There is a compelling factual case
to be made that the contemporary radical Left can properly be called "Neocommunist."
The Hard Left is grounded in Marxist vision of creating a "new man" under
a system led by a vanguard that knows best what the rest of society needs.
And Neocommies behave in patterns with startling parallels to Old Communist
tactics.
The Neocommies are not members of a
Communist Party, and are part more of a movement than a conspiracy. They
are utterly different from traditional liberalism in America and Europe.
Traditional liberals were democratic -- people like Hubert Humphrey, Scoop
Jackson and Harry Truman. They fought passionately against the Totalitarian
Left, as Ronald Reagan did when he was president of the Screen Actors Guild.
Reagan started as a democratic liberal, and became the most famous conservative
of the 20th century. As he said so often, he didn't leave the Democratic
Party -- it left him.
Over time, the Democrats became more
totalitarian in spirit and practice after the first wave of the New Left
started its takeover of the Party in the 1970s and 80s. Half a century
ago, true liberal Democrats like Harry Truman told Americans the truth
about Stalin and the new Cold War -- and were hated for it by the Hard
Left. The American Labor movement was dominated by true liberals like George
Meaney, who earned their positions by expelling Communist infiltrators,
and in some cases throwing out entire Stalinist unions like the Longshoremen's
Union.
Today's Labor movement has gone back
to Leftist bosses. As the old industrial unions implode, victims of the
burden their high wages and benefits imposed on private businesses, the
leaders of the fast-growing government employee unions find politics their
literal bread and butter and are pillars of the Left.
True liberals drew a bright line in
the sand to separate themselves from Communists, including the Communist
Party USA (CPUSA), which literally took its orders from Moscow. Combined
with strong Democratic support for the national defense, the purge of Communist
elements is precisely why liberals earned credibility and trust from the
American people. In much of the 1950s and 1960s, "liberal" was not a dirty
word, it was a boast.
Had the true liberals given in to the
Communists, they would have been marginalized by American voters. A Democratic
Party with a strong anti-military, anti-victory wing would never have supported
a strong national defense, and would not have been trusted in the face
of the obvious menace of Stalin and his heirs.
Today the voters have not yet caught
on to the real radicalism of the Left. If they do, Democrats will once
again have to choose between the totalitarian impulse and being small d-democrats.
Because our Democrats are emphatically not small-d democrats. They will
use and manipulate their voters, but they don't listen to them. Whenever
possible, they accomplish unpopular policy initiatives through the courts,
our least democratic government mechanism, one never designed to lead in
formulating social policy.
The NeoCommies may not be conspirators,
but they are heirs to an international political movement that was built
on conspiracies.
The Historical Communist
Conspiracy
We now have a great deal of factual
evidence about the Communist conspiracies that were part of longest struggle
against totalitarianism in the 20th century, much longer than the war against
the Nazis. The struggle against Soviet Communism was a seven decade Long
War. There was ample time to develop covert networks.
The new evidence comes from Communist
archives that were opened after the fall of the Soviet Empire around 1990.
It shows that the anti-Communist Right was quite accurate in its diagnosis
of the disease. Former Communists like George
Orwell, Arthur
Koestler and Whittaker
Chambers were telling the truth.
Today, former Boomer Leftists like David
Horowitz are giving us the same bad news. They are the most reliable
sources we have, because they are the most intimately familiar with the
disease. There are political, intellectual, and spiritual descendants in
positions of power and influence. It's just that most of us don't really
want to believe the bad news.
Yes, there really was an international
Communist conspiracy, controlled by Lenin and Stalin and their successors,
with tens of millions of sucker-followers in the West. Today the average
liberal is not a knave, but a sucker; but there are knaves aplenty on the
Left. We can see them acting
out in the noisiest way.
The KGB and its predecessors really
were incredibly successful in penetrating American and European academia
and government. Harry Hopkins, FDR's right-hand man, really did report
at times to Soviet agents, riding in a car so they couldn't be bugged.
Harry Hopkins was perhaps under the illusion that he was doing that in
good faith to FDR and the country. The human capacity for self-delusion
is very great, and among liberals it becomes fathomless. But Alger
Hiss is now widely acknowledged by historians to have been a Communist
spy in the State Department, just as William F. Buckley and Whittaker Chambers
said in the Fifties.
Senator Joe McCarthy may have been a
demagogue who took advantage of alarm about the Stalinist danger. But Joe
McCarthy flourished in an atmosphere in which Stalin had conquered half
of Europe, had exploded his first A and H Bombs, and possessed vastly greater
armies than the West. Stalin did have agents all over the West and was
helped immeasurably by millions of Leftist dupes. After all the immense
US sacrifices of World War II, no wonder Americans were outraged by the
Stalinist threat. They were absolutely right to be angry.
