in the nationality field, will form a super, over-all front such as the
old American League Against War and Fascism, which at its peak claimed
7,500,000 members. Often the propaganda value is to show unity: all these
organizations, representing many different nationalities, are working
together for common aims.
Or consider the National Negro Labor Council, mentioned at the beginning
of this chapter. This also was a roof, or compound, front created by
already existing fronts. Let’s see how this works.
First, “delegates” must be “elected” to a “national founding convention.”
Immediately, communist fronts across the nation “elect delegates,” and
communist-controlled labor unions choose as their delegates those best
suited for convention service.
At the convention all arrangements are made by Party leaders, including
the selection of officers, the issuing of press releases, the passing of
resolutions. This includes the actual running of the convention to ensure
security. To illustrate, a newspaper reporter went to the convention. He
had once been a Party member but had been expelled. On the first day of
the convention one of the officials invited him outside and asked if he
had been expelled. The reporter admitted that he had, and was ordered not
to come back into the convention hall.
Hailed as representing “thousands of members,” the new organization is a
front created out of fronts.
Another technique of manipulation is the continuing front. Here the same
front is maintained by changing the name to meet current conditions. In
1940 the American Peace Mobilization was formed, urging mobilization for
peace and no aid to Britain. In 1941, after Germany’s invasion of Russia,
the name was changed to American People’s Mobilization, and the demands
to all-out aid to Britain and a second front. This was the same group
with a different name.
Again, on October 16, 1943, the Young Communist League was dissolved and
the very next day the American Youth for Democracy was formed. Later the
group was called Labor Youth League. All were designed to recruit young
people for communism.
The continuing front is well suited for “victim” agitation cases; for
example, the Committee to Save John Doe. This group, so active for Doe,
had lapsed into disuse. A new “victim,” Richard Roe, was now at hand.
Resurrect the old front!
That is exactly what happened. A communist arrived in town and contacted
leaders of the old Committee to Save the Martinsville Seven. Where had it
achieved the best results while agitating for the Seven? What were the
problems? How could it best be used again?
A few days later the new front was already in action; the Committee to
Save Albert Jackson, the same old faces under a new name. On Sunday
morning its members were handing out leaflets in front of churches. In
this instance Jackson was executed and the comrades turned to other
fields.
Still another device is the satellite front, a cluster of minor fronts
around a larger front. A new issue, like higher transit rates or the
draining of a swamp, arises. The DEF Committee to Fight the High Cost of
Living (the larger front) starts satellites, such as related committees
in various sections of the city. Many of these satellites are paper
organizations; however, they make a formidable showing to the uninformed.
These fronts are a vehicle for communist pressure. They are highly
fissionable. From many comes one; from one come many. They can be cut,
sliced, slivered, or compounded to fit any need. No wonder the Party
makes so much use of them in mass agitation.
The campaign is launched, urging the veto of the Anticommunist Bill.
Let’s see how the Party’s front system is brought into play.
Suddenly telegrams, letters, petitions pour in on the governor from
all kinds of groups such as organizations protesting higher taxes;
youth, women’s, union, and veterans’ organizations; free-speech groups;
civil-rights organizations. To an uncritical eye it must seem that a
wide stratum of population is interested in a veto of the anticommunist
legislation. Then messages arrive from other countries (from
international fronts), as if the whole world, “millions of people” as the
communists like to say, is vitally interested in the bill.
Many noncommunists may oppose the legislation for a variety of reasons
and express their opinions by letter, telegram, and petition. That, very
emphatically, does not make them communists. They are only exercising
their democratic privileges. What we are interested in here, however, is
how the Communist Party, through its front system, can stimulate a vast
and often effective propaganda barrage—a barrage which, within hours, can
be turned off or shifted elsewhere.
Many times fronts appear bewildering in their variety; agitating on
countless issues; based on different groups and occupations; and working
in many ways. But actually their technique of formation is virtually
identical.
