively easy to mobilize them to act toward more radical goals.
In Rules for Radicals, Alinsky said: “Any revolutionary change must be preceded by a passive, affirmative, non-challenging attitude toward change among the mass of our people. … Remember: once you organize people around something as commonly agreed upon as pollution, then an organized people is on the move. From there it’s a short and natural step to political pollution, to Pentagon pollution.”
An Alinsky-influenced leader from Students for a Democratic Society nailed the essence of radicalizing protests when he said, “The issue is never the issue; the issue is always the revolution.” The radical Left after the ’60s was deeply influenced by Alinsky, and always spun its responses to social issues into dissatisfaction with the status quo overall, using it to advance the revolutionary cause.
Fourth, Alinsky turned politics into a guerrilla war without restraint. In explaining his strategy for community organizing, Alinsky told his followers that they need to hit the enemy’s senses: “First the eyes; if you have organized a vast, mass-based people’s organization, you can parade it visibly before the enemy and openly show your power. Second the ears; if your organization is small in numbers, then do what Gideon did: conceal the members in the dark but raise a din and clamor that will make the listener believe that your organization numbers many more than it does. Third, the nose; if your organization is too tiny even for noise, stink up the place.”
Fifth, Alinsky emphasized using the negative aspects of human nature, including indolence, greed, envy, and hatred. Sometimes participants in his campaigns would win petty gains, but this only made them more cynical and shameless. In order to subvert the political system and social order of free countries, Alinsky was happy to lead his followers to moral bankruptcy. From this, it can be inferred that if he were to truly gain power, he would neither take care of nor pity his former comrades.
Decades later, two prominent figures in American politics who were deeply influenced by Alinsky helped to usher in the silent revolution that has subverted American civilization, traditions, and values. At the same time, the no-holds-barred, unrestricted guerrilla warfare-type protests advocated by Alinsky became popular in America from the 1970s on, as seen in the Occupy Wall Street movement, the Antifa movement, and so on.
It is salient to note that it wasn’t just in the opening pages of Rules for Radicals that Alinsky gave his “acknowledgment to the very first radical,” Lucifer. In an interview with Playboy magazine shortly before his death, Alinsky also said that when he died, he would “unreservedly choose to go to hell” and begin to organize the “have-nots” there, saying, “They’re my kind of people.” [38]
7. The Long March Through the Institutions
In the 1930s, prominent Italian communist Antonio Gramsci wrote that in order to subvert Western society from within, socialists needed to fight a “war of position,” a concept that later came to be called “the long march through the institutions.” He found that it was difficult to incite a revolution to overthrow a legitimate government when the people still had faith in the divine, and so communists needed to rely on a large number of foot soldiers who shared their dark vision of morality, faith, and traditions. The revolution of the proletariat, then, must begin with the subversion of religion, morality, and civilization.
After the unrest of the 1960s, the rebels who had pushed for revolution began entering academia. They obtained degrees; became scholars, professors, government officials, and journalists; and entered the mainstream of society to carry out the long march through the institutions. They infiltrated and corrupted the institutions that are crucial for the maintenance of the morality of Western society, including the church, the government, the education system, the legislative and judicial bodies, the art world, the media, and NGOs.
There are numerous ostensibly legitimate means by which unscrupulous people or groups can ruin a free society from within. For democracy to be effective, the people must be disposed toward civic virtue and possess a certain moral standard. Since the 1960s, the United States has been like a patient who cannot identify the cause of his affliction. Para-Marxist ideas have been deeply planted into American society and are spreading virtually unchecked.
Among the many revolutionary strategies that have been put forward, one of the most well-known is the Cloward-Piven strategy, proposed in 1966 by a Columbia University sociologist couple (who were also members of the Democratic Socialists of America). The core concept of the strategy was to bloat the public welfare system and push states into bankruptcy. The authors claimed that since the number of people eligible for welfare benefits far exceeded the number of people actually receiving them, it was possible to exhaust state coffers by encouraging people to apply for benefits en masse. The state government thus would be forced to step in to “rescue” and reform the system by giving the government even more control and moving toward a socialized system.