Many of the people who were called to
testify before Congress were Communists, as they boasted long afterwards,
and yes, it's true, they really were taking orders from the local Party
bosses, who were taking their orders from Moscow. We all wish it wasn't
so. It was a nasty, dangerous time. But wishing doesn't make the truth
go away.
For just one alarming example: nuclear
bomb secrets really were stolen from the Manhattan Project by Klaus Fuchs,
who was rewarded for it by a high position in the East German Communist
government. American Leftwing scientists like Robert Oppenheimer, the Director
of the Manhattan Project, were incredible suckers, allowing gaping security
holes, and ended up giving Stalin the Bomb -- much to the surprise of the
CIA (natch).
In the Post-Soviet world, of course,
things are very different. There are no puppet masters in Moscow. But still,
the parallels and resonance with what's going on today are chilling.
The Academy
Today's Neocommunists prefer to call
themselves Marxists, which has again become a respected word on college
campuses. But Marxism is Communist ideology. What else could it be? If
you read carefully, Neocommunism is really out there, only slightly disguised.
Just as Soviet propaganda insisted America was rotten to the core, so does
the Hard Left and the institutions it controls parrot the line. The People's
History of the United States by Howard Zinn, now a favorite history
textbook in the colleges, is proud to "revise" everything we think
we know about America, from the true people's point of view.
The heroes of today's aging New Left
are the Old Communist Left, not the democratic liberals of the past. Karl
Marx is considered the most important "philosopher" in Britain according
to the BBC's Radio 4, polling
its own audience. Guess how the captive BBC audience learned respect
for old Karl? From the BBC itself, one of the biggest neo-Marxist Organs
of Propaganda, paid for by the suckered British license holders.
(The big secret is that Marx was a brilliant
agitator and political propagandist, but a third-rate philosopher, economist,
political scientist, historian and prophet. He was just wrong all the time.
But his followers only read his propaganda, which appeals to their romantic
desires to be Prophets of the Future.)
Along the same lines, famous Communist
thug, hero, martyr, and poster-boy Che Guevara just received an adoring
tribute
from Reuters, the big European news service, for "Che Guevara's ideals."
For the real Che, see this
book.
Jew-Hating: Seems like
old times
A new Stalin-Nazi alliance is alive
in Europe and parts of the US, as Leftists openly ally themselves with
Islamic Fascists. Islamists worship Allah and the Leftists worship atheism,
but the ideological differences are not that big compared to the Hitler-Stalin
Pact. Common enemies and common goals overcome doctrinal differences, to
be worked out later.
The difference becomes even smaller
when you put a sharp sword at the throats of the Left.
(It's a kind of a public secret that
the Left has always had the hots for men of violence, of any brand. It
was Hitler who held that Communists made good Nazi recruits, but not the
Social-Democrats of his time, who were too much like real liberals. Political
violence really has its own groupies and junkies.)
Conversions to Islam are now common
in Britain, especially among "alienated youths." That's where the Nazis
made their converts in the 1920s and 30s. "Alienated youths" are always
the easiest targets for any totalitarian creed. It's another sign of political
danger.
Today's resurgence of anti-Israel and
anti-Semitic propaganda is yet another cultural alarm bell shrilling, kicked
off by the new "Red-Green" alliance. (Green is the color of Islam.) London's
mayor "Red Ken" Livingstone was elected by a Red-Green alliance. Even Britain's
Prince Charles likes to parade around in a Lawrence of Arabia costume,
according to Mark Steyn's recent column. Prince Charles is an empty-headed
fool, but Mayor Red Ken Livingstone is a true knave and demagogue. Totalitarians
need both knaves and fools.
Anti-Americanism
Anti-Americanism has come roaring back
like a bad rash, flaring up after years of remission. Anti-American rage
is pervasive on our Left and the dominant media. (But I repeat myself,
as Mark Twain might have said).
In Europe most of the major media ---
Der Spiegel, Stern, Le Monde, the Guardian, the BBC News -- make a specialty
of slamming America,
with Israel thrown in as the Little Satan.
Why do they hate us? It's truly not
our fault. The Euro-Left hates us for winning the Cold War, and for showing
capitalist democracy to be far more beneficial and compassionate than any
State-controlled society. It still drives them to rage -- as you can see
in the most recent novels of John Le Carre, who was in the British spy
services when the KGB-controlled Cambridge Spies were allowed to punch
gaping
holes in Western security. Cambridge University was a major indoctrination
and recruitment center for the KGB between the world wars, because it was
populated by Left ideologues. Today, John Le Carre is a very, very angry
man, and in his recent novels his Anti-American rage comes out with unmistakable
clarity. (For some reason, he especially hates Mormons.) It's really too
bad, because he's also a top spy novelist.
