BLINDING HISTORY

By Diana West, TOWNHALL

Diana WestFor logic-minded Americans still genuinely puzzled as to how it could be that our presidents and secretaries of state and generals and pundits keep hammering home the big lie that Islam has nothing to do with jihad, that the religion of conquest is a “religion of peace,” I have a special warning. Such widespread, politics- and mass-media-driven brainwashing is nothing new.

Just as today’s opinion-makers seek to divorce Islam from its impact — for example, brutal conquest, forced conversion, religiously sanctioned sex slavery, beheadings — past opinion-makers worked equally hard to divorce communism from its impact — for example, brutal conquest, forced collectivization, concentration camps (Gulags), mass murder.

It worked. Unlike Nazism, communism has never been judged guilty or even held responsible for the carnage and suffering it has caused. On the contrary, it remains a source of “liberal” statist ideas such as Obamacare. My book “American Betrayal” delves deeply into this dangerous double standard. In short, it not only enables collectivist policies to strangle our remnant republic, but also explains why American students can find a drink called Leninade, emblazoned with a hammer and sickle, for sale on a college campus. It is also why silkscreens of Warhol’s Chairman Mao, history’s top mass murderer, are sought-after items for the homes of the wealthy.

There are no such trendy portraits of Hitler, and who would want them? Who would want to swig a bottle of Hitlerpop, decorated with a swastika? So, why Leninade? Not only does the stench of death not follow the Communist murder-cult, the brand lives.

Barring a groundswell of common sense, I predict that Islam, the brand, will most likely remain separate in the public mind from the violence and repression it causes and has caused for more than a millennium. That’s certainly the direction leaders from both political parties have been relentlessly herding us in for over a decade, insisting against all reason — against all sacred Islamic texts — that “Islam is peace.”

This means that not only must we contend with this cycle of expansionist jihad — a recurrence that should be familiar from Islamic history were it, too, not subject to whitewash — we must simultaneously withstand a campaign of lies designed to subvert our understanding of how Islam, in fact, has everything to do with beheadings and other violence both in the Islamic world and in the West.

And yes, such whitewashing has happened before. Stalin’s Red Army occupied half of Europe at the end of World War II, but Americans were told they had won the war and that “Uncle Joe” was a great guy. Then there is the whitewash of the transformation the Cold War wrought at home, where agents, agents of influence, fellow travelers, and dupes worked to advance Moscow’s will just as Soviet tanks (and agents, too) imposed it abroad. The conventional wisdom, however, set forth by academics, historians, think tank analysts, journalists, filmmakers (whether “liberal” or “conservative”), remains suspended in the amber of the “Red Scare,” the 1950s period during which anti-Communist “witch-hunters” searched for “Reds under the bed,” allegedly in vain. Never mind that many hundreds of American traitors had infiltrated the federal government in previous decades. The important thing, says the conventional wisdom, is not to connect the dots and examine whether these proxies for Stalin influenced the “American Century.”

That, of course, is exactly what “American Betrayal” does, thus enraging all keepers of conventional wisdom. No matter. The more I learn about the extensive penetration by Stalin’s secret agents into the federal government over the two decades that FDR and then Harry Truman held the Oval Office, the clearer it is that the American ship of state had too many hands loyal to the USSR pushing at the rudder, influencing, to varying degrees, the direction of U.S. policy and strategy, even if not especially during World War II.

Such is the once-hidden history that comes into closer focus since the U.S. and Russian governments released some subset of their vast secret archives — intelligence documents, FBI files and the like. Reigning “court historians” keep looking the other way, hoping Americans never notice the big picture: that FDR presided over the biggest national security disaster in U.S. history, the massive infiltration of the U.S. government by agents of a foreign power.

Ken Burns’ new PBS documentary, “The Roosevelts,” typifies this blackout. For example, take the series’ treatment of the Yalta Conference, the final meeting of the so-called Big Three wartime leaders. Old news footage shows the conference table, from Stalin to FDR to Churchill. The camera also shows a man who sure looks like Soviet military intelligence agent and U.S. State Department official Alger Hiss. Next to him is top White House aide and, according to some experts, Soviet agent or asset Harry Hopkins. Both men are seated behind the dupe-ish secretary of state Edward Stettinius.

