Most understand that socialism conquered its first country, Russia, in 1917 under the leadership of Vladimir Lenin and has always been a revolutionary doctrine never content to allow any people to choose another way. Eighteen months later it was organized to do the same in America. Yes, colluding with Russia has been a part of our history for over 100 years but it has been the Socialists who colluded. We see three times in the 20th Century when its imprint was most evident: after World War I, after World War II and during theVietnam War. Space permits only a brief summation of each.
“It was in 1919 that a majority of the membership of the Socialist Party of the United States voted to join the Comintern, established by the Bolsheviks.” It was August 31, that splinter socialist groups formed the Communist Labor Party of America under the leadership of John Reed and Benjamin Gitlow. They quickly attached themselves to labor unions especially the International Workers of the World (IWW) famous for its use of sabotage and violence in protesting World War I.
Allegiance to The 21 Conditions of the Russian Comintern was required for membership so those joining were loyal to the Bolshevik Revolution and its ideology above our own government. One of these 21 conditions read: “Every party wishing to belong to the Communist International must systematically and persistently develop a Communist agitation within the trade unions.” Iron discipline and periodic cleansing rid them of the less revolutionary.
Any enemy of the Soviet Republic was their enemy. They understood that propaganda was their main weapon and it was to be used in spreading the communist ideology and eventually overthrowing the U.S. government (Steve Byas, “Communist Part USA Is 100 Year Old This Year,” New American, May 20, 2019).
When Lenin encouraged world revolution in 1919, loyal Communists went to work everywhere. In America they called for labor union strikes across the nation “urging the workers to rise up against the government of the United States.” Some 2,600 strikes resulted with over 6,000 arrested. These were accompanied by a wave of bombings, some 36 bombs mailed to prominent politicians in April 1919 alone ("Send Death Bombs to 36 U.S. Leaders" Chicago Tribune, May 1, 1919). In June another 8 bombs, of 25 pounds of dynamite each, was sent to mostly prominent government officials (Wreck Judge Nott's Home, The New York Times, June 3, 1919). In 1920 “a wagonload of explosives was detonated on Wall Street, killing 38 people and injuring 200 others” (Byas). Attorney General Mitchell Palmer’s own home was bombed twice.
Most history textbooks undermine these events and villainize Palmer omitting that the raids were conducted under the authority of numerous states as well as the federal government. The Constitution defines treason as giving aid and comfort to the enemy which does allow the death sentence. In kindness many found guilty were offered one-way transportation to Russia on the Buford, the ship nicknamed the “Soviet Ark.” Many chose to go there. The only death sentences given for the sabotage and violence of the Red Scare was to radicals Nicola Sacco and Bartolomeo Vanzetti and that for the murders of Frederick Parmenter and Alessandro Berardelli.—not for their political affiliation.
The Great Depression brought the nation to its knees and the Socialist’s, modeling the Russian led USSR, openly planned conquest. William Z. Foster, head of the Communist Party USA, in his book “Toward Soviet America” wrote of what “the American Soviet government” would look like. It would nationalize education, “The studies will be revolutionized, being cleansed of religious, patriotic, and other features of bourgeois ideology. The students will be taught on the basis of Marxist dialectical materialism, internationalism.” All religious schools and churches would be abolished. God would be banished and all property collectivized (Byas). So much of what he advocated then has been implemented under socialism and liberalism.
With a philosophy mirroring Socialist Russia, America was awash with spies for the Kremlin. Benjamin Gitlow, who defected from the Communist Labor Party of America he co-founded, confided, “The Communist Party of the United States is proud of the spies it has supplied to the Soviet government out of its own ranks” (Byas). Remember it was socialists Ethel and Julius Rosenberg, who passed atomic bomb secrets to the Soviet Union for which they were executed in 1953. Communist State Department, wonder boy, Alger Hiss, also passed atomic secrets to Russia, played a major role in communist victories under Franklin Roosevelt at the Yalta Conference, and became acting secretary-general of the UN in 1945, among other things.
The third major attempt to communize, thus overthrow our system of government, was during the Vietnam War. I have in my possession hundreds of Senate and House Hearings of American socialists colluding with Russia. So prevalent was the problem that U.S. News and World Report published “Communism and the New Left,” in 1970 with chapters on how Socialists exploited war, blacks, disorder, youth, and labor. A favorite chapter is “Spying for Russia.” We lost the Vietnam War primarily because of the Socialist enemy within America. Consequently, South Vietnam and Cambodia were turned over to the Communists.
Also in my possession is at least a hundred books about U.S. Socialists colluding with Russia. It is a very old story.
Dr. Harold Pease is a syndicated columnist and an expert on the United States Constitution. He has dedicated his career to studying the writings of the Founding Fathers and applying that knowledge to current events. He taught history and political science from this perspective for over 30 years at Taft College. Newspapers have permission to publish this column. To read more of his weekly articles, please visit www.LibertyUnderFire.org.
