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Despite the fact that Wednesdays Democratic debate in Las Vegas was the first debate to feature both Jewish presidential contenders, the word Jewish was not mentioned once. On top of that, neither Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders nor former New York City Mayor Mike Bloomberg took the opportunity to discuss their very different relationships to their American Jewish identities, and how it has affected their politics.

But make no mistake: There was still a very Jewish moment in the debate, and it was a moment that shows just how much and how little Jewish politics has changed in the past decades. Facing allegations from other candidates that he is spending his unimaginable fortune to essentially buy himself the presidency, Bloomberg defended himself by saying he didnt inherit his money but made it. The implied contrast with Donald Trump was obvious; While the current president inherited most of his wealth, he himself supposedly started from nothing, worked hard, and earned his money the old-fashioned way, making his wealth more legitimate than Trumps.

But Bernie Sanders, the other Jew on stage, had a ready response: He denied that Bloomberg actually earned his money at all. You know what, Mr. Bloomberg, Sanders retorted, to rapturous applause, it wasnt you who made all that money. Maybe your workers played some role in that, as well.

It was one of the bluntest and most unabashed articulations of Marxs labor theory of value that weve ever seen in American politics.

Of course, the argument over whether labor or management generates most of the wealth of a company is not a uniquely Jewish argument; in fact, its one of the central debates in economic theory. But it is a debate that has divided the American Jewish community for decades, and in fact played a significant role in the making of modern American Jewish identity.

Fears of a public association of Jews with socialism and communism defined mainstream American Jewish political life throughout the past century, and led to many of the political decisions made by prominent American Jewish organizations. It is well known that Eastern European Ashkenazi Jewish immigrants were disproportionately represented in leftist groups in the first half of the twentieth century.

The numbers are well-documented. In the 1910s, the most predominantly Jewish voting districts in New York elected more Socialist Party members to political office than any other area of the United States.

By 1914, at the outbreak of the First World War, Jews comprised fully 15% of the members of the Socialist Party, despite comprising only 3% of the total US population at the time. In 1920, socialist presidential candidate Eugene Debs received 3.4% of the national vote but a whopping 38% of the Jewish vote.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, the most well-funded organizations of the American Jewish community feared that this disproportionate Jewish representation in left-wing politics would lead to anti-Semitism a fear that was not unfounded.

They responded by trying to erect a quarantine against socialism and communism in organized American Jewish life. In 1920, the Anti-Defamation League circulated to 500 newspapers around the US a series of articles trying to prove that most American Jews were anti-communist. The widely-read American Jewish Chronicle went further, not only arguing that most Jews were not communists, but implying that communist Jews were not really Jews at all. If the more prominent local Soviets have admitted many Jews, it is because these Jews are no longer Jews, the pamphlet argued.

By the late 1940s, the American Jewish Committee and the Anti-Defamation League worked to formally expel known communists from Jewish community organizations. As Stuart Svonkin notes in his book Jews Against Prejudice, During the late 1940s and early 1950s, with the aid of intelligence provided by the AJCs Staff Committee on Communism local Jewish communities severed their connections with various pro-communist organizations. American Jewish organizations like the ADL and AJC consistently adopted a liberal, anti-communist line, and were active participants in the anti-communist rhetoric of the postwar era.

It was ironic: Because Jews were disproportionately represented in socialist and communist politics in the early twentieth century, post-World War II mainstream American Jewish politics defined itself as explicitly anti-communist in order to combat the fear that anti-Communism would lapse into anti-Semitism.

Bloombergs mix of pro-capitalist economics combined with social liberalism is closely aligned with the politics of the post-World War II American Jewish consensus, while Sanders represents a Jewish identity which it was fighting. Bloomberg represents the model that was supposed to have won out, while Sanders represents a model that many organs of the American Jewish community tried to banish. So it isnt surprising that Bloomberg has been a financial supporter of institutional Jewish organizations, including the Jewish Museum and Hadassah University Medical Center, whereas Sanderss links to this formal Jewish organizational infrastructure are much weaker.

And yet, here comes Sanders, who says he is proud to be Jewish, getting up on stage at a Democratic debate and defending Marxist labor theory to thunderous applause, while Bloomberg gets booed.

Its enough to make you think that maybe the postwar consensus of American Jewish politics is beginning to crack.

After World War II, American Jewish organizations tried to combat anti-Semitism by purging socialists and communists from organized Jewish life. But it may be the socialists who get the last laugh.