Who the Hard Leftists
are
The history of NeoCommunism is well
known. It starts with the 68'ers in Europe -- les Soixant-huiteurs, named
after the 1968 student riots, which served as the major agitprop opportunity.
Radicalized youth were created and went on to careers in poltiics. People
such as former German Socialist Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder, who now literally
works for the Russians, bought by the giant oil monopoly Gazprom. German
anarchist and Green politician Joschka Fischer actually has now turned
against his old comrades. Where have we seen this before?
In the US, of course, the NeoCommunists
were the Sixties Radicals who decided to carry on a "Long March through
the Institutions." That means the college faculties, the high schools,
the media, Hollywood, and government. Today, major foundations started
by Henry Ford and Andrew Carnegie have turned Hard Left. Capitalist money
is turned against the very engines of prosperity.
Hillary Clinton's puppy love for Saul
Alinsky, when she was a college student in the Sixties, is symbolic of
the way the "new" radicals fell in love with the old, hard-line Communists.
Hillary Clinton started her adult life as a millenarian zealot, following
the old prophet of radicalism. It's anybody's guess what she believes today,
but I suspect it's not the Methodism of her youth. The methods of the Democratic
Party today are taken straight out of Saul
Alinsky's playbook.
Today The New York Times celebrates
the passing of old Communists with lavish obituaries. The NYT Editorial
Page has now turned into a mud-throwing gallery for the nasty Left, as
shown last week by Gail Collins' weird column
on Newt Gingrich's decision not to run for President. It was titled "Ah,
Newtie, we hardly knew ye!" Gail Collins is actually the Op-Ed Page Editor
of the New York Times, one of the most sought-after jobs in American newspapers.
She is engaging in juvenile mudslinging, which is frankly idiotic, because
Newt Gingrich happens to be a real history professor, a highly successful
electoral politician, a novelist, and one of the most creative policy thinkers
in the country. But the Grey Lady will publish such childish rants without
hesitation.
(Collins also enabled the disinformation
team of Valerie Plame and Joe Wilson to dump blatantly false agitprop into
its Op-Ed pages about the Iraq invasion, triggering a massive Leftist assault
on George W. Bush, and ending with the sentence of Scooter Libby now under
appeal, in lieu of bigger scapegoats.)
The aging New Left has simply become
the Neocommunist Left. If you don't believe it, just ask them politely
what they really believe. Or check out Moveon.org and many other locations
on the web. It's not a secret.
Methods
The methods of Neocommunism parallel
those of Old Communism to an astonishing degree.
The routine use of orchestrated
group lying (so that many different people are suddenly making the same
accusation);
The constant use of innocent-sounding
front groups like MoveOn.org and Media Matters;
The use of stooges (like military retirees,
both real and phony);
The need to whip up the rage of the
faithful with constant disinformation about the enemy (i.e., America and
conservatives);
The infiltration of media and government.
Members of the seventies left are sprinkled throughout these institutions,
carrying out the long march. These tricks are all straight out of the old,
old playbook. Karl Marx really was a genius agitator and revolutionary
plotter, though nothing else. Marx is still the model.
In the Democratic Party, the former radical
Henry Wallace wing now controls the Party under a different label, because
adopting different disguises is the essence of revolutionary konspiratia.
(Konspiratia has been one of the biggest Russian indoor sports since Ivan
the Terrible. Americans are just pikers by comparison.)
The worst example of PC re-labeling
is what the Hard Left has done to the word "liberal." Our current Left
is anything but "liberal." They are not concerned with liberty. They have
nothing good to say about John Locke, John Stuart Mill, or Thomas Jefferson.
Instead, they impose PC speech control wherever possible, including in
the mainstream media. They try to intimidate anyone who disagrees, and
have purged professors in universities by accusing them of the current
smear labels: Racist, Sexist, Homophobe.
A distinguished older scholar I know
was harassed some twenty years ago when the PC Police took over his college.
His scholarly journals were thrown into the garbage and his office was
trashed. He was attacked verbally by radical students in his classes, who
were openly encouraged by old-style Marxist professors. My friend ended
up resigning from his tenured job, had a heart-attack, somehow survived
it and retired. These radicals are not liberals, no matter how much they
try to use that label.
There are many similar stories from
the Putsch period of the New Left -- starting roughly in the 1970s, when
the Boomer Lefties were graduating from the colleges where they had been
radicalized. That's when the PC Commissars started to take over, often
by simply harassing their enemies.
Today, they're in charge on the campuses.
President Lawrence Summers lost his job at Harvard, and was recently blackballed
at UC Davis, for offending against Politically Correct Orthodoxy. Larry
Summers came to fame as a Clinton Administration official -- a liberal,
but not ideologically Stalinist enough for the Hard Left.
