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The Karl Marx sculpture in Chemnitz, Germany, August 31, 2018. (Hannibal Hanschke/Reuters)Paul Kengors The Devil and Karl Marx is superbly researched, but makes no effort to persuade the unconverted.

Per its introduction, Paul Kengors new book, The Devil and Karl Marx, deals with the grim, disturbing, militant atheism and intense anti-religious elements of Marx and other founders and practitioners of communism. The history of the last century gives Kengor no shortage of examples of these elements, and, as a superb researcher, he is well suited to the task he has set himself. The book contains almost 700 footnotes, and he is clearly well acquainted with practically every biography of Marx in print. Nary a point is made about the life of Marx, or the Soviet Union, or domestic Communist infiltration, without citations from primary or secondary sources (in most cases, both).

The great virtue of the book is the attempt it makes to correct those who would separate Marx the man from the evils ushered in by Marxism. Kengors point of departure is the observation made by Aristotle that men start revolutionary changes for reasons connected with their private lives. He sets out to show that the salient features of Marxist ideology are each and all putrid emanations from Marxs miserable, morally destitute private life. But he doesnt devote any significant space in the book to a forensic and dispassionate deconstruction of Marxs ideas; he merely contents himself with illustrating Marxs many flaws and implying that Communism can be explained in terms of those flaws alone. In so doing, he leaves himself open to the critique of those who would point out that an idea cant be refuted by simply observing or explaining its historical origins. So an extra chapter detailing how the ruinous results of Marxist ideology flow ineluctably from its intellectual premises, quite apart from the manifold defects of Marxs personal character, would have been welcome.

Nevertheless, Kengor does make a strong case that the philosophical output of a man who called for the ruthless criticism of all that exists might have been born of considerable personal unhappiness. It is not surprising, for example, that Marx, who once wrote Blessed is he who has no family in a letter to a friend about his own domestic unhappiness, also included the weakening of family ties as part of the path to his envisioned utopia. His inability to play well with others also seems to have prefigured the practice of his ideological progeny:

Marx was often dictatorial with his editorial staff and with his Communist League and Party. Payne chronicles what he aptly terms Marxs purges, a haunting bellwether for how various Communist Parties, from Russia to America to worldwide, would deal ruthlessly with internal dissenters who did not always toe the Party line.

The inconsistency of Marxs conduct with his ideology is, however, even more powerful than the consistency Kengor traces. Marx was a rank hypocrite, devoid of any integrity. He spent an extraordinary amount of time traipsing across Europe to estranged relatives, attempting to scrounge money off of them, since he refused to get a job. He was only too delighted when his mother, for whom he had no affection, died and left him 6,000 franks. His attitude toward the woman who gave birth to him is encapsulated by this line from a letter he sent to his wife, Jenny: She does not want to hear a word about money but she destroyed the I.O.U.s that I made out to her; that is the only pleasant result of the two days I spent with her. As Kengor observes, this flies completely in the face of Article 3 of the Communist Manifesto, which calls for the abolition of all rights of inheritance.

Marx and Jenny also retained a live-in nanny, bequeathed to them by her family. They never paid this woman, named Lenchen. She functioned as an indentured slave, upon whose body Marx would slake his sexual appetites when his wife was ill. The reader would do well to remember Lenchen the next time they hear something about the exploitation of the proletariat quoted from Das Kapital.

The books novelty is found mainly in its focus on Marxs work as a poet and a playwright, which, Kengor claims, displays a wicked affection for the figure of Satan. I have to confess, I dont find this argument particularly compelling. Its true that the Prince of Darkness does make several appearances in Marxs creative work, but, as Kengor concedes, there is no real evidence of any interest in the occult or in Satanism as such in these works. What we find instead is the same affection for the figure of Satan that tends to fire the imaginations of most violent political revolutionaries. Marxs one-time friend and ally, Mikhail Bakunin, eulogized Lucifer as the eternal rebel, the first freethinker, and the emancipator of worlds. Even John Milton, himself a devout Puritan, could not wholly resist the literary allure held out by the Devil to political insurgents, as Paradise Lost amply demonstrates. Marxs similar literary interest doesnt tell us anything we didnt already know about the man: He resented the givenness of the world and sought with fiendish fervor to remake it in his own image.

Although Kengors skill as a researcher is considerable, and the new historiographic ground he breaks is interesting despite the tenuous conclusions it leads him to, his book is in the end a failure, mainly because it exhibits one of the besetting sins of present-day conservative publishing: It is pitched at an incredibly narrow and siloed right-wing audience that is bound to already agree with everything Kengor has to tell them. Put simply, if you are not already a conservative Roman Catholic, youre unlikely to get very far into this book before putting it down. No attempt is made to convince people who fall outside this demographic of the authors thesis. Marxists, or even moderately progressive readers, will be so turned off by Kengors insults and his childish dismissals of his ideological opponents that they will rightly dismiss it out of hand. We come across fan service for the already-converted and bad writing besides in lines such as as usual, however, Marx was far from finished venting the acrid recesses of his bitter brain, and admirers of Marx will surely want to dispute that, given their fealty to their beloved founding father, for whom they make excuses for everything, and modern Marxist oddballs will find reasons to defend this nightmarish trashin a way, of course, they would never do if, say, a Republican president had penned such pernicious claptrap.