The National Welfare Rights Organization, active from 1966 to 1975, sought to implement this strategy after President Lyndon B. Johnson’s War on Poverty was underway. From 1965 to 1974, the number of single-parent families receiving benefits surged from 4.3 million to 10.8 million — more than doubling. In 1970, 28 percent of the annual budget of New York City was spent on welfare expenses. From 1960 to 1970, the number of people receiving benefits in New York City rose from 200,000 to 1.1 million. “By the early 1970s, one person was on the welfare rolls in New York City for every two working in the city’s private economy,” journalist Sol Stern wrote in the City Journal. In 1975, the city effectively went bankrupt. [39]
The Cloward-Piven example in New York can be regarded as another implementation of Alinsky’s theories, specifically that radicals should “make the enemy live up to its own book of rules,” i.e., if the rules say anyone eligible can receive welfare, then forcing the “enemy” to live up to its own rules would lead to its bankruptcy without any overtly hostile action on the part of the radicals.
W. Cleon Skousen wrote in his book The Naked Communist that one of the forty-five communist goals is to “capture one or both of the political parties in the United States.” The Communist Party saw that this could be achieved using a small number of people and organizing them to create “crises” and “revolutions” that could be used to the Party’s advantage. Lenin once said that labor unions are “the transmission belts from the Communist Party to the masses.” [40] The communists found that as long as they controlled labor unions, they controlled a large number of votes. As long as they controlled the votes, they could make elected officials and lawmakers do their bidding. Ordinary workers are forced to join the labor unions in order to maintain their basic rights and interests, and thus they become the unions’ pawns. An identical principle is at work when paying protection fees to organized crime syndicates.
Filmmaker and researcher Loudon explains how communist entities use unions and other groups as conduits to implement their policies and hijack democratic countries.
First, the foreign or local communist entity sets its agenda, e.g., strengthening labor legislation, implementing a more socialist school curriculum, or relaxing trade sanctions on Cuba. Second, the communists and their socialist allies adopt these policies as union policies. The unions then put pressure on the local Labor Party, Socialist Party, or Democratic Party to adopt these union policies as their own. “As labor [unions] effectively control these major parties, the process is often not that difficult,” Loudon wrote in 2014. Thus, as communist policies become union policies, they in turn become “mainstream” political party policies. “This process has been carried out countless times all over the world,” Loudon wrote. [41]
Communists and those who ignorantly act on their behalf have worked to subvert the political and social systems of free societies in any way they can. After decades of communist planning and operations, the governments and the societies of the United States and other Western countries have been severely eroded.
8. Political Correctness
Communist countries have always exercised strict control over speech and thought. Since the 1980s, another form of such control has appeared in the West, as “thought police” use the banner of “political correctness” to run amok in the media, society, and education system, using slogans and mass criticism to restrain speech and thought. Although many have recognized the inherent wrongness of this control, they have not grasped its ideological origins.
Terms such as “political correctness,” together with “progress” and “solidarity,” have long been used by communist parties. Their superficial meaning is to avoid using language that is discriminatory toward minorities, women, the disabled, and others. However, the hidden implication behind political correctness is the classification of individuals into groups according to their victim status. Those who are deemed to be the most oppressed should, therefore, be accorded the most respect and courtesy. This judgment, rendered solely on one’s identity and disregarding individual conduct and talent, is the basis of what’s called “identity politics.” This style of thinking is extremely popular in the United States and other Western countries today.
This type of classification is identical to what occurred in China, where individuals were classified within the “five classes of red” or the “five classes of black” according to their wealth and class status before the revolution. The Chinese Communist Party eliminated and oppressed landowners and capitalists because of their “wrong” class status, attacked intellectuals as the “Stinking Old Ninth,” and chanted that “the poor are the smartest; the nobles are the dumbest.”
The differences in political and socioeconomic status between various groups stem from complex historical reasons and cannot be simply explained as oppression. But political correctness sets up a flat binary: only those who show sympathy for the designated “victims” and disdain for “oppressors” are to be considered moral, while those who deviate from the narrative are accused of being racist, sexist, homophobic, Islamophobic, and so on.
Political correctness has been pushed by many Western governments and NGOs to further a left-wing agenda. In some countries, the legal definition of “hate speech” has been expanded significantly and punishments for such speech are now enforced throughout schools, the media, and internet. [42] These blanket restrictions on free speech move democratic societies closer toward the thought control exercised by communist states.
