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It was one of America's best-loved sitcoms at the height of the Cold War, but a new documentary claims "Gilligan's Island" was in fact a hymn to "communist" values.

In the last interview before he died in 2011, Sherwood Schwartz -- the television producer who also created "The Brady Bunch" -- said that the fictional utopia he invented for a group of castaways on a tropical island was meant as a light-hearted critique of capitalism.

Award-winning filmmaker Cevin Soling told AFP that Schwartz, a biologist who began his career writing jokes for Bob Hope, "affirmed to me what I had long suspected ... that Gilligan's Island was a communist paradise".

All property on the island was shared and the series' main heroes were its only two working-class characters -- the bumbling ship's mate Gilligan and salt-of-the-earth striver Mary Ann.

Although far from a communist himself, the left-leaning Schwartz told the documentary "The Gilligan Manifesto", which was presented at the MIPTV gathering at the French Riviera resort of Cannes this past weekend, that the comedy had a serious political side.

But he said he didn't want to force that down people's throats. "Sometimes those lessons are hammered into you, whereas doing it gently with comedy you achieve the same purpose and sometimes it's longer-lasting.

"The issue behind it is serious. I got the idea to bring a lot of people together that would not normally be together," he added.

In the series, first broadcast in 1964, a multimillionaire and his wife are shipwrecked on an island after taking a day-trip from Hawaii with a Hollywood movie star, a professor and the ship's captain and crew.

'A kind of communism'

Although, in the series, details of what is happening in the outside world are unclear, it appears the world has been plunged into some kind of nuclear war.

On TV just two years after the Cuban missile crisis had brought the world to the abyss, Schwartz said he originally wanted to make "a satirical two-hour film about the only seven people left" after a nuclear holocaust.

Soling said that as a childhood fan of the show -- which was still being run on television in the late 1980s -- he had long suspected "Gilligan's Island" was not quite what it seemed.

"When I interviewed Sherwood Schwartz shortly before he passed away he affirmed a lot of the things that I suspected, and added a whole lot more," Soling said.

Not only did the series send up the rich and the celebrity culture, Soling argued that it also skewered the way money was undermining democracy.

"Schwartz was very much a capitalist -- he lived in Beverly Hills -- but his utopian vision of the world turned out to be a kind of communism without him actually calling it that because of the shadow of totalitarian Soviet communism," he said.

Ironically when two Soviet cosmonauts crash-land on the island in one episode they are completely thrown by what they find. They suspect that the simple-minded Gilligan is the supreme leader, a Machiavellian genius who manipulates the others.

Soling, best known for his films "The War on Kids" and "Ikland", said it is remarkable that the secret never leaked out.

"Schwartz had always insisted that it was meant to be political but he knew that if he did it with low-brow slapstick humour he could be subversive and people wouldn't be threatened."

Rather than Marx, Schwartz said his inspiration came from the Bible. "They say that the meek will inherit the Earth and that was my belief," he said.

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Classic TV show 'Gilligan's Island' was 'communist paradise' - CTV News

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Wichita 7:33 a.m. CT April 1, 2017

Harsh reality of communism

Having lived 5 years in Venezuela, I feel qualified to make these comments:

Communist Hugo Chavez was elected in what was likely a rigged election in 1999. The self-declared observer of all things fair and just, former US president Jimmy Carter spenttwo hoursthere on that election day and returned home saying the election was without any problems. Venezuela at that time was without question the most prosperous country in all of South and Central America. Cancer cells in 2013 offered them hope in ridding them of Chavez, but the same political party (United Socialist Party of Venezuela) then proceeded to maneuver Nicolas Maduro into office.

