How to Subvert America
A couple of years ago I was driving somewhere with my teenaged daughter and made a comment about the communist threat to America. Her reply was, “Dad, that sounds sooo science fiction!”
Her comment set me thinking about public attitudes on the subject of communism and ideological subversion. When I was growing up, it was “understood” that we faced a Red Menace that sought to overthrow the United States by any means possible, including possibly a nuclear war. Today, 50 years later, the idea of such a threat is “science fiction”.
Is it possible my daughter was right? That there is no communist threat to America? I’d like to think so. But I think the evidence points to the contrary.
There is no question that communism still exists in the world. China, North Korea, Vietnam, and Cuba are all communist countries. Communism still rules the thinking of many people in Russia and Eastern Europe. Socialism pervades the West, and socialism is just one step removed from communism (someone once said that the only difference between the two is that, if you displease the government in a socialist country they’ll jail you, but in a communist country they’ll shoot you). Yet the Cold War is over, the Soviet Union is no more, and the Red Scare seems to be a thing of the past.
But is it really?
A Brief History
I’ll skip over the question of whether communism really works if the “right” people try it — that’s the subject for another day. Rather, let’s take a historical look at how communism has tried, sometimes successfully, to overthrow various countries, and how it might still seek to overthrow the United States.
I don’t know the complete history of communism, but in the 20th century it was a major factor in world politics. Nation after nation has fallen to communism due to both internal and external forces.
The threat of communism was one factor that helped Adolf Hitler gain control of Germany in 1933; Hitler was strenuously opposed to communism and worked hard to root it out of German politics. His tactics were brutal and inhuman, but he was successful until 1945, when his regime was destroyed by combined Allied and communist armies.
Since 1945, many countries have had communist parties and many still do (including the USA). Italy has a sizeable communist party and with every election faces the possibility of the communists gaining control of the government. Several Central American countries have battled against communist insurgents, and in 1959 Cuba actually fell to a communist revolution. Communists gained control of China in 1949, and since then communists took over North Korea and North Vietnam. South Vietnam fell in 1975 after a prolonged 30-year war. Cambodia fell to communist insurgents the same year.
Russia invaded Hungary in 1956, Czechoslovakia in 1968, and Afghanistan in 1980 (one invasion every 12 years); the Soviet Empire collapsed in 1989 and Russia became just another 3rd World country. But ideology doesn’t die so easily, especially when people have been nurtured in it from childhood.
Russia was the threat that most people feared, not only because of her giant stockpile of nuclear weapons, but also because she had demonstrated (every 12 years) her willingness to forcibly overpower a weaker nation. Only the Mutually Assured Destruction (MAD) capability of the United States prevented Russia from attacking us. Now that threat seems to have gone away, and most people have relaxed. Russia has collapsed, they think, so communism must be dead. China is big and bears watching, but its nuclear capability isn’t all that great. Cuba is a very small pebble in our shoe, Vietnam has been quiet since 1975, and until recently North Korea was just a black spot on the nighttime satellite surveillance photos.
So the threat, if it ever really existed…is over.
Right?
Not So Fast
Communism is a utopian ideology that appeals to a wide range of people, including academics, but most notably to the working class in countries where governments are oppressive. The ideology holds that the end justifies the means, and is therefore willing to take over nations by force if necessary, but internal revolutions are far less messy and draw less criticism from the world community.
Communism became a major player in world politics in 1917 Russia, where the “proletariat”, or working class, suffered from the autocratic cruelty of the Czar. In the decades that followed, communism found fertile recruiting grounds among the poor of other nations with similar structure; Cuba and Cambodia are perfect examples. Yet other nations, such as Hungary, Czechoslovakia, and most of Eastern Europe, have been forced to embrace communism because of foreign invasion. In many such cases, including those that fell to invasion, the pre-communist governments were weak on human rights and popular unrest was high. In every case, the reality of communist rule was even worse than whatever system it replaced.
Communism was popular in the United States in the early years. Many journalists and other reporters traveled to Russia and returned with glowing accounts of a utopian society. Many held onto this illusion for decades, even after World War II when Russia became the new enemy. It was not until Nikita Khrushchev revealed the truth (or some of it) about Stalin’s brutality that the illusion was dashed, and even then some believed it wasn’t communism that had failed, but Stalin himself.