These days, the Left abuses political correctness to deprive others of having a legitimate outlet for their voices. This became more pronounced after the 2016 US presidential election, with left-leaning media, organizations, and academics mobilizing to deplatform and silence supporters of President Donald Trump. Protest marches erupted in major cities, and violations of freedom of speech occurred with greater frequency. Universities, which are supposed to be bastions of free thought and expression, have become centers of radical indoctrination. Organizations acting under the banner of opposing hate speech have labeled regular conservative groups as “hate groups,” and conservative authors and scholars have been threatened after being invited to speak at or attend various events. [43]
In March 2017, American social scientist Charles Murray was invited to speak at Middlebury College in Vermont. As he attempted to speak, the more than four hundred protesters crowding the room jeered and shouted, preventing him from being heard. Later, as he was leaving the campus, protesters swarmed him and an accompanying professor, pushing and shoving them. The professor was taken to the hospital for a neck injury.
In September 2017, a scheduled appearance by conservative author Ben Shapiro at the University of California–Berkeley’s Free Speech Week met with threats of violence by the far-left extremist group Antifa. Dozens of Berkeley police officers stood ready in riot gear as police helicopters hovered overhead; the security measures were estimated to have cost more than $600,000. [44] Ironically, one signature event that marked the start of the student movement in 1964 was a fight for freedom of speech at Berkeley. The next month, when Shapiro was scheduled to speak at the University of Utah, a student group vowed to shut down the event. A reporter pointed out to the young leader of the group that preventing Shapiro from speaking wouldn’t agree with the First Amendment. The student replied, “I don’t care. I don’t think that’s a, like, relevant document right now.” [45]
In March 2018, tenured professor Amy Wax of the University of Pennsylvania School of Law was relieved of some teaching duties after she voiced a politically incorrect observation during an interview with a professor from Brown University. Wax said black students “rarely” graduate at the top of the class. [46]
The political correctness and restrictions on free speech championed by the left are not intended to foster healthy debate between differing viewpoints; they are ideological weapons used by those acting in bad faith. Political correctness is the communist specter’s “thought police” for suppressing dissent and obscuring the truth.
9. Socialism Across Europe
All of Europe — not just the countries of Eastern Europe — is dominated by communism. Non-communist countries in northern, southern, and Western Europe are all intentionally or unintentionally promoting and hosting communist ideologies and policies. To say Europe is “in enemy hands” is not an exaggeration.
Socialist International is the largest international political organization in the world, consisting of more than 135 political parties and organizations. The organization grew out of Second International, founded by Engels in 1889. The early socialists included people like Karl Johann Kautsky and Eduard Bernstein, who promoted progressive reform. When the Second International was established, there existed more than one hundred political parties around the world that were founded on Marxism. Of them, sixty-six were ruling parties that adhered to socialism in their respective countries. The name “Socialist International” originated in 1951.
Today, many socialist parties that descended from Second International exist all over Europe, with many of them ruling their respective countries.
The Party of European Socialists, established in 1992, is active in the European Parliament and is associated with Socialist International. Its members are the social democratic parties of the EU and surrounding countries, including the United Kingdom. Its members can be found in most leading European organizations, including the European Parliament, the European Commission, and the European Council. The Party of European Socialists currently has thirty-three member parties, as well as twelve associate members and twelve observers, for a total of fifty-seven political parties from across the European Union, the United Kingdom, and Norway. Its main objectives are to “shape progressive European policies” and to develop close cooperation between member parties, parliamentary groups, and the like. Essentially, it works to vigorously promote the socialist cause.
The guiding principles of the United Kingdom’s Labour Party are based on Fabian socialism. As previously discussed, Fabian socialism is simply another version of Marxism, one that stresses using gradual methods to effect the transition from socialism to communism. It also advocates high taxes, high welfare benefits, and other socialist ideas. The Labour Party has been the ruling party of the United Kingdom many times in recent decades and has always advocated Fabian socialist ideas.