In fact 562 companies and industries have been removed from free enterprise ownership and are now owned and run by the government. A six fold increase in the number of employees in the nationalized oil company has resulted in extremely inefficient operation of the worlds largest oil reserves. State owned utility companies are able to provide their services only an average of 3 to 5 hours per day. Food is so scarce that children no longer go to school as they have to hold places in lines for parents at grocery stores all day in hopes something to eat might show up, but they can forget staples like milk, eggs, potatoes, bread. A recent medical report claims the average citizen has lost 20 pounds of weight in the last year from lack of food. Inflation is so rampant the country does not allow an official report to be published, but anything of necessity doubles in price every few months. Citizens use the local currency for toilet paper, as it is cheaper.

All you socialist worshipping Democrats need to read, study, learn, and think before you push for the very things that Venezuelans once thought they desired.

While writing this, it was announced the equivalent of our Supreme Court in Venezuela was dissolved and all rule will be by Maduro. This mess will only end when there is not enough money of any value to pay the military generals necessary to remain in power. They come first so it will be awhile.

- Bob Hance, Wichita Falls

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Letter: Harsh reality of communism - Times Record News

Communist Party USA and the Democratic Socialists of America are claiming surges in interest and membership since the 2016 election and the inauguration of Donald Trump.

To be sure, these claims are according to their self-reporting for what thats worth though these comrades havent made such boasts in a long time. We can take it with a grain of salt. But either way, these are strong claims, and theyre being used to generate still further recruits. Its worthwhile to at least consider what these folks are up to.

Communist Party USA contends that more than 600 people have joined the party in the last two months of 2016, beyond the 5,000 who (were told) joined over the past few years. This is according to CPUSA social media coordinator Joe Sims in an article posted at the partys official website.

Folks want to fight Trump, explains Sims.

But thats not the only reason.

Sims says that communist and progressive groups are seeing their largest upticks in membership since the collapse of the USSR the country to which American Communist Party members so long devoted themselves.

I pledge myself to rally the masses to defend the Soviet Union, the land of victorious socialism, vowed American communists who joined the party in its heyday some 100,000 members in the 1930s. I pledge myself to remain at all times a vigilant and firm defender of the Leninist line of the party, the only line that insures the triumph of Soviet Power in the United States.

Lincoln Steffens, the popular journalist for The New Republic, famously stated, I am a patriot for Russia; the Future is there. Agreeing with Steffens was poet Langston Hughes, who stated: Put one more S in the USA to make it Soviet. The USA when we take control will be the USSA. The American Communist Party general secretary at the time, William Z. Foster, openly advocated a Soviet American Republic as part of a world Soviet Union.

That was the 1930s, when Joseph Stalin ran the Soviet Union a deadly empire, an evil empire that would slaughter tens of millions.

Of course, modern Americans, miseducated as theyve been in our monolithically leftist universities, have learned none of this. To them, communism, like socialism, is as an ideology that believes in sharing and helping ones fellow man.

Indeed, Sims believes that the long wretched history of communist affiliation with Soviet rule is no longer an obstacle to new recruits. Younger people dont carry that baggage, he said.

The baggage thats the memory of millions of lives lost under communist rule.

While the 2016 election revealed that many Millennials have a love affair with Bernie Sanders-style socialism, a recent study by the Victims of Communism Memorial Foundation (VOC) found that only 37 percent of Millennials have a very unfavorable view of communism, notably less than preceding generations that experienced the Cold War firsthand. And a shockingly high number believe that George W. Bush killed more people than did Joe Stalin (yes, seriously).

They blissfully call themselves democratic socialists, not even realizing that Lenin, Trotsky, Herbert Marcuse, and countless communists called themselves democratic socialists.

That brings us to the Democratic Socialists of America. Like its commie cohorts, the DSA is also claiming a surge in the wake of Donald Trumps ascendency, as nearly 1,600 new dues-paying online members joined in the six days following the November election an immediate 18% increase in membership, according to DSA deputy director David Duhalde. The organization reports 8,000-plus active members, of which 2,500 have joined since the beginning of Bernies DSA-backed presidential campaign in 2015.

The DSA is more ready than ever to welcome our new comrades, writes Duhalde. In this era of political tension and opportunity, this country needs a socialist vision that mobilizes both grassroots activism and intellectual discourse required to make sustainable economic and social progress.