Let’s look briefly inside a communist front and see how it operates. At
the center is always the Party, organizing, manipulating, seeing that the
right persons are in charge. Noncommunists might well ponder this comment
by a Party organizer:
Experience has shown that most sponsors are unwilling to give
of themselves sufficiently to stop the secretary from directing
policy.
So true! The communists realize that if the secretary (or other key
officer) is a communist (almost always a concealed member), the Party can
dominate the organization. Let the letterhead glitter with noncommunist
names: president, vice-president, members of the executive board. They
serve as lightning rods, camouflaging the communist interest. To the
sponsors, the prestige; to the communists, the power.
Around this communist core come layer after layer of noncommunists.
As we have seen in Chapter 15, great emphasis is placed on attracting
noncommunists, the more prominent the better, into communist propaganda
work. These noncommunists, by allowing their names to be used as
sponsors, giving testimonials, or appearing at front rallies, are aiding
the Party. It cannot be emphasized too often how the communists attempt
to exploit for strictly partisan purposes the legitimate interests of
noncommunists in social and economic problems, world peace, civil rights,
and so forth.
Most important to fronts are mailing lists containing the names of
persons to whom literature can be sent. Perhaps you have received such
propaganda in the mail and wondered whence it came. Party-front mailing
lists are compiled in many ways—from telephone books, directories,
membership rolls of infiltrated organizations (“loaned” by concealed
members). Then the daily press is followed. Front headquarters may jot
down the names of officers in noncommunist organizations. You never know.
Someday they might “come in handy.”
Party fronts are aggressive. To wait for the noncommunist is wrong. Seek
him out. “We must get into the neighborhoods more and into the home.”
Through rallies, parades, picket lines, forums, debates, circulation of
literature, fronts are constantly seeking public support. They operate on
the main streets of America.
Another thing: The agitation is always practical. Talk about peace, jobs,
and the price of milk, not Marx’s ideas of revolution. Link the struggle
with “the fight for pork chops.”
Peace is an everyday issue and ... should involve the
housewife, the woman who has to wrestle with budgets in the
hopeless struggle with taxes, high prices and a shrinking pay
check.
In one instance, for example, a cookbook was issued by a front, a “dollar
stretcher” containing low-priced menus. Here is the point. These recipes
will help, somewhat. But, Mrs. Housewife, you can never hope for a stable
economy (where prices are always low) until “peace” (Soviet style) is
achieved.
That’s mixing propaganda with eggs and butter, sugar and salt.
Many times, trick “come-ons” are used. Consider communist-sponsored
forums, for instance. Here are some Party-suggested topics:
—Are American marriages a failure?
—How to find an apartment.
—Should the voting age be reduced to eighteen years?
—Future of youth, what is it?
—Can heart disease be cured?
—Can cancer be cured or prevented?
—How to become a cultured person.
What have these to do with communism? Nothing. But they bring listeners
within talking distance.
If one thing won’t work, maybe another will, such as a special
celebration, in which a front sponsors an exhibit of “peace” literature
or Russian photographs. Then there are round-robin letters, chain
telephone calls, forums for high school science teachers. One front sold
“Christmas seals.” Another was planning to put out a leaflet. “Fine,”
commented an associate, “but be sure to add the inscription which appears
on the Statue of Liberty. That’ll make it sound better.” Festivals and
rallies, often featuring foreign “dignitaries,” attract hundreds, even
thousands. Don’t forget to conduct polls on the street, always securing
through partisan manipulation “proof” that the “people” support points
advocated in the Party line.
Communist Parties around the world collaborate whenever it will advance
their cause. Some years ago a women’s conference was convened in
Paris, France, and out of it grew the Women’s International Democratic
Federation.