Does Burns inform viewers of the identities of these notorious figures seemingly “boring from within” before the viewer’s eyes? Does he note the existence of scholarship confirming covert agent Hiss’ outspoken role at the conference, and evidence that he may have exerted influence over deliberations on China policy, war reparations including German slave labor, and other vital issues in the USSR’s favor? Is there any mention of the troubling questions about Hopkins’ single-mindedly pro-Soviet stance that caused George C. Marshall to describe “Hopkins’ job with the president” as being “to represent the Russian interests”?

Silence. Or rather, Burnsian chatter about the big secret of Yalta being FDR’s grave health — something obvious to anyone who looked at him. The series’ ultimate mission is accomplished, however. A re-gilded FDR is burnished to a starry sheen, blinding a worshipful audience. Is that what history is for?

September 27, 2014 | 141 Comments »

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41 Comments / 141 Comments

  1. @ yamit82:

    “True or false dweller?

    ‘that is, the mystery made known to me by revelation’….”

    “True or false dweller?

    ‘For our gospel did not come to you in word only, but also in power, and in the Holy Spirit and in much assurance’…”

    If you want an answer, you’ll have to be a little less cryptic.

    Ask me a real question (so far you haven’t) — and if I can, I’ll give you a real answer.

  2. @ yamit82:

    “What I’d said was that you wouldn’t HATE her, because you couldn’t afford to risk her support (to which you’ve clearly become accustomed).
    And I’d said THAT because SHE’D said, “Don’t hate me.”

    “It never occurred to you that I care for her a lot…”

    I wasn’t unaware of it, but it was irrelevant.

    One can still hate somebody he cares for a lot; caring doesn’t rule it out. Happens all the time. (She obviously knows that better than you.)

    ” Even if she were not supportive I don’t think it would effect how I feel.”

    I think you think you know yourself better than perhaps you do. (Yes, that’s my ABHO.)

    ” It’s like an emotional thing and it’s due mostly because I am a man and a human being. “

    Half-right.

    Half-wrong.

    You’re right that it’s an emotional thing.

    You’re wrong that it’s ‘because’ you’re a man & a human being.

    — More accurate to say that it’s DESPITE that you’re a man & a human being.

    “Some show their emotions openly and some hide them…”

    A difference of style, not substance. Both types are in trouble. Those who hide them have gotten burned in the past for showing them. Those who show them have found that if they don’t show them, they lose out in some (valued) way.

    Most people fluctuate between the one & the other, swinging back & forth like a clown hanging on for dear life to the pendulum of a giant grandfather clock — driving themselves nutso in both modes.

    “…but you seem to be one who has suppressed yours.”

    Not at all suppressed. I’m very conscious of them; in fact, I daresay I observe mine more constantly than most do theirs.

    “Very unnatural condition dweller and that makes you less than a man and certainly less than a human being.”

    I suggest, w/ all due respect, that until you know something about the ‘condition,’ you won’t be in a position to decide such things. Better to put those kinds of conclusions on a back burner till you’ve explored the matter.

    “You make a fetish out of control and order. “

    You say that ONLY because you associate ‘control’ with suppression. They are not identical, not synonymous. You draw that conclusion because:

    — inasmuch as suppression is the act of the ego, you ASSUME that control is likewise the act of the ego. So the one must be tantamount to the other, yes?

    But it isn’t. They are two different faculties altogether. There IS a connection between them, a relationship between them — but the connection is not that of “identification.”

    SUPPRESSION is what the individual is driven to in the absence of true control.

    Acquire true self-control (true self-possession) and you will never suppress anything. Won’t have to. Guaranteed or your money back.

    “Sick sick sick!!! Get help you are really losing it. In all fairness I must say I am enjoying watching your decent into total madness.”

    First you say I should get help. Then in the next breath, you say you’re getting off on observing my ‘madness.’

    — Nu, ken ayin hara, so WHO is it that’s losing it here?

  4. @ yamit82:

    “Yadda Blah Blah Compassion had nothing to do with it.”

    Of course it had nothing to do with it; that’s the whole friggin’ POINT, shmendrick. Compasssion wasn’t the essence of the movement.

    ‘Compassion’ was its selling point; ‘compassion’ was its HOOK.

    I said they talked the TALK of compassion.

    But walked the WALK of power.

    — They talked a good game (a better game than the Nasties talked).

    “They were cold hearted ideologues, secular religious fanatics. Ever hear of ends justyfing the means???”

