[Home]  [Headlines]  [Latest Articles]  [Latest Comments]  [Post]  [Mail]  [Sign-in]  [Setup]  [Help]  [Register] 

Why will Kamala Harris resign from her occupancy of the Office of Vice President of the USA? Scroll down for records/details

Secret Negotiations! Jill Biden’s Demands for $2B Library, Legal Immunity, and $100M Book Deal to Protect Biden Family Before Joe’s Exit

AI is exhausting the power grid. Tech firms are seeking a miracle solution.

Rare Van Halen Leicestershire, Donnington Park August 18, 1984 Valerie Bertinelli Cameo

If you need a Good Opening for black, use this.

"Arrogant Hunter Biden has never been held accountable — until now"

How Republicans in Key Senate Races Are Flip-Flopping on Abortion

Idaho bar sparks fury for declaring June 'Heterosexual Awesomeness Month' and giving free beers and 15% discounts to straight men

Son of Buc-ee’s co-owner indicted for filming guests in the shower and having sex. He says the law makes it OK.

South Africa warns US could be liable for ICC prosecution for supporting Israel

Today I turned 50!

San Diego Police officer resigns after getting locked in the backseat with female detainee

Gazan Refugee Warns the World about Hamas

Iranian stabbed for sharing his faith, miraculously made it across the border without a passport!

Protest and Clashes outside Trump's Bronx Rally in Crotona Park

Netanyahu Issues Warning To US Leaders Over ICC Arrest Warrants: 'You're Next'

Will it ever end?

Did Pope Francis Just Call Jesus a Liar?

Climate: The Movie (The Cold Truth) Updated 4K version

There can never be peace on Earth for as long as Islamic Sharia exists

The Victims of Benny Hinn: 30 Years of Spiritual Deception.

Trump Is Planning to Send Kill Teams to Mexico to Take Out Cartel Leaders

The Great Falling Away in the Church is Here | Tim Dilena

How Ridiculous? Blade-Less Swiss Army Knife Debuts As Weapon Laws Tighten

Jewish students beaten with sticks at University of Amsterdam

Terrorists shut down Park Avenue.

Police begin arresting democrats outside Met Gala.

The minute the total solar eclipse appeared over US

Three Types Of People To Mark And Avoid In The Church Today

Are The 4 Horsemen Of The Apocalypse About To Appear?

France sends combat troops to Ukraine battlefront

Facts you may not have heard about Muslims in England.

George Washington University raises the Hamas flag. American Flag has been removed.

Alabama students chant Take A Shower to the Hamas terrorists on campus.

In Day of the Lord, 24 Church Elders with Crowns Join Jesus in His Throne

In Day of the Lord, 24 Church Elders with Crowns Join Jesus in His Throne

Deadly Saltwater and Deadly Fresh Water to Increase

Deadly Cancers to soon Become Thing of the Past?

Plague of deadly New Diseases Continues

[FULL VIDEO] Police release bodycam footage of Monroe County District Attorney Sandra Doorley traffi

Police clash with pro-Palestine protesters on Ohio State University campus

Joe Rogan Experience #2138 - Tucker Carlson

Police Dispersing Student Protesters at USC - Breaking News Coverage (College Protests)

What Passover Means For The New Testament Believer

Are We Closer Than Ever To The Next Pandemic?

War in Ukraine Turns on Russia

what happened during total solar eclipse

Israel Attacks Iran, Report Says - LIVE Breaking News Coverage

Earth is Scorched with Heat

Antiwar Activists Chant ‘Death to America’ at Event Featuring Chicago Alderman


Status: Not Logged In; Sign In

Opinions/Editorials
See other Opinions/Editorials Articles

Title: We've Seen the Likes of the Teabaggers Before
Source: counterpunch.org
URL Source: http://www.counterpunch.org/blum05132010.html
Published: May 13, 2010
Author: WILLIAM BLUM
Post Date: 2010-05-13 12:35:55 by Brian S
Keywords: None
Views: 1686
Comments: 15

