much to say that there are few people who, having become the target for Communist attacks, did not eventually either lose heart or become suspect themselves to world public opinion. The struggle against convinced anti-Communists proceeds from simple premises. The effectiveness of this struggle is due to the fact that it goes on relentlessly and in practically every key. The struggle is marked by the use of a vocabulary including such terms of abuse as "Rightist," "Fascist," "negative element," "dim wit," "police informer," "systematic anti-Communist." This last expletive is the highest form of abuse. And yet quite a few democrats have been trying to convince themselves that there is something reprehensible in being a systematic anti-Communist, forgetting that they take pride in being systematically anti-Fascist. What's more, they see nothing incongruous in the Communists being systematically antidemocratic. And it is diffi cult to see how a systematic evil can be fought in any other way than by systematic opposition. This simple truth has not been lost on the Communists. Indeed, one of the main tasks of Communist propaganda is to maintain an atmosphere of constant denigration and criticism of consistent anticommunism. The success achieved by the Communists in this particular field has been such that a truly unheard-of situation has come about in the Western World, in which anticommunism is often regarded as a greater evil than communism. When one of the parties in a relentless and merciless struggle discovers that it is considered bad form to fight back with the same weapons, it goes without saying that their opponents have scored a major victory in the battle of propaganda which aims at nothing less than the intellectual intimidation of those opponents. Such intimidation, moreover, thrives on its own effects. So far as serious and enlightened circles keep silent, they leave stigmatizing communism to reactionary extremists alone; the contention "anticommunism equals reaction" thus seems confirmed; and serious and enlightened circles keep more silent than ever. McCarthy cast such discredit on exposing cryptocommunism that it is now no longer possible to accuse somebody of it without being called a witch hunter. Yet it is quite sure that cryptocommunism did not disappear by magic with McCarthy. When intimidation does not succeed in crushing the counterpropaganda of some particularly prominent anti-Communists, the Soviets do not shrink from crime to silence their voices. They murder them (Trotsky, Krivitsky, Nin, etc.) or kidnap them (Trushnovitch). RADIO BROADCASTS This propaganda channel is too well known to need emphasizing. We shall only remark that in this sphere, where the United States have made an exceptional effort, the Soviets still surpass them by a ratio of 4 to 1 in broadcasting time. France, on whom half-a-dozen Soviet stations pour out French-language programs, has not a single Russian-language broadcast. The Soviets do not merely fill the air with their broadcasts; they set up crypto-Communist radio stations wherever they can. Thus engineers of the East German Radio are installing a powerful transmitter in Conakry so that Soviet propaganda may radiate from the very heart of Africa. SPECIAL SCHOOLS One of the characteristics of Bolshevism is a wealth of special schools to train propagandists. Every Communist Party in every country has such schools to shape its agitators. In France there are six, among them the Viroflay School and a Leninist University. The abler students go on to study in Moscow or Leningrad in institutes innocuously labeled "economic and social." There were trained the professional revolutionaries Mao Tse-tung, Chou En-lai, Ho Chiminh, Bagdache, and many others." Students often register under an assumed name, their real identify being kept secret. In Tashkent in Soviet Turkmenistan there operates a university for Afro-Asiatic studies. It is attended by thousands of yellow and black students, the latter chiefly native of Ghana, Guinea, Sudan, Cameroon, to whom recruiters propose a 3-year program with periods in various institutes. The curriculum includes methods of camouflaged propaganda and various ways of investing a country. This university has become the nursery of the Kremlin's auxiliaries in underdeveloped countries. To some extent Prague has taken over from Moscow. Its western setting, its cultural prestige, are more attractive. Here operate two schools for "elites", expecially from ex-colonial countries. Sekou Touré (the present President of Guinea) [as well as] the brother of Dr. N'Krumah of Ghana, the brother of Fidel Castro of Cuba, and many others studied in these schools. The chief espionage schools are also in Prague. The center of special schools for propagandists in the Far East has moved to Peking. Every year it turns out several hundred anticolonialist apostles and fellow travelers who will be sent to Burma, Thailand, Cambodia, Laos, Indonesia, Japan. In addition to this, regular universities in Communist countries have departments which, under an academic cloak, are in fact nurseries of auxiliaries: departments of colonial problems, departments of