Joel Swanson is a Ph.D. student at the University of Chicago, studying modern Jewish intellectual history and the philosophy of religions. Hes skeptical of any consensus, political or otherwise. Find him on Twitter at @jh_swanson.

The views and opinions expressed in this article are the authors own and do not necessarily reflect those of the Forward.

The Jewish establishment once expelled communists. Now Jewish socialists are having the last laugh.

Original post:
The Jewish establishment once expelled communists. Now Jewish socialists are having the last laugh. - Forward

Democratic presidential front-runner Bernie Sanders likes to market himself as a wise old man who just happens to have clown hair but is right about everything, such as the War in Iraq. Yet his opposition to the Iraq War was dictated not by cool-headed geopolitical calculations, but the lifelong habit of romancing American enemies as is typical for communism-lovers.

The recently surfaced press conference Sanders gave following his return from his honeymoon in Yaroslavl, USSR, is a great example of leftist navet about totalitarian regimes. For Bernie to fawn over Soviet culture the way he did indicates a staggering degree of incuriosity. I was only 15 and growing up in Kharkiv, now Ukraine, when the couple visited the USSR, and Im not impressed when I watch Sanders sing Moscows praises

Start with the metro. Sanders said at the time, The stations themselves were very beautiful, including many works of art, chandeliers that were beautiful. It was a very, very effective system.

Its slightly creepy that Joseph Stalin initiated the tradition of building chthonian palaces underneath Soviet cities. The stations are beautiful, no doubt, but effectiveness is a whole different matter. Coverage was so-so, and the rush hour commute was a nightmare, so Sanders classification of the stations as effective is puzzling. People stuffed into trains like sardines.

More importantly, metros were only built in cities with populations exceeding one million. Investing money into extravagant projects makes sense if the goal is to dazzle foreigners, but its also highly unwise considering that the condition of roads across Russia has always been atrocious. Traveling in the USSR, especially in provincial towns such as Yaroslavl, Sanders, an American man with a driver license, would take note of the state of the infrastructure one would think.

Bernie continued:

Their palaces of culture for the young people, a whole variety of programs for the young people, and cultural programs which go far beyond what we do in this country. We went to a theater in Yaroslavl which was absolutely beautiful, had three separate stages. Their cultural programs were put together by professional actors and actresses, including a puppeteer area. And the cost, the highest price of the ticket you can get was equivalent of $1.50.

Its true that the Soviet Union subsidized all sorts of cultural programming for children, such as theaters and youth culture palaces with after-school enrichment programs. Unfortunately, in a socialist economy, that type of institution existed without any feedback from the markets.

I was part of the generation that took yearly field trips to the Theater of The Young Viewer. Ticket costs aside, there was just one such stage in the city, plus the Puppet Theater for the younger kids, and not a lot of demand for the shows. I dont think American cultural programming is in any way inferior, albeit the cost to the consumer might be higher.

When I was 10, I started taking the metro across town to a childrens palace where the after-school activities were offered. The palace, a beautiful pre-revolutionary structure, was named after Stalins henchman Pavel Postyshev. Postyshev presided over Red Terror, purges, and Holodomor, before himself falling victim to Stalinist repressions.

Toward the end of his life, the executioner, by then an alcoholic, was displaying symptoms of paranoia. He once decided that the flame drawn on the box of matches resembled the profile of Leon Trotsky and that sausages, when cut, have swirls similar to swastikas. He ordered the confiscation of all matches and a purge of the grocery.

My generation of Soviets came of age knowing that the USSR was built on tyranny and lies. We are the most cynical generation in Russian history. Once the country crumbled, our lives spun out of control. As a result, Russian speakers my age suffered through high rates of substance abuse, low life expectancies, and through-the-floor birth rates. On the plus side, we grew up with gaudy chandeliers in public places.

Bernies bride, Jane, picked up where her husband left off:

We were astounded with the openness, the optimism, the enthusiasm in the nation. What struck me the most was the way that they dealt with children, and the cultural life of their community. As Howard [another man on the trip] mentioned, they put the money into public facilities, and they have palaces of culture which are paid for strictly by trade union dues, and those have movies and dances, and those have a lot of artistic outlets for people for instance, they might become members of an orchestra and study to play an instrument and perform, and when they go off on performances, it seems not as not something as they are doing on their own, and they need to take vacation time from work, but its seen as providing and contributing to the community life, so it becomes part of their work instead of compartmentalizing their life into job and hobbies. Its all interrelated, and its all under the banner of community involvement.