Long before the Paris gathering the Communist Party went to work
promoting delegations of American women. One hundred telegrams were
sent out from Communist Party headquarters in New York City to leaders
of various women’s organizations, announcing that they had been chosen
as delegates and inviting them to attend a meeting at the home of the
chairman of the committee. A temporary Committee on Cooperation with the
International Women’s Conference came into being to make arrangements.
An expediter was appointed to get passports, and a special rate of 495
dollars for a round trip by plane was secured. And so the ladies went to
Paris, many without the slightest idea that the affair had been promoted
by the Communist Party.
Out of the Women’s International Democratic Federation grew its American
affiliate, the Congress of American Women. Shortly after the Congress
had its first meeting, the National Committee of the Communist Party
met in New York City. At this meeting one of its members discussed the
importance of the Women’s International Democratic Federation to the
Communist Party. This high Party official then stated that the Party did
not then control the newly created Congress of American Women, and that
the communists needed to “infiltrate it more.” The Congress has since
been designated as a subversive organization by the Attorney General,
the Senate Internal Security Subcommittee, and the House Committee on
Un-American Activities.
Earlier in this chapter we spoke of international fronts. The following
is an example:
An envelope was postmarked at Prague, Czechoslovakia, addressed to an
American college. Inside was a printed letter signed by the Prorector and
Secretary of Charles University, Prague, formerly renowned as a great
European educational institution, now a communist propaganda front. The
letter opened:
We send you the Proclamation of the Charles University against
the use [by the United States] of the bacteriological warfare
in Korea and urge you to express your views on the named
Proclamation.
Enclosed was the “PROCLAMATION of the Academic Community of the Charles
University....”
As you read the message, note the propaganda techniques employed:
1. _The appeal prostitutes the reputation of a well-known university
for propaganda purposes_: “We, professors, lecturers and the other
scientific workers of the Charles University in Prague, one of the oldest
universities of the world....”
2. _The appeal allegedly is based on humanitarian and scientific
grounds_: “With full responsibility to our human and scientific
consciences we have considered the danger which threatens all of humanity
through the crimes that are being committed by the American imperialist
army.”
3. _The appeal is directed to scientific teachers in universities._ The
idea is that an appeal from a member of one profession or occupation to
another is more effective than random appeals. This device is often used,
with Russian writers, artists, musicians addressing their “counterparts”
in America: “We address ourselves to you, scientific workers of
universities of all countries....”
4. _The weight of scholarly backing is designed to influence opinion._
(If scientists in this university say the charges are true, they must be
true.) For example:
These facts prove that the armies of the American
interventionists have repeatedly used bacteriological weapons.
* * * * *
From the American airplanes bombs were dropped containing
different kind of insects, rats, etc., which were infected
with plague, cholera and other epidemic diseases, and infected
foodstuffs as well.
* * * * *
... we are ashamed to think of those American members
of medical science who have committed themselves to the
preparation of these repulsive crimes.
5. _Action is recommended_: “We urge you to refuse to place your
scientific knowledge at the service of mass extermination of mankind....
Protest not only in your activity as teachers and in your work in the
scientific press, but with your governments as well!”
The proclamation is designed to make a lie believable, to paint the
United States as a murderer and the Soviet Union as a protector of peace,
thanks to a dignified and “respectable” front.
Most of this communist propaganda would be laughable except for its
deadly seriousness. The Party is not kidding. This is live ammunition
designed to capture, maim, and kill. To regard communist fronts and their
propaganda as foolishness is to risk our freedom.
Examine the communist attitude toward parades, for example. Most people
think of parades as a time of interest and commemoration. Not the
communists. Parades are weapons of propaganda, another form of front.
Listen to these Party instructions, for example, concerning parades,
issued by the old Central Committee of the Party before it was abolished:
The marchers must be well mannered. Walk in rhythm. Don’t be “a line of
stragglers shuffling along like a tired and discouraged army in retreat.”
The result is that the value of the demonstration as a means
of impressing and winning over or neutralizing hostile people
along the line of march is lost.