Terminally Stupid People Have Always Been With Us

If you shake your head and roll your eyes at the nonsense coming out of the Teabagger followers of Sarah “Africa is a country” Palin and other intellectual giants like Glenn Beck and Rush Limbaugh ... If you have thoughts of moving abroad after the latest silly lies and fantasies like “Obama the Marxist” and “Obama the antichrist” ...  If you share Noam Chomsky’s feeling: "I have never seen anything like this in my lifetime” ... keep in mind that the right wing has long been at least as stupid and as mean-spirited.  Consider some of the behavior of the same types for half a century during the Cold War with its beloved -- albeit imaginary -- "International Communist Conspiracy”.

 * 1948: The Pittsburgh Press published the names, addresses, and places of employment of about 1,000 citizens who had signed presidential-nominating petitions for former Vice President Henry Wallace, running under the Progressive Party.  This, and a number of other lists of “communists”, published in the mainstream media, resulted in people losing their jobs, being expelled from unions, having their children abused, being denied state welfare benefits, and suffering various other punishments.

 * Around 1950: The House Committee on Un-American Activities published a pamphlet, “100 Things You Should Know About Communism in the U.S.A.”  This included information about what a communist takeover of the United States would mean:

Q: What would happen to my insurance?

A: It would go to the Communists.

Q: Would communism give me something better than I have now?

A: Not unless you are in a penitentiary serving a life sentence at hard labor.

 * 1950s: Mrs. Ada White, member of the Indiana State Textbook Commission, believed that Robin Hood was a Communist and urged that books that told the Robin Hood story be banned from Indiana schools.

 * As evidence that anti-communist mania was not limited to the lunatic fringe or conservative newspaper publishers, here is Clark Kerr, president of the University of California at Berkeley in a 1959 speech: “Perhaps 2 or even 20 million people have been killed in China by the new [communist] regime.”  One person wrote to Kerr: “I am wondering how you would judge a person who estimates the age of a passerby on the street as being 'perhaps 2 or even 20 years old.'  Or what would you think of a physician who tells you to take 'perhaps 2 or even twenty teaspoonsful of a remedy'?”

 * Throughout the cold war, traffic in phoney Lenin quotes was brisk, each one passed around from one publication or speaker to another for years.  Here's U.S. News and World Report in 1958 demonstrating communist duplicity by quoting Lenin: “Promises are like pie crusts, made to be broken.”  Secretary of State John Foster Dulles used it in a speech shortly afterward, one of many to do so during the cold war.  Lenin actually did use a very similar line, but he explicitly stated that he was quoting an English proverb (it comes from Jonathan Swift) and his purpose was to show the unreliability of the bourgeoisie, not of communists.

 “First we will take Eastern Europe, then the masses of Asia, then we will encircle the United States, which will be the last bastion of capitalism.  We will not have to attack.  It will fall like an overripe fruit into our hands.”  This Lenin “quotation” had the usual wide circulation, even winding up in the Congressional Record in 1962.  This was not simply a careless attribution; this was an out-and-out fabrication; an extensive search, including by the Library of Congress and the United States Information Agency failed to find its origin.

 * A favorite theme of the anti-communists was that a principal force behind drug trafficking was a communist plot to demoralize the United States.  Here's a small sample:

Don Keller, District Attorney for San Diego County, California in 1953: “We know that more heroin is being produced south of the border than ever before and we are beginning to hear stories of financial backing by big shot Communists operating out of Mexico City.”

 Henry Giordano, Commissioner of the Federal Bureau of Narcotics, 1964, interviewed in the American Legion Magazine:   Interviewer: “I've been told that the communists are trying to flood our country with narcotics to weaken our moral and physical stamina.  Is that true?”