According to the DSAs Ben Dalton, a Trump bump has motivated thousands to join progressive organizations across the country. CPUSA has placed itself at the center of a loosely affiliated coalition of left-wing organizations calling itself the resistance (sometimes with a capital R). That is, the Trump Resistance.

While disparate in purpose, these organizations are united in opposing the alt-right, fascist, and white supremacist agenda of the Trump administration, with a full-throated emphasis on protecting the supposed jeopardized rights of a long litany of various victim classes, which now prominently includes not just women and African-Americans, but Muslims, immigrants, and the LGBTQ community. (Actually, CPUSA has been using the term LGBTQIA community the more victims, the better.)

A new kind of right-wing and authoritarian danger has emerged, one that if unchecked threatens basic democracy, asserts recent CPUSA general secretary John Bachtell. Tens of thousands will die as a direct result of the cruel and ruthless Trump and GOP congressional policies.

Its a rather laughably hollow appeal coming from the head of a political party that for over 70 years carried water for Lenin and Stalin and their mass-murdering minions.

In essence, the resistances inaugural event was the parade of perversity known as the Womens March on January 21, which attracted big numbers to the nations capital and other major cities. Joining the DSA and CPUSA at the March were kindred spirits such as the National Education Association, the National Organization for Women, AFSCME, Planned Parenthood, the NAACP, the Council on American Islamic Relations, Amnesty International, People for the American Way, Code Pink, and oddities ranging from the classy Pussy Hat Project to the Georgetown University College Democrats.

Like the larger resistance movement, the Womens March aimed to capture the entirety of the political left. As one old-time CPUSA activist, Joelle Fishman, explained, the Marchs unity principles interconnect womens rights with human rights with civil rights with union rights with immigrant rights with LGBTQ rights with environmental justice. (Note the forever-expanding list of rights for the left.)

Fishman also emphasized that African American History Month, International Womens Day, May Day, and the Peoples Climate Mobilization all CPUSA-sponsored or touted events will continue to seek to unite various sections of The Resistance. Through these events, in large cities and (they hope) rural towns, the movement is organizing nationwide to resist the Trump administration and lay the groundwork for a major victory in the 2018 midterm elections.

The comrades are focusing on insurgent, grassroots-level tactics and civil disobedience in their fledgling resistance movement. Not surprisingly, many of their anti-Trump demonstrations have turned violent. Communist agitprop strategies are core to the resistance movement, as evident in the so-called Resistance Calendar of upcoming progressive events, which encourages current revolutionaries to Organize. Resist. Repeat. It smacks of an old Marxist maxim: agitate, agitate, agitate.

This was captured well by aging comrade Angela Davis. The infamous female Marxist revolutionary and honorary co-chair of the Womens March declared that the January March was merely the beginning: the next 1,459 days of the Trump administration will be 1,459 days of resistance: resistance on the ground, resistance in the classrooms, resistance on the job, resistance in our art and in our music.

And so it goes. Communists, socialists, and progressives, unite!

They are rallying against the nefarious, snarling image of Donald Trump. They are looking to raise some serious discord in the next four years, and some membership rolls.

Its apparently an exciting time to be a commie again.

Paul Kengor is professor of political science at Grove City College. His forthcoming book is A Pope and a President: John Paul II, Ronald Reagan, and the Extraordinary Untold Story of the 20th Century (May 2017). Joshua Delk has been writer for a number of publications, including The Daily Caller.

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Communists and Socialists Rally Under 'Trump Resistance' - American Spectator

Published: March 30, 2017

Daniel Hannan is an MEP for South-East England, and a journalist, author and broadcaster. His most recent book is What Next: How to Get the Best from Brexit.

In 1917, Lenins Red Guards stormed the Winter Palace in Petrograd. Actually, stormed is the wrong word. Despite later portrayals by Soviet iconographers, the beginning of the revolution was banal and tawdry. The Provisional Government, led by a social-democratic lawyer called Alexander Kerensky, was in no position to put up a fight. Kerensky himself had fled the city in a car borrowed from the American legation, leaving a few ministers behind at the deposed Tsars former residence.

