Communism
October 19, 2024 — John Hinderaker
Electricity is the foundation of modern life. Cheap, reliable power is the defining feature of a developed country. A poor country is one where the lights don’t always go on. Among the poorest of the poor is Cuba, now experiencing mass blackouts: Electricity went out across Cuba on Friday just hours after its cash-strapped government ordered the shutdown of nonessential businesses to save power as millions of residents were already
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September 24, 2024 — Scott Johnson
TCM is running a series based on the New Republic’s list of “The 100 most significant political films of all time.” Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck’s The Lives of Others (2006) came in at number 19 on the New Republic list: “Set in the 1980s, this German drama tells the story of a morally conflicted Stasi agent spying on two East German residents, a playwright and an actress.” The film made
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September 17, 2024 — Scott Johnson
I posted this column by Professor Sean McMeekin over the weekend. Now that it has rotated off our home page, I am giving it one more spin in case you missed it. Sean McMeekin is Francis Flournoy Professor of European History at Bard College and the author of essential books including The Red Millionaire: Münzenberg, Moscow’s Secret Propaganda Tsar in the West, 1917-1940 (2004), The Russian Revolution: A New History
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September 14, 2024 — Lloyd Billingsley
It was my first time voting in a presidential election, and, while only twenty-one years old, I was already disenchanted with the state of partisan politics in America. Entering the voting booth I had no idea for whom I was going to cast my vote, but I was thrilled at the opportunity to exercise my newfound citizenship privilege. I scanned the seven names listed and stopped at the Communist Party
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September 14, 2024 — Scott Johnson
Sean McMeekin is Francis Flournoy Professor of European History at Bard College and the author of essential books including The Red Millionaire: Münzenberg, Moscow’s Secret Propaganda Tsar in the West, 1917-1940 (2004), The Russian Revolution: A New History (2017), and Stalin’s War: A New History of World War II (2021). His new book is To Overthrow the World: The Rise and Fall and Rise of Communism, just published by Basic
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September 4, 2024 — John Hinderaker
Former New York State official Linda Sun and her husband have been indicted for, among other things, violation of the Foreign Agents Registration Act, as a result of Sun’s alleged services on behalf of the People’s Republic of China. The indictment has gotten a good deal of publicity: A former top aide to New York Govs. Andrew Cuomo (D) and Kathy Hochul (D) used her high-ranking position in the state’s
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August 20, 2024 — Lloyd Billingsley
John links to a piece in which Tim Walz says Communism means “everyone is the same and everyone shares. . . The doctor and the construction worker make the same. The Chinese government and the place they work for provide housing and 14 kg or about 30 pounds of rice per month. They get food and housing,” and so on. Walz dished up this classic PRC propaganda after the Tiananmen
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July 19, 2024 — Lloyd Billingsley
As Victor Davis Hanson notes, “our Soviet Union” features our own Brezhnev in Joe Biden and our own Pravda in the establishment media that praises the Delaware dullard as “sharp as a tack.” Our Soviet Union also features Stalinist show-trials, imprisonment without trial, government control of media, deep state agencies deployed against the people, and our very own communist party. Long before the Russia hoax, the Soviet Union interfered with
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June 5, 2024 — Lloyd Billingsley
On June 3-4, 1989 China’s Communist regime unleashed massive military force against pro-democracy protesters in Tiananmen Square, killing hundreds, possibly thousands. The massacre made it clear what China’s murderous regime was all about, but the USA rewarded China with most favored nation status and World Trade Organization membership. This was supposed to make the PRC respect human rights, but it didn’t. The Communist regime strip-mined the USA of intellectual property
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May 18, 2024 — Lloyd Billingsley
In the course of writing From Mainline to Sideline I came across Huan-Ying: Journey Through Workers’ China, authored by Janet Goldwasser and Stuart Dowty and published by Monthly Review Press in 1975. “We wrote it to combat misinformation, ” explained Goldwasser in 2019. “China had a different way of setting priorities in terms of healthcare and working conditions, so we intended to get information to readers who weren’t able to visit themselves.”
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May 13, 2024 — Scott Johnson
Quillette has published Ron Radosh’s long review of Benn Steil’s new biography of Henry Wallace as “Misadventures of a Stalinist stooge” (subscribers only). Steil’s new biography is titled The World That Wasn’t: Henry Wallace and the Fate of the American Century. You can read the first section of Ron’s review at the link. You can also listen to the whole thing via the reading of the review in the audio
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April 29, 2024 — John Hinderaker
So who is behind the kill-the-Jews campus protests that, as Steve noted earlier today, have panicked Congressional Democrats who fear a political debacle as in 1968? Consistent with the retro nature of the protests, the organizers appear to be largely left-wing retreads, with a financial assist, it is reported, from one or more Soros entities. Take, for example, Charlotte Kates. Kates has been prominent in the Columbia protests: Radical anti-Israel
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March 14, 2024 — John Hinderaker
Via InstaPundit, I learn that Karl Marx died on this day in 1883. I concur with Glenn Reynolds’ suggestion that March 14 should therefore be a holiday: Marx performed the difficult feat of being wrong about everything. Most people are right about some things and wrong about others; the law of averages sets in. But if you are an ideologue, like Marx, and if your ideology is stupid, you can
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March 11, 2024 — Lloyd Billingsley
As John noted recently, members of “The Squad” recently snuck off to Cuba, a one-party Communist dictatorship and massive violator of human rights. The woke Democrats seem unaware of films and books that document the repressions of the Stalinist regime. Consider, for example, Improper Conduct, by Cuban cinematographer Nestor Almendros, who in 1979 won an Oscar for Days of Heaven. Improper Conduct shows how Fidel Castro tossed homosexuals into forced
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March 5, 2024 — John Hinderaker
Josef Stalin died on this day in 1953. In his sleep; so, like Lenin, Mao and Castro, and unlike Hitler, Mussolini and Ceausescu, he never paid a price for his crimes. The Victims of Communism remember: Stalin died on this day in 1953. He left behind a legacy of terror, famine, and mass murder. Remember the victims. pic.twitter.com/HUBBYUZMwh — Victims of Communism (@VoCommunism) March 5, 2024 Stalin ranks second only
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March 2, 2024 — John Hinderaker
There was a time when, if you said that liberals suffer from Communism envy, they would deny it. Is that still true? Perhaps not, as to the Squad, two members of which were among a delegation that made a more or less secret trip to Cuba: A delegation of the U.S. Congressional Progressive Caucus traveled to Cuba last week in a trip that has not previously been disclosed by the
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January 7, 2024 — Scott Johnson
Henry Wallace! I have long thought that Roosevelt’s replacement of Wallace with Truman on the Democratic ticket in 1944 provided irrefutable proof that God looks out for the United States. Wallace was a fool who would have altered the course of history very much for the worse if he had succeeded Roosevelt to the presidency in 1945 instead of Truman. Among other evidence of Wallace’s foolishness, one thinks of Wallace’s
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