africology, departments of vernacular dialects, of primitive economics, and so on. The total number of indoctrinators turned out by all these beehives can be estimated at several thousand a year. Special schools are a terrible weapon. For the small or poor man admitted into them, the long trip and discovery of new countries mean a promotion and pleasant memories. The students make lasting friends, savor the intoxication of initiation, feel in contact with an imposing power and entrusted with a mission of trust, absorb techniques that make them different and important. Above all they believe in having become bearers of a truth. This is the mainspring of missionary work, and it will be continually rewound by frequent contacts and technical and material aid. The truth they learn is in fact a lure, but its rational content matters little. What matters is apprenticeship in a certain phraseology, in a verbal system that supplies classified answers to every question, in an art of discussion See testimony of Leonard Patterson re Gus Hall, current general secretary of the Communist Party USA Feb. 2, 1960, and of Joseph Zack Kornfeder, pt. 2, Communist Threat to the United States Through the Caribbean, both before the Internal Security Subcommittee. which actually has more to do with acrobatics than intelligence, but which hypnotizes an audience. III. ESTIMATE OF THE MAGNITUDE OF PROPAGANDA MEDIA BROUGHT INTO PLAY BY MOSCOW In countries where a powerful apparatus for direct Communist proselytism exists it is estimated that the apparatus of parallel and crypto-Communist organizations has about the same size. In countries where the Communist Party is weak or nonexistent the parallel apparatus remains extremely large. If the fact is added that undercover corruption costs the most, it can be concluded that the cryptoCommunist propaganda apparatus throughout the world employs roughly 300,000 people and costs $1,500 million a year. If the figures for direct Communist propaganda are included, plus those for the propaganda effort within Communist countries for foreign use (guided tours, radio broadcasts, special schools), the following rough estimate can be made: The various forms of Communist propaganda throughout the world involve a personnel of about 500,000 and an annual expenditure of approximately $2,000 million. This effort is made to circumvent about 1 milliard 12 people outside the Communist orbit, so that it can be said that Moscow (with slight aid from Peking) spends $2 a year per freeman to be subjugated. To grasp the magnitude of this figure expressing the scope of the political war Moscow wages against us, we should remark that an American Senate committee has estimated the sums allocated by the United States to world propaganda at 14 cents per person per year. If the budgets of all other free countries are added the total hardly comes to 2 cents. On this point the Soviet effort is roughly 100 times as great as that of all the rest of the world, and thus it is a phenomenon of an entirely different nature. In fact, the Communist and para-Communist propaganda apparatus is a colossus unique in kind and scope in human history. That is one essential truth about communism which must be always borne in mind. Money THE MAINSPRINGS OF SOVIET PROPAGANDA The motive power of this fantastic machine is money, mostly drawn from overexploitation of enslaved toiling masses under the Communist yoke. These masses work to exhaustion for absurdly low wages to enable their masters not only to dominate them the better, but also to deceive more successfully the toiling masses in free countries. A substantial supplement is poured into the golden stream of rubles in the form of profits of a series of industrial and commercial exportimport companies established by auxiliaries in our democracies for Iron Curtain countries. In countries where Communist Parties are very strong, systematic racketeering in institutions taken over by them, such as municipalities and workers' councils, is another substantial source of revenue. With regard to the role of money it should be emphasized how unworthy it is for professedly rational thinkers to pretend to inno 12 1 billion. cence and belief in miracles where communism is concerned while refusing to admit that the sympathy of many freemen for so ruthless a tyranny as Moscow's can only be explained by corruption. It should be emphasized further that, in the main, the immense size of the material means brought into play is sufficient to account for the success of communist propaganda. Many people hate to explain political power by the apparatus at its disposal and want at all costs to regard social crises as its base. It cannot be denied that social injustice or national dependence do supply themes for the agitation that forms the roots of the tremendous vegetation of communism. But the rain that makes it grow is Soviet money. The Marxian idea that political power always reflects economic conflicts took shape at a time when propaganda had not grown into an enterprise in itself. No doubt communism was able to take root in some countries in 1918 owing to a conjunction of social conditions. But once the