Bolshevik militiamen entered the Winter Palace through an unlocked back door and wandered around the cavernous interior until they found the remnants of the Provisional Government in a kitchen. Being illiterate, they forced Kerenskys ministers at gunpoint to write out their own arrest warrants. A secretary described what happened next:

The Palace was pillaged and devastated from top to bottom by the Bolshevik armed mob, as though by a horde of barbarians. All State papers were destroyed. Priceless pictures were ripped from their frames by bayonets. Several hundred carefully packed boxes of rare plate and china, which Kerensky had exerted himself to preserve, were broken open and the contents smashed or carried off. Desks, pictures, ornaments everything was destroyed. I will refrain from describing the hideous scenes which took place in the wine-cellars.

The revolution, in other words, began as it was to continue: with looting. It wasnt long, though, before the looting turned to bloodshed bloodshed on an unimaginable, oceanic scale.

Nothing had prepared humanity for so much slaughter. Perhaps ten million indigenous Americans were killed by European pathogens after Columbus. A similar number of people died in the Atlantic slave trade. The Nazis killed 17 million. The Communists killed 100 million some shot after show trials, some tortured to death, some starved to enforce collectivisation.

How are we to explain murder on such a scale? Lets ask Alexandr Solzhenitsyn, one of the anti-Communists who was lucky enough to die in exile:

Macbeths self-justifications were feeble and his conscience devoured him. Yes, even Iago was a little lamb. The imagination and the spiritual strength of Shakespeares evil-doers stopped short at a dozen corpses. Because they had no ideology. Ideology that is what gives evil-doing its long-sought justification and gives the evil-doer the necessary steadfastness and determination.

To mark this years centenary of the Bolshevik Revolution, the Alliance of Conservatives and Reformists in Europe (ACRE) is holding a conference on 7th-9th April, bringing together some of Europes foremost historians, politicians and Cold War veterans. Well be meeting in Tirana and, if youd like to see what Marxism did to Albania, you can join us by registering at http://www.thelibertysummit.org.

Is it truly necessary, a full generation after 1989, to go through these arguments again? After all, the Berlin Wall has now been down for longer than it was up. Are we conservatives conjuring a phantom foe from the past, a sort of reverse Goldstein?

There are two answers. First, as the poet says, the evil that men do lives after them. The Communists took over or banned every voluntary association, emptying the civil space that used to exist between state and citizen. When the Hungarian Socialist Workers Party seized power in 1948, for example, Janos Kdar, as Minister of Home Affairs, abolished over 5,000 independent associations: churches, charities, chess clubs, Boy Scout troops, village bands.

After such vandalism, it was hard to rebuild. A whole generation had been brought up to disbelieve, distrust and dissemble. An ideology that simultaneously atomised and subjugated had drained its subject territories of social capital. Sir Roger Scruton aptly describes this as the great sin that lay at the heart of the Communist system the sin of isolating individuals from their fellows, and then turning the spotlight of interrogation on them so as to watch them squirm.

Yet and this brings us to the second answer people keep falling for Marx. A third of American millennials, according to YouGov, think that George W Bush murdered more people than Stalin did. A fifth would cheerfully vote for a Communist candidate. How often we see some moral idiot wearing a Che Guevara tee-shirt. We should react as we would to someone wearing an Adolf Hitler or Osama bin Laden tee-shirt; but, in general, we dont.

Is it that young people are gullible? Do they insist on seeing the defining ethic of Communism as fairness rather than force? Do they cling to the idea that there is some idealised form of Marxism, one without secret police or shortages, just waiting to be tried?

Or is it the opposite? Is it precisely the pitilessness, the purity, the inhumanity, that attracts them? In every age and nation, some people often young men are drawn to ideologies that promise a completely new way of life, ideologies that make no concession to human frailties, nor to past practice. In this regard, at any rate, the appeal of Communism is not so different from the appeal of Daesh.

