Ronald Radosh's Blog, page 17

How David Horowitz Revealed the Truth about Ralph Miliband’s Legacy: What it Should Teach the British Left

You may not know the name Ralph Miliband, but by now, the late Marxist professor is a household name in the UK. He was the father of the Labor Party’s leader and possible future PM, Ed Miliband. When the conservative Daily Mail ran a story about the father’s influence on his son, the controversy began.

It started with an Oct.1 story by Geoffrey Levy, in which the journalist wrote that young Ed wants nothing less than to fulfill his father’s dreams, and return England from the legacy left by Margaret  Thatcher to a new 21st Century socialism. “Ed is now determined to bring about that vision,” Levy writes. “How proud Ralph would have been to hear him responding the other day to a man in the street who asked when he was ‘going to bring back socialism’ with the words: ‘That’s what we are doing, sir.’ “

Ed Miliband’s father, the story continues, was a full-throated Marxist, committed to nationalization and harsh socialist policies. Levy paints the senior Miliband as a man who hated the country he adopted as his own when he sought refuge from Nazi Germany, a man who was critical of the Soviet Union but still believed it was socialist, and who thought Gorbachev had successfully “democratized” Soviet society. Nothing had changed in his belief system, he wrote, since the time when as a young man, he made the pilgrimage to Karl Marx’s grave in 1940, when he wrote that “I remember standing in front of the grave, fist clenched, and swearing my own private oath that I would be faithful to the workers’ cause’”. Now Miliband is buried in a grave 12 short yards from Marx’s grave, and his tombstone bares the inscription “Writer Teacher Socialist.” He had dedicated his life, he wrote near the end of his life, to realizing the socialist dream, and preparing the ground for “such an alternative.” With Ed as Prime Minister, Levy concludes, “perhaps that ground is indeed now being prepared.”

That one article began the fierce war of words. Ed Miliband told the press that he found the story “appalling,” and “responded by accusing the paper of peddling “a lie” and trying to ‘besmirch and undermine’ his dead father for political ends.” He wrote: “Fierce debate about politics does not justify character assassination of my father, questioning the patriotism of a man who risked his life for our country in the Second World War or publishing a picture of his gravestone with a tasteless pun about him being a ‘grave socialist’”.

The editors of The Daily Mail responded by saying that Ralph Miliband sought to drive “a hammer and sickle through the heart of the nation so many of us genuinely love.”

Miliband’s friends were aghast. They particularly did not like tying Ralph Miliband in with the late historian Eric Hobsbawm, a man who was an unabashed Stalinist who in a famous late in life interview, had justified the millions Stalin killed as necessary for the triumph of socialism. Norm Geras, a moderate and truly democrat of the Left, who has been in the forefront in condemning the current anti-Israeli stance and anti-Semitism of the Left in Britain, argued that Ralph Miliband believed in parliamentary democracy under socialism, and was anything but a Leninist who believed in “smashing the state.” Moreover, Geras wrote, “he was never a Stalinist or an apologist for Stalinism.”  Geras was particularly incensed about a column by Benedict Brogan, who called Miliband one of the Cold War’s “bad guys.”

Today, Paul Dacre, editor-in-chief of the Daily Mail, responded in both his own paper and in the pages of the left-wing Guardian. He explained his decision to run the first column in these words:

The genesis of that piece lay in Ed Miliband’s conference speech. The Mail was deeply concerned that in 2013, after all the failures of socialism in the twentieth century, the leader of the Labour party was announcing its return, complete with land seizures and price fixing.

Surely, we reasoned, the public had the right to know what influence the Labour leader’s Marxist father, to whom he constantly referred in his speeches, had on his thinking.

It was not Miliband who was evil, but the ideas he believed in and the system he favored for Britain. “Ralph Miliband was, as a Marxist,” Dacre writes, “committed to smashing the institutions that make Britain distinctively British – and, with them, the liberties and democracy those institutions have fostered.”

At this point, columnists whose own fathers and ancestors were also Marxist, or who at one point were themselves also Marxist, took to the pages of the press. Theodore Dalrymple, who also writes often for PJM, chimed in with his own thoughts, revealing that his father was also wrong, and was himself a hard core Marxist. He points out correctly that the Marxist doctrine is both emotionally and intellectually dishonest, and that “I quickly grasped that the dialectic could prove anything you wanted it to prove, for example, that killing whole categories of people was a requirement of elementary decency.” Dalrymple brilliantly noted the main problem with the doctrine, which as he notes, a belief in leads to justification for mass murder:

Marxism was also replete with heresies and excommunications that tended to become fatal whenever its adherents reached power. There was a reason for this. Marx said that it is not consciousness that determines being, but being that determines consciousness. In other words, ideas do not have to be argued against in a civilised way, but rather the social and economic position of those who hold them must be analysed. So, disagreement is the same as class enmity – and we all know what should be done with class enemies.

Next, Peter Hitchens- brother of the late Christopher-explains that now he is “conservative, Christian, patriotic,” but once, as a young man, he was a Trotskyist. Although that made him a Marxist-Leninist, his brand of communism “hated Stalin and the Gulag as much as anyone else.” Yet he believes that “people ought to know and care more about the influence in our national life of Marxist politics.” He personally worries more about the Blairites whom he argues hold “politically correct, multiculti, anti-Christian ideas” that stem from Euro-Communism of the 70’s.

This is as good a time as any to turn to a man well-known to all of us, and what his experience shows about what Ralph Miliband really believed. And that is David Horowitz, who in the late 1980s, when he was beginning his march to conservatism, wrote a letter to Miliband, who was his mentor when he lived for years in Britain in the early and mid 1960’s. He eventually published it as an Open Letter in the pages of Commentary magazine, under the title: “Socialism, Guilty as Charged.” (I urge readers to pay the fee to go beyond the firewall and read the entire Horowitz letter, which is lengthy and impossible to sum up in an article.)

At that point, Horowitz believed that although he had left the ranks of the Left, he could maintain a personal relationship and friendship with Miliband, who was important to him and he knew as a good man and loving father to his then young children.