This is not to say that theres anything inherently wrong with converts, of course; the history of the conservative movement in America is littered with them. Some of our brightest luminaries have been socialists or progressives who were mugged by reality, to use Irving Kristols memorable phrase. Ronald Reagan, Whittaker Chambers, Milton Friedman, and Thomas Sowell all began their political lives on the left before being won over to the right, and we can always use more like them but Mr. Kengors book wont produce any.

One of the most important principles of Sun Tzus Art of War is that its important to provide ones enemy with a golden bridge to retreat across. In intellectual terms, this means giving your opponent the respect necessary for them to climb down from their position and change their mind. They have to be able to do this while keeping their self-image and their dignity intact. Otherwise, they will simply dig in their heels. No human being is going to admit that his political aims are wicked and that his conscience is therefore corrupt. Consequently, its always advisable to at least attribute noble motives to ones ideological opponents. Unless they are particularly depraved, the reason that most Marxists want to see their political agenda enacted is probably not that they think its evil. They want to see it enacted because they think it is good. Conservatives must work to show them that they are mistaken, and that there are better means to fundamentally good and decent ends.

Kengors book shows no interest in that vital work. Take the following passage. After quoting extensively from a Communist writer, Kengor dismisses the content of the quotation out of hand without making any argument:

This, of course, is relativistic pabulum. It is the sophistry that, unfortunately, has evolved into the modern secular-progressive zeitgeist that dominates America and the wider West today. It is the childish philosophical silliness that has enabled modern leftists to redefine everything from life to marriage to gender to sexuality to bathrooms. When man makes himself his own Sun that is, his own God then he destroys his world.

Any writer worth his salt knows that the way to convince a reader of something say, that a given text is relativistic pabulum is to describe, explain, and take apart the opposing argument in such a way that the reader says to him or herself, Ah, I see. Thats some relativistic pabulum right there. Kengor doesnt care to show the reader what to think; he simply tells the reader what to think. Without addressing the claims of the text in question, he has a verbal hissy-fit about the modern Left, punctuated by a bald and pietistic theological assertion.

This last point needs expanding on, because the way the author employs his own Catholic faith throughout the book is also a case study in what not to do when seeking to persuade. Kengors references to Roman Catholicism leave an impression of expectation that the reader already shares his prior religious commitments. For instance, take Kengors invocation of Christs temptation in the wilderness:

As the two debated, the Living Bread told the tempter that man lives by every word from the mouth of God. Marx took not the side of Christ on that one. Of course, Marx rejected Christ in total. Communists are atheists after all.

What is the reader who doesnt already believe that Jesus is the Living Bread to make of this? And why the complete conflation of atheists and Communists? Doesnt Kengor want to convince his atheist readers that they, too, should abhor Marx and Marxism?

The book is also chock-full of appeals to papal encyclicals, writings, and statements condemning socialism and emphasizing its incompatibility with the Catholic faith. But the author fails to demonstrate why anyone who isnt a Catholic should care about what any of these popes or bishops have to say. The authority of their statements, as presented by Kengor, is not derived from the independent merits of their historical analyses but from the fact that they are men of authority within the church, which, again, cant mean much to anyone who doesnt share his faith. The books conclusion includes an appeal to Pope Pius Xs critique of the many roads of modernism. Kengor then sums up the Popes warnings in his own words:

We face a terrific danger as each and every person renders unto itself his or her own individual interpretation of truth and reality. Eventually, each person becomes his or her own god. Soon enough, it ends in Karl Marxs ultimate goal: the undermining if not annihilation of religion.

Theres more than a little irony involved in an author condemning the individual interpretation of truth and reality in a book. After all, why put pen to paper if not in an attempt to alter the individual readers interpretation of truth and reality? By the very end of the book, Kengor has descended into full-on homiletics, appealing to the anti-Communist Fulton Sheens predictably approving assessment of his own church:

The truth was to be found in Truth itself, in Himself. And Sheen was certain most of all that Truth existed in the Church that He, Jesus Christ, founded upon Peter, the rock upon which He built His Church. That Church would provide the foundation for surviving age after age and all the corrosive ideologies and isms and spirits that pervade it. The Church offers a constant reminder to people of the principles that do not change and which thus are those to live by, and those which will protect us from being children of our age.

As a general rule, writers should not make claims that they are unprepared to back up with explanation and evidence. Everything Kengor writes here would fit reasonably in a Catholic devotional book, but baldly asserting any of it in a political and intellectual history of Karl Marx and Communism is unprofessional and immature. Perhaps this brand of presuppositional pietism could be excused to a limited extent if it made room for all theists, or all Christians, seeking to unite them against the avowed materialism of Marx. But Kengor goes out of his way to alienate every one of his readers who is not in communion with the Bishop of Rome. First of all, the Protestant Reformation is presented as leading ineluctably to Communism:

[Marxs father] became Lutheran. It was a choice that allowed him more choices to define his own views. The son would seize upon such choices with wild abandon. . . . Thinking completely apart from the Church of Rome could pave the way for him to open the door to philosophical communism. Breaking with Rome was the break he needed to pursue atheistic communism.