Perhaps a form of nihilism is innate in a portion of humanity. To some people, every tradition is a superstition, every authority figure an oppressor, every transaction a swindle. We may not be able to shake these people from their prejudices; but we can at least confront them with where those prejudices lead, namely to gulags.

There are always ideologues who say theyd be happy to break a few eggs in order to make an omelette. These ideologues need to be refuted with the observable data of the last hundred years. Setting aside the vast fact that human beings are not eggs, there has not been a single case of an omelette actually emerging. Communism leaves us with empty eggshells and empty bellies. Every time. This story shall the good man teach his son.

ACRE Albania Alexander Solzhenitskyn Alliance of European Conservatives and Reformists Communism Hungary Karl Marx Lenin Marxism Russia Soviet Union

22 comments for: Daniel Hannan: A century since the Communists began their mass slaughter, some still have not learned the lessons

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Daniel Hannan: A century since the Communists began their mass slaughter, some still have not learned the lessons - Conservative Home

NARELLE HENSON

Last updated12:00, March 31 2017

GETTY IMAGES

A statue of Communist revolutionary Vladimir Lenin in Wuensdorf, Germany.

OPINION: Let's meander through the Museum of Marxism today. It's a good time to do it, because the oldest exhibit is 100 this year.

It's just there on the left, in fact where you see Lenin's Bolshevik uprising in 1917. That was where the little child conceived by Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels first entered the world, and was christened "communism". This baby idea that would soon storm the world is decorated in red flags. Red for the blood of the tens of millions whose lives it demanded in the name of equality, freedom and true justice.

In the Soviet Union alone, as you can see, the bones of 20 million people are piled under communism's smiling face. Those bones were earned through war, through the purging of those with different ideas, or through starvation induced by property and industry reforms. Academics argue over the body count. Communism didn't care enough to chronicle the names of the workers it murdered while claiming to rescue them.

At our next exhibit you can see the hammer and the sickle in the hands of Mao Zedong. He too stands atop a pile of bones taken from 65 million people. With the hammer he destroyed thousands of years of "bourgeois" culture, with the sickle he culled comrades in ways so cruel, and in numbers so great, it would make a normal human cry to think about. And still, communism didn't care to record their names.

Communism also made a move into Cambodia and his lust for blood was still not satisfied. As he had everywhere he went, he killed dissidents, intellectuals, those from different ethnic or political groups and he killed the religious. He claimed around 2 million lives through disease, starvation and torture, out of 8 million people.

In the other exhibits, of course, we find communism calling workers of the world to unite. And they do unite, in every one of the scores of countries in which he is or was present. Under the guise of redistributed wealth he unites them in poverty. Under the guise of equality communism unites workers in some of the most unequal nations. Under the guise of justice, communism unites them as victims of terrible human rights abuses. Under the guise of freedom he unites them in an intellectual and political prison. His hollow-eyed citizens don't even have the energy to laugh any more at the words "equality, freedom and true justice".

There are five nations where the dying man still maintains a firm grip: China, North Korea, Laos, Vietnam and Cuba. Perhaps they are the five points of the communist star, but none shines as a model for freedom or equality.

We have reached the end of our tour for today, and just outside the back door (for they refuse to come in) you will find intellectuals even in New Zealand telling you that old man communism is yet "untested" and may still work under the right conditions. They have never lived in communist states, nor have their families. You will know them by the hammer and sickle on their hats, or the red star on their shirts symbols that, on body count alone, are 10 times more offensive than the swastika.

These intellectuals will say Marx was right, it is just his followers that got it wrong. Ask them how many more they are willing to sacrifice to find out if this is true, and how much more time we will need.

Because, as the Little Black Book of Communism says, the body count is almost at 100 million, making Marx and Engels' ideas the most deadly ever conceived in human history once they were put into action.

Surely it is time to put communism in the museum forever.

-Stuff

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Narelle Henson: 100 years of communist history enough - Waikato Times