The First-World problem Jane is trying to solve here is called the fractured modern man, and you wouldnt know it was a problem until you took a fair number of college classes. I mean, is it really that bad to have a job and a hobby?

Her talk of community involvement is rather ridiculous, considering she visited a country with a very low level of trust, no meaningful civic culture, and lots of alcoholism. When the workday was over, most Soviet people didnt go to culture palaces that they viewed as an extension of their work life. They didnt practice violin. They went moonlighting, making money on the side, or shopping, a time-consuming process, or otherwise cared for their families.

Also drinking or maybe watching a foreign movie at the cinema the USSR bought a limited number of those, but drinking was a favorite pastime. Alcohol consumption doubled from 1955 to 1979.

Nobody knows what paid for the construction and maintenance of Soviet culture palaces. In a planned economy with its web of subsidies and bribery, such things are not transparent. The trade union fees, however, were levied on everyone enrolled in a trade union, meaning every worker, because all those employed by the government were automatically enrolled in one, and everyone worked for the government or at least pretended to. As the Soviet joke went, We pretend we work, and they pretend they pay us.

To be in awe of those palaces of culture performances in the late 80s, a visitor would have to be really, really I mean really incurious. I understand the Sanderses went on their honeymoon surrounded by the KGB minders, but wow!The newlyweds were shown performance venues, but did they make an effort to meet an artist? Their tour was literally a Potemkin excursion through the Soviet Union: the best of architecture, no real people.

The late 80s was a difficult time, when the economy had suffered as the country struggled to compete with U.S. military spending. But it was also an incredibly exciting time because Mikhail Gorbachevs glasnost provided an opportunity to learn about the countrys past and discuss a whole universe of new ideas. Jane Sanders is right that there was much enthusiasm and openness in the country, and ordinary people were eager to meet Americans. The Sanderses let them down by staying with their minders.

And the culture palaces? Through most of Soviet history, those were the sanctuaries for second-tier Soviet culture amateurish and produced under the watchful eye of the censor. Top-level Soviet performers didnt start in provincial adult education classes; they were groomed in major cities starting in early childhood.

The kind of entertainment Soviet people wanted most wasnt created by youth puppeteers, either. A handful of officially produced Russian-speaking stars remained popular among people of all ages. Many of those born after World War II developed a preference for Western performers and homegrown underground acts. Recordings of banned performers were bootlegged from friend to friend and sometimes pressed on X-ray vinyl film na kostyah or on the bones. A few Western performers, most notably David Bowie, were allowed to tour the USSR. Soviet bands usually played concerts in apartments.

After a smuggled recording of Soviet underground rock was released in the West, Gorbachev reportedly said, Why cant we do it here? Shortly after, artists featured on the recording got contracts with the sole Soviet recording company, Melodia. Stadiums and other official performance venues opened for musicians who had endured years of prosecution, including being fired from work, expelled from official youth organizations, and sentenced to prison terms.

That was happening when Bernie went to the USSR. Yet with all his excitement about chandeliers, puppeteers, and the KGB-sanctioned rehearsal spaces, he completely missed the zeitgeist. The Vermont communism-lover was as close to liberation as he could ever get, but he chose to bond with his minders. And millennial hipsters think hes cool.

He is a special kind of tourist known to Russians. The tell me something nice about your country tourist, the surely the bad things Ive heard are all CIA propaganda tourist, which is one grade below the lets be nuanced about your situation tourist.

That said, the attitude toward those types of people was generally positive. They were still American, still in blue jeans, and they could tell us a thing or two about the music. We believed them to be basically well-intentioned but hopelessly nave.

After moving to the United States, I no longer believe Bernie-types to be well-intentioned. Regardless, the man who could be led astray that easily should never be the president of the United States.

Katya Rapoport Sedgwick is a writer from San Francisco Bay Area. She has published at The Daily Caller and Legal Insurrection. You can follow her @KatyaSedgwick on Twitter.

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I Lived In Russia When Bernie Sanders Visited, And He's A Dupe - The Federalist

COMMENTARY: In 2020, the United States, the longtime home of free markets, watches millions of its citizens embrace socialism and even communism, the scourge of the 20th century.