He starts by noting  the revolutionary vision he shared with Miliband at one point in his life, and asks him this question: “How could I divorce myself from a mission like this without betraying those whom I had left behind? Especially without betraying those like yourself who had been my guides and my comrades in the 60′s through the moral wilderness created by the disintegration of the Old Left.”

It was not to be. Horowitz had his own famous second thoughts, while Miliband had none. He was engaged in yet another and seemingly never-ending attempt to bring into being another resurrection of the Left, that would succeed in building the new world they both once dreamed of. “For you,” he wrote Miliband, “the socialist idea is still capable of an immaculate birth from the bloody conception of the socialist state.”

Horowitz, in his usual precise and cutting style, dissects in his letter to Miliband the follies, the hopes, the dreams and the warped methodology by which the Left uses to keep alive the flame of revolution. One thing it holds dear, he writes, is  a belief in “the redemptive power of the socialist idea,” and as a guide to getting to the goal, the ideology of Marxism. Their allegiance was to Marxism, “to the paradigm itself: politics as civil war; history as a drama of social redemption.”

When Lesek Kolakowski, the late Polish born philosopher and once himself a Marxist, wrote his swan song to Marxism, his three volume history of the Marxist idea, he argued “that Marx’s ideas could not be rescued from the human remains they created.” To that, Miliband had nothing but contempt, and wrote these words, which Horowitz quotes: “To speak of Stalinism as following naturally and ineluctably from Leninism is unwarranted.”

That Miliband could write these words indicates that contrary to what Geras believes, Miliband was in fact a defender of the Soviet Union, and the myth that Stalinism was an aberration, not the inevitable result of Leninism, as Richard Pipes and others have shown in detail.

Horowitz shows in his letter to Miliband that it could not reform itself into something better, and would never become “the paradise of our imaginations.”  It is a tough and thoughtful letter, and one wonders what Miliband said, if indeed, he chose to respond at all. For Horowitz wrote these words to Miliband: “For socialists like you to confront these arguments would be to confront the lesson that…the socialist idea, has been, in its consequences, one of the worst and most destructive fantasies ever to have taken hold of the minds of men.”

 As one might expect, there is no way that Ralph Miliband could even consider or respond to Horowitz’s major essay. Indeed, he waited two years before publishing the letter, hoping, undoubtedly that Miliband would respond in a serious fashion, much as the late British socialist E.P. Thompson had when Kolakowski challenged him in a similar fashion.

This is particularly true when Horowitz ends with these words: “By promoting the socialist idea, …which required so much death and suffering to implement, and then did not work in the end, you and I have earned ourselves a share, however modest, in the responsibility for its crimes. And it is these crimes that are the real legacy of the Left of which I was, and you so tragically still are, a part.”

The answer is to be found not in the letter itself, but in Horowitz’s own memoir, Radical Son: A Generational Odyssey. Here, Horowitz tells us that he hoped Miliband would publish the letter in the annual series he edited, The Socialist Register. After all, years earlier, he had dared to publish Kolakowski’s seminal essay in which he announced his disillusionment with the socialist project. It was not to be. He told Miliband in a personal letter, which he reproduces in the memoir, “I’m hoping the huge events of these last years [the collapse of the Soviet Union and the Eastern satellites] may have softened the edges of the issues that divide us.” He told him that he wanted Miliband “to understand that I did not turn my back on the struggle we once shared for trivial or unreflected reasons.” He also let him know that “I do not feel harshly towards you, but only warmth for a  friend who has remained on a path that I have left.”

Horowitz also told him that he hoped they might resume contact, despite their political divide. The answer came in a short note: “Thank you for your letter.” He added a brief p.s., saying that the opening lines of Horowitz’s Open Letter were not true, and that he had not ever said that he had spoken of Horowitz’s “apostasy” as a tragedy of the New Left. Then a cutting line: “The first notion grossly exaggerates its public importance; the second its personal importance to me.”

This non-reply reflected the bitter truth: Ralph Miliband could not even engage David Horowitz’s carefully spelled out arguments. Moreover, Miliband had indeed said what David quoted him as saying. I recall that when Miliband was teaching at the City University Graduate Center, he was asked about Horowitz, and he had publicly replied that mentoring him was one of the biggest mistakes he had ever made.

Moreover, Miliband revealed something that settles the issue being raised today in the British press by Ed Miliband’s critics. He may have considered himself a critic of Stalinism, but like the late historian Isaac Deutscher, he firmly believed that Stalin’s reign of power had played a progressive role in Russia. According to Deutscher and Miliband, Stalin’s harsh rule had created the very modernization and social structure that allowed Soviet society to evolve to the socialist democracy it was meant to be; therefore- despite the horrors of Stalinism- which again they believed did not stem intrinsically from Lenin- it was a progressive social system that Stalin had created.

David Horowitz proved with the rejection of his attempt to dialogue with Ralph Miliband that they had both belonged to “a community of faith, hermetically sealed from knowledge that might wake it from its dream.” Miliband could not even discuss the challenge Horowitz had put before him; had he done so, confronting the bitter truths might have led him too to the path of rejecting Marxism. That he could never do.

They still believed that “it was only ‘actually existing socialism that had failed; ‘real socialism’ had not yet been tried.” And so, the dream lived on, as it does today for Ralph Miliband’s son, Ed. The lessons Horowitz learned were costly for him; he lost many whom he thought were his friends, and was subject to vitriolic diatribes from those who could never learn from history. As far as they were concerned, he had nothing to teach them. Miliband obviously saw Horowitz only as a renegade who had betrayed him.

Our British friends, thus, would be wise to read David Horowitz’s Open Letter and Radical Son. There they will learn the truth about the late Ralph Miliband, who indeed was as his critics charge, a defender of the Soviet Union and of the Marxist faith.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

+

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Should ’70s, ’80s Nicaragua Matter to NYC Voters? Two Writers Make the Case

Why is Bill De Blasio’s 1988 trip to Nicaragua something New York City voters should consider when casting their ballot for mayor next November? After all, the major issues facing the city are: its increasing debt from union contracts; whether or not business will be welcomed and allowed to flourish or be met by increased taxes that cause them to flee the city; and of course, De Blasio’s commitment to put an end to the successful “stop and frisk” policies used by the city’s police force, which have led to less crime — especially in urban minority areas of the city.