For 20 years after World War II, communism was seen as an evil threat in the USA. In many respects the menace was comically portrayed, and in retrospect looks about as frightening as the threat from UFOs. But we believed it, and went to war to prevent it. The Korean and Vietnam wars were fought to stop the spread of communism. Today, nearly two decades after the fall of the Soviet Union, many people believe the threat was real enough back then, but is no longer a matter for concern. Others believe there never was a credible threat. The question is…are any of them right?
A Hypothetical Case — John-ism
My name is John and I’m the ruler of John Land. I have developed a form of government called John-ism. John-ism is an ideology that puts the workers ahead of everyone else, because workers are the ones who produce and make everything possible. I think it is unfair that workers should be paid less than their employers, since the workers do the hard labor, so I have eliminated the “bourgeoisie” (ruling class) and made everyone equal; workers are now hired by the State. My system guarantees that everyone will have a job, low-rent housing, free education, free medical care, and equal pay. Since there are more workers than employers in John Land, John-ism is very popular with the masses.
As the man in charge, of course, I make an exception for myself. Someone has to lead this nation, and I can’t be living in some cheap shack like everyone else; so I have a mansion, several fancy cars, jet planes — everything I need to live as a proper head of state. And of course I can’t run everything myself, so I have a cabinet to oversee the various divisions of government. The cabinet members also have to have certain amenities, so I pay them more than the workers and give them nicer homes to live in, private schools, and numerous other perks. They understand, of course, that to keep these things they must remain loyal to me and to John-ism. Failure to comply will result in their losing everything.
Even the cabinet can’t oversee all the details of government, so I need a low-level bureaucracy. I need people I can trust, people who are loyal to me, and the only way to ensure that loyalty is to pick someone who has something to lose. I look in the prisons to find men to fill those positions. This has several advantages: such men are grateful to be given a second chance and they know that failure to perform will result in even worse conditions than they had before; and if something really nasty needs to be done, such men will not be squeamish about doing it.
I control the economy; I fix prices and regulate wages. I don’t want anyone taking advantage of my workers.
Because I believe John-ism is the best of all social models, I don’t want anyone trying to change it. I also know that if people start complaining about this or that detail, unrest will follow, and unrest can result in revolt, so I can’t tolerate criticism. For that reason, I control the press, education, religion, and public communication of all sorts. I don’t let people travel freely about; to travel from one district to the next requires government approval.
I also encourage anyone who hears criticism to report it, and those who are guilty of politically incorrect talk will be arrested and incarcerated until their attitudes change. Because I don’t want to waste anyone, I send such people for re-education. If that doesn’t work, I can always use their labor in some of the dirtier jobs that need to be done, such as digging canals, clearing forests, and building roads.
To protect all this, I keep a standing army with the latest in weapons technology. To make sure I am at least equal to my strongest enemy, I have scientists and engineers working on new ideas, and if another country develops something better than we have, I send spies to steal their secrets.
It’s a perfect society! It’s brilliant! And my people love it (just ask them)!
How to Subvert America
Since I have such a utopian society, I think the whole world should adopt John-ism. I would especially like to see the Western democracies convert over, because for some reason they are a real pain in my side. Their false belief in personal freedoms is a threat to my workers, because some of my people, for reasons I can’t understand, somehow think it would be better to live in a country where one can amass personal wealth at the expense of others. From time to time a few of them try to escape from John Land and get to America; life in John Land would be much better if America adopted John-ism and became more like us.
Unfortunately, Americans think John-ism is a dull, oppressive way to live. They think their system, their so-called “freedom”, is superior in every way. It doesn’t look like they’re going to adopt John-ism any time soon, and maybe never. I could always invade them, of course, but their army is as big as mine, and they have won almost every war they ever fought. The cost of such a war would be so high that, even if I won, it wouldn’t be worth it. I’ll keep building my army, of course, because I might get an opportunity to attack, but I’m going to have to think of another way.
I’ll see if I can subvert them instead. It will take a long time, maybe longer than my lifetime, but if I set the right machinery in motion, it should continue to run even after I’m gone.
In order to subvert a country from within, we have to be smart. The first thing to recognize is that it doesn’t work overnight — it takes years. Some weaker countries can be overcome in a very few years, but a country like America will likely take decades. They have a long tradition of personal freedom and national pride that has to be eroded, and while it can be done, it is very important that no one recognize what is happening.
Some people will never accept John-ism, simply because it’s new and radical to their way of thinking, or they’re simply too old to change. A successful subversion will have to consider this. We simply will not win over very many older Americans, so we’ll have to let them die out. In the meantime, we work on their children and grandchildren. Times change, attitudes change, and generations have short memories. What would be radical and unacceptable to one person might seem perfectly logical to his grandson, if the campaign is waged correctly. We will wage it correctly.