Thirty years ago this month, something critical happened in Moscow signaling the end not only of the Cold War, but of the Soviet Union itself.

On Feb. 7, 1990, Mikhail Gorbachev succeeded in banishing the Communist Partys guarantee as the USSRs sole political party. He backed a proposal by free-market reformers to repudiate Article 6 of the Soviet Constitution, which had ensured the more-than-70-year communist stranglehold on power. The communist monopoly was officially ended.

This historic shift was greeted by a top-of-the-fold headline across The New York Times. I still remember where I was when I saw that headline. I was walking down Fifth Avenue of the Oakland section of Pittsburgh, en route to my job at Childrens Hospital and Presbyterian University Hospital, where I was a pre-med student working for the organ-transplant team. The headline hit me like a Soviet SS-20 missile and was a key factor redirecting my path ahead, eventually taking me toward a different field of study, one in which I would go on to spend the next three decades of my life explaining why the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics collapsed and, equally important, why no rational human being should ever choose the destructive road of communism and socialism. As evidence of the political systems history of human-rights violations, conservative estimates of the death toll under communist/socialist regimes in the Soviet Union, China, Cambodia, Cuba and elsewhere number in the tens of millions.

And yet, all along, Ive watched in dismay as an entire generation of young people raised in our public schools and universities not only havent learned the crucial lessons about communism and socialism but, quite the contrary, have been taught that these ideologies really werent all that bad. Socialism and communism, theyre told, merely had not been done properly.

Ive thus spoken to countless groups on college campuses and elsewhere giving talks with titles like, Why Communism Is Bad and Communism, Socialism and Democratic Socialism: What the Heck Is the Difference. This is information they flatly do not know.

Ive sounded that warning for years now, with many colleagues rolling their eyes thinking Im being a tad hysterical. Sure, I could give anecdote after anecdote, but these were just anecdotes. Right?

Well, now we have more than anecdotes. We have hard data, and that data is only getting worse.

In the early 2010s, I noticed a clear break during the Obama presidency. I began to see a flip in surveys asking young people if they preferred socialism. A 2014 survey by the Reason Foundation found that 53% of 18- to 29-year-olds viewed socialism favorably. In 2015, the same year that socialism was the most looked-up word at Merriam-Webster, Gallup found69% of millennials saying they would vote for a socialist president.

Many people shrugged that off. And yet, in the 2016 Democratic primary, millions did precisely that, voting for Bernie Sanders, a lifetime avowed socialist. Sanders got 13 million votes in the Democratic primary 40% of votes that year, and almost as many as Donald Trump received (14 million) in the Republican primary.

In 2020, Bernie is the front-runner for the Democratic Party. That should not surprise us, given a 2019 survey that found that, among registered Democrats, 57% view socialism positively.

High as these numbers are, they continue to increase. A November 2019 survey by the Victims of Communism Memorial Foundation (conducted by YouGov) found 70% of millennials saying that they are likely to vote for a socialist.

And it isnt merely young people. In May 2019, Gallup found that four in 10 Americans generally prefer socialism, with 43% saying socialism would be a good thing for America.

Even more disturbing, praise for communism is on the rise. That November 2019 survey by Victims of Communism and YouGov shows that 36% of millennials say they approve of communism, and 22% believe society would be better if all private property was abolished.

Their ignorance of the crimes of communism is likewise shocking. Amazingly, an October 2016 survey by the Victims of Communism found that one in three millennials and one in four Americans generally believe President George W. Bush killed more people than Soviet dictator Josef Stalin. Yes, you read that right. Few statistics are so revealing of a profoundly sick ignorance.

Alas, likewise disturbing, especially for readers here, is that some Catholics are not immune to this growing enchantment.

Last summer, in July 2019, America magazine published a piece by one of its staff correspondents, Dean Dettloff, titled, The Catholic Case for Communism, along with a defense by the editor in chief, Jesuit Father Matt Malone, Why we published an essay sympathetic to communism. The piece is posted online with a photo of the Communist Crucifix handed to Pope Francis by Bolivias Marxist President Evo Morales.

This is grossly ill-informed and irresponsible on many fronts, particularly given how the Catholic Church has consistently confronted communism and socialism for literally more than 170 years, unlikely any other institution.

