AM:
The Russian revolution took place in two phases. In February of 1917, the socialist movement
organized to delegitimize the political regime in power—Tsar
Nicholas II of Russia.
Two
socialist groups led the charge—the Mensheviks
and the Bolsheviks. The Mensheviks believed in pure Marxism yet
were tolerant of liberal views (i.e., individual liberty and property ownership). The Bolsheviks were far less tolerant of
liberal opposition, and classified people as friend or enemy, with Lenin’s
vision for utopia facilitated by political elite as the litmus test. Then, in October of 1917, the Bolsheviks
seized political power from the provisional government and became known as the
Communist Party. Those who opposed Lenin’s
vision would eventually be silenced—either sent to a Gulag
or executed—in the year following the revolution, the Red
Terror engaged in an estimated 1.5 million political and religious executions. Here’s a passage from a Wikipedia
account from a book[1] by George Leggett, The Cheka: Lenin's
Political Police (pp. 197–198):
At Odessa the Cheka
tied White officers to planks and slowly fed them into furnaces or tanks of
boiling water; in Kharkiv, scalpings and hand-flayings were commonplace: the
skin was peeled off victims' hands to produce "gloves"; the Voronezh Cheka
rolled naked people around in barrels studded internally with nails; victims
were crucified or stoned to death at Dnipropetrovsk;
the Cheka at Kremenchuk impaled members of the clergy and buried alive
rebelling peasants; in Orel, water was poured on naked prisoners bound in the
winter streets until they became living ice statues; in Kiev, Chinese Cheka
detachments placed rats in iron tubes
sealed at one end with wire netting and the other placed against the body of a
prisoner, with the tubes being heated until the rats gnawed through the
victim's body in an effort to escape.
The
same Wikipedia source recounts other forms of brutality as reported in a book[2] by Alexander Nikolaevich Yakovlev. A Century of Violence in Soviet Russia
(p. 156):
Members of the clergy were subjected to particularly
brutal abuse. According to documents
cited by the late Alexander
Yakovlev, then head of the
Presidential Committee for the Rehabilitation of Victims of Political
Repression, priests, monks and nuns were crucified, thrown into cauldrons of
boiling tar, scalped, strangled, given Communion with melted lead and drowned
in holes in the ice. An estimated 3,000
were put to death in 1918 alone.
IM: What is critical to emphasize is that the
Bolsheviks were socialists. A
well-documented history reports
“communists have killed more than 100 million
people. Countless more suffered and suffer still.” I
find it shocking that in America, Bernie Sanders, a known socialist who ran
unsuccessfully for President, recently published his own book with the title, Our Revolution. He does not hide the fact that,
ideologically, he is a socialist—as if he is totally oblivious to the
atrocities stemming from a socialistic society.
His language is consistent with Lenin and the Bolshevik movement. He presumes a morally superior perspective,
playing upon envy to pit the lower class against the upper class. What amazes me is the large number of
followers who wanted him to be President.
AM: This is very disturbing to me—Gadfly and I spent
over 34 years as a member of our national security team opposing the threat of
socialism in Vietnam and during the Cold War.
IM: Yet, the younger generation has not been educated on our history, thanks to the John Dewey progressive educational philosophy that has shaped education in America for nearly a hundred years.
Old Gadfly: I am glad you
mentioned Dewey. We’ll have another
lengthy discussion centered on an excellent analysis by Henry T. Edmondson III
in his book, John Dewey & The Decline
of American Education: How the Patron
Saint of Schools Has Corrupted Teaching and Learning. Meanwhile, are there indications of how bad
history education is in America?
IM: Absolutely.
There is a stark contrast between baby boomers and millennials in terms
of attitudes toward capitalism and socialism.
A recent report
indicates millennials are far more supportive of socialism and communism than
baby boomers. Yet, based on my own
anecdotal data, baby boomers who have grown accustomed to generous welfare
benefits also leaned toward Sanders and his socialistic utopia.
Old Gadfly: Let’s get back to the Russian revolution. The left is starting to describe the current protest movement as an equivalent to the Tea Party movement that emerged in 2009.
AM: The Tea Party movement represented rallies,
not protests. No one was arrested, and
there was never any violence or damage during these rallies. These rallies expressed concerns about
socialistic policies being forced upon us (such as Obamacare and other crushing
regulations). Compare these rallies with
the left wing protests taking place.