So, why is it even being discussed? I raised the issued myself for the city’s voters in two op-eds that appeared in The New York Daily News and The New York Post. Now, two other important articles have appeared that spell out why De Blasio’s defense of his pro-Sandinista activities in the ’80s are important, and worth reconsidering.

The first appears in today’s Wall Street Journal, and is written by their Latin American affairs editor, Mary Anastasia O’Grady. She points out that his old trip “should further enlighten New Yorkers as to the politics of the man who is the front runner in the race.” She points out that by the time he traveled to Nicaragua, the Sandinistas had been in power for almost an entire decade. 

By then, any honest observer should have had no doubts about what they were up to.

O’Grady runs through the entire trajectory of the Sandinistas’ so-called accomplishments. For example, in 1980 — a short time after taking power in an armed coup — the Sandinistas assassinated a democratic opponent who had opposed the authoritarian Somoza regime that had been overthrown. They then moved to purge the first “directorate” of all moderate elements, leaving only committed Marxist-Leninists in power. O’Grady notes:

The crackdown that followed was ruthless. Cuban enforcers were brought in to help. Houses, farms, ranches and businesses were confiscated, and the independent media were muzzled. Central planning meant price controls for everyone. Even rural women carrying produce to market were arrested as speculators.

With blunt sarcasm, she asks how De Blasio could not know about this, since after all, “he had only completed graduate studies of the region” at Columbia University.

She suggests that he nevertheless probably did know the truth, but thought that the “brutality could be explained away with good outcomes,” since to this day, he still defends and approves of the Sandinistas. That his comrades “turned out to be greedy totalitarians who stole the spoils of the war for themselves doesn’t seem to matter.”

An even more important, though unfortunately little read Open Letter to Mr. De Blasio appeared on the webpage of The New Republic, written by an outstanding American intellectual of the Left, Paul Berman. Paul Berman is the author of major books critical of the Islamists, and in particular he has been the most vociferous of the critics of Tariq Ramadan, whom so many liberals and leftists regard as a man of moderation who should be taken seriously. Berman has shown him to be a slippery defender of radical Islam.

In his first Open Letter, titled “Bill de Blasio should Embrace Democratic Socialism in New York City,” Berman tries to establish his leftist credentials with De Blasio, obviously in the hope that he will go on to the second part. It is a silly and foolish choice. He makes it clear that he is a proud democratic socialist, and he argues that democratic socialism once had “an honored place” in the city’s history. To establish that, he goes back decades to the ’30s, ’40s and to the early ’60s, when anti-Communist social democratic unions had some political clout, and which he note built institutions that lasted, such as cooperative apartment houses.

This is more of Berman’s romanticism, reflected in his early enthusiasm for Occupy Wall Street. It is too cute by half. He must realize that the kind of socialists he remembers and celebrates would be called “social fascists” by the kind of Left that De Blasio and his generation are part of. They have all but disappeared from sight, save for a few intellectuals like Berman who sit alongside him at Dissent magazine. Berman says little about the disastrous economic policies De Blasio supports, and that could bring the city to ruin.

His second Open Letter, titled “Why De Blasio’s Nicaraguan Work Worries Me,” shows Berman at his best.

Berman reveals just how he, in the same years De Blasio went to Nicaragua, came to learn what the Sandinistas were really about. His powerful article stands as a singular accomplishment, an example of how even a man of the Left, when honestly looking at reality, can ditch his early enthusiasms and think twice about the forces he was supporting.

Berman once was a Sandinista supporter. His first somewhat critical articles actually appeared in Mother Jones, an act for which its then editor, pre-filmmaker Michael Moore, fired Berman from the magazine. Hence Berman begins by writing that the international support for the Sandinistas “was earnest and sincere,” although some was “fanatically arrogant and shrill.” However, Berman is hoping to get De Blasio to read on, so he writes that he knows the future mayor’s “commitment to the Sandinista cause” reveals that he was once “bold and adventurous and idealistic,” and hence he writes: “I salute you.”

Conservative readers, please do not stop at that paragraph. Berman is getting ready for the kill.

Leftist Educator Diane Ravitch Meets Her Match: An Important Critique by Sol Stern

Do you know who Diane Ravitch is? If not, you should. No other educator has been acclaimed in so many places as the woman who can lead American education into the future. Her new book, Reign of Error: The Hoax of the Privatization Movement and the Danger to America’s Public Schools, had a first printing of 75,000 copies and quickly made the New York Times non-fiction best seller list.

Recently, the leading magazine for left-liberal intellectuals, The New York Review of Books, featured a cover story about Ravitch by Andrew Delbanco. He compares the approaches of the educator most despised by the Left, Michelle Rhee, with Ravitch. He calls Ravitch “our leading historian of primary and secondary education.” Having established that, he goes on to note Ravitch’s condemnation of Rhee, which he says “borders on contempt.” Delbanco also dislikes Rhee. He does not agree with what he calls her “determination to remake public institutions on the model of private corporations.” Rhee is pro-corporate, a woman who wants “to introduce private competition (in police, military, and postal services, for example) where government was once the only provider.” In other words, Rhee stands with the enemies of the Left who want school choice for poor children, vouchers, charter schools, and competition, rather than more pay for teachers, smaller classes, and working with and through the teachers’ unions.

To Delbanco, people who hold such reviews are retrograde, “true believers” in “the promise of privatization.” To the journal’s readers, these code words are enough to know that Rhee is someone to oppose, and if Ravitch is on the other side, she is someone to support. Indeed, if they didn’t get the message, Delbanco adds that one lobbying group that favors charter schools is — horrors — funded by the Koch brothers, and the group also supports “stand your ground” laws.

Now his readers definitely know that Rhee is evil, and that Ravitch is good. He writes:

Through Ravitch’s eyes we see what Rhee refuses to see: the limits of what even the most skilled teacher can do in the face of such realities. “Poverty,” she says bluntly, “is the most important factor contributing to low academic achievement.” And so “we must work both to improve schools and to reduce poverty, not to prioritize one over the other or say that schools come first, poverty later.” This is an incontestably true statement — but not the kind of call to arms that gets you on the cover of Time magazine.

