American Thinker | Paul Kengor | Jun. 13, 2008
Since literally the founding of the American Communist Party in 1919, the extreme left — specifically, the communists — have relied upon genuine liberals to be dupes, or suckers, to help further their cause. Here’s how it typically worked: the communists would engage in some sort of work or agenda, very focused, and which they would be prepared to publicly deny. Anyone who has done any work with or on communists, from New York City to Moscow, can speak at length about how they operated with deceit. As Vladimir Lenin had said, in a favorite quote cited often by Ronald Reagan, the only morality that communists recognized was that which furthered their interests.
At some point as the communists pursued their intentions, someone or some group — usually conservatives or moderate Republicans — would catch on and blow the whistle. When the alarm was sounded, the communists typically would flat-out lie about whatever they were doing: claiming not to be guilty of the charges, but rather victims of right-wing paranoia. For this, they relied upon gullible liberals — non-communist liberals — to join them in attacking their accusers on the right.
These liberals, particularly after the McCarthy period, came to detest the anti-communists on the right. These liberals were not pro-communist but anti-anti-communist. They saw the anti-communists as Neanderthals, and still do, even though the anti-communists were absolutely right about the 20th century slaughter otherwise known as Marxism-Leninism. This ongoing anti-anti-communism is immediately evident in a quick conversation with your typical liberal in the press or academia. When I lecture at universities around the country, rattling off facts about the literally unparalleled communist destruction in the 20th century — easily over 100 million people died under communism from about 1917-79 — the young people are riveted, clearly having never heard any of this in the classroom, whereas their professors roll their eyes, as if the ghost of Joe McCarthy had flown into the room and leapt inside of my body.
It is all, yes, quite bizarre, quite strange, and really requires more of a psychological explanation for which I’m not adequately trained. But the point is that this anti-anti-communism works beautifully for the true communists who rely upon liberal dupes — of whom the communists are privately contemptuous, given the liberals’ stunning naïveté.
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