    Again, precisely my point. The APPEAL was to compassion, human needs, etc.

    But the REALITY was strictly a matter of attaining and exercising POWER — not ‘compassion.’

    How many ways & how many times do you have to hear it before it begins to penetrate?

  6. @ dweller:

    Yadda Yadda Blah Blah Compassion had nothing to do with it..

    They were cold hearted ideologues, secular religious fanatics. Ever hear of ends justyfing the means??? Just like your Paul the marketer!! Compassion????? 🙂 🙂 🙂

  8. honeybee Said:

    Tequilas kosher?????????????

    Don’t think you will find many Kosher observing Jews at those pool parties. 🙂 That’s the other side of Israel we are a mixed bag.

  9. @ honeybee:

    Are you complainin???

    I helped with the chores and did the shopping, washed the dishes before we got a dishwasher and always took out the garbage. Fixed almost anything the needed fixing. I think I spoiled Mrs Yamit. She didn’t seem to mind. 🙁

  11. @ yamit82:

    “Utopian comunism was attractive to the Wests intellectual elite, who through positions in Academia, the arts and other influential sectors of society helped to advance some form of the ideology. Their offspring today is evident in all the social and so called liberal and progressive movements in the world. “

    Their spiritual offspring perhaps; not necessarily their physical offspring, however. In OUR generation, for example, lots of communists (and even MORE non-commie lefties) were attracted as REBELLION to their parents, not in conformity to them. And the converse is ALSO true: plenty of anti-communists are the children of communists.

    “Without military conquest the Nazis never had a chance of advancing beyond those areas that were conquered.”

    In the end that was true of Communism as well, because socialism — of ANY species — cannot generate wealth, it can only redistribute existing wealth. Without somebody somewhere to generate it, therefore, communism DIES. It has no other means of expansion, and it cannot lie static w/o devouring itself, and collapsing. (Hence, the “World Revolution,” and “Permanent Revolution,” the push into the Third World, “Wars of National ‘Liberation’,” etc, etc.)

    — Without outside fuel to feed its furnace, Communism has no choice but to burn the furniture to keep itself warm.

    “Hiter was a socialist”

    Quite so. And Mussolini was the former head of the Italian Socialist Party. Nazism & Fascism are phenomena of the Left.

    “All of the Above is a far cry From Equating superior PR/(Compassion?) as reasons for the success of communism.”

    Poppycock. Your data made my case, shlemiel — not your own.

    In the absence of the seductive PR appeal of ‘compassion,’ communism wouldn’t have had a leg to stand on, a pot to piss in, or a window to chuck the contents of the pot out of. It would’ve been forced to go straight for military force right from the jump.

    It is precisely the appeal to compassion which made it so much longer lasting — and so much harder to see thru — than Nazism.

  13. @ yamit82:

    “dweller has not learned that repeating popular historical revisionist spin is no substitute for real scholarship and analysis.”

    Actually I learned that long ago.

    But what I offered above [pg 1, post #8] is neither spin, nor revisionism. You call it “revisionist spin” because it challenges the standard claptrap taught in universities for half-a century now by left-wing faculties. (Did some tenured, ding-a-ling professor stick a gold star on your forehead for regurgitating that tripe in a term paper?)

    Moreover, if what you have written here is supposed to pass for “real” scholarship & analysis, it must be in some parallel universe. You’re long on verbiage (mostly leftish-liberal), short on substance. But most disturbingly, you COMPLETELY miss the forest for the trees.

    “He lacks profundity and erudition.”

    And your standard for those things would consist of . . . what, exactly? (This should be good.)

    “The dirty little secret of the left generally — and Communism in particular — is that while (in contrast to Nazism) Communism talked the talk of ‘compassion’ — it walked the walk of POWER, just as surely as the Nasties themselves.”

    “It was not the success of superior PR that was the prime reasons for communist success and Nazi failure. A little thing like WWl had a lot to do with the advancement of Communism Europe and North America. The mass slaughter was horrendous and the after shock to Europeans and Americans helped to make the universal utopian message of communism very attractive to wide swaths of the populations especially in Europe.”

    WW1 made FASCISM just as popular to other wide swaths of Europe (in fact, sometimes the SAME swaths of Europe). What made communism appealing however was that its universal utopian ‘message’ was grounded in an appeal to compassion, “human needs,” etc.