But, it definitely is the point you will see in the NYRB or The Nation, over and over and again and again.

So here are their differences, according to Delbanco:

Ravitch wants a return to broad-scale attack on social and economic inequities — to incremental, long-range strategies that do not promise quick results. Rhee, essentially, wants shock therapy for the schools.

In a nutshell, good teaching depends on a radical political program, one that pushes our nation to the Left and that will result in answering the problems of education. Thus Rhee does not like the teachers’ unions, which she accuses of being “a thuggish interest group that stands in the way of reform and holds the Democratic Party in thrall. She sees its overriding purpose as protecting weak or burned-out teachers who block opportunities for younger teachers who have better prospects of instructing and inspiring children.” Ravitch, on the other hand, makes her case for teachers’ unions “with more nuance and depth,” which means Delbanco agrees with the unions. So of course Ravitch is right. “She sees it as ‘the strongest voice in each state to advocate for public education and to fight crippling budget cuts.’” Of course, unions often stand against any reforms that would interfere with the power of bad teachers to keep their jobs at the students’ expense, because they have seniority and vote for the Democratic lawmakers who continually give them more benefits at the time of contract renewal.

There is much in Delbanco’s review that leaves out what Diane Ravitch really stands for. To learn this, one must turn to the very important article by Sol Stern that challenges and tears apart Ravitch’s views, and seeks to explain why and how Ravitch changed — she was once a major advocate for school reform who worked in the administration of George H. W. Bush, where she supported national standards and school choice. She gradually broke ranks and moved to the side of leftist political ideology as well as opponents of any school reforms.

With Sol Stern’s important critique, Diane Ravitch has met her match. Stern’s must-read article appears in City Journal and is titled “The Closing of Diane Ravitch’s Mind.” He writes:

She reinvented herself as a vehement political activist. Once one of the conservative school-reform movement’s most visible faces, Ravitch became the inspirational leader of a radical countermovement that is rising from the grass roots to oppose the corporate villains. Evoking the civil rights movement and Martin Luther King, Ravitch proclaims that the only answer to the corporate school-reform agenda is to “build a political movement so united and clear in its purpose that it would be heard in every state Capitol and even in Washington, D.C.” The problem is that Ravitch’s civil rights analogy is misplaced; her new ideological allies have proved themselves utterly incapable of raising the educational achievement of poor minority kids.

The Dangers of a De Blasio Victory in New York City’s Mayoral Race

As the mayoral campaign of Bill de Blasio moves on, the revelation that the likely victor was a Sandinista supporter as a young man in the 1980s has begun to be noticed. It made de Blasio actually have to respond to his Republican opponent, Joe Lhota, who had condemned him as a “Marxist.” But instead of saying something to the effect that he was young, idealistic, and perhaps wrong about Nicaragua, he openly defended his positions.

In an interview with Capital, a Manhattan-based publication, de Blasio argued that U.S. policies in Central America in the ’80s “were wrong,” and that he was only working with Jesuits and Catholics, with much of the work “done by nuns.” Well, there are nuns and then there are nuns. And de Blasio, by his own account, thinks he was on the right side, since those supported by the U.S. in the Reagan and Bush 41 years were regimes “very unfair to their own people.”

In standing firm in defense of his old positions, de Blasio has revealed how little he has learned.  The truth is that the Catholics he supported in Nicaragua — including the nuns — were part of the regime-created “Popular Church,” an attempt to fuse Catholicism with Marxism in support of the Sandinista Front (FSLN), and were advocates of “liberation theology,” popular among the Catholic left in the region in those years. The regular Church, as in Poland, condemned the Sandinistas and was a strong opponent of the drift to totalitarianism.

Today, in City Journal, my old friend Sol Stern has perhaps the single best article on what a de Blasio victory might mean for New York City, and for the nation.  As Stern writes, “Bill de Blasio was outed by the New York Times and then proudly stood his ground, politically and ideologically”:

De Blasio’s untroubled response to the Times’s revelations speaks volumes about New York’s rapidly changing political culture. It’s not that the next mayor will try to establish socialism or bring Sandinista ideas about the class struggle to government agencies. But de Blasio’s ascendency, perhaps even more than Obama’s, marks another step in the evolution of the Democratic party and big-city liberalism toward a twenty-first-century version of the old Popular Front. De Blasio’s City Hall will be open for business to each element of a self-styled “progressive” coalition of “inclusion.” No group or individual will be deemed too far to the left as long as they jump on the de Blasio bandwagon. Lining up to receive their fair share of the spoils will be the old Acorn organization, now renamed New York Communities for Change; the far-left Working Families Party; the United Federation of Teachers and other municipal unions; the radical Service Employees International Union, including the former Communist-led health-care workers’ union Local 1199; the civil liberties and homeless lobbies; and, of course, the onetime racial arsonist Al Sharpton, now posing as a wise elder and political power broker. To varying degrees, each will have a place at the municipal trough. Meanwhile, at the other end of City Hall—thanks to the successful efforts of the Working Families Party in many local races this year—the newly elected city council will tilt further left and will dole out even more cash to radical and activist community groups.”

Given that New York City is the financial center of our country, and hence important nationally, if the dark scenario laid out by Stern as a possible result of a de Blasio victory comes true, it bodes ill for our country as a whole. It is as important a development on the Left as was Scott Walker’s victory over the Left in Wisconsin.

To confirm how much the national Left is moving to support the de Blasio campaign, look no further than this article at Huffington Post by the New Left’s main 1960s leader and author of the Port Huron Statement that announced SDS to the nation, Tom Hayden. He likes de Blasio for one reason. His candidacy, Hayden writes, “should hugely excite the progressive base in New York politics after a long period of Republican rule. De Blasio did not leave his radical youth behind either; in the present day, he is a leading critic of stop-and-frisk and the massive economic inequalities dramatized by Occupy Wall Street.”