Theres no attempt to back up this ludicrous assertion of a direct and immediate causal link between disbelieving the claims of the Roman church and embracing communism. Once again, Kengor confesses himself to be an opponent of thinking completely apart from the Church of Rome, something that the material conditions of the modern world all but guarantee, quite apart from the theology of the Reformation. Kengor also spills a lot of ink to establish that Protestant churches were easy targets for Communist infiltrators in America. This phenomenon is neatly contrasted with Catholics Reject the Outstretched Hand and The Catholic Worker Steps Up.

After defaming Protestantism as a staging ground for full-blown communism, forgetting all the while to mention any of the prominent Protestants who battled against Marxism in the 20th century, the author then sets about burning his bridges with Eastern Orthodoxy. Totally forgotten in the West today, he informs the reader . . .

. . . is that the Russian Orthodox Church surrendered to become a tool of the Soviet government (to quote Cianfarra) in order to unite all Christians and make Moscow the Rome of the Twentieth Century. Both the Bolshevik leadership and Russian Orthodox Church leadership alike wanted to contest Romes leadership as the primary head of the worlds Christians.

This claim is as historically illiterate as it is morally offensive. Insofar as the Orthodox Church behind the Iron Curtain accommodated itself to the Bolsheviks in light of the relentless and overwhelming persecution it experienced, it was with a view to survival, not to deposing the pope. The idea of Moscows being a Third Rome has furthermore been around since the conversion of the Slavs in the Middle Ages. It is not a Twentieth Century idea. Kengor further alienates Muslims alongside Orthodox Christians by deciding to defend, of all the things that Marx criticized, the Crusades. The Crusades, the reader is told, are greatly misunderstood and maligned to this day. The goal was to rescue those Christians and recover land and sites (such as the Holy Sepulchre) that had been theirs until Muslim invaders seized them violently. This would have been news to the Orthodox Christians of Constantinople, who were completely unperturbed by the Muslim invaders in 1204, when their city was sacked, pillaged, and burned to the ground by Roman crusaders during the Fourth Crusade.

In short, Kengors book fails to justify its own existence as a work of ideas. Virtually the only readers that it wont alienate are his fellow conservative Roman Catholics. It will undoubtedly serve to confirm the already-entrenched biases of some particularly excitable members of that demographic, but that is insufficient grounds for calling it a respectable work of political history, or even of polemics. Kengor should spend some time immersing himself in the work of C. S. Lewis. He might learn how to graft religious belief onto persuasive intellectual arguments in a winsome and non-sectarian way. If he can master that art and combine it with his remarkable prowess as a researcher, his next work will be a real treat to read.

See more here:
A Conservatives Revisionist History Aims at Marx and Misses the Mark - National Review

On September 8, 1947, federal agents walked into the midtown Manhattan office of the Hotel, Restaurant &Club Employees &Bartenders Union Local 6and arrested its president for being an undesirable alien. Michael J. Obermeier had been organizing hotel workers into asuccession of scrappy independent unions since he arrived in New York as aGerman immigrant around the time of the first World War. By the time of his arrest, he led 27,000 union members in apowerful affiliate of the American Federation of Labor.

That same day, attorneys for the CIOs Transport Workers Union Local 100 were fighting an aggressive move to deport John Santo, the unions Romanian-born organizing director. Local press asked the Deputy Commissioner of Immigration and Naturalization, Thomas Shoemaker, if these actions were apart of acrackdown. Shoemakers mild response was that the legal actions were in the normal order of business.

The truth is that they were both. The federal government was cracking down on union leaders it believed to be Communists, and it was specifically targeting activists based upon their immigration status. Dozens of arrests, prosecutions and deportation procedures were initiated against alleged Communist activists in the weeks and months that followed. Its apattern that has marked American politics for over acentury.

Anew book by lawyer and historian Julia Rose Kraut, Threat of Dissent: AHistory of Ideological Exclusion and Deportation in the United States, comprehensively lays out this long history of using the denialand even the threatened removalof citizenship in order to restrict some forms of political action.

A history of ideological exclusion

Restrictions on naturalization coincided with the advent of partisan politics, according to Kraut. Article Iof the Constitution directs Congress to establish an uniform rule of Nationalization, and the first one that Congress set, in 1790, allowed white foreigners to become citizens after just two years of residency. This liberal policy made the United States ahaven for political refugees throughout the 1790s, and they became active in American politics. The Irish fleeing British rule and French fleeing the twists and turns of their revolution tended to support Thomas Jeffersons new Democratic-Republican clubs that were critical of the Federalists drive for astrong central government.

By the end of the decade, the Federalists were frustrated by the legislative intransigence of Jeffersons party and with its many publications that were critical of them. President John Adams, aFederalist, was facing atough re-election and itching for war with France. In 1798, he signed the notorious Sedition Act into law, which made it acrime to publish material critical of the government, or the president. Less well remembered is that the Federalists also updated the Naturalization Act to greatly increase the years of residency needed to become acitizen, and passed an Alien Friends Act, which gave the president the power to deport non-citizens that he deemed athreat to the nations security.

Most of us were taught in high school that the United States ultimately survived this early test of our democracy. After all, when Adams lost to Jefferson in 1800, he peacefully transferred power, establishing anorm. The Sedition Act expired and Adams never used his expulsion powers under the Alien Friends Act. Readers of this publication, on the other hand, are all too aware that areliance on norms makes for avulnerable democracy, and ahardening of the line between citizen and resident alien leaves the latter population vulnerable to persecution. (Indeed, the reason Adams never had to use his deportation powers, Kraut shows us, is that many of Adams targeted enemies self-deported before he had the chance to do it by force.)

