Posted on 08/31/2005 6:52:17 PM PDT by OESY
Dana Milbank and Alan Cooperman do a pretty good job of making John J. Tierney look like an alarmist nut based on their report of his presentation at the Heritage Foundation yesterday. His upcoming book apparently researches the funding and momentum behind the burgeoning anti-war protest industry and finds a lot of evidence that it primarily consists of unreconstructed communists. The Washington Post report of the event has Tierney painting a pretty broad brush on this score, however, and starts out by using what it believes to be a killer emotional rebuttal:
Cindy Sheehan: anti-American communist? That was the accusation coming yesterday from the Heritage Foundation, which hosted author John J. Tierney Jr. for a forum titled "The Politics of Peace: What's Behind the Anti-War Movement?" ...
Tierney, of the Institute of World Politics, identified five groups: ANSWER, Not in Our Name, Code Pink, United for Peace and Justice, and MoveOn.org. He said these groups "come from the Workers World Party" and are an "umbrella" for smaller groups, such as the "Communist Party of Kansas City" and the "Socialist Revolutionary Movement of the Upper Mississippi." Of the last two, he said, "I'm just making these up."
Tierney singled out Sheehan, whose son died in Iraq and who camped out at President Bush's ranch this month to protest the war. "I've never heard of a woman protesting a war in front of a leader's home in my life," he said. "I've never heard of anything quite so outrageous."
The problem that comes with some people who get something right about their political opponents is a tendency to go too far, and Tierney falls into this trap. I have no doubt that Milbank and Cooperman give us the most egregious quotes possible in this piece, but the one above demonstrates a high level of cluelessness. Truly Tierney cannot have been serious when he said this, or he exposes himself as little more than a rube. Considering the permanent moonbat display across the walkway from the White House, where our "leader" lives, the notion of protests at his residence should not surprise anyone. That protest zone hardly qualifies as a men-only zone, either. If Tierney objects to the protests following George Bush to Crawford, then the responsibility for that goes to Bush for moving his base of operations to his ranch while Congress is out of session.
Overshooting the target allows for criticisms to stick. Tierney names a lot of organizations in his speech as reported by the Post, which doesn't report on whether the author brought any evidence of communist infiltration or backing within all of them. That scattergun approach leaves Tierney open to charges of McCarthyism -- seeing Red wherever he looks -- and diminishes his credibility even further.
Which is a shame, because he gets it exactly right with at least one of these groups: International ANSWER. One need look no further than their own website to find out the people who direct ANSWER's political direction to understand what fuels their passion, and it isn't an abiding love of democracy. In the About Us section, ANSWER lists its "steering committee", the organizations that comprise its leadership:
* IFCO/Pastors for Peace * Free Palestine Alliance - U.S. * Haiti Support Network * Partnership for Civil Justice - LDEF * Nicaragua Network * Alliance for Just and Lasting Peace in the Phillippines * Korea Truth Commission * Muslim Student Association - National * Kensington Welfare Rights Union * Mexico Solidarity Network * Party for Socialism and Liberation * Middle East Children's Alliance
Edward Immler at FrontPage wrote an extensive expose of ANSWER in September 2002 which demonstrated the connections between the group and Stalinists such as the Workers World Party and the International Action Center. On this count, Tierney is on solid ground, and to the extent that ANSWER alone fuels these rallies, then he can show a solid link to communist participation in anti-war protests.
And while Cindy Sheehan may be anti-American, based on her public statements such as "America is all about killing" and her assertion that the country is not worth defending with one's life, that doesn't make her a Communist by default. Moreoever, it hardly helps to overly demonize Sheehan past what can easily be said about her based on her own words.
With polls showing a growing discontent with the direction of the war, one still has to presume that America has not suddenly turned Communist. Plenty of blame can go towards the media for this weakening of support, as they relentlessly cover explosions and deaths but report little of the rebuilding efforts seen by our troops and the few embeds still left in Iraq. Readers find little context in daily tallies of combat deaths (which after two years still doesn't come close to the one-day loss on 9/11) without understanding that nation-building takes long, hard work, but if successful will lead to many more lives saved, not just American but Iraqi as well. The White House shoulders some of this blame as well. It needs to communicate these issues better.