New York City’s Next Mayor: A Stealth Socialist Who Loved Sandinista Nicaragua and Castro’s Cuba

We used to call young Americans who went to Sandinista Nicaragua in the ’80s “Sandalistas,” a name of derision meant to mock the sandal-wearing leftists looking to help Daniel Ortega build the socialist future in Central America. As we all know, what was going on was a fight for freedom against the Marxist-Leninists, which included most of the Sandinista leadership, by those who wanted to defeat their attempt to build a second Cuba in this hemisphere.

Bill de Blasio, who most likely will be the next mayor of New York, is not just a simple run-of-the mill “progressive.” The New York Times just published a major story on his background, timed to run after the the New York City primary, which was likely the real election. (Rudy Giuliani’s victory on the Republican ticket was an anomaly, and the working-class voters whose ballots put him in no longer live in the areas from which he got the necessary votes.) Had voters known about de Blasio’s background before the primary, he may have lost the critical number of votes for his victory.

Indeed, the Times tells us of a whitewash: “References to his early activism have been omitted from his campaign Web site.”

No wonder. The story by Javier C. Hernandez reveals de Blasio was a far-left socialist who worked with an outfit called The Quixote Center. But he was not simply tilting at windmills; he visited a Nicaragua on the road to communism, and came back with “a vision of the possibilities of an unfettered leftist government.”

The Reagan administration was right in denouncing the Nicaraguan regime –which took power by a coup led by armed guerrillas — as a tyranny led by Communists. Hernandez writes: “Their liberal backers argued that … they were building a free society with broad access to education, land and health care.” The backers of Ortega’s coup were not liberals, but hardcore Marxists, socialists, and other anti-American members of the New Left. Soured on Cuba, they turned to Nicaragua as their new land of hope.

De Blasio told Hernandez: “My work was based on trying to create a more fair and inclusive world.” Like other blinded gullible leftists, he accepted the Marxist jargon peddled by the regime’s junta while ignoring that the Commandantes like Tomas Borge, Daniel Ortega, and the rest of the bunch were lining their own pockets with the most valuable properties. They were creating a wealthy nomenklatura modeled on Soviet lines which gave them access to the wealth and power no one else in the country could access. Led by Borge’s secret police, who were trained by the East German Stasi and quartered in a building with the sign reading “Sentinel of the People’s Happiness,” they crushed dissent, closed down the opposition newspaper La Prensa, and instituted major steps towards building a one-party system.

As the Times notes: “Mr. de Blasio became an ardent supporter of the Nicaraguan revolutionaries.” In 1990, he said publicly that his goal for America was “democratic socialism.”

As the New York Daily News reported, de Blasio took his 1991 honeymoon in Castro’s Cuba! I guess totalitarian Cuba is what he meant by “democratic socialism.”

De Blasio’s path to power reveals a local version of the path trod by Barack Obama — that of a “Long March through the Existing Institutions,” which is what the German New Left revolutionary leaders in the 1960s called the road to power. For the advanced capitalist countries, Mao’s Long March was not the way; rather, the path was political power by working through the existing political structure and moving to take over one of the mainstream dominant political parties.

In New York City, with his ally in the radical Working Families Party — affiliated with the former ACORN — de Blasio has shunned the real goal of socialism. Calling himself progressive, he has worked to create a majority to run New York that is anti-business and supports greater and greater entitlements. As Jonathan Tobin writes in Commentary,  de Blasio’s “left-wing populism and hostility to both the business community and the police tactics that have helped fuel New York’s revival bode ill for the city’s future.”

New York City’s Next Mayor: A Stealth Socialist who loved Sandinista Nicaragua and Castro’s Cuba

We used to call young Americans who went to Sandinista Nicaragua in the 80’s “Sandalistas,” a name of derision meant to mock the sandal-wearing leftists who travelled there to help Daniel Ortega build the socialist future in Central America.  As we all know, what was going on was a fight for freedom against the Marxist-Leninists, which included most of the Sandinista leadership, by those who wanted to defeat their attempt to build a second Cuba in this hemisphere.

Little did we learn, until today, that for Bill deBlasio, who most likely will be the next Mayor of New York, is not just a simple run-of-the mill “progressive.” The New York Times ran a major story on his background, leaving their news about him to run after the real election- the New York City primary. (Rudy Giuliani’s victory on the Republican ticket was an anomaly, and the working-class voters whose ballots put him in no longer live in the areas from which he got the necessary votes.)  Had voters known about his background, he may have lost just the critical amount of votes that would have put one of the other candidates in the running.

Indeed, the Times tells us that “References to his early activism have been omitted from his campaign Web site.”  No wonder. What the story by Javier C. Hernandez reveals is that the Democratic Party standard-bearer was no liberal, but rather, a far left socialist who worked with an outfit called The Quixote Center. But he was not simply tilting at windmills, as was Don Quixote. He went to a Nicaragua on the road to communism coming back with “a vision of the possibilities of an unfettered leftist government.”

The Reagan administration was right in denouncing the Nicaraguan regime, put into power by a coup led by armed guerrillas, as a tyranny led by Communists. The reporter is wrong when he writes that “their liberal backers argued that…they were building a free society with broad access to education, land and health care.” The backers of Ortega’s coup were not liberals, but hard core Marxists and socialists, and other anti-American members of the New Left. Soured on Cuba, they turned to Nicaragua as their new land of hope.

Mr. deBlasio told reporter Hernandez that “My work was based on trying to create a more fair and inclusive world.” That is because like other blinded gullible leftists, he accepted the Marxist jargon peddled by the regime’s junta, while ignoring the fact that the Commandantes like Tomas Borge, Daniel Ortega and the rest of the bunch were lining their own pockets with the most valuable properties, the creation of a wealthy nomenklatura modeled on Soviet lines, that gave them availability to the wealth and power no one else in the country had access to. Led by Borge’s secret police, trained by the  East German STASI  and quartered in a building with the sign in front “Sentinel of the People’s Happiness,” they ruled with an iron fist as they crushed dissent, closed down the opposition newspaper La Prensa, and instituted major steps to building a one-party system.

