By Paul Kengor
Editor’s note: Who could have imagined that one of the most
audacious disinformation campaigns in American history would turn out,
according to a recently declassified FBI file, to have a direct
connection not only to today’s president of the United States, Barack
Obama, but to top advisers David Axelrod and Valerie Jarrett as well?
Here, Professor Paul Kengor, author of “The Communist,”
the new bestseller about Obama mentor Frank Marshall Davis, tells the
incredible story of communist disinformation in America and its multiple
ties to those now “fundamentally transforming” this country from the
top.
If you want to see how Soviet-style disinformation has spread in our
own country, look no further than the Communist Party USA. Sure, no one
could spin a web of lies quite like the Soviets and the Kremlin, but
their American devotees are likewise excellent at agitation, propaganda
and deliberate deception. America’s communists have produced some
impressive homegrown disinformation. Here, I’ll consider an especially
productive example, which still bears bitter fruit today among the wider
American left: the campaign against the House Committee on Un-American
Activities.
In this skillful, cynical disinformation campaign, American
communists, working with duped progressive/liberal accomplices, framed
their accusers as “fascists,” “Nazis,” “McCarthyites” and even “racists”
who were (allegedly) unfairly hounding and maligning them by
investigating their ties to Moscow. In truth, the accused were
frequently guilty – and, at the least, merited attention. Nonetheless,
these leftist forces came together, under the leadership of the CPUSA,
the Daily Worker and other far-left forces, in coordinated campaigns
such as “Operation Abolition,” which sought to abolish the House
Committee on Un-American Activities, which they tagged as “HUAC” – the
“House
Un-American Committee,” a label that sticks to this day.
Of special interest, one of those who engaged in this campaign was
Frank Marshall Davis, a closet CPUSA member who in the 1970s would go on
to mentor a young Hawaiian boy named Barack Obama, our current
president.
Communist campaigns
Before examining this anti-”HUAC” campaign, consider a few words on the concept of communist campaigns.
Communists excelled at “campaigns” – that is, carefully concerted
efforts where they exploited an issue or cause to further their agenda.
Such campaigns were a very significant, still vastly unappreciated
tactic vigorously employed by the communist movement throughout the 20th
century. They were done with great effect, so much so that many of the
outright untruths in these underhanded campaigns have slipped their way
into history books as quasi-official versions of 20th century history.
These campaigns took on such a discernible, consistent pattern that
they eventually prompted full-scale investigations by the U.S.
government, which deciphered a clear tactic requiring constant
surveillance. The FBI in the 1950s would produce a 100-plus-page report
(classified) strictly on the subject of campaigns. The bureau defined
campaigns as “concentrated, continuous and concerted succession of
agitation and propaganda activities specifically devised and timed to
sway public opinion. All communist campaigns are intended to arouse,
influence and mobilize as many people as possible to further communist
goals.” Those goals, naturally, included the promotion of the “welfare
of the Soviet Union.” For American communists, the end-goal was always a
“Soviet America,” or, as the 1930s CPUSA loyalty oath put it, “to
insure the triumph of Soviet Power in the United States.”
Of special relevance to this article, communist campaigns, like
communist fronts, thrived on deceit and disinformation. And American
communists were vigilant in concealing their coordination. They needed
to be ever ready to deny their participation.
The chief target audience in these campaigns was gullible
liberals/progressives that communists believed could be duped. The dupes
were indispensable to success. If the campaigns marshaled only the
support of communists, they would be transparent and would collapse
under public exposure. The presence of liberal/progressive dupes helped
diminish the presence of communists.
The FBI noted that, “No other organization has ever engaged in so
many diverse, intensive and extensive campaigns conducted with so much
perseverance, deftness and potency as has the Communist Party USA.”
CPUSA was “never without” a campaign of one type or another, and had
been responsible for “an inestimable number of campaigns.”
The anti-’HUAC’ campaign
This brings me back to the anti-”HUAC” campaign.
