Blackshirts and Reds: Rational Fascism and the Overthrow of Communism

by Michael Parenti

During the Vietnam era, explanations as to why people sided with the communist revolutionaries came from some unexpected sources. U.S. ambassador Henry Cabot Lodge admitted, “The only people who have been doing anything for the little man—to lift him up—have been the communists” (New York Times, 2/27/66). In a similar vein, one faithful propagator of the official line, columnist James Reston, wrote with surprising candor, “Even Premier Ky [U.S.-sponsored dictator of South Vietnam] told this reporter today that the communists were closer to the people’s yearnings for social justice and an independent life than his own government” (New York Times, 9/1/65). What Lodge and Reston left unsaid was that the “little man” and the “people’s yearnings” for social justice were the very things that U.S. leaders were bent on suppressing.