Part 8

Many well-meaning citizens, attracted by these words and not seeing behind the communist intentions, have been swept into the communist thought-control net. Most are sincerely interested in improving society, and there are many ways in which our society can and should be improved. They are willing to devote their time, talents, and energies to a “sacred cause.” That is how communist thought control works. If it can influence you on any matter, regardless of how minor, making you think favorably toward communism, it has gained. It has something to sell everyone.

“Fool the noncommunists!” That is the slogan. And, better still, make noncommunists fool each other! Encourage the support of as many dupes as possible. These individuals see only the exterior, or false face, of communism. They are never shown the inside, the real communism, the terror, injustice, and slavery. Time after time, in almost unbelievable fashion, victims, somehow or other under communist thought control, do communism’s work: signing communist election petitions, contributing time or money to communist fronts, issuing statements in support of communist-sponsored campaigns.

Elizabeth Gurley Flynn, a member of the National Committee of the Communist Party, USA, quite recently was a candidate for the New York City Council under the emblem of the People’s Rights Party. Communists canvassed to obtain at least 3000 signatures on petitions required by law to place her name on the ballot. They went over the goal with the help of noncommunists. In the November 5, 1957, election, however, Flynn received fewer than 1000 votes.

The People’s Rights Party is a sham political party created to give the Communist Party the legal right to run communist candidates. In 1946, 1952, 1954, and again in 1957 communist candidates have run for municipal, state, or national office in New York City under the banner of the People’s Rights Party. Each time signatures had to be obtained to secure the right of the PRP to place its candidates on the ballot.

Another instance of Party manipulation to gain the support of noncommunists was the campaign in the summer of 1957 to solicit signatures for petitions opposing the further testing of nuclear weapons by the United States government. Most of these signatures, of course, were those of noncommunists. On this issue the Party was slavishly following the line of international communism. Communist strategy is to provide the leadership, encouraging noncommunists to do the work.

Not that these individuals are communists. The great majority of them are loyal, but deceived, citizens. Sending five dollars to a front organization with a patriotic-sounding name; signing a communist-inspired petition urging “world disarmament” (isn’t that a worthy cause?); attending a giant Party-manipulated rally in support of the “Bill of Rights”: the noncommunist does not realize these campaigns are being operated out of downtown communist headquarters. He is fooled because he believes in the aims they profess and does not recognize the hidden motive.

But, from the communist point of view, a dollar is a dollar. A victim makes a contribution. His money is just as good as money from an open member. A noncommunist allows his name to be used on a letterhead. Suppose he was fooled? The name is still there. Thus the communists assemble support from all quarters, whether given intentionally or not, and apply it toward their objectives.

Party officials, like fishermen, are constantly watching their “nets” to see what the fishing will bring. Each day, unfortunately, communist thought-control nets, sweeping through American life, catch new supporters, maybe two or three new members, several sympathizers, an opportunist, many victims. A “big-name” sympathizer is worth a great deal and so is another fellow traveler. Each can be put to work. The strength of the Communist Party depends, at any given time, on the number of fish in the net.

How can we, as Americans, protect ourselves from becoming “innocent victims” of the communists?

First, we should not fall for “fronts.” In Chapter 17 you will find a detailed description of how communist fronts operate, together with a twelve-point list of ways to spot them so that we will not be fooled into giving them our support. (The Attorney General of the United States has issued a list of subversive organizations, and the House Committee on Un-American Activities has also issued a _Guide to Subversive Organizations and Publications_.)

Second, we should know the answers to the _Five False Claims of Communism_. In the next chapter we shall learn what those claims are and how United States communists use them to disarm and confuse loyal Americans. We should learn to spot those claims, and know the answers.

Finally, we should not permit the use of our names unless we know the true identity of the soliciting group. We should use our right of petition to further the American way of life, and not allow the communists to steal it from us.

7.

_What Do U.S. Communists Claim?_

I have said that one of the chief strengths of the Communist Party has been its ability to appeal, by trickery, to many Americans who are sincere, idealistic, and well-meaning.

A first step in arming ourselves against communism is to know how those appeals are made and how to see through them. So now let us consider five of the most deceptive claims made by the Communist Party, USA, in its effort to lure “innocent victims.” Let’s see what communists pretend to be and what they really are:

1. _Communists are not liberals._ The concept that communism is a new world of liberalism is false, a trap used to catch noncommunists. The word “liberal” has a fine, upright meaning and is symbolic of a great historic tradition. That is why the communists appropriate the term for their own use.

Communism is the very opposite of liberalism. Liberalism means increased rights for the citizen; a curb on the powers of the central government; freedom of speech, religion, and the press. Communism means fewer and fewer rights for the private citizen, curtailment of freedom of speech and press and worship of God. The state becomes all-powerful, the absolute reverse of American tradition.