One of the most controversial domestic battles of the Cold War was
the fight between Congress’s House Committee on Un-American Activities
(HCUAA) and those accused by the committee of harboring private
loyalties to the Soviet Union and international communist movement. It
was before this committee that certain citizens were repeatedly asked
the dramatic question, “Are you now, or have you ever been, a member of
the Communist Party?” Many of those asked pleaded the Fifth Amendment.
There is much to this drama that today is misunderstood or
unappreciated. To cite just one example, the actions of the House
Committee are often identified with conservatives, with the political
right, with McCarthyism and the man Joe McCarthy. In truth,
Senator McCarthy was never a member of this
House
(of Representatives) Committee. In fact, throughout its history, the
committee was chaired primarily by anti-communist Democrats. Its
Democrat chieftains ranged from Rep. Martin Dies, D-Texas, to Rep.
Francis Walter, D-Pa., to Rep. Richard Ichord, D-Mo., among others.
But more than that, and fundamental to the theme of this article, was
the counter-campaign against the House Committee. That counter-campaign
is known today only by a narrow group of Cold War researchers who have
actually dug into the declassified archives – ranging from Soviet
archives in Russia to the Comintern Archives on Communist Party USA
(CPUSA), housed at the Library of Congress. A look at those archives,
and other material, illuminates an interesting counter-response to the
House Committee. That counter-response was a campaign called Operation
Abolition.
Operation Abolition was a 1940s/1950s effort led by (among others)
CPUSA, the Daily Worker, the ACLU and a splinter group from the ACLU,
the National Emergency Civil Liberties Committee – headed by Corliss
Lamont and I. F. Stone. The goal of this coalition of left and far-left
sources was to abolish the House Committee on Un-American Activities, or
at least to so question and demonize the committee in the public’s mind
as to discredit the committee.
It was incredibly ironic, and utterly outrageous, that after two
decades of being wrong and being duped by Stalin, by Stalinists, and by
secret supporters of Stalin, that America’s liberals/progressives – led
by the ACLU and National Emergency Civil Liberties Committee – would
come together to find their demon not in the duped liberals/progressives
or pro-communists who defended Stalin as he murdered tens of millions,
but in the
anti-communists who tried to tell the truth to
Americans about Stalin, his murderous state and his secret supporters in
America. Can you imagine? Well, that is precisely what happened. Making
it worse, I. F. Stone, who we now believe was a paid Soviet agent from
1936-38, helped lead the campaign.
So intense was this campaign that Congress itself ultimately
investigated the campaign. Congress correctly perceived that the
campaign was built upon a larger “anti-anti-communist” campaign that
liberals/progressives pushed for decades and still advance to this day.
That push had been so intense and problematic in the 1950s that the
Senate Judiciary Committee (run by anti-communist Democrats) would hold
hearings and publish a report titled, “The New Drive Against the
Anti-Communist Program.”
As noted during those hearings, leading the charge in many of these
anti-anti-communist thrusts was the New York Times. As testified by the
feature source in the hearings before the Senate Judiciary Committee,
the Times was one of the primary “organs of anti-anti-communism,” doing
so
ad nauseum with “heavyweight, comatose gibberish.”
Whether gibberish or not, this work was extremely effective in
stirring the emotions of liberals/progressives, with the effect of
inadvertently advancing the communist cause.
‘HUAC’s’ ‘Un-Americans’
Implicit to this effectiveness, and a huge propaganda success, was
the very use of the acronym “HUAC.” Language became central to the
debate.
Consider: America’s communists, socialists and liberals/progressives
happily inverted the phrase “un-American,” charging the House Committee
itself (and its chairs and members) with being “un-American.” The
political left has done this so effectively that its historic term for
the House Committee on Un-American Activities is not the proper acronym,
“HCUAA,” but the commonly known and widely accepted term “HUAC,” which
is actually a mis-ordered acronym that incorrectly reads: House
Un-American
Committee. This acronym is itself a major statement. Note, too, that
the term “HUAC” shows that the political left in America is not shy
about labeling certain people “un-American” – a tactic that the left
claims is the typical domain of the right – so long as the left is doing
the labeling.
