DEMOCRATS AND RUSSIANS
It's July 2018 and the mainstream media has been on fire for over 18 months with allegations that President Trump "colluded" with the Russians to win the 2016 Presidential election. So far, we have seen very little in the way of evidence that Trump or any member of his campaign had anything more than a conversation with the occaisional Russian. Still, whatever "new information" the media learns, they feverishly connect dots which have no business being connected.
As a student of politics and history, I have found the behavior of the media as well as Democrats to be appalling.
What I hope to do for you in this podcast is to give you some idea of the history that exists between Democrats and Russians. At the end of this podcast, my hope is you will understand why I am appalled at the current behavior of the Mainstream Media and the Democrat Party.
The Russian Hoax by Gregg Jarrett
This story begins in Russia, with the Bolshevik Revolution of 1917. The Bolshevik takeover of Russia was the first successful Marxist revolution and it sent shock waves around the world, particularly in Western countries. European and American intellectuals were swept up in the excitement of revolutionary change and what it could mean for the future of the world.
Violence and Terror in the Russian Revolution
Remember, in 1917, Marxism had never been attempted as a governing philosophy. Russia would be its first laboratory. The intelligentsia had a rooting interest, hoping for its success.
The early days of the Russian Revolution under the leadership of Vladimir Lenin were bloody in the extreme. Anyone opposing the new Bolshevik government under Lenin was deemed a "counter-revolutionary" and typically met horribly cruel deaths, often by starvation. Although Lenin died in 1924, he was succeeded by Joseph Stalin, who was even worse.
Execution by Hunger: The Hidden Holocaust by Miron Dolot
While this was going on in Russia, in the United States, fear was growing. It was fear of the "Red Menace" or the "Red Scare." Many Americans feared a Marxist revolution would come to America. New immigrants from Europe, particularly Eastern Europe and Italy were often receptive to leftist propaganda. The leftists, however, never really gained a foothold because the rise of organized labor blunted the revolutionary fervor. In short, American businesses adapted. Still, on university campuses around the U.S., the cutting edge of political thought centered on the great collectivist experiment going on in Russia.
To bring Americans a bird's eye view of what was happening in Russia, the New York Times assigned a journalist named Walter Duranty to cover the progress of the Russian Revolution. Duranty filed news accounts accentuating the positive and to his everlasting discredit, all but ignoring the negative. The trouble was, the negative Duranty either played down or ignored entirely was so monstrous, it was clear he was acting as a propaganda tool for Stalin.
Crimes of the Bolsheviks
Duranty ignored the deliberate and intentional starvation of as many as 11 million Kulak peasant farmers, an atrocity rivalling the Nazi Holocaust of European Jewry in its immensity. The New York Times still displays Duranty's Pulitzer Prize in its headquarters offices in New York City. The prize was awarded before it was learned that Duranty was a fraud.
Duranty's reports from Russia were followed closely by academics, who were excited to know of the revolutionary progress and successes. Although viewed with hostility in the halls of American government as a subversive ideology, antagonism toward Russian Marxism faded completely when the United States found itself allied with Russia after Hitler declared war on the United States in December 1941.
Who was Walter Duranty?
At that moment, many of those left wing university intellectuals as well as others who were just plain, old, pro-Russian Marxists, found their way into the US government in various roles to help defeat Nazism. Immediately after the defeat of Nazi Germany, the US found itself with tons of pro-Russian Marxists all throughout the institutions of government, placed there by the FDR and Truman Administrations. These were people who were favorably disposed toward Stalinist Russia and many of them were current or former members of the Communist Party of the United States. Others were recruited as spies. But all of them were Democrats.
Almost immediately after the war ended, Russia and the United States became Cold War enemies. In 1948, a former American communist and spy for Russia, Whittaker Chambers, revealed that a vast network of Russian spies existed in the United States. Richard Nixon, a California Congressman at the time, listened to what Chambers had to say and what he said was explosive.
Chambers accused a Truman Administration official in the State Department, Alger Hiss, of being a Soviet Russian spy. The accusation mattered a great deal because Hiss accompanied FDR to his meeting with Stalin and Churchill at Yalta, where the construct of post-war Europe was being discussed and decided. Truman also appointed Hiss to draft the UN Charter.
The accusation that a Soviet Russian spy was that close to the President of the United States caused a political earthquake, resulting in an avalanche of cries of partisanship and character assassination directed at both Chambers and Nixon.
Knowing this was political dynamite, Democrats began to line up in defense of Alger Hiss's loyalty to the United States. Among those Democrats attesting to Hiss's loyalty were two sitting Supreme Court Justices, one past Democrat Presidential candidate and one future Presidential candidate, Adlai Stevenson.