Here are a few things that should be remembered:
Every two or three hundred marchers should be led by a band,
a bugle or fife and drum corps. We need scores of bands, with
plenty of brass instruments.
Banners and placards! Do not be “stingy with the length of sticks.” Cut
out the fancy lettering. It is difficult to read.
Use good English. “Some slogans are so bad grammatically, that people are
amused at seeing them.” The fewer the words the better. Don’t just “slap”
slogans on cardboard. Make sure they are “politically correct.”
More advice: carry placards “on a slight angle, with wording facing the
sidewalks.” Scatter them through the parade; avoid bunching. Streamers:
too much pulling causes ripping; not enough causes folding.
A favorite field for communist fronts is the election campaign for public
office. Running communist candidates for city council, mayor, governor,
even for the presidency of the United States, is an old Party habit.
Never has the Party, running under its own name, been able to secure
many votes. In instances where Party candidates have run under their
own colors, their defeats have almost invariably been disastrous. Party
candidates have run five times (1924 through 1940) for the presidency of
the United States and in 1932 achieved their highest percentage of the
total vote cast—a mere 0.3 per cent, or 102,991 out of almost 40,000,000
votes cast. Three times the percentage was 0.1, and once, 0.2. In
instances, however, where the Party has maneuvered political alliances,
it has achieved more success, as shown by the election of Benjamin J.
Davis, Jr., and Peter Cacchione, both well-known communists, to the City
Council of New York City in the 1940’s. Yet these campaigns give training
in agitation and enable the Party to smear rivals, scream its propaganda,
and cause unrest.
Party candidates also frequently run in concealed capacities.
Board-of-education campaigns are well suited to communist exploitation.
Usually running as independents, Party candidates can conceal their
true affiliations. Moreover, national and international issues that
would betray their basic sentiments, such as the Russian intervention
in Hungary, are not likely to arise. In such campaigns Party-sponsored
candidates are invited to parent-teacher meetings, community centers,
public forums, to participate in radio debates (when the time is
donated), and speak in the homes of private citizens. “The Citizens
(or Independent) Committee for ——” takes the candidate where, as a
communist, he could never dream of going. The Party, behind the scenes,
works overtime stuffing propaganda into envelopes, passing out cards,
drumming up enthusiasm.
The results are often amazing. William Z. Foster in one of his books
boasts that in Cleveland, Ohio, “A. Krchmarek, Communist candidate for
the school board, received 64,213 votes,” while in California, “the
well-known Communist, Bernadette Doyle, polled the big total of 613,670
votes on a nonpartisan ticket as candidate for Superintendent of Public
Schools.” Krchmarek and Doyle both ran on independent, nonpartisan
tickets and were not identified on the ballot as communists. In another
instance a Party member, also running in a concealed capacity, failed by
only a few votes to be elected a city official. He was supported by two
anticommunist newspapers that had no way of knowing his Party background.
This is the communist-front movement. Its strength rests on deceit and
its ability to attract the support of noncommunists.
Fronts, however, can be detected. You, as an alert citizen, can do much
to weaken their influence. Here are a few tests:
1. Does the organization espouse the cause of Soviet Russia?
Does it shift when the Party line shifts?
2. Does the organization feature as speakers at its meetings
known communists or sympathizers?
3. Does the organization sponsor causes, campaigns, literature,
petitions, or other activities sponsored by the Party or other
front organizations?
4. Is the organization used as a sounding board by, or is it
endorsed by, communist-controlled labor unions?
5. Does its literature follow the communist line or is it
printed by the communist press?
6. Does the organization receive consistent favorable mention
in communist publications?
7. Does the organization represent itself to be nonpartisan,
yet engage in political activities and consistently advocate
causes favored by the communists? Does it denounce both
fascists and communists?
8. Does the organization denounce American foreign policy while
always lauding Soviet policy?