Giordano: “As far as the drugs are concerned, it's true.  There's a terrific flow of drugs coming out of Yunnan Province of China. ... There's no question that in that particular area this is the aim of the Red Chinese.  It should be apparent that if you could addict a population you would degrade a nation's moral fiber.”

 Fulton Lewis, Jr., prominent conservative radio broadcaster and newspaper columnist, 1965: “Narcotics of Cuban origin -- marijuana, cocaine, opium, and heroin -- are now peddled in big cities and tiny hamlets throughout this country.  Several Cubans arrested by the Los Angeles police have boasted they are communists.”

 We were also told that along with drugs another tool of the commies to undermine America's spirit was fluoridation of the water.

 * Mickey Spillane was one of the most successful writers of the 1950s, selling millions of his anticommunist thriller mysteries.  Here is his hero, Mike Hammer, in “One Lonely Night”, boasting of his delight in the grisly murders he commits, all in the name of destroying a communist plot to steal atomic secrets.  After a night of carnage, the triumphant Hammer gloats, “I shot them in cold blood and enjoyed every minute of it.  I pumped slugs into the nastiest bunch of bastards you ever saw. ... They were Commies. ... Pretty soon what's left of Russia and the slime that breeds there won't be worth mentioning and I'm glad because I had a part in the killing.  God, but it was fun!”   

 * 1952: A campaign against the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization because it was tainted with “atheism and communism”, and was “subversive” because it preached internationalism.  Any attempt to introduce an international point of view in the schools was seen as undermining patriotism and loyalty to the United States.  A bill in the US Senate, clearly aimed at UNESCO, called for a ban on the funding of “any international agency that directly or indirectly promoted one-world government or world citizenship.”  There was also opposition to UNESCO's association with the UN Declaration of Human Rights on the grounds that it was trying to replace the American Bill of Rights with a less liberty-giving covenant of human rights.

 * 1955: A US Army 6-page pamphlet, “How to Spot a Communist”, informed us that a communist could be spotted by his predisposition to discuss civil rights, racial and religious discrimination, the immigration laws, anti-subversive legislation, curbs on unions, and peace.  Good Americans were advised to keep their ears stretched for such give-away terms as "chauvinism", "book-burning", "colonialism", "demagogy", "witch hunt", "reactionary", "progressive", and "exploitation".  Another “distinguishing mark” of “Communist language” was a “preference for long sentences.”  After some ridicule, the Army rescinded the pamphlet.

 * 1958: The noted sportscaster Bill Stern (one of the heroes of my youth) observed on the radio that the lack of interest in "big time" football at New York University, City College of New York, Chicago, and Harvard "is due to the widespread acceptance of Communism at the universities."

 * 1960: US General Thomas Power speaking about nuclear war or a first strike by the US: "The whole idea is to kill the bastards!  At the end of the war, if there are two Americans and one Russian, we win!"  The response from one of those present was: "Well, you'd better make sure that they're a man and a woman."

 * 1966: The Boys Club of America is of course wholesome and patriotic.  Imagine their horror when they were confused with the Dubois Clubs.  (W.E.B. Du Bois had been a very prominent civil rights activist.)  When the Justice Department required the DuBois Clubs to register as a Communist front group, good loyal Americans knew what to do.  They called up the Boys Club to announce that they would no longer contribute any money, or to threaten violence against them; and sure enough an explosion damaged the national headquarters of the youth group in San Francisco.  Then former Vice President Richard Nixon, who was national board chairman of the Boys Club, declared: “This is an almost classic example of Communist deception and duplicity.  The 'DuBois Clubs' are not unaware of the confusion they are causing among our supporters and among many other good citizens.” 