Publicity and Education
The first step will be a publicity campaign. I’ve studied the Americans for a long time and I understand how they think. Americans will believe pretty much anything they read in a newspaper or popular magazine. So I’ll invite a few journalists to John Land and give them a tour. I’ll also be available for TV interviews by their news networks. I’ll be open and friendly and give them the grand tour of our finest farms and factories. I’ll let them interview university students and the wives of our diplomats. We’ll showcase the benefits of John-ism for all Americans to see and read about.
I realize that some journalists may be skeptical of my invitation, so I’ll invite only the idealistic ones, those with stars in their eyes. A little positive press will go a long way to disarm American suspicions.
This will take a few years to bear fruit. We’ll keep up the journalism coverage, but in the meantime we’ll continue on with the next step.
While the American media is gushing with enthusiasm about the success of John-ism in John Land, we will establish a small, barely noticed political movement in the United States. A handful of political promoters from John Land, scattered throughout American universities, will be enough to begin a fledgling movement for John-ism. These political promoters will be almost as young as the students they recruit, and as far as anyone knows, they will be Americans themselves. They will speak American English, drive American cars, dress in American styles, and have all the trappings of Americans. This will give them credibility when they begin to point out the shortcomings of the American system and the positive aspects of John-ism. They will work on two or three students at a time until they have spread unrest among a growing number of students. Each recruited student will spread unrest to a few others, and within four to five years, John-ism will gain a foothold.
Some of these student converts, when they finish college, will forget about John-ism, but if we choose them correctly, at least half will continue believing in it. Some will move into the private sector and give it up when they start making money, but we’ll concentrate on journalism students. They tend to be idealistic and most want to “make a difference”. We’ll help them do that. Once they’re employed by media outlets, they will be in a position to re-educate the American public. Most of them won’t even do it consciously, they’ll just view the world through the perspective we’ve taught them and draw conclusions that are favorable to John-ism.
Some of the students we subvert will become teachers and college professors, and they will be able to pass a John-ism-like philosophy on to their students. Within a single generation, people will no longer blindly accept the self-serving doctrine that America is the greatest nation on earth, or that America can do no wrong. The seeds will be sown, and we will continue to provide the water.
Discredit Opposition
This part of the project might take ten or fifteen years, maybe longer. At some point, the fact that John-ism is growing will begin to alarm the older generation of Americans. Some die-hard patriot in Congress will probably raise an alarm, perhaps even hold hearings to determine who is a John-istic (“jistic”) and who has beliefs that are “un-American”. If this happens (and it surely will), it will present us with the greatest opportunity of all.
By then we will have people in high enough positions that we can feed this patriot false information about innocent people, such as government officials and Hollywood actors, maybe even a scientist or two, and we’ll let the patriot run with his “documentation”. He’ll make a public scandal of these innocent folks, perhaps blacklisting them and ruining their careers, and when he’s done, we’ll take him down.
By then we should have at least one really popular journalist in our camp, someone the American people really trust, and he will be able to discredit this patriot in the starkest of terms. He will use terms such as “witch-hunt” and “scare-mongering” (words that really resonate with Americans) and we will provide him with documentation to discredit the patriot. He can invite the patriot onto his television program and publicly make a fool of him. In the wake of this scandal, the patriot’s name will become synonymous with “witch-hunter”, and nobody will ever again dare speak against John-ism for fear of being so labeled.
Pick a Political Party
American conservatives will be our most serious opposition, and the patriot we will discredit will almost certainly be a conservative, right-wing Republican. The Democrat party will be overjoyed at seeing the opposition humiliated, and will leap onto the bandwagon to gain as much political advantage as possible from the scandal. Because the Democrats tend to be left-wing (like jistics), the Democrat party will be the natural political home for jistics in America.
Democrats as a whole don’t approve of John-ism, of course, but we’re not stupid. We can tout our philosophy without labeling it for what it is. If we say “John-ism”, most Americans will panic. We’ll use a different term, such as…”progressive”. That sounds nice, doesn’t it? It should appeal to the ego of any who want to be seen as the leading edge of political thought. We’ll only need a tiny handful of true jistics inside the party, because Democrats love a good slogan and pride themselves on being the party that cares about the workers.