Britain’s communist party and its various iterations also have been very active in trying to influence British politics, even sponsoring its own newspaper, Daily Worker (renamed Morning Star in 1966). The Party grew from the Communist Party of Great Britain, established in 1920, and during its peak, its members were elected to the House of Commons. At the start of the 2017 general election in the United Kingdom, the Communist Party of Britain suddenly announced that it intended to support the leader of the left-wing Labour Party. This politician, who has headed the Labour Party since September 2015, has spent forty years promoting socialist policies including the nationalization of assets and anti-war efforts. When a BBC reporter enquired about his views on Marx, he praised him as a great economist and a “fascinating figure who observed a great deal and from whom we can learn a great deal.”
The Swedish Social Democratic Party, the ruling party of Sweden, is a member of the Socialist International. During the several decades under its rule, it has promoted the socialist ideologies of equality and welfare. One of France’s Socialist Party leaders was elected president in 2012. The Party also is a member of Socialist International and the Party of European Socialists. In Italy, veteran communist Gramsci not only founded the Italian Communist Party in 1921, but also served as its general secretary. Up until the 1990s, the Italian Communist Party was very active, for years maintaining its position as the country’s second-largest political party. In 1991, the party was renamed the Democratic Party and is now part of the ruling coalition. Other European countries, like Spain and Portugal, have active communist political parties with significant influence. Germany is no exception; it is the birthplace of Marx and Engels, and home to the influential Frankfurt School, another bastion of Marxism.
10. Falling for the Devil’s Tricks
Everywhere communism goes, it is accompanied by violence, lies, war, famine, and dictatorship. The question is, why do so many people still wholeheartedly help this devil spread its lies, even becoming its obedient and fanatical tools?
American sociologist Paul Hollander, in his 1981 book Political Pilgrims: Travels of Western Intellectuals to the Soviet Union, China, and Cuba, tells the stories of many young intellectuals enamored with communism. These young “pilgrims” were naturally shown none of the horrifying abuses taking place at the same time as their visits. Upon returning to their countries, they enthusiastically sang the praises of the communist system. [47]
In the United States, people have been attracted to, or coerced into, communism for a variety of reasons. Many of the early leaders and members of the Communist Party USA were immigrants from Russia and Eastern European countries. Their economic status was low, and it was difficult for them to assimilate. Mainly due to influences from their homelands, they joined the Party.
After the Great Depression, the influence of Marxism in the West dramatically increased, and almost the entire intellectual class in the West began to take a leftward turn. Numerous intellectuals went to visit the Soviet Union and, after returning home, gave speeches and wrote books promoting communist ideology. Those involved included many influential thinkers, writers, artists, and reporters.
The baby boomer generation entered college during the 1960s, after growing up in post-war affluence, yet they were misled by communist-inflected ideologies into taking up other countercultural stances, in the form of anti-war protests, feminism, and the like. The next generation of students was taught left-leaning material right out of their textbooks because their teachers were the “tenured radicals” — thus communism’s long march through the institutions had finally succeeded, beginning a cycle intended to reproduce and maintain itself forever.
In the book Masters of Deceit, FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover, whose tenure ran thirty-seven years, classified communist supporters into five levels of thought control: open Party members (card-carrying tools of the Party), underground Party members (those who act as covert influencers of the communist agenda), fellow travelers (not Party members, but often choose to supplement Party work), opportunists (those who support the Party out of self-interest), and dupes (innocent victims who don’t know they’re under communist thought control). [48] In reality, there are very few extremely evil and die-hard communist activists. It’s much more the case that the majority of people controlled by communist thought were simply taken in.
American journalists John Silas Reed and Edgar Snow played major roles in promoting communist ideology around the world. Reed, author of the book Ten Days That Shook the World, is one of three Americans buried in the Kremlin Wall Necropolis, meaning that he himself was a communist activist. His description of the October Revolution was not an objective reporting of the actual events, but rather carefully crafted political propaganda.
Snow, author of the book Red Star Over China, was a communist fellow traveler whose glowing portrayal of the CCP leadership left a deep impression on many Americans. In 1936, he traveled to the CCP stronghold of Bao’an, in the northern province of Shaanxi, and conducted interviews with Mao Zedong about the revolutionary cause. Snow was used as a propaganda tool by the CCP to broadcast its narrative to an international audience.