 * 1966: “Rhythm, Riots and Revolution: An Analysis of the Communist Use of Music, The Communist Master Music Plan”, by David A. Noebel, published by Christian Crusade Publications, (expanded version of 1965 pamphlet: “Communism, Hypnotism and the Beatles”).  Some chapters: Communist Use of Mind Warfare ... Nature of Red Record Companies ... Destructive Nature of Beatle Music ... Communist Subversion of Folk Music ... Folk Music and the Negro Revolution ... Folk Music and the College Revolution

 * 1968: William Calley, US Army Lieutenant, charged with overseeing the massacre of more than 100 Vietnamese civilians in My Lai in 1968, said some years later: "In all my years in the Army I was never taught that communists were human beings.  We were there to kill ideology carried by -- I don't know -- pawns, blobs, pieces of flesh.  I was there to destroy communism.  We never conceived of old people, men, women, children, babies."

 * 1977: Scientists theorized that the earth's protective ozone layer was being damaged by synthetic chemicals called chlorofluorocarbons.  The manufacturers and users of CFCs were not happy.  They made life difficult for the lead scientist.  The president of one aerosol manufacturing firm suggested that criticism of CFCs was “orchestrated by the Ministry of Disinformation of the KGB.”

 * 1978: Life inside a California youth camp of the ultra anti-communist John Birch Society: Five hours each day of lectures on communism, Americanism and “The Conspiracy”; campers learned that the Soviet government had created a famine and spread a virus to kill a large number of citizens and make the rest of them more manageable; the famine led starving adults to eat their children; communist guerrillas in Southeast Asia jammed chopsticks into children's ears, piercing their eardrums; American movies are all under the control of the Communists; the theme is always that capitalism is no better than communism; you can't find a dictionary now that isn't under communist influence; the communists are also taking over the Bibles.

 * The Reagan administration declared that the Russians were spraying toxic chemicals over Laos, Cambodia and Afghanistan -- the so-called "yellow rain" -- and had caused more than ten thousand deaths by 1982 alone, (including, in Afghanistan, 3,042 deaths attributed to 47 separate incidents between the summer of 1979 and the summer of 1981, so precise was the information).  Secretary of State Alexander Haig was a prime dispenser of such stories, and President Reagan himself denounced the Soviet Union thusly more than 15 times in documents and speeches.  The "yellow rain", it turned out, was pollen-laden feces dropped by  huge swarms of honeybees flying far overhead.

 * 1982: In commenting about sexual harassment in the Army, General John Crosby stated that the Army doesn't care about soldiers' social lives -- “The basic purpose of the United States Army is to kill Russians,” he said.

 * 1983: The US invasion of Grenada, the home of the Cuban ambassador is damaged and looted by American soldiers; on one wall is written "AA", symbol of the 82nd Airborne Division; beside it the message: "Eat shit, commie faggot." ... "I want to fuck communism out of this little island," says a marine, "and fuck it right back to Moscow.”

 * 1984: During a sound check just before his weekly broadcast, President Reagan spoke these words into the microphone: “My fellow Americans, I am pleased to tell you I have signed legislation to outlaw Russia, forever.  We begin bombing in five minutes.”  His words were picked up by at least two radio networks.

 * 1985: October 29 BBC interview with Ronald Reagan: asked about the differences he saw between the US and Russia, the president replied: “I'm no linguist, but I've been told that in the Russian language there isn't even a word for freedom.”  (The word is “svoboda”.)

 * 1986: Soviet artists and cultural officials criticized Rambo-like American films as an expression of “anti-Russian phobia even more pathological than in the days of McCarthyism”.  Russian film-maker Stanislav Rostofsky claimed that on one visit to an American school “a young girl had trembled with fury when she heard I was from the Soviet Union, and said she hated Russians.”

 * 1986: Roy Cohn, who achieved considerable fame and notoriety in the 1950s as an assistant to the communist-witch-hunting Senator Joseph McCarthy, died, reportedly of AIDS.  Cohn, though homosexual, had denied that he was and had denounced such rumors as communist smears.

