Have you ever asked yourself why you hate & fear communism?
“There are few archbishops in espionage”
For the record, this post is not about defending communism.
I’m not talking about “communism” as the term is currently used and abused. Somehow, someway, there are people today who think Biden, the World Economic Forum, Big Pharma, etc. are “communists” or “Marxists.” '
In this post, however, I’m talking about communism in the critical Cold War/McCarthyism era when it was actively demonized in the name of profit — thus shaping public opinion for many, many decades.
So many Americans reflexively despise and fear this ideology but how many ever wonder why? Sure, they repeat deeply embedded talking points. But what if I told you that — like everything else — there’s a whole lot of propaganda and duplicity going on?
Below are two of the innumerable examples…
“I am a general and chief of the intelligence department of the High Command of the German Army. I have information of the highest importance for your Supreme Commander and the American government, and I must be taken immediately to your senior commander.”
It was with these words that General Reinhard Gehlen, Hitler’s notorious eastern front espionage chief, began his relationship with the Office of Strategic Services (OSS) and the budding U.S. intelligence community. As the OSS was transformed into the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), yet another of many dark alliances emerged.
After surrendering on May 22, 1945, Gehlen, or “Reinhard the Fox,” was eventually interviewed by OSS founders “Wild” Bill Donovan and Allen Dulles after flying to Washington — in the uniform of a U.S. general. According to his biographer, Leonard Mosley, Dulles recommended that the Nazi super-spy be given a budget of $3,500,000 and “set up in business as the supplier of Russian and East European intelligence.”
But the shrewd Gehlen had some conditions:
His organization would not be regarded as part of the American intelligence services but as an autonomous apparatus under his exclusive management. Liaison with American intelligence would be maintained by a U.S. officer whose selection Gehlen would approve.
The Gehlen Organization would be used solely to procure intelligence on the Soviet Union and the satellite countries of the communist bloc.
Upon the establishment of a German government, the organization would be transferred to it and all previous agreements and arrangements canceled, subject to discussions between the new sovereign authority and the United States.
Nothing detrimental or contrary to German interests must be required or expected from the organization, nor must it be called upon for security activities against Germans in West Germany.
Considering that Gehlen was essentially a prisoner of war who could have been brought up on charges of war crimes, these demands were remarkable. Even more remarkable, at first blush, is the fact that the U.S. complied. However, when viewed through the prism of the rapidly escalating Cold War, a Nazi-CIA alliance becomes rather predictable.
With German defeat imminent, Gehlen instructed several staff members to begin microfilming intelligence on the USSR beginning in March 1945. After secretly burying this material throughout the Austrian Alps, Gehlen and his men sought a deal.
Upon his surrender, Gehlen was taken to Fort Hunt, Virginia, where he convinced his U.S. counterparts that the Soviets were planning a westward expansion. Before the end of 1945, Gehlen and most of his high command were freed from POW camps and ready to supply what rabid American cold warriors were dying to hear.
By way of the torture, interrogation, and mass starvation of the four million-plus Soviet POWs at his disposal, Gehlen procured the information that would save him and some of his Third Reich cohorts from the gallows. He and his staff eventually became known as “the Gehlen Org,” which was funded by the United States until a new German government came to power.
For nearly a decade, the Gehlen Org was essentially the CIA’s singular source for Eastern European intelligence. The fruits of this relationship manifested themselves in a deadly Cold War and, true to his job experiences in the war-torn Soviet Union, Reinhard the Fox did whatever it took to stay in business.
“Gehlen had to make his money by creating a threat that we were afraid of, so we would give him more money to tell us about it,” explains Victor Marchetti, formerly the CIA’s chief analyst of Soviet strategic war plans and capabilities.
When Allen Dulles became CIA Director in 1953, (brother John was already President Eisenhower’s Secretary of State by that time), his response to the claim that Gehlen, a known Nazi war criminal, was purposely intensifying the Cold War and influencing the American public opinion was: “I don’t know if he’s a rascal. There are few archbishops in espionage. Besides, one needn’t ask him to one’s club.”
Another potent element of red-baiting involved the myth of Soviet supremacy. Surely, if the godless communists, hell-bent on world domination, were allowed to surpass U.S. military might… well, you get the picture.
