Leftist Lies Undermine American Elections [OPINION]
One of the goals of America's enemies, particularly Russia, is to undermine the confidence in our elections and the legitimacy of our democratic government.
The legitimacy of the American Republic has been under assault since its birth. The key to undermining our nation is to claim the elections aren't legitimate. If people lose confidence in the elections, then they can't believe the government--which gets its consent from the governed--is legitimate. Undermining elections is crucial to the goals of our enemies.
Over the years, totalitarian opponents of the United States have launched long-range propaganda campaigns to discredit the legitimacy of our elections. Russia, Cuba, East Germany, Nicaragua, North Korea, China and Vietnam have run campaigns to attack America's system of government.
It is ridiculous that dictatorships would have a voice in the conversations about democratic elections. But they weren't looking to discuss democracy; they were focused on destroying the legitimacy of democracy.
The foreign enemies of our republic found support with a small but extremely active number of people in America. Most of the people who actively discredited our American way of life lived in the orbit of the Communist Party. The truth about those traitors is well documented, but much less known. David Horowitz and Ronald Radosh were raised in that world, and they have written about it. They participated, as children, in marches to defend the Rosenbergs while spreading the idea that the United States was a militant anti-Semitic monster.
The communists knew the Rosenbergs were guilty of giving the Soviets atomic secrets. The Russians and their American supporters used the Rosenbergs twice. First, to get atomic secrets to strengthen the communist military's ability to attack America. Once the Rosenbergs' spy operation was discovered and they were convicted, the Russians and their agents in America used their situation as propaganda to claim America was a Jew-hating nation that framed and murdered the Rosenbergs because they were Jews.
Today, we have enough adults who were educated by teachers who thought Howard Zinn was important. His book A People's History of the United States is assigned reading in high school and college classrooms. The book has been celebrated in television shows and in movies. It is literally a work of Soviet propaganda written by a man who we now know was a member of the American arm of the Soviet government and under their discipline. You need only to read his FBI file.
If you have a copy of the book, please go look up the sources he uses for each chapter. If you don't have a copy, ask your child for their copy. The sources for his book on American history include official members of the Communist Party USA who were acting on the orders of the Soviet government. He repeatedly cites books published by International Publishers as sources, too.
International Publishers was founded by Alexander Trachtenberg. He is dead but the company is still alive. A letter written to Trachtenberg in 1924 was discovered in the Communist International's archives in Moscow after the Soviet collapse. The letter makes it clear that International Publishers was an arm of the Communist International movement directed from Moscow. The mission of International Publishers was spreading communist propaganda in the United States, Canada and other English-speaking nations.
This might be new information to you, but it is well known to people in the FBI, CIA and the rest of our national security operation.
Alexander Trachtenberg was important enough to the Soviet espionage network in America by 1939 to have been brought to the attention of President Roosevelt by his staff. Whittaker Chambers told A.A. Berle, a top confidant of F.D.R., about Trachtenberg during their historic September 2, 1939 meeting. The meeting also included journalist Don Issac Levine. Chambers had been a secret courier for the Communist espionage networks secretly operating in the U.S. government for the benefit of the Soviet Union. A.A. Berle titled his four-page memo from the meeting "Underground Espionage Agent."
His testimony to Congress, and later in a courtroom, shocked America. He exposed Alger Hiss, a close advisor to U.S. presidents, cabinet members, and one of the architects of the United Nations as a Soviet spy. Hiss was one of the few traitors to actually go to jail for his crimes in support of Soviet world domination.
Whittaker Chambers detailed his life of espionage and his escape from that world in his book Witness, and he named the traitors. Witness spent a consecutive 13 weeks as the New York Times' number one bestselling book when it was published in 1952.
Zinn's book is purchased with tax dollars and used in thousands of American public schools. Children are required to read and absorb the text as if it is a normal school book. It is a document written by a person who took orders from the Communist Party USA and controlled by the evil men in Moscow.
It is unlikely that the teachers assigning this book offer an alternative to the foreign propaganda in A People's History of the United States. I doubt most teachers even know the subversive background of the author and his chosen sources. And sadly, I suspect those that do know about Zinn and the mission of his book are mostly in agreement with him.
Finally, someone at the decision-making level of the school system purchased that text. A teacher who questions the wisdom of teaching children Howard Zinn's version of American history is smart enough to know they would be going to war with their boss. I suspect they would find little support from the leadership of their union in that battle.
Chris McCarthy is the host of The Chris McCarthy Show on 1420 WBSM New Bedford. He can be heard weekdays from 10 a.m. to noon. Contact him at chris.mccarthy@townsquaremedia.com and follow him on Twitter @Chris_topher_Mc. The opinions expressed in this commentary are solely those of the author.