In the century that followed, Congress continued to make it difficult for immigrants to naturalize, but primarily for reasons of regulating the workforce, coupled with racist exclusion (mostly directed at Asian workers). Kraut does not neglect this scorched underside of our national melting pot myth, but the subjects of ideological exclusion and deportation are perhaps less well understoodeven by those on the Leftthan the fact that our immigration laws are inherently racist.

The 20th century drive to deny and revoke citizenship of dissidents began with abang. When President William McKinley was shot to death in 1901 his assassin, Leon Czolgosz, claimed to be an anarchist who drew his inspiration from alecture he attended by Emma Goldman. Although Czogolz was anatural-born citizen, anarchism was still viewed as aforeign ideology and Congress responded by voting to ban anarchists or anyone who advocated the overthrow by force or violence of the Government of the United States, language that in one form or another remains in federal immigration code.

Goldman was made notorious by the assassination that she neither called for nor condoned. But she was arevolutionary, and her writings and public speeches on anarchism and workers rights, not to mention her advocacy of free love and contraception, made her the bte noire of the law and order types who wanted to stamp out criminal anarchy. The barrier to kicking Emma Goldman out of the country, aside from the yawning gulf between philosophical anarchism and advocating real acts of violence, was that she was aU.S. citizen by marriage.

Obsessed with so-called undesirable aliens, Congress in 1906 passed alaw that for the first time allowed for the denaturalization of aperson who obtained citizenship through fraud or misrepresentation. Immigration officials almost immediately began investigating Goldmans estranged husband. Finding that he had misrepresented his age in his application for citizenship, he was denaturalized. Goldman lost her own citizenship as aresult and spent 10years restricting her travel, well-aware of how vulnerable she now was to deportation. She was eventually purged in 1919, along with 248 other foreign radicals, and deported to Russia during the first Red Scare that followed the Bolshevik revolution and (at the time) the largest strike wave in U.S. history.

Anti-communism would animate most changes to immigration law, and much of federal law enforcement, in the decades that followed. The Department of Justices Bureau of Investigation (forerunner to todays FBI) that was created to investigate potentially fraudulent immigration paperwork in 1908 transformed into adomestic spy agency focused on going after underground Communists in the 1920s. In 1940, Congress again revised immigration and naturalization code, and passed the Smith Act, making it afederal crime to knowingly or willfully advocate, abet, advise, or teach the duty, necessity, desirability, or propriety of overthrowing or destroying any government in the United States by force or violence, or to belong to an organization that did. This included publishing, public speaking and organizing. The Smith Act further required foreign nationals to be fingerprinted and to sign an affidavit regarding the date and place of entry to the United States, the intended length of stay, the activities he or she expected to be engaged in, criminal record (if any) and other information that the Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS) might request.

This 20th century sedition law was drafted in response to the INSs inability to deport Harry Bridges, the longshore workers leader who led the 1934 strike that snarled shipping up and down the West Coast and led to ageneral strike in San Francisco. Although Bridges denied belonging to the Communist Party (CP), he was seen as athreat to commerce and national security. Bridges, who emigrated from Australia in 1920, was vulnerable to deportation and the House Un-American Activities Committee pressed the INS to begin deportation proceedingsunder the older Anarchist Exclusion languagein 1938.AJune 1939 Supreme Court decision, Strecker vs. Kessler, narrowly ruled that the exclusion language could only be applied to someone who was an active member of an organization that fit its definition of one that advocated the violent or forceful overthrow of the government. Bridges was definitely not an active member of the CP at the time, denied ever having been amember, and the prosecution could never prove otherwise. He walked out afree man.

The new law added 10years of retroactivity to the affidavit required in anaturalization application, regarding membership in arevolutionary anti-government organization. This is why the infamous question in congressional hearings and other investigations was, Are you now or have you ever been amember of the Communist Party? It was atrap. Answer honestly, and you could go to jail under the Smith Act. Lie, and you could be denaturalized and deported under the Nationality Act. Michael J. Obermeier, the New York hotel workers leader, was one of 41 Communist labor organizers arrested in the initial crackdown of 1947. By 1949, Kraut writes, the number had swelled to 135 and the Attorney General, Tom C. Clark, maintained alist of 2,100 foreign Communists who he wanted to deport.

Are you now or have you ever been

Michael J. Obermeier is not one of the stories that Kraut tells in Threat of Dissent. Hes my research subject. Over adecade since filing my first Freedom of Information Act requests, Ive been studying his FBI file and those of his comrades. Without knowing the complete dark history that Krauts book compellingly brings into the light, it was clear to me that the FBI was prioritizing investigatory resources based upon the immigration status of its targets. Obermeier was fingered in 1942 for work he was doing among German-Americans in support of the Allied war effort. Within two years, FBI agents had interviewed adozen ex-comrades and had dug up details on numerous trips in and out of the country in the years between his first arrival in the country and his (unsuccessful) 1939 naturalization application, and were building the case to deport him.