    “Communism preached social permissiveness a break with traditional societal values like sexual liberation and approval of abortion leading ultimately to pornography in the 60’s.

    Permissiveness, liberation, etc. all in the name of “compassion.” What OTHER basis could it have? — ‘societal perversity”? (The fact that it was a FALSE compassion is quite beside the point; at base it was an appeal to compassion and was invariably couched in terms compatible with it, whether it used that word or not.) You aren’t making your case; you’re clearly making mine.

    “The Nazis actually promoted family values because it strengthened the State.”

    They preached family values only to Germans. They had no problem with ‘inferior’ peoples’ practicing abortion, and in fact promoting it. (They sure-as-hell had no problem encouraging it amongst JEWS.)

    What’s more, the Nazi Party was shot thru with homosexuals. Ernst Rohm & the Brownshirts were NOTORIOUS for faggotry. In the past I’ve quoted whole chunks of the Scott Lively & Kevin Abrams book, The Pink Swastika .
    I suggest you check it out.

    “In America what defeated Communism more than anything else was the development of organized Labor which showed the way to elevate the worker his pay and conditions without the need for all out class warfare.”

    Quite so, but again, the appeal was to compassion. In America what happened was that communism was beaten at its own game; it was undercut, co-opted & “out-compassioned” by organized labor (whose advent & development Marx failed to foresee).

  15. honeybee Said:

    you’ll have to do you own research.

    Research is my forte I prefer only primary sources up close and personal but if impossible I will consider next best option.

  16. honeybee Said:

    After cleaning house, mopping floors and wash ????????

    I understand A womens work is never done nor mine. I only have the cleaning woman come every two weeks to do the stuff I hate like dusting. I gave up on dust here because an hour after I dust it’s dusty again so I let it accumulate.

    My floors and windows do shine though and I’m proud of them. I have a room full of books wall to wall and they need dusting. Too daunting for me. I love to wash and dry… I can sit for hours watching the drums spin. Hypnotic like Zen. I hate folding so I just stuff en in the closet.

  23. honeybee Said:

    Eat your heart out “Shebrew”:

    No disrespect meant whatsoever, hb, but this poor blonde with a funny hat is nowhere NEAR shebrew’s category, if you catch my drift…

  27. yamit82 Said:

    N America eons before the Vikings. Some believe during the Reign of Solomon

    So Las Vegas, NV is the oldest city in the USA?????????????

  33. yamit82 Said:

    Milton? The poem states by the end the eventuating feelings:
    The positive emotions are present because passions-strong and turbulent intrnal forces or afflictions- are spent, that means that having been well imitated they are brought to a just measure with a kind of delight

    Who ??? can comprehend Milton?????

  34. honeybee Said:

    ” Leif Ericson Day”

    Isn’t he the the guy who posts on Israpundit that wants to Nuke everyone. You’d make a good couple. I might get jealous then and Nuke him.

  35. dweller Said:

    And I’d said THAT because SHE’D said, “Don’t hate me.”

    It never occurred to you that I care for her a lot and not because of support. Even if she were not supportive I don’t think it would effect how I feel. It’s like an emotional thing and it’s due mostly because I am a man and a human being. Some show their emotions openly and some hide them but you seem to be one who has suppressed yours. Very unnatural condition dweller and that makes you less than a man and certainly less than a human being. You make a fetish out of control and order. Sick sick sick!!! Get help you are really losing it. In all fairness I must say I am enjoying watching your decent into total madness.

  36. yamit82 Said:

    I don’t want to upset HB.

    yamit82 Said:

    HB is a suitable substitute when she isn’t jealous.

    Your know that it is almost ” Leif Ericson Day” and the my blood courses through out my core in a cold icy torrent.

  41. @ yamit82:

    “There is one person on this planet that I would never never ever think of hurting intentionally besides my immediate family and that’s HB.”

    Who said you would?

    — This is another straw man. (You seem to have a thing for straw men, don’t you?)

    What I’d said was that you wouldn’t HATE her, because you couldn’t afford to risk her support (to which you’ve clearly become accustomed).

    And I’d said THAT because SHE’D said, “Don’t hate me.”

    “You Barbs are another cup of merde!”

    If you’re suggesting that you’ve had your quota, then perhaps you should quit using your cup for a commode.