Free Republic
Browse · Search
News/Activism
Topics · Post Article

To: The UnVeiled Lady
don't see how it could be de-bunked, it is true. I got my copy off the Congressional website from Jan 1963

I'm not suggesting it wasn't read into the congressional record, merely questioning whether or not any communofacists ever actually wrote these rules down.

Actually, I was wrong- the item that had been debunked was similar, but was not this particular piece. Here's what I was talking about: (from snopes)

Claim: A list of "Communist Rules for Revolution" was discovered by Allied forces in Germany in 1919.
Status: False.

Example:

Communist Rules for Revolution In May 1919 at Dusseldorf, Germany, the allied forces discovered a copy of these 'Rules.' They were first printed in the United States in the 'Bartlesville (Oklahoma) Examiner-Enterprise' the same year, 1919.

Almost 20 years later, in 1946, the attorney general of Florida obtained them from a known member of the Communist Party, who acknowledged that the 'Rules' were then still a part of the Communist program for the United States.

1. Corrupt the young; get them away from religion. Get them interested in sex. Make them superficial; destroy their ruggedness.

2. Get control of all means of publicity, thereby:

3. Get people's minds off their government by focusing their attention on athletics, sexy books, plays and immoral movies.

4. Divide the people into hostile groups by constantly harping on controversial matters of no importance.

5. Destroy the people's faith in their natural leaders by holding the latter up to contempt, ridicule and disgrace.

6. Always preach true democracy, but seize power as fast and as ruthlessly as possible.

7. By encouraging government extravagance, destroy its credit, produce years of inflation with rising prices and general discontent.

8. Incite unnecessary strikes in vital industries, encourage civil disorders and foster a lenient and soft attitude on the part of government toward such disorders.

9. Cause breakdown of the old moral values - honesty, sobriety, self-restraint, faith in the pledged word, ruggedness.

10. Cause the registration of all firearms on some pretext, with a view to confiscate them and leaving the populace helpless.

Origins: A time-honored ploy in the political arena has been to discredit your opponents (and their ideas) by demonizing them, by associating them with . . . well, demons. In the twentieth century, this has usually meant claiming that the ideas your opponents advocate were implemented by Nazis or Communists, or were recognized by them as means of "softening up" a country and making it ripe for totalitarian takeover. So, for example, if you believe the film industry should be more heavily regulated to prevent it from corrupting our youth, just point to this document and proclaim that the Communists came to power in Russia because the previous government had allowed callow youth to idle away their time watching "immoral movies."

As shown in the example above, this document is usually claimed to have been discovered "in May 1919 at Dusseldorf, Germany, by allied forces" and "first printed in the United States" in the Bartlesville, Oklahoma Examiner-Enterprise. Although the Examiner-Enterprise is a real newspaper, none of this rings true. Language about getting the young "interested in sex" and focusing their attention on "sexy books" and fretting about the "registration of all firearms" sound out of place for 1919. Even if this document really had been found in 1919, it's unlikely Americans would have found it alarming back then, when the German hun was still a much bigger bogeyman than the Russian communist. And not surprisingly, nobody has ever managed to turn up the mysterious issue of Examiner-Enterprise that supposedly printed it. When columnist Bob Greene checked out this piece with Russian specialists at the University of Chicago and Northwestern University in the mid-1980s, they said the list was "a total fraud," "an obvious fabrication," and "an implausible concoction of American fears and phobias." (Greene also wrote: "I always wanted to meet a communist who was carrying the list around, so I could ask him what 'obloquy' means.")

When The New York Times ran an article on this piece way back in 1970, it had already been circulating for about twenty-five years. The Times reported that neither the National Archives, the Library of Congress, nor university libraries had a copy of any such document. When Montana senator Lee Metcalf looked into the issue back then, he checked with the FBI, CIA, and the Senate Internal Security Subcommittee; found that "exhaustive research" had proved the rules to be "completely spurious"; and noted that "the extreme right also follows rules, one of which is to make maximum use of false, misleading and fear-inspiring quotations." Nonetheless, numerous Congressional members received copies of the rules list from alarmed constituents and, believing that nobody else was yet aware of them, continued to insert them into the Congressional Record.

The earliest known publication of these rules was in the periodical Moral Re-Armament in February 1946, and circulation of the list really took off after Florida state attorney George A. Brautigam endorsed them as true in 1954. (His "punishment" was that for many years afterward, printed versions of this list included his statement and signature appended at the bottom.) Even though the Soviet Union has since ceased to be, well into the 1990s the "Communist Rules for Revolution" have continued to be cited in newspaper editorials and letters to the editor as proof of our moral and political decay.

18 posted on 05/17/2003 11:42:00 AM PDT by fourdeuce82d
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 16 | View Replies ]


To: fourdeuce82d

If you don't think Communists think like "Rules for Communists" consider that the true story of a sleeper Russian agent appeared in Reader's Digest many years ago. The fellow was the son of Russian immigrants also born in Russia. When he was a teen, they told him to write letters to newspapers mentioning disinformation and demoralizing information. In lLater years they told him to drive near secret defense facilities and take pictures of planes coming in and out, cars leaving etc. They also told him to do a lot of silly things that he thought were pranklike or childish perhaps to test his obidience for nasty projects.
By the time of his college education, he was Americanized and wanted to turn in his handlers as provacateurs and disavow , forget about being a sleeper agent. He did quit being a Soviet agent. I think he grew up in Florida.


36 posted on 06/21/2004 3:12:14 PM PDT by Celeb1013
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 18 | View Replies ]

Free Republic
Browse · Search
News/Activism
Topics · Post Article


FreeRepublic, LLC, PO BOX 9771, FRESNO, CA 93794
FreeRepublic.com is powered by software copyright 2000-2008 John Robinson