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 non-communists. 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, hoping to attract non-communist 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 non-communists, 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 non-communists. 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 every-thing 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.