Overall, the left has done this so aggressively that it has succeeded
in permanently labeling HCUAA as “HUAC.” I have noticed the results
when teaching college students. In my courses, when I attempt to use the
correct acronym, HCUAA, I get quizzical looks as I scribble the letters
on the chalkboard. To the contrary, the moment I revert to “HUAC,”
students nod, understanding what I’m referring to. The left has won this
battle over language. And most ironic, the greatest champions of the
term “HUAC” were American communists, who used the term incessantly in
the Daily Worker and all their publications. When non-communist
liberals/progressives today use that term, they are actually, whether
they know it or not, employing the propaganda language of CPUSA.
Particularly brazen was the Daily Worker. In fact, it is almost
laughable that the Daily Worker put “communists” in quotes when
reporting on actual communists identified by HCUAA, while simultaneously
not placing “HUAC” in quotes, as if the former were fantasy and the
latter reality. Oftentimes, communists and liberals/progressives alike
simply called HUAC “the Un-American Committee” (leaving out “House”).
Even more brazen, CPUSA, throughout the Cold War and even post-Cold
War, maligned what it dubbed “the racist, McCarthyite forces of evil”
and the “fascist House Un-American Activities Committee.”
Yes,
fascist. This was an obscene accusation against a
generation that had faced the Nazis. And yet, typical of the American
left, opponents were transmogrified into political monsters: “racists,”
“fascists,”
“Nazis.” Liberals/progressives hurl around these
vicious names still today, almost reflexively. It isn’t anything new;
they and their comrades have done this for a long, long time.
Frank Marshall Davis
Interestingly, this war over language was waged not only at CPUSA
organs like the Daily Worker but by a subject of remarkable modern
political relevance: Frank Marshall Davis. Davis did so in his writings
and publications, beginning at the Chicago Star (1946-48) and continuing
with great frequency at the Honolulu Record (1949-57) – two
communist-controlled publications.
For the record, Frank Marshall Davis was a card-carrying member of
Communist Party USA – card no. 47544. He joined the Party in Chicago
during World War II. He was founding editor-in-chief and a weekly
columnist for the Chicago Star, where he wrote flawless pro-Soviet
propaganda, blasting everything and everyone from the Marshall Plan and
Truman Doctrine to Harry Truman and Winston Churchill. His position was
always predictable: it was the Kremlin’s position. Davis continued that
work in Hawaii, where he moved in 1949, and where he would eventually
meet and mentor a young man named Barack Obama in the 1970s.
As to the theme of this article, I counted 43 examples of Frank
Marshall Davis using the word “un-American” at the Honolulu Record in
just 1949-50 alone. Some of these were in defense (to defend himself),
others on offense (to attack the committee). Three times the words were
typed into titles of his columns. Twice he used the word
“un-Americanism.” Davis was not reticent about excoriating “the aptly
named un-American committee.”
Some examples of Davis’s use of this phrase are worth highlighting:
In a May 1950 piece for the Honolulu Record, Davis described what he
referred to as a natural alliance sought by bigoted anti-communists on
“the un-American committee.” “This alliance with a revived Nazi
Germany,” wrote Davis, “may please such persons as John Rankin of
Mississippi and John Wood of Georgia, two past and present chairmen of
the un-American committee whose ideas on race parallel those of Adolf
Hitler.” In fact, said Davis, congressmen Rankin and Wood were not
merely run-of-the-mill, redneck Democratic Party racists, but were
themselves “upholders of master race theory of the Nazis.”
Frank Marshall Davis did not mince words: If America, and especially
anti-communists at “HUAC,” wanted to see Nazis, they should look in the
mirror.
