by Trevor | Aug 24, 2019 | #EnemiesWithin, Blog, Commentary, Socialism/Communism
Commentary
Trevor Loudon | The Epoch Times August 22, 2019 Updated: August 22, 2019
Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) is coming for your children.
Not content with taking over school boards and sending comrades into the teaching profession, the United States’ largest Marxist group is also writing the textbooks your children study.
California DSA member Duane Campbell helped write the new History-Social Science Framework for the state, which was adopted in 2017. Sacramento-based Campbell, a DSA comrade since at least 1983, is an emeritus professor of bilingual/multicultural education at California State University–Sacramento and former chair of the Sacramento DSA. He is also the author of “Choosing Democracy: A Practical Guide to Multicultural Education.”
According to Campbell, “Because of California’s large size and market, what goes into California textbooks frequently also gets written into textbooks around the nation.”
In the mid-1990s, Campbell was a contributing editor to Oakland-based Maoist-leaning CrossRoads magazine, which sought to “promote dialogue and build new alliances among progressives and leftists … to bring diverse Marxist and socialist traditions to bear, while exploring new strategies and directions for the progressive political movements.”
In the mid-2000s, Campbell was a contributor to a Bay Area socialist blog called Educational Justice, described as being “from a collective of progressive education activists—stuff about teaching, thinking, parenting, social justice, desegregation, self-determination, economic justice, music, creativity, and building progressive movements for our future.”
Other contributors included Tom Edminster, a teacher’s unionist and DSA member; Karen Zapata of Teachers 4 Social Justice; and Eric Mar, a Freedom Road Socialist Organization supporter and, like Campbell, a member of Progressives for Obama.
As a young man, Campbell was one of several communist or socialist organizers with Cesar Chavez’s United Farm Workers union, an experience he now wants to impart to America’s youth.
Campbell has served on DSA’s leadership body, the National Political Committee, and has also served on the DSA’s Latino Commission and Anti-Racism Commission. In 2017, Campbell was co-chair of the DSA Immigrant’s Rights Committee. Campbell is steeped in Marxist racial politics.
More Voters
The DSA’s interest in education is completely political. Inspired by Italian Communist Party theoretician Antonio Gramsci, DSA seeks to infiltrate U.S. society’s main opinion-forming institutions to change the popular consciousness in a socialist direction. In the more short-term, DSA is committed to both expanding the Latino vote and pushing it to the left to give its allies in the Democratic Party an unchallengeable majority in national elections.
Campbell’s DSA comrade, Eliseo Medina, was also active in the United Farm Workers union under Chavez. Medina transferred to the Service Employees International Union (SEIU), rising to executive vice president. As one of the most influential advocates for amnesty for illegal immigrants in the country, Medina served as an informal immigration adviser to then-President Barack Obama.
When Obama was still a senator, he declared at a campaign stop while addressing SEIU, “Before immigration debates took place in Washington, I spoke with Eliseo Medina and SEIU members.”
At the America’s Future Now! conference in Washington on June 2, 2009, Medina addressed attendees on the necessity of “comprehensive immigration reform.”
Speaking of Latino voters, Medina explained their importance to the socialist project:
“When they voted in November, they voted overwhelmingly for progressive candidates. Barack Obama got two out of every three voters that showed up.
“So I think there’s two things that matter for the progressive community:
“Number one: If we are to expand this electorate to win, the progressive community needs to solidly be on the side of immigrants. That will expand and solidify the progressive coalition for the future. …
“Number two: [If] we reform the immigration laws, it puts 12 million people on the path to citizenship and eventually voters. Can you imagine if we have, even the same ratio, two out of three?
“If we have eight million new voters … [we] will create a governing coalition for the long term, not just for an election cycle.”
Campbell wants to use his influence on the education system to play his part in DSA’s revolutionary program.
Educational Change
In the early 2010s, Campbell set up a network to change the California history and social studies textbooks, which had mainly been written by objective historians appointed by Gov. Ronald Reagan.
