Communism
September 11, 2023 — Steven Hayward
September 11, 2023 marks the 50th anniversary of the left’s 9/11 world-historical catastrophe: the day Chile’s aspiring Communist dictator Salvador Allende was deposed in a military coup. Needless to say the left has always seen the deft hand of Nixon, Kissinger, and the CIA behind the event, and while it is certainly true the Nixon Administration was hostile to Allende’s proto-Communist regime, subsequent history ought to disabuse everyone that our
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August 4, 2023 — Steven Hayward
One reason I’m not posting much right now is that I’m in the middle of a three-day conference for scholars at the Reagan Library that they kindly titled after my books, “The Age of Reagan.” Last night the conference featured me in an after-dinner conversation with Beth Fischer of the University of Toronto, author of The Myth of Triumphalism: Rethinking President Reagan’s Cold War Legacy. Don’t be misled by the
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May 8, 2023 — John Hinderaker
Of all living Americans, Angela Davis may have the most disgraceful history. She is a Communist–her description, not mine; she was twice the Communist Party’s candidate for vice president, and was awarded the Lenin Peace Prize by the Soviet Union. She once participated in the murder of a judge in California. She was acquitted of the crime by a biased jury, but there was never any serious doubt about her
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March 23, 2023 — Scott Johnson
I have repeatedly noted the role played by the National Lawyers Guild chapter at Stanford in the shoutdown of Judge Duncan at the March 9 Federalist Society event that has disgraced the law school several times over. The National Lawyers Guild is an old Communist front group that seeks to spread the old-time religion despite the fall of the Soviet Union and the Communist International. Alan Dershowitz now reviews the
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March 15, 2023 — Scott Johnson
Megyn Kelly covered the disgrace of Stanford Law School on her Sirius XM/podcast show yesterday. She invited Tim Rosenberger to discuss the disgrace. Rosenberger is the president of Stanford Law School’s Federalist Society chapter and hosted Fifth Circuit Judge Kyle Duncan at the shoutdown. In the video of the segment below, Megyn Kelly mocks Stanford DEI Dean Tirien Steinbach. Rosenberger does a good job discussing the event. Kelly deserves some
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October 22, 2022 — Scott Johnson
Reuters has a good story on the forcible removal of Chinese former President Hu Jintao from the closing ceremony of the Communist Party Congress on Saturday: Hu, 79, Xi Jinping’s immediate predecessor, was seated to the left of Xi. He was led off the stage of the main auditorium of the Great Hall of the People in Beijing by two stewards, a Reuters witness at the congress said. Video footage
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October 10, 2022 — Scott Johnson
Over at the University of Minnesota Medical School, one probably shouldn’t be seen with books such as Arthur Koestler’s novel Darkness at Noon or Fan Shen’s memoir Gang of One: Memoirs of a Red Guard. It might reflect an inclination to think for yourself and other such bourgeois indulgences. I’m thinking that they missed a few strokes at this year’s white-coat ceremony for new students. The video below is a
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August 31, 2022 — John Hinderaker
It has been a while since we checked in on Fidel’s socialist paradise. You might think that an utterly failed and discredited regime would inevitably be overthrown, but that hasn’t happened, at least not yet. (See also Venezuela.) Meanwhile, when you think things can’t get worse, the decline continues. Babalublog reports: “After Milk and Beef, Bread Disappears from the Cuban Table.” From the balcony, Yudineya watched dozens of bread and
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August 28, 2022 — Steven Hayward
Leftists will get impatient or roll their eyes when they hear someone like Jordan Peterson describe postmodernist “critical theory,” critical race theory, or any aspect of identity politics (especially the phenomenon of “gender fluidity”) as “cultural Marxism.” And yet. . . Michael Anton drew my attention to a passage in the transcript of Leo Strauss’s seminar on Marx that he taught at the University of Chicago in 1960 (emphasis added): Partly
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July 24, 2022 — Scott Johnson
Ron Radosh was a student and follower of Pete Seeger. Ron recalls his personal relationship with Seeger as well as Seeger’s loyalty to the vagaries of the Communist Party line in his memoir Commies: A Journey Through the Old Left, the New Left and the Leftover Left, published by Encounter Books in 2001. Encounter has kept it in print along with the rest of the back catalog. In 1941 Seeger
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May 20, 2022 — Scott Johnson
The Bradley Foundation held its annual Bradley Prizes award ceremony this week in Washington on May 17. Moderated by the Wall Street Journal’s own former Bradley Prize-winning Kim Strassel, the event honored 2022 recipients Wilfred McClay, Glenn Loury, and Chen Guangcheng. Having been sent a link to view the ceremony via live stream, my wife and I watched at our kitchen table. When the great Bill McClay finished speaking, my
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February 5, 2022 — John Hinderaker
The Babylon Bee made this video that parodies one of popular music’s more detestable songs. This version is much better: “Imagine Communism.” Via InstaPundit.
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October 9, 2021 — John Hinderaker
One of the strangest phenomena of our time is the whitewashing of the Chinese Communist Party by American liberals. Fifty years ago, everyone knew that the CCP was vicious, cruel and evil. But over the years, economic self-interest–the desire to take advantage of what is at best low-wage labor, and at worst slave labor–has triumphed over moral judgment. With hindsight, maybe Richard Nixon’s famous opening up of China and Bill
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September 23, 2021 — Paul Mirengoff
China’s President Xi Jinping reportedly is moving down a Maoist path. If so, this is probably the most important development of 2021. The Wall Street Journal reports on this development in a story with the headline: “Xi Jinping Aims to Rein In Chinese Capitalism, Hew to Mao’s Socialist Vision.” The subtitle is: “Going beyond curbing tech giants, [Xi] wants the Communist Party to steer flows of money and set tighter
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June 20, 2021 — Paul Mirengoff
Scott’s Father’s Day tribute to his dad includes a picture of his father and Hubert Humphrey. Scott noted that the picture was taken not long after Humphrey had led the charge to retake the Democratic-Farmer-Labor Party from the Communists between 1946 and 1948. Around the same time as that picture was taken, my father, a socialist, was a leader in the movement to wrest control of certain union locals in
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February 24, 2021 — Scott Johnson
Tim Weiner is a former New York Times reporter and author of Legacy of Ashes: The History of the CIA (2007). The history of the CIA, according to Weiner, is a history of the failures of the CIA. The CIA chose not to ignore the book. It posted a response by the agency’s historian that the agency has unfortunately removed from its site. The CIA historian’s response to Weiner’s book
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September 23, 2020 — Scott Johnson
We have previously drawn attention to Professor Gary Saul Morson’s New Criterion essay “How the great truth dawned,” Professor Morson’s New Criterion lecture “Leninthink,” Professor Morson’s New York Review of Books review “The horror, the horror,” and Professor Morson’s book Narrative and Freedom: The Shadows of Time (Steve wrote about it here). To these I now want to add Professor Morson’s First Things essay “Suicide of the liberals.” Drawing on
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