By contrast, the FBI began investigating Obermeiers long-time organizing partner, Jay Rubin, in late 1943. President of the NY Hotel Trades Council, Rubin was allied with anumber of conservative AFL craft unions and maintained stable bargaining relationships within the hospitality industry. More importantly, from the FBIs perspective, he became anaturalized citizen in 1929. He was added to the Security Index, alist of key individuals to be arrested if the government ever decided to completely suppress the Communist Party. But the FBI mostly kept tabs on him, and only briefly considered denaturalizing him in the late 1950s when acouple of agents convinced themselves that Rubin had only pretended to quit the CP in 1950.

Gertrude Lane, the General Organizer (and, later, Secretary-Treasurer) of the Hotel, Restaurant &Club Employees &Bartenders Union Local 6, was anatural born citizen and graduate of Hunter College. Despite evidence that she served on the CPs National Committee, she was dismissed as not currently of sufficient interest to add to the Bureaus Security Index. Instead, the New York office mildly collected her birth, education and voter records, known aliases and whereaboutsand passively accepted tips from snitches.

As with the Alien and Sedition Acts of 1798, were taught in school that the postwar Red Scare was atest of our democracy that we ultimately passed. After all, the overreach of the Smith Act was eventually blunted by the Supreme Court, and today, the Communist Party can operate in the open as alegal organization once again. But peoples lives were destroyed in the process, and immigrants were singled out for targeted harassment. More importantly, the principles of ideological exclusion and denaturalization are still enshrined in the law under the exclusive purview of the executive branch.

A good chunk of the latter half of Threat of Dissent is focused on the Nixon and Reagan administrations efforts to deny entry visas to scientists and public intellectuals who belonged to socialist or antifascist organizations, or who supported Palestinian statehood or opposed South African apartheid. This includes the ridiculously petty efforts to deny the ex-Beatles member John Lennon avisa renewal because of his public opposition to the war against Vietnam, and to kick the famed actor Charlie Chaplin out of the country for thumbing his nose at the House Un-American Activities Committee. These cases, writes Kraut, served as areminder of the importance of discretion and of who holds that discretion to determine the fate of foreigners seeking to enter the United States, as well as the potential for abuse of discretion under the law.

Indeed, that executive discretion is at the heart of President Trumps so-called Muslim Ban. While obviously racist in his intentions, his executive order drew its authority from Red Scare-era ideological exclusion laws and the flimsy argument that visitors from majority-Muslim nations are predisposed towards terrorism. Now consider Trumps recent efforts to declare the loose network of antifascist organizers a domestic terrorist organization. He wants to tap into the surveillance and civil forfeiture powers afforded him under the PATRIOT Act (which Democrats voted to renew during Trumps term). Just wait until Stephen Miller tells him he can also deport antifascists who arent natural-born citizens!

If Joe Biden is able to defeat Trump in November, progressives should treat his presidency with the same level of fear and loathing as we did the Trump and Bush administrations. The basic democratic rights of citizenship should not be the playthings of presidents. When we are finally able to turn our attention towards shutting down Stephen Millers toddler concentration camps and establishing a pathway to legal citizenship, we also have to insist upon irrevocable citizenship as aright.

See the article here:
A Brief History of the U.S. Government's Targeting of Left-Wing Immigrants - In These Times

Chiranjeevi made his debut in 1978 with Pranam Khareedu, in the role of a man who worked for an exploitative feudal landlord. The film ends with Chiranjeevi stabbing the landlord, as the entire village revolts against him. Over the years, Chiranjeevi, one of the biggest stars of Telugu cinema, went on to play the underdog in many films. In the past couple of decades, however, in line with changes in dominant themes in mainstream Telugu cinema, he has mostly played more powerful characters, including that of the benevolent feudal lord Indrasena Reddy in Indra (2002), one of his biggest hits, and more recently in his last film to release, Sye Raa Narasimha Reddy (2019).

In his upcoming film Acharya, Chiranjeevi is set to play a left-wing revolutionary. Director Koratala Siva has described the film as A Comrade's quest for Dharma. Venu Udugulas Virata Parvam is another upcoming Telugu film based on radical left politics, with Priyamani and Sai Pallavi playing Naxalites and Rana Daggubati in the role of a policeman, according to reports.

Telugu cinema has a significant history of films portraying the politics of the Left, including the Naxalite movement in the state. This loosely defined bracket sometimes called Erra cinema or Red cinema includes a few well-known or acclaimed films like Goutam Ghoses Maa Bhoomi (1979), Dhavala Satyams Yuvatharam Kadilindi (1980), R Narayana Murthys Erra Sainyam (1994) and Dasari Narayana Raos Osey Ramulamma (1997). Yet, many such films, while certainly carrying political and cultural significance, have not exactly been part of mainstream Telugu cinema.

The year 2019 saw the release of two major Telugu films set in the backdrop of Left politics on college campuses: George Reddy and Dear Comrade. With Acharya and Virata Parvam underway this year, we look at how the communist movement and the politics of the Left have been depicted in mainstream Telugu films in recent years.

The Red Star

Bharat Kammas Dear Comrade tells the story of Bobby (Vijay Deverakonda) and Lilly (Rashmika Mandanna), which begins in Kakinada in the backdrop of student protests against fee hikes. Bobby is inspired by his grandfather, Comrade Suryam. There are a few posters and portraits of communist leaders, and many old books in the students union building. But we are not sure if Bobby ever reads any of them.