In 1846, two years before the Communist Manifesto was even published, Pope Pius IX issued his encyclical Qui Pluribus, which stated that communism is absolutely contrary to the natural law itself and would utterly destroy the rights, property and possessions of all men, and even society itself.In 1849, Pius IX issued Nostis Et Nobiscum, which described both socialism and communism as wicked theories, perverted theories and pernicious fictions.

Such condemnations continued on from papacy to papacy. In 1878, Pope Leo XIIIs Quod Apostolici Muneris criticized communism as the fatal plague which insinuates itself into the very marrow of human society only to bring about its ruin. Pope Pius XIs May 1937 encyclical, Divini Redemptoris (Atheistic Communism), referred to communism as a satanic scourge, a collectivistic terrorism replete with hate. Marxists were the powers of darkness. The evil we must combat is at its origin primarily an evil of the spiritual order, said the encyclical. From this polluted source the monstrous emanations of the communistic system flow with satanic logic.

And as for socialism, Pope Pius XI in May 1931 issued Quadragesimo Anno, which affirmed, Religious socialism, Christian socialism, are contradictory terms; no one can be at the same time a good Catholic and a true socialist.

Read that again: One cannot be a good Catholic and a socialist.

As for oddball Christians who confusingly want to be socialists, Pius XI advised a better course:

If they truly wish to be heralds of the Gospel, let them above all strive to show to socialists that socialist claims, so far as they are just, are far more strongly supported by the principles of Christian faith and much more effectively promoted through the power of Christian charity.

If they want to help the poor, they should be Christians, not socialists.

In July 1949, Pope Pius XII issued his Papal Decree Against Communism, which asserted that it was not licit for Catholics to join or show favor to communist parties, nor to publish, distribute, or read publications that support Communist doctrine or activity, or to write for them. The decree even stated that Christians who profess, defend or promote materialistic Communist doctrine incur the penalty of excommunication as apostates from the Christian faith.

Think about that. That means that, quite literally, America magazines piece last summer could have been cause for excommunication in 1949.

Pope Francis has also condemned communism. In December 2013, he said, The Marxist ideology is wrong, though adding: But I have met many Marxists in my life who are good people.

Francis knows how deadly communism has been. In April 2017, Francis decried the many Christians killed by the demented ideologies of the last century. In June 2019 in Romania, he beatified seven communist-era martyred bishops who had endured suffering and gave their lives to oppose an illiberal ideological system that oppressed the fundamental rights of the human person.

To be sure, Francis is a product of a 1970s Argentinian mindset thats skeptical of free markets and favorable toward aspects of collectivism and wealth redistribution. But still, he has condemned Marxism as wrong, as has his Church. Francis knows, as any Catholic should, that Catholics cant support communism or socialism.

As St. Pope John XXIII put it, No Catholic could subscribe even to moderate Socialism. He rightly insisted: Socialism takes no account of any objective other than that of material well-being. It places too severe a restraint on human liberty.

And yet, here we are in the United States in 2020, and young people are praising communism, voting for socialists, and Catholic publications are publishing articles making a Catholic Case for Communism. This is a highly disturbing trend, prompting many of us to wonder if we really did defeat these ideologies when we won the Cold War. We defeated socialism and communism in the war room but not in the classroom.

And so, take a look back and assess where we are today: In 1990, the USSR, the longtime home of socialism and communism, rebuked socialism and communism. In 2020, the United States, the longtime home of free markets, watches million of its citizens embrace socialism and even communism. Pretty sad.

Paul Kengoris professor of political science at Grove City College in Grove City, Pennsylvania.

His books include A Pope and a President andThe Divine Plan and The Politically Incorrect Guide to Communism.

Read the rest here:
Soviet Union Rewind: Why Are We Praising Communism Again? - National Catholic Register

From their suppression of dissenting voices, use of propaganda, and capitulation to Russia, the GOP is behaving like US Communists in the 1930s and 1940s.

President Donald Trump, Russian President Vladimir Putin, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov, and Former Sergey Kislyak (AP)

Professor Leonard Weinberg is a Senior Fellow at CARR, Professor Emeritus at the University of Nevada, and recipient of both Fulbright and Guggenheim research awards.

In a recent issue of The New Yorker, the Harvard University historian, Jill Lepore, challenges the mood of pessimism that has overcome many thoughtful individuals about the direction of democratic institutions in the West, the United States especially. She asks us to recall a similar though even darker mood that an earlier generation of thoughtful pessimists had about the prospects of democracy. Not only did much of Europe fall under the control of Fascism but also, despite many western admirers, the Soviet Union was brutalized by Stalinist rule.