Over the next dozen years, Democrats will do most of our work for us. We will provide them with emotional issues such as raising minimum wages, low-cost housing, rent control, affordable health care, a woman’s right to choose, and plant the idea that American corporations care only about profits at the expense of the workers. (Hey, it worked in John Land, it will work in America!) We’ll also help them see that capitalist American imperialism has a history of enslaving Africans, of subjugating women, and committing genocide against Indians (to avoid confusion about Indians from India, we’ll coin a new term for native Americans — have to figure out what to call them). If we can keep the Democrats talking about these things, and our people in the media writing about them, it will increase discontent across the American continent. There is no shortage of old history that can be exploited for this purpose. (We can even change the name of the party; instead of the Democrat party, we’ll call it the Democratic party. Sounds more fair and balanced, doesn’t it?)
We can anticipate riots and revolutions that will shake America to its core, and if that doesn’t bring about regime change, we’ll move on to even more emotionally-charged issues such as animal rights and destroying the environment — anything that will disrupt American production and weaken its economy.
Lawsuits
Keep in mind that, at no time should John-ism be mentioned. If anyone sees our hand at work, we will take every possible step to discredit him, ridiculing him to tears at every turn. The American system is so vulnerable that we can even use their own courts against them; lawsuits, because of the expense and publicity, are an excellent way to stifle opposition, and we won’t hesitate to exploit them to the fullest. We can establish Institutes and Foundations with names that sound very American to do our work for us. Who is going to suspect that John-ism is behind an organization called People For the American Way, or American Civil Liberties Union? Names like that just drip with baseball and apple pie.
It is very likely that, while all this is going on, we may be invading or fomenting revolution in smaller countries. If the Americans are really frightened of John-ism, they may decide to help these nations out by sending troops to “preserve” them “for democracy”. If and when that happens, we can work behind the scenes to increase unrest at home, staging protests and burning American flags; we’ll spit on their soldiers when they return home and vilify them in the media as baby killers. We can start a “peace movement”, and if we can recruit some American combat veterans, so much the better — who can argue with a man who has already put his life on the line and tells you the war is unjust? After they have lost one or two wars in such a fashion, the Americans will be reluctant to ever fight again, especially if they haven’t been attacked.
Anti-Patriotism
As time passes, the Democratic party will think more and more like jistics (even though they won’t realize it), and we’ll strive to keep a majority in Congress for the express purpose of defeating American patriotism at every turn.
We can accuse patriots of being extremists, and when one of them actually does something extreme, we will concentrate on it and magnify it all out of proportion. When they have a strong leader, we’ll paint him as a bully, an imperialist, and accuse him of profiteering at the expense of the children in poor countries. Congress will gain control of the Presidency, and if any president fails to toe the line, we’ll vilify him in the media until his own children will begin to hate him.
Two or three generations from now, Americans will be afraid to express true patriotism, and few will even know what it means.
By the time this plan has run its course, I will probably be dead, but America will be weakened so badly that, even if John Land is no longer a world power, any weak nation can overcome the United States. Even if I don’t live to savor the victory, I will have won.
Back to Reality
Okay, that was a hypothetical exercise. But it illustrates how things could be done if one had the long-term vision and determination to carry it out. Communism is nothing if not a religion (actually it’s a doctrine, but another word for doctrine is religion). People with religious beliefs have long-term goals, and support strategies that will continue long after their own mortality. Like radical Islam, communism is a religion with a plan to dominate the world, and I believe the true believers see the current decline of communism as a temporary setback.
Religion, by its very nature, is self-perpetuating. The face of it may evolve (it seems unlikely that anyone from the 1st Century Christian church would recognize the face of Christianity today), but the tenets are embedded in bone. Once the current communist governments have fallen, there may never again be a nation with a government that calls itself communist, but that doesn’t mean the philosophy is dead. Dozens of nations today subscribe to a “socialist” philosophy, which is merely communism without the guns.
Communist philosophy lives on, and dominates half the Western world in one form or another. Any political party that describes itself as “progressive” is hiding its true nature behind a pretty word. “Progressive” nations may be kinder and gentler than pure communist nations, but their philosophy is not in the best interest of their citizens. If the United States ever falls into the pit of “progressive” philosophy, the Cold War will truly be lost, because Communism did set out to subvert America, to destroy the American way of life, and the danger is more real today than it was in 1950.
The Communist Party USA (CPUSA) will never win a major election, but it doesn’t have to. We have “political correctness”, which is nothing more than an Orwellian effort to control the thoughts of American citizens; political correctness is inherently communist to the core, and we have swallowed it whole.
Some may think Communism is science fiction, but the most successful subversion is when you convince your enemy that you don’t even exist.
–August 19, 2008
Private Thoughts 