Regardless of the blame, Tierney and others like him need to remain precise and careful about their charges. Hyperbole only destroys the credibility and gives material assistance to the lunatics at the fringe, which need real exposure that includes solid evidence that speaks for itself.
Posted by Captain Ed
Isn't Dana Milbank an unreconstruction Communist?
First of all, even if I accepted the author's pro forma denunciation of the so-called red-baiting that occurred during the 50s and 60s, and approved of his castigation of "McCarthyism"-which I don't-the charge could not be applied to any of John Tierney's statements.
This man is a moderate, rational libertarian, along the lines of a John Stossel, who-to the best of my knowledge-was still in the employ of The Old Gray Lady, a paper that has published the work of James Reston, Walter Duranty, Sydney Schanberg, Tom Wicker, Anthony Lewis, among a variety of other writers, whose political orientation has ranged all the way from Stalinist apologetics, to hard core, reflexive defense of new leftism, to tacit sympathy for Islamic terrorists and their state sponsors.
So the notion that Tierney is some sort of reactionary is preposterous on its face.
Secondly, it's not simply "one group" of those that were enumerated by Mr. Tierney that is intimately connected with the CPUSA, the Sparticist League, SWP, and other criminal socialist elements, but all of those groups, save MoveOn.org, which is still radical enough to have vociferously opposed both Operation Enduring Freedom and OIF.
Finally, I don't think that Tierney should be faulted for exposing the truth, any more than the scientist who exposed the origin and extent of the SARS virus should have been chastised by the PRC government.
Someone who sheds light on the darkness that shrouds internal diseases, which are intent on doing us harm, should be commended, not rebuked for his perseverance.
I beg to differ. >>
me too, look no further than Hollywood, certain members of the catholic church, the media, academia and the public school system. they have systematically infiltrated most institutions in American which influence people the most.
The bitch in the ditch is as red as they come.
America’s Mein Kampf
Check my home page.
Yes there ARE communists - and quite a lot of them!
In 1919 an Italian socialist named Antonio Gramsci began to publish a newspaper in Milan called, L'Ordine Nuovo, or "The New Order." Loosely rendered, he concluded that the average person would never voluntarily reject the faith and culture of the West. He concluded that the best way to implement a collectivist government was to use an intellectual elite to destroy traditional values by attacking fundamental Jewish and Christian beliefs.
Antonio Gramsci, 1891-1937
...A. The New Order (L'Ordine Nuovo)
......1. Italian Communist newspaper, founded 1919
......2. Co-founder of Italian Communist Party, 1921
......3. Pre-Prison Writings, ed. Richard Bellamy (Cambridge, 1994)
......4. Selections from the Prison Notebooks (Intl. Publishers, 1971)
...B. Lenin was wrong, and the Leninist revolution will fail
......1. The workers will see the revolutionary government as a new boss
......2. When the revolution fails, the west will re-import Capitalism
...C. Gradual revolution through infiltration & subversion by revolutionaries
......1. Infiltrate the State: elective & appointed office; judgeships
......2. Infiltrate the military: enlist & subvert from within
......3. Infiltrate justice: undermine and discredit state constitutions
......4. Infiltrate education: professors & administrators
......5. Infiltrate & discredit religion: scoundrels as clergymen
......6. Register, then license, then confiscate all privately held weapons
...D. Form or infiltrate international organizations to promote goals such as "global understanding," "economic development," "transfer of resources"
...E. Both Capitalism and Judaeo-Christian culture must be destroyed before a Communist revolution can succeed
......1. Religious sentiment cannot be destroyed through legislation, as Lenin believed, but must be redirected from the divine to the state
.........a. Terror will only drive Religion underground
.........b. Religion will then reemerge when Leninism fails
.........c. So Religion must be destroyed in the minds of men
......2. Infiltrate religious academies and become priests and clergymen
.........a. Subtly promote heresy within religious organizations
.........b. Infiltrators must act so as to discredit the church
............(1) Cause financial and sexual scandals
............(2) See that this is given a high profile in the news
............(3) Like-minded infiltrators in the media will cooperate
......3. Once religion is discredited from within, continuously promote the idea that only the state can solve the problems that have been traditionally brought before the church
...F. When propagating revolutionary ideas, cloak them in polite terms
......1. National Consensus
......2. Popular Mandate
......3. National Pacification
......4. Pluralism
......5. Global Community
......6. Economic Justice
......7. Economic Democracy
......8. Liberation Theology
......9. Direct Action
...G. Marxists "must enter into every civil, cultural, and political activity in every nation, leavening them as yeast leavens bread."