IM: Even if there is some truth to allegations the
Koch brothers financially supported some of the Tea Party efforts, the left
ignores solid evidence that George Soros is clearly behind ongoing protests
from the left. In fact, the recent
Women’s March on Washington was well organized and at least 50 of its partner groups have been funded by Soros. The Koch brothers have earned their fortune
through sound business practices. Soros,
on the other hand, is a convicted felon, and earned his fortune by betting on
the demise of entire national currency systems.
AM: But more important, the Tea Party
symbolically represented the historical Boston Tea Party that protested
tyranny. Similarly, the modern Tea Party
advocated individual liberty, limited government, and a fair market
economy. Compare this with left wing
protests that oppose the rule of law and American values of patriotism and
individual responsibility.
IM: The left believes in identity politics and a
manufactured oppression. With this
complex set of strawmen, they can then disparage liberal opposition (classical
liberalism now more accurately represented by the conservative movement) by
calling them the new set of “N” words—racist, bigot, misogynist, homophobe, xenophobe,
Islamophobe, and so forth. The political
left champions themselves as the protectors of the oppressed. Notice I said protector as opposed to
liberator. The left exploits modern
Uncle Toms, like John C. Lewis and Elijah E. Cummings, as ideological
warriors. By the way, the real Uncle Tom in Harriet
Beecher Stowe’s novel was a hero, unlike today’s pejorative meaning advanced by
the intellectual left. The political
left exploits this notion of oppression to justify a large central government
that imposes social justice, that is, equality for everyone (except the ruling
elite). Ironically, if there were no
oppression, then there would be no need for the political left. None of their ideas of good governance
assumes a capacity for self-governing people, as envisioned by our Founding
Fathers. These dynamics explain why the
left has gotten away with running inner city plantations for decades.
Old Gadfly: I want to get back to the Russian revolution
because this history is important in understanding the American revolution of
2017. The Russian revolution was the
beginning of Soviet communism. The
Communist International, commonly referred to as the Comintern, was founded in
1919, intended to fight "by
all available means, including armed force, for the overthrow of the
international bourgeoisie and for the creation of an
international Soviet republic as a transition stage to the complete abolition
of the State” (see here). According to Dictionary.com, the word soviet means, “(after
the revolution) a local council originally elected only by manual workers, with
certain powers of local administration. . . . (after the revolution) a higher council
elected by a local council, being part of a hierarchy of soviets culminating in
the Supreme Soviet.” Bernie Sanders (and Obama’s) modern bourgeoisie
are the top 1%. Notice
the abolition of the State means no borders, no national sovereignty. This might explain the left’s resistance to
building a wall and enforcing immigration laws.
AM: The Communist Party USA (CPUSA)
was very active in the early part of the 20th Century, and it was
totally loyal to the Comintern.
Old Gadfly: The Comintern went
away after WWII in the 1940s. Yet,
American support of Soviet Communism did not stop. Thus, like al Qaeda, the socialist/communist
ideology remains the organizing principle.
Since our progressive educators will not educate our children on
history, we must find a way to fill this gap.
For example, till the day he died in 1996, Alger Hiss claimed he was
innocent of being a Communist and Soviet spy.
To this day many, mostly those on the left, believe he was
innocent. Today, Jonathan Brent
serves as the Visiting Alger Hiss Professor
of History and Literature at Bard College.
Yet, Brent is not a left-wing ideologue.
See
this interesting article by John Miller.
The body of evidence of Soviet Communist
sympathies and actual spying is voluminous.
See for example,
Whittaker Chambers, Witness, (Washington, D.C.: Regnery History, 1952).
J. Edgar Hoover, Masters of Deceit: The Story of Communism in America and How to
Fight It, (New York, NY: Pocket
Books, Inc., 1958).
G. Edward White, Alger Hiss’s Looking Glass Wars: The Covert Life of a Soviet Spy, (New
York, NY: Oxford University Press,
2004).
Allen Weinstein and
Alexander Vassiliev, The Haunted Wood,
(New York, NY: The Modern Library,
2000).
Allen Weinstein, Perjury:
The Hiss-Chambers Case (Stanford, CA: Hoover Institution Press, 2013).
Herbert Romerstein and Eric
Breindel, The Venona Secrets: The Definitive Exposé of Soviet Espionage in
America, (Washington, D.C.: Regnery
History, 2000).