To Bobby, being a comrade means fighting for what you care about. He is a hot-headed student, and the campus politics simply becomes a vehicle to display Vijay Deverakondas Arjun Reddy aesthetic lashing out over bad guys or breakups, smoking while bleeding, taking vacations for soul-searching etc. His involvement in student politics doesnt do much besides reminding us of the film which marked Vijays arrival as a star.

The only red flag Lilly sees is Bobbys violent behaviour, and she leaves him because of this. On his grandfathers advice, Bobby goes to Ladakh to deal with the break-up, and all the solitude and introspection apparently teach him to be a 'real comrade'.

Bobby returns to find Lilly depressed, having given up her promising cricketing career because of a traumatic incident. His aggression returns when he finds out that Lilly was sexually harassed, and he's hellbent on getting justice for her.

Lilly does object to his saviour complex, and the film does give her character a lot of importance and agency in general. She eventually stands up to her harasser on her own, and seems to find it cathartic. Until then, Bobby is rather callous in pushing Lilly to speak up. He even calls her a loser for hesitating. He does the same with a classmate at the beginning of the film, chiding her after she is driven to attempt suicide because of a stalker. After supposedly transforming into a true comrade, thanks to the mountains, you would think Bobby would have a better understanding of how power operates, and would know better than to yell at a woman to be brave.

His insensitive coercion underlines the male saviours failure to perceive Lillys trauma. Lilly even puts her harasser, father and Bobby in the same box for not respecting her agency, and says You (men) are all the same. Star-driven films are often packed with such dissonances, especially when the hero fights on behalf of the oppressed while belonging to the oppressor community. Dear Comrade incidentally also takes a jibe (accidentally?) at the criticism of Left parties in the state for being filled with members of dominant, land-owning castes. When Lilly asks her uncle what comrade means, he replies: Kamma plus Reddy equals Comrade.

Story continues

Altogether, the film doesnt gain much from Bobby or his familys Marxist or Leninist leanings. Grandpa might as well have been a follower of Stalin from the 2006 Chiranjeevi film and advised his grandson to run a pyramid scheme of kind acts. Bobby and Lilly would have still had the same ending, with her courage attributed to the heros credit for her courage.

Trivikrams Jalsa (2008) is another star-driven film where the hero toys with communist politics. Sanjay Sahoo (Pawan Kalyan), a postgraduate from Osmania University, belongs to a poor, marginalised family from a village in Karimnagar. As a child, he loses his brother for lack of healthcare. As an adult, he loses both his parents after his father, a farmer, dies by suicide. In his pain, he lashes out at the henchmen of a local landlord over a minor incident. Following a generic rant against capitalists and excessive wealth, he learns that his anger is a result of years of oppression, and joins the Naxalite movement.

He quickly moves up the ranks in his troop, but feels conflicted with some of his fellow troop members beliefs. For instance, when a comrade says that collateral damage is an acceptable part of the movement, Sanjay asks, If innocent people die in a war fought on behalf of innocent people, whats the use?

He surrenders in the aftermath of a deadly police firing, and inexplicably returns to a life of urban comforts. He eventually settles scores with the village landlord, but his anger at systemic inequality seems to have fizzled out, and revolution is long forgotten. In Dear Comrade too, Bobby seems to limit his fight to achieve justice for his partner Lilly alone. Her friend Rubina who tried to complain against Lillys harasser and was physically assaulted by him as a consequence is pushed to the sidelines.

In both these films, the male leads stardom overshadows any clear explanation of their politics.

As a biopic, George Reddy inevitably worships its hero. While there is an emphasis on Georges politics and views, they remain blurred under the infatuated gaze through which his story is told by director Jeevan Reddy.

Maya a lovesick fellow student claims to understand Georges actions through Che Guevara and Bhagat Singhs texts (recommended by George). But the film features more Hindu mythological references (quoted by one of the bad guys henchman) than any well-grounded references to Marxist thought.

We see George leading protests against caste discrimination on campus, and engaging in a few heroic fights. Soon, the protests are extended to include national issues like agrarian crisis. But the film doesn't show us how the movement grew so big, and how George managed to organise so many students across campuses.

Dear Comrades

In one noteworthy exchange with a Naxalite leader, George Reddy in the film talks about drawing inspiration from the Srikakulam peasant uprising and seems open to joining the Naxalite movement in the future.

In Virata Parvam, Priyamani plays the role of Comrade Bharathakka. Describing her role, Rana Daggubati wrote, She believed that even a huge crisis could lead to a great peace.

Foreshadowed by Krishna Vamsis Sindhooram (1997), more recent films like Virodhi (2011) and Dalam (2013) told stories that were empathetic towards Naxalites and their reasons for joining the movement. But these characters are almost always doomed.

In Neelakantas Virodhi, the protagonist is a principled journalist named Jayadev (Srikanth). A Naxalite troop plans to abduct a corrupt Member of Parliament Jangaiah, who is illegally mining the tribal lands in his constituency. They accidentally kill him, and abduct Jayadev instead. The troop leader, Gogi, plans to use Jayadev as a bargaining chip to escape the police while returning to their basecamp.

Jayadev gives off strong centrist vibes, and believes in doing whatevers best for the country. Held captive by the Gogi dalam (troop), he walks with them through the Nallamala forest, forming friendships with the members while also poking holes in their movement.