Democracy, to paraphrase the late Daniel Patrick Moynihan, seemed to be where the world had been, not where it was going. And yet, as Lepore writes and as many others have written, the post-war world saw a revival of democratic values and the restoration of democracy itself in much of the West. Thanks to the New Deal and its military successes against the Axis powers, the United States became something of a model to be emulated elsewhere. Lepores core message is, do not despair democracy may be in recession at the moment, but it is sufficiently resilient to survive Trump and his base.

By taking our thinking about politics back to Depression-era America, we might pay some attention to the countrys Communist Party (CP). For the only time in American history, the Party counted for something. Its role was limited but it attracted the support of many artists and intellectuals (see R.H. S. Crossman ed., The God that Failed) and something approaching a mass base of support (see, Nathan Glazer, The Social Base of American Communism, and Harvey Kiehr, The Heyday of American Communism). Its leaders, Earl Browder, Jay Lovestone and their lieutenants, played significant roles in the formation of the Congress of Industrial Organizations (CIO), an organization that became one of the countrys two leading labor union federations. The CP also became a champion of civil rights for African-American long before the issue became center stage in the politics of the 1960s.

Aside from a small group of Trotskyites, the CP was a largely unquestioning follower of Stalin and the Soviet Unions zigzag policies during the 30s. These rapid changes, of course, involved switching from condemnation of socialist parties in the US and elsewhere as social fascists during the early years of the decade to support for broad-based popular front alliances during the mid-30s (including a benign view of the Roosevelt administration). In August 1939, Nazi Germany and the USSR signed the non-aggression agreement, and Communist parties around the western world were instructed to remain neutral in the deadly struggle underway between the western democracies and Nazi Germany. All this changed, once again, when the Hitlerite regime attacked the Soviet Union in June 1941 and Stalin called once again for a broad alliance of all progressive forces in the fight against Nazism.

Then, there were the Moscow purge trials. Between 1936 and 1938, prosecutors acting at Stalins orders charged prominent leaders of the Soviet Party with Treason (Arthur Koestlers Darkness at Noon captures the atmosphere). Key figures in the Party/State apparatus were tried and executed for allegedly acting on behalf of the bourgeois democracies all along.

How were members of the American CP able to stomach all these changes of direction? How were they able to absorb the transformation of previously admired heroes of the USSR and the international communist movement (e.g. Bukharin, Radek) into betrayers of the cause, almost overnight?

The answers involve the flow of information to CP USA members. The Party published newspapers and magazines (e.g. The New Masses, The Communist, Pioneer, the Daily Worker, PM), which provided correct interpretations of developments in the USSR. At cell meetings, Party members were told not to believe accounts of the show trials and other anti-Soviet accounts published in the capitalist (or CAP) press. The latters aim, according to CP leaders, was to weaken the Party by sowing dissension within the international working-class movement.

It is hard to imagine a wider distinction in political outlook than the one between American Communists in the 1930s and the contemporary Republican Party. Certainly, in terms of ideology they are virtual polar opposites. Yet, in terms of the way they treat dissident voices, there are striking similarities.

Trump and his administration have been racked by scandal, with one Trump confidant and appointee after another going to prison while still others await trial. The President has been caught up in sex scandals involving multiple young women who, using an intermediary, he has paid to remain silent. He has been impeached by the House of Representatives for seeking to bribe (with military assistance), Ukrainian officials to persuade them to announce an investigation of a likely rival in the 2020 presidential election. Trumps financial dealings are under investigation by state and local authorities. Newspapers, such as The Washington Post, report Trump has lied to the public over 16,000 times since taking office on January 20, 2017.

Despite this record, opinion polls have shown the Presidents popularity has remained virtually unchanged since taking office; it seems to oscillate between 40 and 45 percent of those questioned. By contrast, between his landslide re-election in 1972 and his resignation from office in the summer of 1974, President Nixons popularity fell to a bit over 23 percent. The Watergate scandal and its attendant publicity had a dramatic impact thanks largely to enormous newspaper and national television coverage. If Nixon, why not Trump?

The answer is that in the intervening decades there has grown up a conservative echo chamber consisting of Fox News, Sinclair Broadcasting, and a long list of conservative talk radio commentators. They serve to insulate their right-wing audiences from information and opinions that conflict with conservative ones they are already disposed to believe, much like the CP publications of the 1930s.

