Table of Contents (continued)
6. The American Marxist6. 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 was made up of “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]
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 read “The KKK Supports Bush.” The students followed his advice, 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 read: “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.
An Alinsky-influenced leader from SDS 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, he 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 had he truly gained power, he would have treated his former comrades with the same ruthlessness seen of communist leaders in countries like Russia or China.
Decades later, two prominent figures in American politics who were deeply influenced by Alinsky helped advance the silent revolution underway in the country. 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.
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 realized 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 organizations 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 sick 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.” In the case described, where anyone eligible for welfare was entitled to receive it, the tactic was to hold the “enemy” to their word, with the aim of causing its bankruptcy without any need for hostile action by the radicals.
Loudon, the Florida-based communism expert, 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]
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 status as victims. Those who are deemed to be the most oppressed should be accorded the most respect and courtesy. This judgment, rendered solely on one’s identity and disregarding individual conduct and character, 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 CCP 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 social media. [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]
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 the 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 the 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 the 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.
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?In the United States, people have been attracted to or coerced into supporting communism for a variety of reasons. Many of the early leaders and members of the CPUSA 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.
Bezmenov said that many journalists, actors, and star athletes could be excused for being blind to reality while visiting the Soviet Union, but 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]
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. While the specter’s key agents and representatives are driven by traits like selfishness, ambition, and greed, communist ideology appeals to its true followers’ 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 humankind’s abandonment of spiritual belief and its now disordered moral standards. Only through righteous faith and moral elevation can humanity safeguard itself against the specter’s demonic manipulation.
References (continued)
33. David Horowitz, Barack Obama’s Rules for Revolution: The Alinsky Model (Sherman Oaks, CA: David Horowitz Freedom Center, 2009), 6, 16.38. Norden, “Playboy Interview.”
45. “Outspoken Conservative Ben Shapiro Says Political Correctness Breeds Insanity,” ABC News, October 20, 2017, https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=3&v=vj5JXrpwsZs&feature=emb_logo.