Jayadev convinces Lakshman, a sensitive college dropout, that he will never get used to killing; that he doesnt have to agree with his leader Gogi who has way fewer qualms about taking lives. Jayadev also persuades Maina, a Dalit girl who was raped and had her family torched by her upper caste boyfriends family, that she can find love again with Lakshman, and lead a normal life outside of the movement. Gogi reminds Maina of their fight to create a casteless, classless society, but fails to convince her and Lakshman to stay back.

Gogi, a political science graduate, has spent nearly 10 years in the movement, and broken out of his former troop to start his own. Other troop leaders feel Gogi is polluting the movement, that he only has ambition devoid of ideology. Out of conceit, Gogi refuses to set Jayadev free, and ends up endangering his comrades lives.

The rest of the troop slowly comes to see that what they saw as a serious commitment to the movement was actually Gogis ruthless craving for power. Hari, the last standing honest member of the troop, rejects Jayadevs suggestion to surrender and walks off into the forest. Jayadev returns home as the Leftist poet Sri Sris words ring in the background, suggesting that he is not sure of his binary worldview anymore, where he saw insurgency as a misguided path.

Dalam, also directed by Jeevan Reddy, tells the story of a group of Naxalites who quit their troop and surrender. The group is led by Shatru, who cant see the point of all the sacrifice anymore. With his close aide Abhi, and a few others, he surrenders, only to be sent to police custody for a month. Cops torture Abhi until Shatru agrees to turn his group into hitmen, cooperating with the police while working in proxy for an MLA.

Dalam does not brood too seriously over the surrendered Naxalites motives for joining the movement, or for leaving. Instead, it shows the vulnerability that haunts Shatrus troop before, during and after their involvement in the movement. Ladda, a new encounter-crazy cop arrives in town, and Shatrus dalam is left without support from the MLA or the police department.

Through the film, the silly characters of the dalam grow on us, so that their murders hurt. The bloodthirsty cops actions are shown as a sadistic, gratuitous power trip. SP Ladda, however, is just the poster boy of police brutality in the film.

Earlier in the film, Shatru says that if a gun had a brain, it would be like Abhi. After losing everyone he loves, Abhi joins the Naxalite movement again, and goes on to avenge all the brutal murders by Ladda.

Sindhooram andVirodhionly show the downfall of the movements leaders who deviate from a communist ideology towards vigilantism or despotism. In Dalam however, the movement gives Abhi his only realistic shot at justice.

While Dalam takes a clear stand on police brutality, in Virodhi, Neelakanta presents an intellectual debate between a journalist and political science graduates turned Naxalites, with the cops simply doing their job in the backdrop. With reports suggesting that Virata Parvam will show a romance between a Naxalite (Sai Pallavi) and a cop (Rana Daggubati), it will be interesting to see how Venu Udugula presents sociopolitical realities with his literary sensibilities.

As for the Megastar, whether he plays a worker or a landlord, a farmer or teacher, don or army officer, the politics and principles of the film are usually molded in his star persona. Whether Acharya will do the same, or balance the stars blaze with its politics (like Rajinikanth's Kaala for instance), remains to be seen.

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'Pranam Khareedu' to 'Acharya': Communism in Telugu cinema and the red hero - Yahoo India News

Poland was partitioned in the 18th century, contested by rival imperial powers through the 19th, invaded by the Nazis and Soviets in 1939 and occupied by the latter for nearly 50 years, during which Stalin and his Communist henchmen murdered the Poles greatest war heroes and maintained a stifling grip on political, social and economic life.

That is the tragic history of my homeland. (And I didnt even touch on the devastating Swedish invasion of the 1600s. Yes, the Swedes.) Yet the Poles also have a glorious history, and among our most glorious moments remains the Battle of Warsaw, whose centenary we mark this month. Exactly 100 year ago, the Poles, then newly independent, achieved a startling victory over the fierce and fanatical Bolsheviks and, in the process, saved the West from Communisms advancing forces.

It should be the task of the political writers, wrote the English diplomat Edgar Vincent DAbernon in 1930, to explain to European opinion that Poland saved Europe in 1920.

Perhaps Im wrong, but I suspect the average European or American adult wouldnt have the first idea what this sentence refers to. The great historian of Poland Norman Davies remembered that, as a history student at Oxford, he never heard a word about the Polish-Soviet War; it had no place on the intellectual radar screens of British historians.

Its generally forgotten that before Stalin encouraged the Bolsheviks to pursue a policy of socialism in a single country, they had had more international ambitions. We staked our chances on world revolution, said Lenin in 1920, and while he thought much of this revolution would arise from spontaneous working-class enthusiasm, he and his followers werent above using military muscle to bring it about.

By the later months of 1919, the Soviets had pushed westward into Eastern Europe, exploiting the retreat of the Germans in World War I to overpower local independence movements and proclaim Soviet republics in nations like Latvia and Belarus.

Meanwhile, the brooding, heavily bewhiskered Polish strongman Jozef Pisudski sought to establish an alliance of independent states in the region to withstand the fury of the new Soviet juggernaut. Allied with Ukrainian independence fighters, Pisudski sent Polish troops into Ukraine.