When it comes to zigzagging, GOP supporters of Trump again bear some resemblance to CP members during the Depression years. For decades during the Cold War, Republicans foremost foreign policy perspective was anti-communism and opposition to Soviet expansionism in Europe and elsewhere. Soviet leaders were often depicted in demonological terms. Today, all that has changed. After several meetings with Putin, solicitation and acceptance of Russias election help, effort to undermine the Russia probe, and indifference to Russian annexation of the Crimea and its invasion of eastern Ukraine, GOP supporters of Trump now have a more favorable view of Russia and the Putin than the general American population. Despite warnings on the Lamestream media about Russias malevolence, Trumps supporters seem to ignore this fact and instead, thanks to Fox News etc., follow Trumps lead.

Todays equivalent of the CAP press is fake news. Trump and his subordinates repeatedly warn Republicans belonging to the Presidents base not to believe what they read, see and hear from the mainstream media, what the former GOP 2008 vice-presidential candidate Sara Palin labeled the lamestream media. The New York Times, Washington Post, Wall Street Journal and news programs on the major television networks so the narrative goes deliberately falsify descriptions of Trump and his administration by broadcasting tales invented to discredit the conservative movement.

If we recall the CPs effort to induce its members to ignore stories in the CAP press in the 1930s, all this will seem familiar. We might even follow Lepores optimism by noting the CPs own failure. No matter how much it tried, it could not prevent major defections after Stalins non-aggression pact with Nazi Germany. Food for thought as the Trump foreign policy train trundles on.

This article is brought to you by the Centre for Analysis of the Radical Right(CARR). Through their research, CARR intends to lead discussions on the development of radical right extremism around the world.

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GOP Is Similar To US Communist Party In The Early 20th Century - Rantt Media

Scott noted earlier Ilhan Omars bizarre response to the fact that a member of the Minneapolis Somali community who knows Omar well has confirmed that she married her brother for fraudulent purposes. First she falsely asserted that Somali Abdi Nur was paid to smear her. Next she asserted that the whole thing is a Zionist conspiracy.

That reeks of desperation, obviously. I just want to add one more log to the fire. Omars source for her crazed tirade was a piece in something called Humans4HumanLife, which she tweeted. You really should read the whole Humans piece at the link. If you are looking for anti-Semitic conspiracy theories, youve come to the right place.

Still, one funny thing about the Humans4HumanLife piece is that the author doesnt seem at all certain that the allegations against Omar are untrue:

Undeniably, no one is immune to making mistakes, or even regrets.

Her private life is no ones business. It is of no reflection on her sincerity, integrity nor her abilities.

Its impossible for anyone on the public stage to achieve everyones expectations all the time. As a human being, its impossible to be everything to everyone every time.

Some of us, though, do manage to avoid marrying our siblings for fraudulent purposes.

Never having heard of Humans4HumansLife, I was curious about the organization. It is obscure, and, it turns out, deservedly so. The fact that Omar apparently reads its stuff is itself revealing. Humans Facebook page starts with the enemy collaboration post about the supposedly Jewish conspiracy to disclose the fact that Ilhan married her brother. But its next Facebook post celebrates Communism:

I had never heard of Mr. Pansare, but he was an Indian communist.

If you keep scrolling, you see the usual left-wing stuff: anti-Israel, anti-Brexit, anti-law enforcement. And, apparently, pro-ISIS:

Relentlessly crucifiedthat refers to revocation of her British citizenshipsimply for joining ISIS. Simply!

Ilhan Omar is an extremist. She thinks nothing, apparently, of citing openly Communist friends in support of her anti-Semitic fantasies. She hates the United States and Israel, but has no particular problem with Islamic terrorists who simply join ISIS. If a Republican Congressman linked to a white supremacist web site to defend himself against a well-supported allegation of corruptionsomething almost impossible to imagineevery news outlet in America would come crashing down on him, and he would be out of Congress within 24 hours. Ilhan Omar did something worse. She linked to and cited a Communist, openly anti-Semitic, and terrorist supporting web site to deflect well-founded (frankly, obviously true) allegations of multi-level corruption: marriage fraud, immigration fraud, tax fraud, among others. And yet the Democratic Party press has been, so far, silent.

See more here:
Ilhan and the Communists - Power Line