Make no mistake, communists do not like liberalism; that is, the genuine liberalism of Western civilization. They denounce liberals (“liberal blockheads” Lenin called them) and attempt by every means to destroy them. The communists realize that true liberalism is a bitter enemy, a fighter for the things that communism opposes.

A derisive poem entitled “March of the Liberals” published in the July 16, 1935, issue of _New Masses_ (a now-defunct communist publication) makes clear this communist attitude, depicting liberals as weak, vacillating, and incapable of any affirmative action:

a conclusion is something we never can find.... ... One step forward and two steps back: that’s the method of our attack.

“You see here,” _New Masses_ comments, “the rhyme and reason of why a liberal looks so poisonous to a sincere and active radical....” The “antidote” for such liberalism? “Weekly doses” of Marxism-Leninism, or, in the words of the editors, “If you know one of these ‘open-minded’ marchers, you can save him! Give him a copy of NEW MASSES quick....”

The liberals do not want revolution but genuine social reforms. That is why the communists detest them. But if they can be exploited, so much the better. Like everybody else, they are fuel for the communist engine of revolution.

2. _Communists are not progressives._ “We of the Communist Party are fully and completely in the camp of progress....” A prime tenet of communist propaganda is that communism is the latest word in social progress. All other forms of government, especially our constitutional government, according to the communists are outmoded, old-fashioned, and antique. Communism is the wave of the future, they like to say, bringing all the good things that man has been dreaming about for years. Religion, the “opium” of the people, must be destroyed, God cast out, and the “oppressors” liquidated. The road ahead is clear. Join the Communist Party and see “progress.” Those who do not join are “reactionaries,” “fascists,” and “warmongers.”

Everybody likes progress. If you are a farmer, you want to grow better corn and more of it. If you have a lawn, you want to weed out the dandelions and have better grass. If you are a manufacturer, you want to develop a better product. This is a natural human trait. The communists, identifying themselves with this idea, have convinced many people that they are the “progressives” of the twentieth century.

The exact opposite is true. Communists are barbarians in modern dress, using both club and blood purge.

Shortly before 1700 Peter the Great came to the throne in Russia. He was ruthless and dictatorial. He was interested in making the Russian state strong. The church, the nobles, the peasants, everybody must be subjected. The most minute details came under his supervision. The army was reorganized, a new civil service put into operation. He even ordered men to shave their beards and women to dress in modern clothing. The law was what he said it was.

Communists have inherited this tradition. With modern, efficient tools, such as the secret police, the army, and control of communications, they have increased the tyranny of the state. The individual under communism is a mere number with two shoulders to carry a bale of hay or a couple of feed sacks, two hands to pull a wagon or drive a tractor. This is not progress but a turning backward, throwing away the fruits of history, religion, and free government.

3. _Communists are not social reformers_, people working for the betterment of living conditions. “The Communist Party ... champions the ... interests of the workers, farmers, the Negro people and all others who labor by hand and brain....” This theme, here quoted from the 1957 Party Constitution, is exploited time after time, to attract noncommunist support.

Some years ago a very distinguished person, after reading a summary of the program of a communist-front organization, commented that if communists worked for desirable objectives, that was praiseworthy. However, in this individual’s opinion, such action could hardly represent much of a gain for communism, except perhaps to make it more like democracy.

This is a complete misunderstanding of communism and is just what the Party desires. The communists detest democratic reforms. These changes, they know, will make free government stronger, hence less likely to be overthrown by revolution. Their espousal of reforms (higher wages, better working conditions, elimination of racial discrimination) is strictly a revolutionary tactic. That communism, by such mass agitation, might gradually change to democracy is a false and dangerous illusion. Communism’s goal is world revolution. Any device that will advance its cause is urgently pursued.

Lenin himself is frank:

The strictest loyalty to the ideas of Communism must be combined with the ability to make all the necessary practical compromises, to “tack,” to make agreements, zigzags, retreats and so on....

4. _The Communists do not believe in democracy_. Communist leaders of all ranks, from N. S. Khrushchev to William Z. Foster, from Lenin to the communist agitator on the corner of 12th and Market Streets, have proclaimed that communism is the most highly developed form of democracy. Lenin stated that the Soviet Union was “a million times more democratic” than the most advanced capitalist democracies of the West. William Z. Foster in an official statement commented, “The Communist Party is a democratic movement,” adding:

And in the Soviet Union ... there exists a higher type of democracy than in any other country in the world.

Mention must be made, to understand this double talk, of a communist deceptive device called _Aesopian language_.