With the Red Army still occupied by its own (Russian) civil war, the Poles reached Kiev. Under the brilliant and brutal Russian military leader Mikhail Tukhachevsky, however, the more powerful Bolshevik troops drove the Poles back and into their homeland. The Bolsheviks were jubilant. The Marxist revolutionary Nikolai Bukharin fantasized about taking the war right up to London and Paris. Felix Dzerzhinsky, head of the feared Soviet security agency, believed the working masses of Warsaw were awaiting the arrival of the Red Army.

Whether the Red Army would have reached London is arguable. But it would at least have posed a serious threat to a World War I-battered Germany, France and England. Mercifully for Europe, a Polish counterattack threw the Bolsheviks into chaos. The Red Army had been weakened by poor decision-making from Stalin and others; the Russians had also underestimated the patriotism, determination and intelligence of the Poles, who, with the assistance of American friends, forced them back and then cut off their escape route.

The Soviets sued for peace and miserably abandoned their dreams of overpowering Europe. Lenin deeply lamented the loss. We remember the battle as the Miracle of Vistula, for the river that flows through Warsaw.

The Miracle on the Vistula is a reminder of the Wests enduring debt to an underdog nation too often betrayed by the great powers. But it also teaches a universal lesson: namely, that there is glory in standing up to overwhelming odds and in sacrificing oneself for a greater cause.

Jacek Saryusz-Wolski, a Polish member of the European Parliament since 2004, played a central role in Polands accession to NATO and the European Union as a state minister in the 1990s.

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100 years ago, Poland saved the West from Communism - New York Post

Statue of Franco in Santander.13-08-2020EFE

Touch, I suppose you could say. One awaits with interest what the Palma councillor for social justice, feminism and LGTBI, Sonia Vivas, has to say on the matter. One would have thought that she would have a view. As noted recently, it was Sonia Vivas who proposed that the Avenida Joan March in Palma be renamed after Pilar Snchez, who was murdered by the Falange in 1936.

The Spanish Association of Christian Lawyers was founded in 2008. Its aims include the legal defence of religious freedom, of life, of the family, and of all citizens whose rights and liberties have been harmed for reasons of their faith.

The association is against euthanasia, permissive abortion policies, and destructive indoctrination of gender ideology. In terms of religious freedom, it means Christianity; its website doesnt make explicit reference to other religions. The association, I think one can say, can be defined as being conservative and right-wing. And it has every right to be conservative and right-wing.

Just as it also has every right to question ideologies and indeed the naming of streets. If the left can promote changes to street names from those associated with Francoism, e.g. Francos banker, Joan March, then the right can call for changes to street names of those associated with Republicanism at the time prior to and during the Civil War.

Administrative procedures have been initiated by the association in certain cities of Spain. It wants street names and monuments dedicated to communists to be removed. Among these names are Dolores Ibrruri. She joined the Spanish Communist Party in 1920 when she was 25. She became famous for her slogan - They shall not pass - during the battle for Madrid in late 1936. She went into exile, only returning to Spain in 1977.

Another name is that of Francisco Largo Caballero, who succeeded Pablo Iglesias as the leader of both PSOE and the UGT union in 1925. He was to become prime minister of Spain after the Civil War started.

He fled to France, was arrested by the Nazis, held in a concentration camp and died in Paris in 1946. Abogados Cristianos cite a resolution approved by the European Parliament last year. This was on the importance of historical memory. (In Spain, the PSOE government of Jos Luis Rodrguez Zapatero from 2004 to 2011 introduced the law of historical memory, an aspect of which was the removal of Francoist symbols, e.g. street names.) The resolution urged European Union countries to condemn the crimes of Nazism and Stalinism and it advised that the existence of public spaces which extol totalitarian regimes facilitates the distortion of historical facts.

The association is therefore arguing that symbols in public spaces, e.g. street names or monuments, which stem from Stalinist totalitarianism, should be removed, as these names were authors of religious persecution and of the rape and murder of people for the practice of their faith during the period of the Spanish Second Republic and the Civil War. Priests, nuns and other citizens were murdered for religious reasons. Why, therefore, should individuals such as Dolores Ibrruri and Francisco Largo Caballero be honoured?

This is contrary to what has been established by EU resolutions and Spains law of historical memory, which does recognise that not all sins and evils were perpetrated by Franco Nationalists alone.

I defend the associations right to challenge these symbols and accept the argument that there were atrocities on both sides, something which can seem at times to be overlooked. Arguably, and in a spirit of genuine reconciliation, symbols from both sides should be removed. But the prevailing view doesnt allow this, and I dont believe that this is a view solely confined to the left or a republican left; not by any means. The historical memory is weighed against Franco, and rightly so.

But in saying this, one highlights what can be an at times depressing reliving of the past. It is a constant theme, and one that invades current-day politics as well as society. One almost wishes that theyd let it go, but then I am not they. The Spanish past is not my historical memory; or perhaps it is, but at a distance. Having said this, and while defending the associations right to challenge these communist/republican symbols, I cant say I have any sympathy. The association regularly denounces what it disagrees with; there have been various actions against LGTBI symbols, for instance. As such, there is the sense of the politics, those of the far right, and as stated in a comment about the communist symbols (made on Ultima Horas website), the association crosses the boundary of equity and good faith in filing complaints against those who hold theses contrary to their programmatic principles.

There is still that touch though.

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Removing communism: the past lives on - Majorca Daily Bulletin