 * 1986: After American journalist Nicholas Daniloff was arrested in Moscow for “spying” and held in custody for two weeks, New York Mayor Edward Koch sent a group of 10 visiting Soviet students storming out of City Hall in fury.  “The Soviet government is the pits,” said Koch, visibly shocking the students, ranging in age from 10 to 18 years.  One 14-year-old student was so outraged he declared: “I don't want to stay in this house.  I want to go to the bus and go far away from this place.  The mayor is very rude.  We never had a worse welcome anywhere.”  As matters turned out, it appeared that Daniloff had not been completely pure when it came to his news gathering.

 * 1989: After the infamous Chinese crackdown on dissenters in Tiananmen Square in June, the US news media was replete with reports that the governments of Nicaragua, Vietnam and Cuba had expressed their support of the Chinese leadership.  Said the Wall Street Journal: “Nicaragua, with Cuba and Vietnam, constituted  the only countries in the world to approve the Chinese Communists' slaughter of the students in Tiananmen Square.”  But it was all someone's fabrication; no such support had been expressed by any of the three governments.  At that time, as now, there were few, if any, organizations other than the CIA which could manipulate major Western media in such a manner.

NOTE: It should be remembered that the worst consequences of anti-communism were not those discussed above.  The worst consequences, the ultra-criminal consequences, were the abominable death, destruction, and violation of human rights that we know under various names: Vietnam, Chile, Korea, Guatemala, Cambodia, Indonesia, Brazil, Greece, Afghanistan, El Salvador, and many others.

Post Comment   Private Reply   Ignore Thread  


TopPage UpFull ThreadPage DownBottom/Latest

#1. To: all (#0)

We've Seen the Likes of the Teabaggers Before

What's up with the teabaggers like this brian moron??

Trolling for more teabag action it seems......maybe he'll pick up one a those free community newspaper rags and splurge on his own choice from the massage section huh?...leave LF out of the picture.....

Death to everybody who does not get outta my way. And the latest Eisteinian revelation from LF's resident Barack poodleboy...AKA Admiral Dwarf who has "shot at living things"...."Yeah, and Oswald was a right winger, too. He was... war posted on 2010-03-22 20:12:36

e_type_jag  posted on  2010-05-13   22:31:58 ET  Reply   Trace   Private Reply  


#2. To: e_type_jag (#1)

Otherwise, pretty good article...huh?

Never swear "allegiance" to anything other than the 'right to change your mind'!

Brian S  posted on  2010-05-13   23:01:42 ET  Reply   Trace   Private Reply  


#3. To: Brian S (#2)

You don't think Officer Donut can actually read all that, do you?

Skip Intro  posted on  2010-05-13   23:04:15 ET  Reply   Trace   Private Reply  


#4. To: Brian S (#2)

#2. To: e_type_jag (#1)

Otherwise, pretty good article...huh?

Dunno....really honest to God I didn't and will not read the bulk.....I'm not in the habit of reading your incessant "rah rah" for obama junk Brian/GO65....after the first chapter the story has been told.

Just the headlines are enough.....any content below MUST be libtard shilling by definition:):)

Chuckles.......

Death to everybody who does not get outta my way. And yet one more stupefying comment from Dwarf's muzzle.... "The FRB is not unconstitutional. It was created by the Congress as it's chosen means to regulate the value of money."

e_type_jag  posted on  2010-05-13   23:09:47 ET  Reply   Trace   Private Reply  


#5. To: Skip Intro (#3)

No.

Fred Mertz  posted on  2010-05-13   23:09:58 ET  Reply   Trace   Private Reply  


#6. To: FredJerx, Abduluh Boner (#5)

Correct.....No:)

Death to everybody who does not get outta my way. And yet one more stupefying comment from Dwarf's muzzle.... "The FRB is not unconstitutional. It was created by the Congress as it's chosen means to regulate the value of money."

e_type_jag  posted on  2010-05-13   23:11:59 ET  Reply   Trace   Private Reply  


#7. To: e_type_jag (#4)

Brian/GO65

Are you having delusions that I'm also GO65?

lol

Ask the forum host, he'll know.