The Democrats went to the mat for Hiss, sealing Nixon's reputation as one of the worst and most cynical villains in US political history for condemning an "innocent man" as a disloyal American. Except, there was one problem.
IT WAS ALL TRUE!
Hiss was indeed a spy for Russia. Although the question of his guilt remained unsettled and was debated for decades, after the fall of the USSR, old KGB documents revealed Alger Hiss was indeed a spy for Russia. The damage to the Democratic Party did not end there. Subsequent to the Hiss Affair, Senator Joseph McCarthy held hearings in 1954, accusing many dozens of State Department officals along with many prominent people in business and entertainment of being Communists, loyal to Russia. Although McCarthy did accuse many people later shown to be totally innocent of any disloyalty, while holding leftist or even Marxist political views, those same KGB documents, made available in the mid-1990s, also confirmed that dozens and dozens of those he accused, all of whom were Democrats, were indeed spying for Russia.
The Venona Secrets
US News & World Report: Declassified Docs reveal KGB Spies in US
Even to this day, the news media refuses to tell the entire truth about Hiss or McCarthy. To this day, despite the existence of incontrovertible evidence of Hiss's guilt, Democrats playing on the ignorance of Americans, continue to defend Alger Hiss and condemn Whittaker Chambers, Richard Nixon and Joseph McCarthy, who were guilty of only zealously defending the United States, showing great courage and patriotism.
Blacklisted by History by M. Stanton Evans
Witness by Whittaker Chambers
At this juncture, it is fair to point out that the Democratic Party is not pro-Russian, per se. What I hope I am making clear here is that the Democratic Party has been a home for those harboring pro-Russian sentiments. From the 1920s through the 1950s, those sentiments were clearly ideological. But in 1960, America elected a vehemently anti-communist and therefore, anti-Russian President, John F Kennedy, who was a Democrat. He was a true profile in courage, especially during the Cuban Missile Crisis. So, it's rather ironic that his assassin, Lee Harvey Oswald, a former Marine, who turned Communist, defected to Russia, marrying a Russian woman, returning to the United States, where he murdered President Kennedy. It now seems almost like COSMIC KARMA for the Democratic Party.
As we moved through the 60s, 70s and 80s, left wing, pro-Russian, pro-Soviet extremism became prevalent on both college campuses and in the media. For example, during the 1960s, much of campus rioting was instigated by pro-Russian groups aligning themselves with the Democratic Party. This also carried on through the 1970s. Political parties in the US, which at least tangentially aligned themselves with the Democratic Party had Russian sponsors and were aligned with the policies of the Soviet Union. One example: The Socialist Workers Party, which got its orders directly from Moscow. Russian involvement with Democrats became more pronounced during the 1980s under President Reagan.
While Reagan was President, Russian sponsored movements like "No Nukes" came to fruition. It argued in favor of the Russian position regarding the placement of Pershing II nuclear missiles in Western Europe. Also, the burgeoning environmental movement was secretly funded by Russian interests as a way to keep the US out of the market as a supplier of oil and natural gas, two commodities Russia needs and depends on greatly. Then, of course, there was Ted Kennedy's appeal to Yuri Andropov, the leader of the USSR at the time. Kennedy was hoping to enlist Andropov's cooperation in defeating Reagan in the 1984 election. Kennedy's outreach was an act of treachery, but Reagan won re-election easily, taking 49 of 50 states.
All of this was done to undermine the power and influence of the United States and in every case, found its most vocal support in the Democrat Party.
Soviet Influence on Peace Movement
Newsweek: Putin is Funding Green Groups to discredit natural gas
Russian-funded environmental group gave millions to anti-fracking groups
It should disturb every American when a foreign power, be it friend or foe, attempts to insinuate themselves into our electoral process, but it should not be altogether unexpected. The United States is the greatest and most powerful country in the world. We should be prepared for others to interfere in our elections.
But before they can interfere in our elections, we should take note of how they are interfering in our political system in other ways as I have outlined here.
Russian interference didn't begin in 2016 and it won't end in 2018. Questions regarding Bill and Hillary Clinton's relationship with Russians remain unanswered. The approval of a deal sending 20% of America's uranium ore and the timing of a $150 million "contribution" to the Clinton Foundation, along with vast sums for speeches given in Russia, deserve as much or more attention than the strained effort to find collusion between the Trump campaign and Russians. If links exist, let us see the evidence. But if we are left with only our suspicions in the absence of evidence, then we ought to have the courage to leave those suspicions wanting.
The Democratic Party for nearly 100 years has never been so ferociously anti-Russian as they are now. It is obvious that their ferocity is fueled by political expediency more than it is by a search for the truth.
Just as it was for Walter Duranty.
Just as it was for Alger Hiss.
Just as it was for Ted Kennedy.