The New Left utilized "affirmative action,"
Black Studies and Women's Studies to bring in new indoctrinated troops,
and to drive out objective scholarship from humanities departments. Science
and engineering departments tended to be a little more resistant, because
they had to deal with facts in the real world. The same seems to be true
in business and economics departments. For honest humanities scholarship
the Left substituted frauds like "post-modernism," "deconstructionism,"
and "Critical Theory." Those were just new labels for the old vinegar.
While those hot new ideas are now dying of ennui, their true believers
are going back to the old Marxist gospel. What's that song about the old-time
religion? Well, the Left is going back to the old-time religion of Communism.
The best proof is that the very word "communism" is now strictly Verboten
by the PC Commissars, who don't want to be exposed.
Will the Evil Empire
Strike Back?
The biggest difference between Old and
New Marxism today is that NeoCommunists don't control the Soviet Empire.
The Left has turned that to its advantage, however. It is no longer possible
to accuse them of being run by the Soviets. They will tell you they are
patriotic Americans, which is very true, if you adopt their belief that
America must be subjected to a Leftist regime for its own good. What's
good for the international Left is good for America. Just ask them, very
politely. It's not a secret.
We can't even rule out a possible revival
of Moscow Center for the worldwide Left, because as Putin becomes ever
more authoritarian in Russia, he has also revived the KGB spy network in
the West. It was Gorbachev himself who warned about the rise of Stalinism
in Russia last week. That is why the Russians used traceable radioactive
polonium to kill their traitor Litvinenko in London -- so everybody would
know that KGB "wet affairs" were back
in the business of killing. They wanted to send a message to their
enemies, and the Western media did the job for them. Now everybody knows,
except for The New York Times.
Putin is an old KGB spook, and represents
the old KGB network who have taken power positions in Russia. Well, if
you're Vladimir Putin and want to rebuild a spy network in the West, who
would be easier to suborn than our militant Leftists? Western Leftists
already hate America and adore our enemies. How easy are they to buy off?
You don't even have to pay them, except for purposes of blackmail. Putin
would simply be following the very successful Soviet espionage routine.
He made his KGB career in East Germany at a time when the Soviets were
highly successful in penetrating the West German government and media.
It worked like a charm before, so why not do it again?
Goals
The ideological goals of NeoCommunism
have not changed one bit, which is why the term "communism" is so accurate.
The sucker goal is to create Paradise on Earth by overthrowing democratic
capitalism. The real goal is to enable the rise of a new ruling class with
huge power over ordinary people. One reason that NeoCommunists have so
much in common with Islamic Fascists is that both fantasize about the same
millenarian end: Islamists also hate democratic capitalism, and they also
want to take over the world for a purer, more idealistic tyranny. Check
out Saudi Arabia and Iran for some good examples.
Means
After the fall of the Soviet Empire,
the Left changed tactics but not goals. In Europe the result was called
the "Third Way," and it is the controlling ideology of the European Union
today. The "Third Way" claims to be a compromise between capitalism and
Communism, but it comes down to sucking resources from relatively free
markets for the sake of centralized State power and control. EU propaganda
is just recycled socialist propaganda. You can easily see it on the web.
It is no accident that the United Kingdom
today is surrendering its national sovereignty to the European Union as
fast as possible: The socialist ruling classes in the UK know they will
merge seamlessly into the EU elites, at higher salaries, bigger perks,
and much more power. The UK elites are simply planning to join the new
ruling class of the emerging European Empire. It's a promotion they just
can't turn down.
Down the road it's quite possible that
the EU will turn Hard Left, and junk soft socialism. And it's not impossible
that it will turn Hard Right, like the Nazis. It all depends on circumstances.
In France, Dominique de Villepin certainly celebrates a Napoleonic Empire
for the future, as he makes
clear in his writings
The most ambitious aim of the European
Union, one that is not disguised, is to become part of a world government,
a far more powerful United Nations perhaps, to unify control over the world.
Sounds paranoid? Yes, I know. But just listen to what
they say. This is a case of paranoids having real enemies.
I'm afraid America has real enemies
today. They are totalitarians who shout to the world that they are bound
and determined to bring us Paradise on Earth -- as long as it's under their
collective thumb. It doesn't really matter whether they are Islamists or
Stalinists. They are not hard to figure out, since they proclaim their
message from the rooftops. It is an ancient disease flaring up again.
Americans and other civilized countries
have a record of winning out over tyrannical ideologies, at least over
the longer term. But winning is by no means guaranteed. It's like a Twelve-Step
Program -- first you have to recognize that the disease has gone too far.
Then you can do something about it --- gently, factually, and in a persuasive
way.
Winning against Neo-Communism is a matter
of reaching hearts and minds, as it always is. Yes, you can love the sinners,
just don't fool yourself about the sin. It all starts with telling the
truth that is right in front of our eyes. |