original planting had taken hold, the influence of Moscow was perpetuated through a process of bureaucratic ossification that was exactly the same abroad as within the U.S.S.R. At bottom the extraordinary longevity of totalitarian states is accounted for by the strength of their apparatus for domination. And today it is recognized by the best minds that state machinery has become a distinct sui generis factor in events, as worthy of entering the tabernacle of historical causes as the "sacred" production relations. Communist propaganda is only a wheel in the machinery of the Soviet State. The power of organization One important characteristic of Soviet propaganda is that it is embodied in organizations: parties, associations, committees, congresses, unions, societies, clubs. Bolshevism has made a capital discovery: the power of organization. In this it has revealed its thorough understanding of the major phenomenon we mentioned at the beginning: the passing of modern societies into the age of politicism. Propaganda only spreads the germs; it is the organization that maintains the epidemic. In it and through it adepts become soldiers. Within it minds are brought in line, hearts synchronized, wills subjected. Organization is to propaganda what the factory is to science. A Communist is the bourgeois of organization as the capitalist was the bourgeois of manufacturing. Gullibility of the free world Strange as it may seem, a third motive force behind Soviet propaganda and not the least-is the eagerness of the free world's press to respond to it without charge. The real power of the Kremlin's propaganda substantially surpasses the formidable magnitude we have evaluated, because it is voluntarily taken up and orchestrated by all democratic organs. With their love of sensation, their search for exciting news, their need to sell, their naivete about Soviet tricks and lies, they repeat a number of these tricks and lies of their own free will, without even having to be induced to do so by the auxiliaries who infiltrate them. Thus, the Soviets dispose of many more mirrors than their own for catching their larks. IV. PSYCHOLOGICAL MEANS Having reviewed the technical means of Soviet propaganda we shall deal in this section with the strings it pulls to attract feelings, and in the following section, with the fallacies to which it resorts to delude minds. SHAMELESS DEMAGOGY The simplest and unfortunately most effective means used by Soviet propaganda is simply vulgar demagogy, but enlarged to a scale hitherto considered impossible. Thus, it was never believed possible to kindle contradictory discontents simultaneously. Yet that is what the Kremlin does every day: setting town against country because bread is too dear, country against town because grain is too cheap, tradesman against official in the name of initiative, official against tradesman in the name of planning, European against American in the name of culture, American against European in the name of peace; stirring up the prejudices most contrary to the internationalist and antisocial doctrines it professes, such as chauvinism, when it is a question of arousing Franco-German enmity, and anti-Semitism, if Israel happens to stand in the way of Soviet imperialism; and even enrolling the ages and dialectic in the service of its impostures by wrapping them up into the "historical process." Communist demagogy is the first to have dared assume the dimensions and the blazon of history. NO LIMIT TO FALSEHOOD AND DUPLICITY That Bolshevism has attained to absolute falsehood is apparent from its basic position, for it promises total liberation and organizes total enslavement. The following is a very incomplete list of examples of its methods, whose equivalent in imposture content is not to be found in any other movement in history: Calling the troops who bring the cruelest subjection to the country they conquer "armies of liberation." Offering their services as partners to “defend freedom" and preparing tyranny. Inciting workers to demand trade union rights and ruthlessly taking them away as soon as power is won. Labeling the tendency to equalize income "bourgeois" in Communist countries and "communist" in bourgeois countries. Forcing innocent people to "confess" they are criminals and worship their executioners. Calling compulsory voting for single candidates an "election" and sessions of unanimous endorsement "debates." Condemning West German rearmament after having overarmed East Germany, etc. Not much thought has been given in the West to the fact that for the first time in history a political system has actually been built on a hundred percent lies, with the further characteristic that lying is practiced ostentatiously. The strong point of this excess is that it saturates and wearies mistrust. Freemen living in a world where a minimum of good faith is observed (if only because political rivalry prevents one side from carrying falsehood too far since the other can unmask it) simply cannot believe that falsehood can reach this point. Further, it is impossible for feeling not to be polarized in favor of communism, if it always appears disguised in winning words. Don't |