Author Edward Herman defines the “Soviet threat” as “a large and formidable beast of prey, the size of whose claws and fangs varied with the demands of the Military-Industrial Complex.”
“It’s now virtually undisputed that the menace once attributed to the Red Army was greatly overrated,” added journalist Ken Silverstein.
“Military history is full of trumped-up threats,” Business Week columnist Stan Crock wrote in late 2002. “Time and again in military preparations, fears are raised that later prove unfounded.”
Crock calls this gap-ology. A gap, according to Herman, is “a frightening but mythical deficiency relative to some foreign power.”
First, there was the 1955 bomber gap. “The Soviets flew Bison bombers repeatedly in a loop over visitors at an air show, giving an exaggerated notion of their numbers,” says Crock. “A worried U.S. military proceeded to build up its air-defense system.”
Five years later, John F. Kennedy gave America the “missile gap” when he claimed the U.S. nuclear arsenal had fallen behind the Soviet stockpile. Upon his election, JFK revealed that a gap indeed existed but it turned out that it was the U.S. that had the advantage.
That didn't stop the sainted JFK from launching a nuclear arms buildup.
Presidents Carter and Reagan combined to make the late 70s/early 80s contribution to the Soviet threat: the “window of vulnerability.”
Based on the faulty assessment of a group of conservative defense analysts, Reagan announced that the Soviets could knock out America's land-based nukes in a first strike. The claims were based on faulty assessments of the Soviet weapons' power and accuracy — with no analysis of Moscow's intentions.
U.S. Secretary of Defense from 1981 to 1987, unrepentant Cold Warrior, master of spin, and Ronald Reagan’s Defense Secretary, Caspar Weinberger remained unfazed by any evidence of U.S. deception.
“In the end, we won the Cold War,” he said, “and if we won by too much, if it was overkill, so be it.”
Once again, this is not a defense of any ideology. It’s an exposé.
So much of what we think has been implanted in our subconscious. We can’t even be sure why we believe what we think we believe.
How many of your thoughts are even your own?
The enemy tells us what to fear, who to admire, who to hate, and how to live. And now, the parasites have the tools to do that more efficiently and covertly.
But we already know what we feel. When we detach ourselves from The Powers That Shouldn’t Be™, we’re free to reconnect with our inherent, profound, supernatural powers.
Reminder: You are fearfully and wonderfully made.
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Heavy thoughts for so early on a Wednesday...
We fear ideologies from habit. From recycling what we were told as children. If we don't allow our habits to be altered by life experience and, hopefully, our own examination, those ideologies persist, and we pass them along.
I grew up during the Cold War, and my father was in law enforcement. We had a subscription to Time magazine. It was ingrained, until I started seeing that these ideologies represented individual people who, presumably, loved their families too.
And boy could they play hockey!
But 4 years ago, as we lined up outside stores, in winter,hoping to be able to buy eggs, I recall my parents talking about the horrors of the Soviet Union...
As history continues to unfold, may we come to realize, as a society, that we are being played for useful idiots. And a great many of us excel in that role
I agree--we all need to question, research and scrutinize with critical thought the suggestions we absorbed, especially while young and impressionable.
For me it went in the opposite direction--my mother idolized the Chinese communists, gushing about how they wiped out starvation in China and other inaccuracies. Then as a teenager, in Italy, all my peers and I became “militants” (activists) in communist groups and parties. Besides school, all we did was go to meetings, hand out flyers at dawn in front of factories, read newspapers and analyze events. It was an exciting time. We were young and idealistic and dreamed of the utopia we were creating.
The PCI (Italian Communist Party) was very strong, in 1975 the PCI, Socialist and other small far-left parties gained 75% of the vote. Ultimately, as we know, it didn’t work out, but these experiences and suggestions created a subconscious backdrop of fondness for communism and the left.
This backdrop hung on until...
1) I spent time in China studying Taoism and Qigong. I wasn’t doing tourist activities but spending time in monasteries and with regular people. I loved and love Chinese spiritual practices, philosophies and history. Contact with the reality of Chinese communism and observing how the government micro-managed, controlled and strangled the life out of their own spiritual legacy was a wrecking ball that destroyed any lingering fantasy of communism as a solution.
2) I lived for a decade in the Brighton Beach area where I befriended countless Russians and Eastern Europeans and heard about the realities of how they lived.