Sunday, August 9, 2020

Four Stages of Marxist Takeover

From The American Spectator:

Joe Biden isn’t Vladimir Lenin. Biden is Alexander Kerensky, the Russian politician who served as the vessel for the revolutionaries to overthrow the old guard in 1917 and then, once he had proven himself useful toward that end, was shuffled aside so the real power could assume control. And as in Kerensky’s case, what comes after will bring the end of all that we know. 
 
They’re not even trying to hide this anymore. Black Lives Matter co-founder Patrice Cullors repeatedly says “We are trained Marxists.” Antifa’s imagery, dogma, public statements — all straight from the Marxist playbook. The bleatings of the Democrat Socialist crowd, including AOC, Ilhan Omar, Ayanna Pressley and the rest — unabashedly Marxist. What do you think every one of these “community organizing” outfits catching oversized checks from the Soroses of the world are teaching to their new recruits? Where do you think critical race theory, repressive tolerance, and intersectionalism, the tools of the cultural revolutionaries setting fire to all our traditions and institutions, came from? They came from the Frankfurt School, all of whom were Marxists.
 
This playbook was written long ago. If you think that Bernie Sanders or Kshama Sawant or Alicia Garza are smart enough to dream up a plan for taking down the greatest society the world has ever known, you are out of touch with reality. The only way they could have been as effective as they have so far is to follow somebody else’s plan. Which they are doing. (Read more.)



People who called Trump “unfit” for office in 2016 include Joe Biden; 2008 and 2012 Republican presidential nominees John McCain and Mitt Romney, Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham, USA Today’s editorial board in its first presidential endorsement ever, later presidential candidate Michael Bloomberg, Sen. Rand Paul; RedState editor and “lifelong Republican” Leon Wolf, author of the debunked “Fire and Fury” novel Michael Wolff, TV personality Omarosa, 2020 presidential candidate Rep. John Delaney, Republican former Sen. Gordon Humphrey, and the United Kingdom’s now-Prime Minister Boris Johnson.

It didn’t end when Trump took office, of course. This week, Trump’s niece Mary Trump has a new tell-all book just like all the others, also insisting he’s “unfit.” In the intervening time, we’ve heard the same buzzword from the FBI director Trump fired, Jim Comey; the national security advisor Trump fired, John Bolton; writer Andrew Sullivan; New Hampshire Sen. Maggie Hassan; and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi.

Clearly, Democrats have been trying to cement in voters’ foreheads the idea that Trump’s personality is unfit for office. Perhaps that’s because Democrats’ policies never have been as unfit for the office as they are now.

Just this week, in his first semi-public appearance in months, presidential Potemkin village candidate Joe Biden promised to be the farthest-left president in American history. (Read more.)
The pact we made to live here has broken. What am I paying for? A defunded police force? More murder? More violence? Do the property taxes I’ve faithfully paid for years not protect the CVS I can see from my bedroom—a building which recently had every window smashed and was looted because of “justice”? When the metro was lousy, we turned to Uber. When the schools were failing, parents turned to charter schools. When one area turned bleak another neighborhood popped up. But when chaos and destruction permeate, and an exhausted people asking for relief are told their indifference–not violent looters—is the true culprit, then there is no alternative but to leave.

The protesters may think this is their moment, but there is a deep, dark secret that will crush every disaffected group now demanding “justice” or “awareness” is this: city people really don’t care. We have an amazing, almost unparalleled ability, to be indifferent.

Real city people have no bandwidth to lay down dead in the street or start fires as part of a “protest.” Look at our day: after our miserable commute to work, we have long days in the office, followed by happy hour, client dinners, drinks, maybe a fundraiser or two or having cigars at Shelly’s—and that doesn’t include going to the gym, picking up dry cleaning, seeing our actual friends or spouse, and that miserable commute back home. Quite honestly, we don’t have time for your cause—of which there are so many, so very many causes, so much so that even a city as liberal DC just does not care.