Another
“un-American” piece by Davis that’s especially
illuminating was a September 20, 1947, column for the Chicago Star,
titled, “I got radical thoughts.” Here, Davis candidly stated that he
wanted to flat-out nationalize the packing-house industry, as well as
impose national price controls and a federal tax on the rich and their
“excess profits.” “I’m so un-American right now,” wrote Obama’s mentor,
“that I want to see price controls clamped back on this minute, a new
and stronger excess profits tax put into operation, and the whole
packing industry nationalized.”
What’s fascinating about this particular article is who Frank
Marshall Davis worked with at the communist-controlled packing house
workers’ union – and how those comrades eerily relate to today.
Working with Davis in promoting the packing-house workers union was
Vernon Jarrett. They collaborated in a communist-controlled group called
the Citizens’ Committee to Aid Packing-House Workers. A surviving April
12, 1948, document printed on committee letterhead, and found by
researcher Trevor Loudon, lists Davis as both committee member and among
the small group of journalistically inclined individuals who comprised
the committee’s publicity committee. Joining Davis in both capacities
was Vernon Jarrett.
Vernon Jarrett would become a major name in Chicago and known
nationally. He would also become father-in-law to a young woman named
Valerie Jarrett, Barack Obama’s single most important adviser.
And the links don’t end there. Also working to advance the
proletariat from the packing-house workers union was the Canter family,
specifically Harry and David Canter, who in the 1930s lived in the
Soviet Union while Harry worked for Stalin’s government as an official
translator of Lenin’s writings. Hailing originally from Boston, where
Harry was secretary of Boston’s Communist Party, the Canters eventually
ended up in Chicago in the 1940s, where they worked with Frank Marshall
Davis, Obama’s mentor. In the 1970s, David Canter would, like Davis,
become a mentor – of a young man named David Axelrod, Obama’s chief
strategist.
The links are amazing, too extraordinary to try to make up.
Nonetheless, they are as true as they are shocking. And to bring this
full circle to the theme of this article, the likes of the Canters
worked with Frank Marshall Davis in certain circles and fronts – and the
literal pages of the Chicago Star, which incessantly called for the
abolition of the House Committee on Un-American Activities.
In all, whether “un-American” was hurled by Frank Marshall Davis or
his liberal/progressive or communist friends, think about their
argument: The left was, in effect, arguing that the
true
Americans were the card-carrying, closet American communists – literally
pledged to Stalin’s USSR and the Comintern – whereas the un-Americans
were the anti-communists, especially those elected to Congress and
fulfilling their duty of investigating possible secret Soviet agents or
collaborators. For these congressmen, their duties to the U.S.
Constitution mandated that they pursue potential indigenous security
threats.
Frank Marshall Davis and his comrades constantly tried to argue that
they weren’t communists, but were mere “progressives” being unfairly
hounded by Neanderthal McCarthyites and the evil “HUAC.” This was
disinformation they fed to liberals, which, in turn, fomented a wider
anti-”HUAC” campaign. Liberals, naturally, swallowed the bait hook, line
and sinker. In truth, these guys were communists, and they were rightly
being pursued for their correctly suspected pro-Soviet activities.
And yet, still today, the likes of Frank Marshall Davis himself
continue to be protected by liberals who portray him as an innocent
civil-rights crusader hounded by McCarthyites. Who does this? Pro-Obama
liberal biographers and journalists. They do this, of course, to protect
Obama. Alas, then, the disinformation curiously continues.
The preceding was excerpted from the September issue of WND’s acclaimed monthly Whistleblower magazine, “DISINFORMATION AGE: How America’s news media have become ‘useful idiots’ for Marxists, sociopaths and tyrants.”
Dr. Paul Kengor is professor of political science at Grove City College and author of the new bestselling book “The Communist: Frank Marshall Davis, The Untold Story of Barack Obama’s Mentor.” His other books include “Dupes: How America’s Adversaries Have Manipulated Progressives for a Century.”
http://www.wnd.com/2012/09/communist-disinformation-american-style/
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