9. Does the organization utilize communist double talk by
referring to Soviet-dominated countries as democracies,
complaining that the United States is imperialistic, and
constantly denouncing monopoly-capital?
10. Have outstanding leaders in public life openly renounced
affiliation with the organization?
11. Does the organization, if espousing liberal, progressive
causes, attract well-known, honest, patriotic liberals, or does
it denounce well-known liberals?
12. Does the organization consistently consider matters not
directly related to its avowed purposes and objectives?
These are some ways, direct and indirect, of the above-ground Communist
Party, which is working against all of us. But this is only one arm of a
gigantic pincer. The other is underground.
18.
_Communism and Minorities_
The Communist Party from its very inception has held itself out as
the “vanguard of the working class,” and as such has sought to assume
the role of protector and champion of minorities. It directs special
attention, among others, to Negroes and nationality groups. Actually the
vast majority of Negroes and members of foreign-language groups have
rejected communism for what it is: a heartless, totalitarian way of life
which completely disregards the dignity of man.
In the case of the Negro minority the Comintern began in 1928 to
lay down a specific Party line for the guidance of comrades in the
United States. According to Comintern instructions, Negroes were to be
considered as an “oppressed race.” The Party was told to carry on a
struggle “for equal rights,” but “in the South ... the main Communist
slogan must be: _The Right of Self-Determination of the Negroes in the
Black Belt_.”
Communist leaders, faithfully following Moscow’s instructions, promptly
started a campaign of agitation. In nominating James W. Ford, a Negro, to
run for Vice-President of the United States on the Communist Party ticket
in 1932, with presidential candidate William Z. Foster, C. A. Hathaway,
then a member of the Party’s Election Campaign National Committee,
reiterated instructions received in a 1930 Comintern resolution:
In the first place, our demand is that the land of the Southern
white landlords ... be confiscated and turned over to the
Negroes....
Secondly, we propose to break up the present artificial
state boundaries ... and to establish the state unity of
the territory known as the “Black Belt,” where the Negroes
constitute the overwhelming majority of the population.
Thirdly, in this territory, we demand that the Negroes be given
the complete right of self-determination; _the right to set
up their own government_ in this territory and the right to
separate, if _they_ wish, from the United States.
Hence, “equal rights” and “self-determination” in the Black Belt became
the Party’s chief slogans for Negroes. By “self-determination” the Party
meant what Stalin had said: “... the right of the oppressed peoples of
the dependent countries and colonies to complete secession, as the right
of nations to independent existence as states.”
As for the “Black Belt,” or as one article termed it, the “new Negro
Republic,” the communists have given various descriptions. In 1948 they
described the Belt as extending through twelve Southern states: “Heading
down from its eastern point in Virginia’s tidewater section, it cuts a
strip through North Carolina, embraces nearly all of South Carolina,
cuts into Florida, passes through lower and central Georgia and Alabama,
engulfs Mississippi and the Louisiana Delta, wedges into eastern Texas
and Southwest Tennessee, and has its western anchor in southern Arkansas.”
By 1952 the communist concept of the Black Belt had been narrowed to “at
least five Southeastern states, with port outlets at Charleston on the
Atlantic and Mobile on the Gulf, encompassing the bulk of Mississippi,
and a good section of South Carolina, Georgia and Alabama.”
As we know from cumulative evidence, the Party’s position toward Negroes
is determined not by concern for their welfare but obedience to Soviet
foreign policy. As World War II approached, for example, the Party
switched its tactics regarding “self-determination” in the Black Belt.
Instead of calling for the immediate and revolutionary overthrow of white
landlords, as the Comintern had originally instructed, the Party now
switched these demands to a purely theoretical and propaganda level: “...
It is clear that the Negro masses are not yet ready to carry through the
revolution which would make possible the right to self-determination.”
Why the shift? To satisfy the Party’s united-front program, which
demanded that the Party work harmoniously with other groups to strengthen
the Soviet Union.