As the Times notes, “Mr. de Blasio became an ardent supporter of the Nicaraguan revolutionaries.” In 1990 he said publicly that his goal for America was “democratic socialism.” And, as The New York Daily News reported today, he took his honeymoon in 1991 in Castro’s Cuba! I guess totalitarian Cuba then led by Fidel Castro is his idea of democratic socialism.

So what de Blasio’s path to power reveals is a local version of the path trod by Barack Obama—that of a “Long March through the Existing Institutions,” which is what the German New Left revolutionary leaders in the 1960s  called the road to power. For the advanced capitalist countries, Mao’s Long March was not the way; rather, the path was political power by working through the existing political structure and moving to take over one of the mainstream dominant political parties.

In New York City, with his ally in the radical Working People’s Party, affiliated with the former ACORN, de Blasio has shunned the real goal of socialism, and calling himself progressive, worked to create a majority to run New York that is anti-business, pro excessive new entitlements, and as Jonathan Tobin writes in Commentary today, he is a candidate whose “left-wing populism and hostility to both the business community and the police tactics that have helped fuel New York’s revival bode ill for the city’s future.”

So, it seems that our largest and most well-known city will, as Tobin puts it, be “lurching to the hard left.” The only good that can come out of this is if the business community and Wall Street quickly drop their usual contributions to the Democratic contender, and consider giving their political contributions instead to the pro-business Republican candidate for Mayor, former MTA chairman Joe Lhota.

If you doubt that de Blasio is a hard leftist, when The New York Times says that “his time as a young activist was more influential in shaping his ideology than previously known,” have no doubt about that. Perhaps its publisher is himself worrying what a de Blasio victory might mean for the city and their own publication, which after all, is a business trying to survive in a dwindling print media age.

Indeed, de Blasio actually says that his desire to have the rich pay more in taxes, and that government exists “to protect and enhance the lives of the poor,” to be done through redistribution of wealth instead of increasing productivity so all can benefit, comes from being inspired by his time in Nicaragua, in which the Sandinistas, “in their own humble way, in this small country,” were “trying to figure out what would work better.”

This is a laugh, since anyone who knows the history of that tragic country understands that they were running it to the ground, just as the Castro brothers have done in Cuba. Today, through ballot maneuvering and unsavory coalitions with wealthy interests, Daniel Ortega and his party rule as just another caudillo type Latin American despotism, while the rulers continually enrich themselves through corruption and misrule.

Like Barack Obama, de Blasio was a community organizer, not with the Alinsky type groups, but with a religious “social justice” center that shipped millions of dollars in food, clothing and supplies to the would-be Nicaraguan Communists. He was part of a group the Times article calls “a ragtag team of peace activists, Democrats, Marxists and anarchists” who did what they could to help the rapidly fading Sandinista cause.  Their interest ended when in an election forced on the Sandinistas by world pressure in 1989, Ortega lost and the dissenting liberal Violeta Chamorro, whose husband had edited La Prensa and was murdered by the pre-Sandinista dictator Anastasia Somoza,  won handily in an election monitored by observers from around the world.

Jonathan Tobin is right. The NYC election cannot be won by refighting the wars of the 1980s. As he writes, the view of the Reagan and George H.W. Bush administrations that supported the opponents of the Sandinistas proved to be right, and the groups that de Blasio worked with were “fronts for Communist killers.”

What this bodes for New York City is that its growth and turn to low crime rates and stability, put into place by Rudy Giuliani and to some extent by Michael Bloomberg, will come to an end when de Blasio’s reign in office takes place. Look for a falling back to the dark and depressing years of the administration of David Dinkins, and the possibility that New York City’s economy will decline and the city will be on the road to becoming like Detroit.

So let me quote Jonathan Tobin’s wise words:

To those who are either too young or too deluded by liberal propaganda to know better, the struggle against the socialism that de Blasio backed was the most important battle fought in the last half of the 20th century. Those who aimed at stopping socialism were not trying to hurt the poor; they were defending human rights against a political cause that sacrificed more than 100 million victims on the Marxist altar. The verdict of history was delivered as the Berlin Wall fell and the “socialist motherland” collapsed, and along with it much of the ideological house of cards that liberals had built as they sought to discredit or defeat anti-Communists. It says a lot about de Blasio’s commitment to that vicious political faith that even after the Iron Curtain fell and the peoples of captive Eastern Europe celebrated the defeat of the Communist cause that he would make a pilgrimage to one of its last strongholds in Cuba to celebrate his marriage.

Today, Bill de Blasio seems proud of his support for the Sandinistas. He has said nothing to indicate that he thinks he was wrong, and that the path they sought for Nicaragua was both dangerous, futile and was putting the country on the road to totalitarianism.

We can only guess as to New York City’s future, if he creates an administration in the image of his leftist world-view. When I traveled to Nicaragua with the late Ed Koch in 1989, and as we watched a massive rally headlined by Daniel Ortega, Koch said: “This reminds me of nothing other than the Nazi’s Nuremberg rallies.” Koch understood the truth at the time; today in the 21st Century, future Mayor Bill deBlasio does not.

For the leftists in NYC, Rudi Dutschke’s strategy of a “Long March Through the Existing Institutions” has paid off. They have gained control of the Democratic Party machinery, and if they are successful, they will ruin New York City.  New York voters have been warned. Let us hope that even sane Democrats will vote Republican.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

American Leftists Journey to Syria in Support of Assad: The Strange Case of Ramsey Clark

If you want to understand how so many Communists and fellow travelers could defend Stalin’s bloodthirsty tyranny in the 1930s, ’40s, and ’50s, look no further than the behavior of a section of the self-proclaimed anti-war Left today. Global Research, a division of International Answer, reported yesterday that former Attorney General Ramsey Clark (1967-69) is now in Syria, where he is leading a delegation in support of the regime of Bashar al-Assad.

Joining him on the trip is former six-term member of Congress from Atlanta, Georgia, the virulently pro-Arab and anti-Israel Cynthia McKinney. (Her father blamed the loss of her ongressional seat on the Jews, who, he claimed, “bought everybody.”)

Also along for the trip were Dedon Kamathi of the All African People’s Revolutionary Party and the left-wing Pacifica Radio, and Johnny Achi of Arab Americans for Syria.