John Earl Haynes, Harvey
Klehr, and Alexander Vassiliev, Spies: The Rise and Fall of the KGB in America,
(New Haven, CT: Yale University Press,
2009).
IM: Is there a major take-away from
these books?
Old Gadfly: To my amazement, the
Soviet Communist spying efforts penetrated the highest levels of our
government, academia, Hollywood, and the media.
AM: The Flynn
political assassination episode is a classic example. On January 12, 2017, Charlie
Savage reported in The New York Times,
“In its final days, the Obama administration has
expanded the power (Executive Order 12333) of the National Security Agency (NSA)
to share globally intercepted personal communications with the government’s 16 other intelligence
agencies before applying privacy
protections.” This is how the NSA was legally
allowed to “share” with another agency the intercepted conversation between
Flynn and the Russian Ambassador. This
classified information was then leaked to David
Ignatius of The Washington Post who claimed on January 12, 2017: “According to a senior U.S. government official, Flynn phoned Russian
Ambassador Sergey Kislyak several times on Dec. 29, the day the Obama
administration announced the expulsion of 35 Russian officials as
well as other measures in retaliation for the hacking.”
IM: Combine this soft
coup
attempt with evidence that the Obama Administration went to great lengths to (a)
stack the federal
appellate court system—70% are left of center, and (b) absorb political
appointees ahead of veterans
as career federal employees into the unelected bureaucracy, a strong argument
can be made that the federal government is being infiltrated by leftist
ideology.
Old Gadfly: Stacking
the appellate system seems to be working in the left’s favor, given recent
actions to thwart Trumps temporary travel restriction from seven countries that
lack robust vetting systems. The left
has accumulated a lot of political street smarts over the years, to include the
Watergate episode in our history. Geoff
Shepard recently revealed formerly undisclosed evidence of left-wing corruption
in his book, The Real Watergate
Scandal: Collusion, Conspiracy, and the
Plot that Brought Nixon Down. Here are some key points from the evidence:
First, Nixon, as a junior U.S. Representative, was
the lead investigator in the Alger Hiss case.
Although Hiss was only convicted of perjury, Nixon was uniformly
despised for his role because Hiss was highly respected among the left.
Second, special prosecutors Cox and Jaworski had
political agendas, and illegally colluded with Sirica, the presiding judge, and
Bazelon , the chief appellate judge to orchestrate Nixon’s prosecution.
Third, public releases of judicial action were deliberately
timed for maximum effect in the media.
AM: Do you think the left-wing effort is
orchestrated?
Old Gadfly: Again, the organizing principle is the
ideology, socialism (today’s socialists prefer the label progressive). In terms of marshaling resources, let’s look
at some more evidence:
First, since 1989, according to Open Secrets.org, of the top 10
donors, six are labor unions, with the Service Employees International Union, being the largest.
Second, in the heyday of the CPUSA, front
groups were critical in advancing the cause.
The protests taking place across the nation (and international system) are
far from spontaneous. See for example,
the work being advanced by Indivisible.
Third, just like the role Lenin played in serving as a
visible symbol for the socialist movement, Barack Obama plays that role
today. He is the leader of the
Organizing for America (OFA) initiative.
Check out the OFA website. This website, www.ofa.us, was originally called Organizing
for Obama prior to the year 2009). Here is
a quote from the website:
With more than 250 local chapters around the country, OFA volunteers are building this organization from
the ground up, community by
community, one
conversation at a time—whether that’s on a front porch or on Facebook. We’re committed to finding and training the
next generation of great progressive organizers, because at the end of the
day, we aren’t the first to fight for progressive change, and we won’t be the
last.
IM: These developments seem to fit the pattern of
the soviet councils following the Russian revolution. The Bolsheviks fought for progressive
change. Millions died. So far, fortunately, we have not seen the same
brutal conditions.
Old Gadfly: Mostly
because there are a sufficient number of responsible, hard-working Americans
who do not subscribe to socialism . . . for now. But, let there be no doubt, there is a contest
for the soul of America.
[1] George Leggett. The Cheka: Lenin's Political
Police. (Cambridge, MA: Oxford University
Press), pp. 197–198.
[2] Alexander Nikolaevich Yakovlev. A
Century of Violence in Soviet Russia. (New Haven, CT:. Yale University Press,
2002), p. 156.
