Communism

Communism  (Ideology)
Interest of	• House Un-American Activities Committee • Richard Löwenthal • Dave Springhall
Ideology of the USSR.

Communism is a collectivist ideology.

Bugbear of the "independently wealthy".

Official narrative

Painful decades exposed communism as an unrealistic political system. Eventually, "The West" won the Cold War, resolving the political debate between left (Soviet style communism) and right (free market capitalism). The people spoke, proving that those on the right (Western style 'democracy') had been right all along. This powerful and authentic vindication for the free world confined communism to the dustbin of history, promising peace and prosperity for all, once we have won the 'war on terror'.

Opposition

A lot of "anti-communist" groups were set up in the 1970s and 1980s, by proxies of the CIA. This was a particular interest of Brian Crozier's and of many Le Cercle members. Strategies included public relations, assassination. The first foreign action by the CIA was a political sabotage of the Italian communist party's election. This remained a long term concern and motivated the activation of Operation Gladio stay-behind cells in Italy to carry out false flag terror attacks such as the 1980 Bologna massacre.

 

An example

Page name	Description
Stephan Steins	Political activist, called for general strike in Germany in December 2020.<a href="#cite_note-1">[1]</a>

 

Related Quotations

Page	Quote	Author	Date
Blowback	“You want to know what this was really all about. The Nixon campaign in 1968, and the Nixon White House after that, had two enemies: the antiwar left and black people. You understand what I’m saying. We knew we couldn’t make it illegal to be either against the war or black, but by getting the public to associate the hippies with marijuana and blacks with heroin, and then criminalizing both heavily, we could disrupt those communities. We could arrest their leaders, raid their homes, break up their meetings, and vilify them night after night on the evening news. Did we know we were lying about the drugs? Of course we did.”	John Ehrlichman	1994
Theodore Dalrymple	“Political correctness is communist propaganda writ small. In my study of communist societies, I came to the conclusion that the purpose of communist propaganda was not to persuade or convince, not to inform, but to humiliate; and therefore, the less it corresponded to reality the better. When people are forced to remain silent when they are being told the most obvious lies, or even worse when they are forced to repeat the lies themselves, they lose once and for all their sense of probity. To assent to obvious lies is in some small way to become evil oneself. One's standing to resist anything is thus eroded, and even destroyed. A society of emasculated liars is easy to control. I think if you examine political correctness, it has the same effect and is intended to.””	Theodore Dalrymple
Document:Psychological Warfare for the West: Interdoc and Youth Politics in the 1960s	“Psychological warfare has two sides: The build-up of moral strength within one's own side and the undermining of the morale of the opposing side.”	Cees van den Heuvel	1959
Stella Rimington	“Well all I can say is that Communist and Trotskyist organisations, by their philosophy, their published aims, would have fallen within the definition of subversion.”	Stella Rimington
Russia	“Higher stakes meant aggressive mobilisation of media for an information war became a feature of 1990s electoral politics at regional level, following the pattern of the 1996 presidential election. By then, the corruption associated with privatisation had made Yeltsin and the reformers unpopular – and many feared the communists would return to power. The democrats had to resort to desperate measures. Every possible resource was mobilised to ensure that Yeltsin was re-elected – including deals with powerful oligarchs with large media empires. The communists were defeated but the price was endemic cynicism about the democratic process. The Yeltsin presidency remained beholden to Russia’s regional governors and the oligarchs. It fell to Putin to curtail the powers of these groups, campaigning in 2000 under the slogan of “the dictatorship of law”. That such a slogan could have popular support shows the degree to which the public had become disillusioned in the late 1990s. However, the direction towards concentration of power had been set almost a decade before Putin was elected president. Russia’s reformers of the 90s largely achieved the irreversible economic change they wanted. They were less successful in creating a positive narrative for the new Russia. Reform had seemed to be based on the idea that Russia needed to learn as much as possible from the west. Over time, disillusion with this idealised view of the west grew and public opinion became more nationalistic.”	Adrian Campbell

 

Related Documents

Title	Type	Publication date	Author(s)	Description
Document:Psychological Warfare for the West: Interdoc and Youth Politics in the 1960s	book excerpt	2011	Giles Scott-Smith	A book chapter covering Interdoc's activities in the international student/youth field during the 1960s.
Document:Sins of Statecraft - The War on Terror Exposed	paper	29 July 2006	Brian Bogart

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