They are sponsored by the revolutionary socialist group International Answer, which ran anti-war rallies during the Bush-era Iraq War. Organizer Sara Flounders, who wrote the report and is accompanying the group, reported: “If anything, support [in Syria] for the government is much stronger now.”

Flounders and the group also praised the legion of gullible Western volunteers, who have flooded to Syria to willingly serve as human shields for Assad. They positioned themselves in areas they thought likely to be targeted by bombs. Calling the action “Over Our Dead Bodies,” they formed an encampment in 50 tents in the Mout Qassioun area of Damascus. “Democracy,” proclaimed organizer Ogarit Dandash, “will not come with American weapons.”

Not that they want democracy. Unless, perhaps, it’s the “people’s democracies” imposed on Eastern Europe by Stalin at the end of the second World War.

BuzzFeed reported that McKinney praised the Assad regime on her Facebook page for its socially progressive policies:

I am in Syria now with former Attorney General Ramsey Clark, where residents enjoy free education and free healthcare. … Visited a Damascus hospital, the Grand Mufti, a school that has been turned into residences for Internally Displaced Persons. Ended the Day with Ogarit Dandash who founded “Over Our Dead Bodies,” a group of young people who climbed atop Mount Qasioun and dared U.S. bombs to target them. They are still there in defiant resistance to any war against Syria. Mount Qasioun should be the site of a peace party, not bombing strikes.

Just like with Cuba, free health care and free education for the loyal portion of the Alawite minority trump the over 100,000 civilians killed by Assad in the past few years. What are their deaths compared to the joy of establishing socialism? Stalin, after all, killed millions in his valiant attempt to create the communist future. Now, with Assad, Clark and McKinney feel they once again have a chance to start off where Stalin failed.

To be fair, I should point out that Clark’s views are even too much for some on the Left. Writing in Salon, Ian Williams pointed out a few years ago that “Clark has become the tool of left-wing cultists who defend Slobodan Milosevic, Saddam Hussein, and Rwandan torturers as anti-imperialist heroes.”

In his interesting profile, Williams also puts his finger on why so many of his leftist comrades are reluctant to criticize Clark:

Many liberals and leftists cut Clark a considerable degree of slack. For a start he is almost the only person the American left has had in high public office since World War II, even if it was a retrospective success, since his long march leftward only began afterward. His views as the former attorney general are listened to with a respect that would be accorded to few others with such eccentric opinions. As a revered spokesman of the left, he is a perfect symbol for its near-impotence in American politics today.

To put it another way, they may think Clark is cuckoo, but since he was one of their own who actually held high office, they do not want to publicly attack him. You never know, after all, when something they support will be attacked and they might need Clark to jump in and come to their defense.

As for McKinney, she supported Muamaar Gaddafi during the Obama administration’s actions to topple his regime, and appeared on Libyan state TV in defense of the ruler.

American Leftists Journey to Syria in support of Assad: The Strange Case of Ramsey Clark

If you want to understand how so many Communists and fellow travelers could defend Stalin’s bloodthirsty tyranny in the 1930s, 40s, and 50s, look no further than the behavior of a section of the self-proclaimed anti-war Left today. Global Research, a division of International Answer, reported yesterday that former Attorney General Ramsey Clark (1967-69) is now in Syria, where he is leading a delegation in support of the regime of Bashar al-Assad.

Joining him on the trip is former six-term member of Congress from Atlanta, Georgia, the virulently pro-Arab and anti-Israel Cynthia McKinney. (Her father blamed the loss of her Congressional seat on the Jews, whom he claimed “bought everybody.”)

Also along for the trip were Dedon Kamathi of the All African People’s Revolutionary Party and the left-wing Pacifica Radio, and Johnny Achi of Arab Americans 4 Syria.

They are sponsored by the revolutionary socialist group International Answer, which ran anti-war rallies during the Bush-era Iraq War. Its organizer Sara Flounders, who wrote the report and is accompanying the group, reported: “If anything, support [in Syria] for the government is much stronger now.”

Flounders and the group also praised the legion of gullible Western volunteers, who have flooded to Syria to willingly serve as human shields for Assad. They positioned themselves in areas they thought likely to be targeted by bombs. Calling the action “Over Our Dead Bodies,” they formed an encampment in 50 tents in the Mout Qassioun area of Damascus. “Democracy,” proclaimed its organizer Oagri Dandash, “will not come with American weapons.”

Not that they want democracy. Unless, perhaps, it’s the “People’s Democracies” imposed on Eastern Europe by Stalin at the end of the second World War.

Buzzfeed reported that McKinney praised the Assad regime on her Facebook page for its wonderful socially progressive policies:

I am in Syria now with former Attorney General Ramsey Clark, where residents enjoy free education and free healthcare … Visited a Damascus hospital, the Grand Mufti, a school that has been turned into residences for Internally Displaced Persons. Ended the Day with Ogarit Dandash who founded “Over Our Dead Bodies,” a group of young people who climbed atop Mount Qasioun and dared U.S. bombs to target them. They are still there in defiant resistance to any war against Syria. Mount Qasioun should be the site of a peace party, not bombing strikes.

Just like with Cuba, free health care and free education for the loyal portion of the Alawite minority trumps the over 100,000 civilians killed by Assad in the past few years. What are their deaths compared to the joy of establishing socialism? Stalin, after all, killed millions in his valiant attempt to create the communist future. Now, with Assad, Clark and McKinney feel they once again have a chance to start off where Stalin failed.

To be fair, I should point out that Clark’s views are even too much for some of the Left. Writing in Salon, Ian Williams pointed out a few years ago that “Clark has become the tool of left-wing cultists who defend Slobodan Milosevic, Saddam Hussein, and Rwandan torturers as anti-imperialist heroes.”

In his interesting profile, Williams also puts his finger on why so many of his leftist comrades are reluctant to criticize Clark:

Many liberals and leftists cut Clark a considerable degree of slack. For a start he is almost the only person the American left has had in high public office since World War II, even if it was a retrospective success, since his long march leftward only began afterward. His views as the former attorney general are listened to with a respect that would be accorded to few others with such eccentric opinions. As a revered spokesman of the left, he is a perfect symbol for its near-impotence in American politics today.