Nearly everyone is familiar with the fables of Aesop, such as “The Fox and the Crow” and “The Lion and the Mouse.” Often the point of the story is not directly stated but must be inferred by the reader. This is a “roundabout” presentation.

Lenin and his associates before 1917, when living in exile, made frequent use of “Aesopianism.” Much of their propaganda was written in a “roundabout” and elusive style to pass severe Czarist censorship. They desired revolution but could not say so. They had to resort to hints, theoretical discussions, even substituting words, which, though fooling the censor, were understood by the “initiated,” that is, individuals trained in Party terminology.

The official _History of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (Bolsheviks)_, telling how Bolshevik agitation in Saint Petersburg in 1912-14 was led by _Pravda_, the communist newspaper, explained that the periodical could not openly call for revolutionary action. That would have brought government suppression. Rather, “hints,” understood by the communists, were used:

When, for example, _Pravda_ wrote of the “full and uncurtailed demands of the Year Five,” the workers understood that this meant the revolutionary slogans of the Bolsheviks, namely, the overthrow of tsardom....

In 1914 labor troubles sprang up in the capital of Russia. The communists wanted mass meetings and demonstrations. _Pravda_ couldn’t publicly sound the call, so it resorted to Aesopian language.

But [the communist _History_ reads] the call was understood by class-conscious workers when they read an article by Lenin bearing the modest title “Forms of the Working-Class Movement” and stating that at the given moment strikes should yield place to a higher form of the working-class movement—which meant a call to organize meetings and demonstrations.

Lenin himself told how he was compelled to write:

with an eye to the tsarist censorship. Hence, I was not only forced to confine myself strictly to an exclusively theoretical, mainly economic analysis of facts, but to formulate the few necessary observations on politics with extreme caution, by hints, in that Aesopian language—in that cursed Aesopian language—to which tsarism compelled all revolutionaries to have recourse, whenever they took up their pens to write a “legal” work.

In one propaganda tract Lenin, writing about world problems, mentioned “Japan.” However, as he later explained, that was merely a trick to pass the censor. “The careful reader,” Lenin said, “will easily substitute Russia for Japan....”

So it is with the word “democracy.” Communists still use Aesopian language; they say one thing and mean another. In this manner they fool noncommunists, encouraging them to believe that communism stands for something desirable. The trained communist knows otherwise: it is mere double talk with a completely different meaning.

The word “democracy” is one of the communists’ favorite Aesopian terms. They say they favor democracy, that communism will bring the fullest democracy in the history of mankind. But, to the communists, democracy does not mean free speech, free elections, or the right of minorities to exist. Democracy means the domination of the communist state, the complete supremacy of the Party. The greater the communist control, the more “democracy.” “Full democracy,” to the communist, will come only when all noncommunist opposition is liquidated.

Such expressions as “democracy,” “equality,” “freedom,” and “justice” are merely the Party’s Aesopian devices to impress noncommunists. Communists are masters at getting other people to do their work. They clothe themselves with everything good, noble, and inspiring to exploit these ideals to their own advantage.

5. _Communists are not American._ The Communist Party, USA, endeavors, in every possible way, to convince this country that it is American. “The Communist Party is American,” one of its top leaders recently proclaimed. “... We take second place to nobody in our devotion to the United States and its people.”

This is a typical Aesopian trick. Communism stands for everything America abhors: slave camps, rigged elections, purges, dictatorship. As we saw in Part II, the communist movement was born abroad, was imported into the United States, and grew up under the personal direction of Russian leaders in Moscow. How can communism be American when it employs every form of treason and trickery to bring about ultimate domination of the United States by a foreign power?

The American people, fortunately, are now more than ever aware of the danger of communism. The hostile attitude of Soviet Russia in international affairs, the Canadian spy revelations, Khrushchev’s denunciation of Stalin, Soviet intervention in Hungary, the aggression in Korea—all these events, and many more, have taught Americans that the communist is not an angel of mercy, ministering to the weak, oppressed, and wounded, but a menacing demon spattered with blood and wielding a hammer and sickle of iron.

Nevertheless, great damage has been done, and is still being done, in miscalculating and failing to understand the true nature of communism. In the 1930’s, and especially during World War II when Russia was a military ally, this foreign ideology gained tremendous strength.

The Party in 1944 claimed a membership of 80,000. Communist fronts welcomed overflow crowds; distinguished citizens flocked to do their work. A great backlog of influence was built up upon which the Party is still drawing. Thought-control nets touched, in one way or another, literally thousands of sympathizers and victims. Many individuals, people who should have known better, went completely overboard, hailing communism as “Twentieth-century Americanism,” a term widely publicized by the communists themselves.