Note: While reading this, think back over what the left has done to this country.
That's one thing that Antonio Gramsci knew, and was counting on as he was rotting away in a jail cell in Mussolini's Italy.
I'm not a huge fan of Pat Buchanan-by any means-but his analysis of how the theories promulgated by the Frankfort School had gradually-but inexorably-taken hold of the American psyche- or at least that part of it that is sculpted by the cultural elite-was simply brilliant.
Correct. What he didn't understand was corporate collectivism, the fascist element of cultural marxism (and its true sponsor in the first place). That history and its affiliation with Marxism goes back long before Gramsci.
bttt
"Secondly, it's not simply "one group" of those that were enumerated by Mr. Tierney that is intimately connected with the CPUSA, the Sparticist League, SWP, and other criminal socialist elements, but all of those groups, save MoveOn.org, which is still radical enough to have vociferously opposed both Operation Enduring Freedom and OIF."
I agree with you in spirit. But I do believe that it is time to re-evaluate the identity of the core of evil in the world. In my view (with correlates with Golitsyn on this point), Putin is the guy most "in charge" of evil in the world. That is to say, the Russians set up a worldwide network of spys and agents of influence (journalists, academics, etc.) and they still run it. The Russians set this up under Communism, but there is no more Communism in Russia. Russia is run by KGB (FSB) guys. The KGB was an organ of the Communist government---but they don't run Russia as a Communist country. Russia is supplying Iran with nuclear power plants and intercontinental ballistic missle technology---and Iran is the center of world terrorism. So Russia is still up to its old tricks.
The Chinese Coomunist government is the #2 center of evil in the world. But they are not really running their country as Communists anymore either, way too much capitalism to say that---though the "Communist government" will always exert complete political control---until overthrown.
Cuba and N. Korea---still real communist countries---are minor.
I call the new center of evil in the world the Organized Hard Left (OHL). I think American Left is a semi-independent branch of the Russian organization. The Russians set it up and still run it---but loosely---not like under Stalin. The Democratic Party is now largely under OHL control. The goal of the OHL---guided by their hidden Russian masters---is to damage America. Naturally, few members of the American OHL know of the importance of this connection.
Plenty of commies, just look at the Democrat party.
So very true and taken hold it has.
If it looks like a duck and quacks like a duck, it's a duck.
After all, without Frederick Engels, would we ever have heard of Karl Marx?
So what do they think comes after this revolution? Certainly it can't be the simple minded "utopia" claim, can it? They aren't that dumb are they?
Why is it that the left can make outrageous charges, but it's the right that must watch it's P's and Q's?
Whether these groups currently accept support from genuine communists is irrelevant. They are all the descendants of groups that did. Starting with the front groups and guilds of Hollywood, that was deliberately infiltrated on Stalin's orders, because he understood that long term success hinged with turning peoples minds. The education establishment was likewise attacked, and it's current leftist tilt is a legacy of genuine USSR communism.
Records of the 30's-50's Communist International found in Russia after the fall of the Berlin Wall are enough proof as to their lineage.
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