Gay? Black? Trans? No offense, but, so what? We are city people: we have seen it all—literally, all—our entire lives. You are our neighbors, our friends, the president of our HOAs, our coworkers. The great beauty of the city is that we come from all walks of life and we get along. We accomplish this by leaving each other alone.

That’s why, when DC’s Mayor Bowser spray painted “Black Lives Matter” in front of my tea spot, I knew I was done. Not because of the issue itself or the cause (remember I don’t really care) but because through her actions, Bowser effectively mandated empathy. This was government-sanctioned compassion. The mayor used taxpayer dollars—the one’s I’ve forked over for years—to force her beliefs on me. And, just like that, the pact was broken. (Read more.)


How Olivia de Havilland and Ronald Reagan fought Communism in Hollywood. From John Fund at The National Review:

In executive meetings of the Citizens’ Committee, de Havilland also found that the group wasn’t as independent as it publicly professed. It always sided with the Soviet Union even though the rank-and-file members were not Communist. “I thought, ‘If we reserve the right to criticize the American policies, why don’t we reserve the right to criticize Russia?’” she told Meroney. “I realized a nucleus of people was controlling the organization without a majority of the members of the board being aware of it. And I knew they had to be Communists.” 
 
De Havilland also told Meroney that she felt betrayed that the Communists had used her, other celebrities, and New Deal liberalism as covers for their subversive work. She hadn’t been told that the Kremlin had declared in 1945 that Communism and capitalism could not coexist in the world and that war with the U.S. was inevitable. 
 
Convinced she had a chance to recapture the Hollywood chapter from the Communists, de Havilland took the lead in gathering a small group of writers, actors, and producers at her home for meetings. Their goal was to fashion an anti-Communist declaration by the committee that would appear in newspapers and make the group’s independence clear. (Read more.) 


On Ronald Reagan's battle with Socialism. From The National Review:

The perception of Reagan as a failure in the movies began long before he first ran for public office. Its genesis was in the days of the so-called blacklist era ’40s and ’50s. Those outspoken against communism were disparaged in whispering campaigns. In a town that runs on rumor and hearsay, such innuendo is death. Screenwriters Morrie Ryskind, James McGuinness, and Martin Berkeley have had their critical and historical reputations reduced to footnotes. With few exceptions, the Hollywood anti-communists have been written out of history. John Wayne is one who continues to ride high despite decades of critical assault. 
 
On the other hand, Communist filmmakers such as Ring Lardner Jr., Dalton Trumbo, and Paul Jarrico continue to benefit from Hollywood’s own special style of compound interest. Today their pictures are regarded as masterworks of courageous, path-breaking mavericks. Politics helped their career reputations immeasurably; it poisoned Reagan’s. It isn’t too farfetched to imagine how Reagan’s film career would be appreciated for nuance and genius had he defended the Communists, remained a left-wing liberal, and written a weepy memoir about the “dark days” of the blacklist. Without that kind of track record to buoy his standing, Reagan is relegated to status as a “bureaucrat of McCarthyism, and a short-sided searcher after redness” in David Thompson’s influential Biographical Dictionary of Film
 
In the fall of 1946, Reagan was learning how deceptive the Communist party could be. His real life was starting to look like pages from James Ellroy’s L.A. Confidential. When he stepped before the cameras on Night Unto Night, Reagan was far from the “happy warrior” known to most Americans. Off-stage, as an officer of the S.A.G., Reagan was taking stands, subsuming himself in the bloody film industry labor strikes that made Los Angeles a cauldron. (Night Unto Night was the only Warner Bros. picture in production during that dangerous time.) Reagan was becoming convinced that the Communist Party had a hand in the upheaval, and that honest strikers were being manipulated. Some people he considered allies were in fact enemies; backstabbing and betrayal seemed to be lurking around every corner. “I found myself misrepresented, cursed, vilified, denounced, and libeled,” Reagan wrote years later. (Read more.) 
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