Henry A. Wallace, in a frank and forthright article entitled “Where I Was Wrong,” published in _This Week_ magazine on September 7, 1952, graphically pictured the communist power of deception, how he incorrectly interpreted communism and its counterpart, Russian imperialism.

While Vice-President of the United States, and even later, Wallace thought Russia “wanted and needed peace.” He visited the Soviet Union in 1944 and was favorably impressed. But, as the article relates, he did not realize during his tour the feverish efforts being made by the Soviets to hoodwink him. For example, he visited Magadan, a city in Siberia, which was one of the Soviets’ most notorious slave labor camps. “Nothing I saw at Magadan or anywhere else in Soviet Asia suggested slave labor.” Later he learned of the Soviet actions

... to pull the wool over our eyes and make Magadan into a Potemkin village [an ideal show city especially built for visitors] for my inspection. Watch towers were torn down. Prisoners were herded away out of sight. On this basis, what we saw produced a false impression.

Mr. Wallace then added these important words:

... what I did not see was the Soviet determination to enslave the common man morally, mentally and physically for its own imperial purposes.

The communists claim to be many things they are not. All over the world and in every field of human life they have erected false fronts, Potemkin villages, to fool and enslave mankind.

8.

_Why Do People Become Communists?_

In the last chapter the Five False Claims of Communism showed how, in truth, communists stand for everything that is abhorred by normal Americans.

Why, then, do Americans turn communist?

The answer involves many details and is not simple. Most communists are ordinary-looking people, like your seatmate on the bus or a clerk in one of your neighborhood stores.

Most communists in the United States are now native-born. Others are naturalized citizens; a few are aliens. Some have never gone to school and have difficulty reading and writing. Many are well educated and have college and university degrees. Often they possess special talents in one field or another.

A member may earn his living in practically any occupation or profession. Not long ago a large Communist Party section listed members in these categories, tabulated as “professional and white collar”: artists, actors, doctors, dentists, educators, engineers, draftsmen, lawyers, musicians, nurses, newspaper writers, office workers, salesmen, social-service workers, pharmacists, clergymen. Or a member may be a butcher, carpenter, mechanic, truck driver, plumber, or laborer.

Members are recruited from all nationalities, races, and areas of the country. They may live in expensive mansions or tumble-down homes. They are of all ages. Never can a communist be identified simply by his physical appearance, occupation, or clothes.

Why, you may ask, do these individuals join? And why, especially in this country, which, under democracy, has such a long and heartening record of expanding privilege and opportunity for so many?

Perhaps we can better understand why members join if we look at an actual case, which we can call the Case of Lost Faith.

Jack was born in a Midwestern city. He was tall, brown-haired, and possessed a pleasant disposition. He liked school and endeavored to please his teachers. He was intensely curious concerning the world about him, especially the physical sciences.

Then something started to happen to him, slowly but surely. His faith in God and religion seemed to be fading. As he later told FBI agents, he felt this loss already in high school. By the time of his graduation his faith in religion, which as a small child had been most sincere and tenacious, had completely disappeared. There was now inside him a spiritual vacuum.

Upon entering college Jack found himself with an exceedingly curious mind but one uncontrolled by any spiritual faith. In a class on government he made the acquaintance of the _Communist Manifesto_. Later he read sections of Engels’ _Anti-Dühring_, which, among other things, discusses Marxist theory in relation to science. He was impressed. Here were some ideas that seemed to offer something positive and new.

Then one day, almost by chance, he came upon a leaflet distributed on the campus by a communist club. Jack became interested and made contact with the Party. Here, for the first time, he seemed to find an “answer” to the problems that had plagued him. Here, in the Party’s claim to be working for a better world, Jack believed he had found a new “faith,” which would give meaning and validity to his life. Though later he was to realize his tragic error, Jack joined the Communist Party.

In many instances we know, joining the Communist Party comes from a loss of faith, so to speak, in our Judaic-Christian heritage and earnest, though perverted, seeking for a new faith. The individual is trying to find solutions to problems, real or fancied, that disturb his life. Many reasons cause individuals to join the Party, but undoubtedly most important is the Party’s appeal to idealistic motivations, to a “bright new world” where justice, peace, and freedom will replace strife, injustice, and inhumanity. “I believed that in the Communist Party was the beginning of a true brotherhood of man, working with devotion for socialism, peace and democracy,” wrote Howard Fast, one of the Party’s best-known writers, later to become bitterly disillusioned. “... I believed, as did millions of men of good will, that the only truth about the Soviet Union was the picture presented by friends of the Soviet Union.”

Communism with its deceitful double talk exploits these basic human yearnings for better social conditions, racial equality, justice, and peace, and places them in the service of tyranny. In this way, strange as it may sound, communists are able to entice free men to fight for slavery in the name of freedom.