Bezmenov, the former KGB spy, recalled his job of receiving foreign “friends” when he worked as a spy. The visitors’ schedule was partially arranged by the Soviet Foreign Intelligence Service; visits to churches, schools, hospitals, kindergartens, and factories were all prearranged. Everyone the visitors met was a communist or a politically trustworthy person who had undergone training to ensure he or she would speak with the voice of the Party. In 1967, the major American magazine Look sent journalists to the Soviet Union to cover a story. Talking about the journalists’ articles, Bezmenov said, “From the first page to the last page, it was a package of lies: propaganda cliché[s] which were presented to American readers as opinions and deductions of American journalists. Nothing could be [further] from [the] truth.” Thus, Soviet propaganda was distributed to the American public by a US magazine.
Bezmenov said that many journalists, actors, and star athletes could be excused for being blind to reality while visiting the Soviet Union, but that the behavior of many Western politicians was unforgivable. These morally corrupt individuals wove lies and sought cooperation with Soviet communists for their own reputation and profit, he said. [49]
In the book You Can Still Trust the Communists … to Be Communists, Schwarz analyzed why young intellectuals became fond of communism. He listed four reasons: disenchantment with capitalism; belief in a materialist philosophy of life; intellectual pride; and an unfulfilled religious need. Intellectual pride refers to the experience of young people, from the ages of about eighteen to twenty, who easily fall prey to communist propaganda due to their partial understanding of history, their arrogance and anti-authoritarian resentment, and their disenchantment with family and national heritage. “An unfulfilled religious need” refers to the fact that everyone has a kind of spiritual impulse inside them, driving them to transcend themselves. However, atheism and the theory of evolution instilled by their education make these young people unable to derive satisfaction from traditional religions. The communist fantasy of liberating mankind takes advantage of this latent human need and serves as their ersatz religion. [50]
Intellectuals tend to be fooled by radical ideologies. Such a phenomenon has drawn the attention of scholars. In the 1955 book The Opium of the Intellectuals, French philosopher and sociologist Raymond Aron pointed out that while on one hand, twentieth-century intellectuals severely criticized the traditional political system, on the other, they generously tolerated or even turned a blind eye to the dictatorship and slaughter in communist states. He saw the left-wing intellectuals who turned their ideology into a secular religion as hypocritical, arbitrary, and fanatical. British historian Paul Johnson analyzed the lives and radical political views of Jean-Jacques Rousseau and a dozen intellectuals who followed him, in his book Intellectuals: From Marx and Tolstoy to Sartre and Chomsky. He found that they all shared the fatal weaknesses of arrogance and egocentrism. [51]
Since the 1960s, communism has engaged in a large-scale invasion of American education. On top of that, many young people indulge in television, computer games, the internet, and social media. They get turned into “snowflakes,” people who lack knowledge, a broad perspective, a sense of responsibility, a sense of history, and the ability to cope with challenges. With communist or communist-derived ideologies instilled in them by their parents’ generation, they become indoctrinated and henceforth use a warped framework for evaluating the new facts they see and hear. That is, communist lies have formed a film around them, preventing them from having a clear view of reality.
The communist specter exploits both negative and positive human emotions to lure people into its snares. Most tragic of all is that communist ideology, in addition to human ignorance, selfishness, and greed, appeals to its true believers’ heartfelt desire for idealism, altruism, and self-sacrifice.
That so many people can be seduced by the lies of socialism and communism is due to mankind abandoning spiritual belief and throwing its moral standards into disorder. Only through righteous faith and moral elevation can humanity safeguard itself against the specter’s demonic manipulation.
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30. Leonard Patterson, “I Trained in Moscow for Black Revolution,” Speakers Bureau of the John Birch Society, YouTube video, posted by Swamp Yankee, August 20, 2011, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GuXQjk4zhZs.
31. G. Louis Heath, ed., Off the Pigs! The History and Literature of the Black Panther Party (Metuchen, NJ: Scarecrow Press, 1976), 61.
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50. Fred C. Schwarz and David A. Noebel, You Can Still Trust the Communists … to Be Communists, Socialists, Statists, and Progressives Too (Manitou Springs, CO: Christian Anti-Communism Crusade, 2010), 44–52.
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Category: Perspective