To put it another way, they may think Clark is cuckoo, but since he was one of their own who actually held high office, they do not want to publicly attack him. You never know, after all, when something they support that is being attacked might need Clark to jump in and come to their defense.

As for McKinney, she supported Muamaar Qaddafi during the Obama administration’s actions to topple his regime, and appeared on Libyan State TV in defense of the ruler.

Una Noche, A Film about Cuba You Have to See

Reading Charles Lane’s important column in The Washington Post about a new indie film, Una Noche (One Night), I promptly rented it “On Demand” on my cable system. It is also available as an iTunes download.

(CLICK HERE to rent and watch on Amazon.com)

Filmmaker Lucy Mulloy is new to the business. This is her first film, and it is now available after premiering at New York’s Tribeca Film Festival in 2012, as well as the Berlin Film Festival that same year. Unless you live in New York City where some theaters are showing it, you have to watch it at home.

What Mulloy has done is to reveal the truth about daily life in Communist Cuba, in a way that Western visitors to Cuba have little understanding. Indeed, the very week that Mulloy’s film has been made available for viewing, The New York Times Travel Section featured two different articles extolling tourism to Cuba, and in effect encouraging its readers to avail themselves of the opportunity to engage in well-managed Potemkin Village tours, in which representatives of Cuba’s tourism industry – controlled by Cuba’s state-security apparatus – guide the gullible Americans to show them how joyous and happy the people are, and how wonderful the regime is that gives its people such a good life. They come back extolling the virtues of the Cuban government, joining in calls to lift the embargo on Cuba, and reporting on how well off things are for the people.

The first Times article informs readers that “ Those eager to get to Cuba just have to pay, and agree to take part in a busy, highly organized tour with very little free time.” Sure, if you had time on your own, you might wander off and see the parts of Havana that Mulloy shows us, and see how people really live and learn what they really think. When I went there in the mid-1970s, I did just that, and ended up getting arrested and thrown into a local holding cell in a police station for six hours because I took a photo of a giant line in front of a nationalized Woolworth store that had just received a rare shipment of plastic shoes from Eastern Europe.

The second Times article notes that “nearly every major tour company is now jockeying for the hearts and wallets of American tourists.” Why not? The tours cost a great deal of money, the food is reportedly mediocre (perhaps better than when I was there, and it was close to inedible) and you are given little time for any R and R- continually shuttled to one orchestrated activity after another. As they put it, “you can’t simply show up and luxuriate at the beach.”

How the Death of Saul Landau, a Supporter of Repressive Communist Regimes, Is Celebrated by Major U.S. Newspapers

On Monday of this week, Stalinist-Castroite filmmaker Saul Landau died at his home in Alameda, California. His death inspired major obituaries in our country’s leading mainstream newspapers, including the Washington Post, the Los Angeles Times, and, as expected, the New York Times. If there is one thing you can count on old media for, it is that they will run laudatory tributes whenever a member in good standing of the far Left passes.

I wouldn’t be surprised if during the Academy Awards, when his photo is flashed and his name mentioned in the tribute to those who left the film colony in the past year, there is loud applause and the usual suspects stand in respect. After all, his current project was a film praising the convicted Cuban spies — the so-called Cuban Five — which he was filming with Danny Glover.

It is remarkable how Landau’s politics are described in the obits.

The headline of the NYT obit read: “Saul Landau, Maker of Films with a Leftist Edge, Dies at 77.” I love that term, “leftist edge.” It implies he was an objective observer of the subjects he filmed, but put a slightly leftist tint on them. As writer Douglas Martin put it, Landau “aspired to marshal art and literature to illuminate social and political problems.”

You would believe that was his goal, if you think that painting Fidel Castro as a humanist god on earth whose life is devoted to the welfare of the Cuban people is objective.

The Washington Post described Landau as a filmmaker who “made films with an unabashedly leftist point of view.” That might be a slight improvement over the NYT characterization, but it still muted the real truth: Landau made films taking the stance Lenin had called on all Communists to take in the 1920s.

Communists, the Bolshevik leader wrote, had to “powerfully develop film production, taking especially the proletarian kino [theaters] to the city masses.” Of all the arts, he added, “the motion picture is for us the most important.” In America, European cultural commissar Willi Munzenberg advised the comrades to “develop the tremendous cultural possibilities of the motion picture in the revolutionary sense.” Writing in the Party’s daily newspaper The Daily Worker on July 23, 1925, he called on all revolutionary Communists who worked in the field of “agitation and propaganda” to use film “and turn it against” the ruling class.

Saul — whom I knew quite well — spent a lot of time reading all the Marxist-Leninist “classics,” as they were called. I’m certain he had come across Munzenberg’s admonition; it was quoted in many places in the old Communist movement.

My acquaintance with Landau went back to my leftist student days at the University of Wisconsin, where Landau and I were both members of the Communist youth movement on campus and later worked on the radical New Left intellectual journal Studies on the Left. As I moved on and left those circles, we became bitter political enemies.

In the 1980s, when I went to Nicaragua to report for The New Republic and on human rights missions with Nina Shea for a group she led called the Puebla Institute, my experiences led me to become a critic of the Sandinistas and their program to turn Nicaragua into a second Cuba in the western hemisphere. It was as a critic of the Left in Central America at a time when the American left was leading “U.S. Out of Central America” marches and condemning the Reagan administration’s foreign policy in the region that I debated Landau in Washington, D.C. on the eve of one of their major pro-Communist rallies in support of the Salvadoran Communist rebels and the Sandinistas.

In those days before YouTube and iPhone cameras, there was no one filming it. I do, however, recall one major exchange. Landau tried to describe the Sandinistas as radical nationalists who simply wanted to gain independence from U.S. imperialism’s grasp, and to build a free and democratic society devoted to the poor rather than to the benefit of U.S. capital. I argued that, in effect, the Sandinistas used nationalism as a guise for their very real belief in Marxist-Leninist tenets, and I provided evidence to back up that assertion.

Landau replied that it was propaganda to claim that Daniel Ortega and company were Marxists.