Never swear "allegiance" to anything other than the 'right to change your mind'!

Brian S  posted on  2010-05-13   23:14:33 ET  Reply   Trace   Private Reply  


#8. To: Brian S (#7)

Are you having delusions that I'm also GO65?

Are questioning Detective Donut's deductive skills?

Skip Intro  posted on  2010-05-13   23:19:32 ET  Reply   Trace   Private Reply  


#9. To: Brian S, GO65 (#7)

Are you having delusions that I'm also GO65?

lol

Ask the forum host, he'll know.

Let's see......posting history copacetic with GO65's droning / fawning / worshipful / kneebound adulation for all things obama?

Check.

Looks like a lock on that one.

Was someone supposed to see a difference?

Snort......chuckles.....

Death to everybody who does not get outta my way. And yet one more stupefying comment from Dwarf's muzzle.... "The FRB is not unconstitutional. It was created by the Congress as it's chosen means to regulate the value of money."

e_type_jag  posted on  2010-05-13   23:31:56 ET  Reply   Trace   Private Reply  


#10. To: Skip Intro (#8)

Are questioning Detective Donut's deductive skills?

Skip Intro posted on 2010-05-13 23:19:32 ET Reply Trace Private Reply

Are you stroking dwarfs' gonads with your free hand?

Death to everybody who does not get outta my way. And yet one more stupefying comment from Dwarf's muzzle.... "The FRB is not unconstitutional. It was created by the Congress as it's chosen means to regulate the value of money."

e_type_jag  posted on  2010-05-13   23:34:27 ET  Reply   Trace   Private Reply  


#11. To: e_type_jag (#9)

Oh...ok. Oaf!

Never swear "allegiance" to anything other than the 'right to change your mind'!

Brian S  posted on  2010-05-14   0:00:12 ET  Reply   Trace   Private Reply  


#12. To: Brian S (#11)

Was someone supposed to see a difference?

Question left unanswered I see.

Carry on Bot.....carry on.

Death to everybody who does not get outta my way. And yet one more stupefying comment from Dwarf's muzzle.... "The FRB is not unconstitutional. It was created by the Congress as it's chosen means to regulate the value of money."

e_type_jag  posted on  2010-05-14   0:16:26 ET  Reply   Trace   Private Reply  


#13. To: e_type_jag, GO65 (#12)

Yeah OK. I really am GO65. LOL! Oaf...

Never swear "allegiance" to anything other than the 'right to change your mind'!

Brian S  posted on  2010-05-14   0:32:09 ET  Reply   Trace   Private Reply  


#14. To: Brian S (#13)

Yeah OK. I really am GO65.

Dolt.....I think you miss the concept of "rhetorical".

Nobody really needs you to confirm the obvious.

BWWAAAHHHAAAHHHAAAA.....what are you?

12....13....?

(That was yet another "rhetorical" btw:)..)

Death to everybody who does not get outta my way. And yet one more stupefying comment from Dwarf's muzzle.... "The FRB is not unconstitutional. It was created by the Congress as it's chosen means to regulate the value of money."

e_type_jag  posted on  2010-05-14   0:40:19 ET  Reply   Trace   Private Reply  


#15. To: Brian S (#0)

Sarah “Africa is a country” Palin

Remember when she said there were 57 States?

Oh yeah....

What is it with you Obamatards and your fascination with teabagging anyway? You hoping to get some Larry Sinclair type action?

no gnu taxes  posted on  2010-05-14   8:57:02 ET  Reply   Trace   Private Reply  


TopPage UpFull ThreadPage DownBottom/Latest

[Home]  [Headlines]  [Latest Articles]  [Latest Comments]  [Post]  [Mail]  [Sign-in]  [Setup]  [Help]  [Register] 

Please report web page problems, questions and comments to webmaster@libertysflame.com