Wrote Campbell:
“I have spent more than six years working on this project—and it was well worth it. The important changes we achieved were produced by years of collective advocacy, lobbying, letter writing, and organizing. After being blocked in our efforts in 2008, we created the Mexican American Digital History site, then organized a statewide network of scholars and community activists to pressure the State Board of Education.
“At each stage, we had to explain why this tedious process of changing the Framework was important. We received assistance from civil rights groups and Latinos in the Democratic Party. Similar and parallel campaigns were organized within the Filipino, Hmong, South Asian, and LGBT communities.”
According to Campbell, this work will result in a new “progressive” path of learning for California’s school children:
“History and social science textbooks in public schools in California and most of the nation are racist, class-biased, and ignore LGBT history. This condition will change in California in 2017 when new textbooks are adopted.
“Under a unanimous decision by the California Board of Education made on July 14, 2016, California students will finally be encouraged to know the history of Latino civil rights leaders like Cesar Chavez and Dolores Huerta and Filipino labor leaders like Larry Itliong, as well as an accurate and inclusive history of LGBT activists as a part of the history of California and the nation. These topics are currently substantially absent from public school textbooks.”
That’s right—now young Californians can learn all about Campbell’s old boss Chavez, a man who trained for six years in Chicago with the father of “community organizing” himself: Saul Alinsky. They’ll also learn about Chavez’s right-hand woman Dolores Huerta, a longtime DSA comrade and general communist hang-around.
Chavez worked with a lot of Communist Party USA supporters, including Filipino labor organizer Larry Itliong—who will also be profiled in the new curriculum.
This is supposedly all about fairness and giving minorities equal treatment. Teaching kids about communists, it seems, will make them better students and more engaged citizens—especially the more than 1 in 10 students who Campbell claims are homosexual:
“In the current books … the 51 percent of students who are Latino, the 11.5 percent who are Asian, and the estimated 11 percent of students who are LGBT, do not see themselves as part of history, for many their sense of self is marginalized.
“As I argued in a prior book, marginalization negatively impacts their connections with school and their success at school. This has resulted in a nearly 50 percent dropout rate for Latinos and some Asian groups and LGBT students.”
Campbell then goes on to reel off a whole list of leftist individuals and the radical events they inspired, including the occupation of Alcatraz Island in San Francisco Bay by communist-inspired militants, the communist-inspired American Indian Movement and the standoff at Wounded Knee in South Dakota, the Marxist-led La Raza Unida Party, and the communist-led Chicano Moratorium against the Vietnam War.
And, of course, the 11 percent of California’s children who are allegedly LGBT shouldn’t feel left out. Their far-left champions are profiled, too: “California activists like Harvey Milk and Cleve Jones were part of a broader movement that emerged in the aftermath of the Stonewall riots, which brought a new attention to the cause of equal rights for homosexual Americans.”
Coincidentally, these educational priorities may end up helping DSA’s revolutionary electoral strategy. According to Campbell:
“School marginalization also contributes directly to low-level civic engagement. An accurate history would provide some of these students with a sense of self, of direction, of purpose. History and social science classes should help young people acquire and learn to use the skills, knowledge, and attitudes that will prepare them to be competent and responsible citizens throughout their lives. …
“And, while California and the nation have a general problem with low civic engagement among young people, it is also true that the state has a very specific problem with the rate of Latino and Asian voter participation in civic life.
“Rates of voting and voter registration provide a window into civic engagement. The proportion of state voter registration that is Latino and Asian has remained far below the proportions of these groups in the state’s overall population. …
“We know that we can do better. California has the largest school population of any state, with more than 6,226,000 students in school in 2015, more than 11 percent of the United States total.”
So, not only will millions of California schoolchildren be moved to the left by Campbell’s pro-communist propaganda, but they will also likely vote in significantly higher numbers.
This will, of course, consolidate the left’s already iron-grip on California politics, but will likely affect other states as well.
One well-placed Marxist operative can negatively influence millions, even hundreds of millions, of people.
Every pro-American school board in the country should immediately review and probably ban all history and social studies textbooks coming out of California.
Feature photo credit: Children walk past a School Bus in Monterey Park, California on April 28, 2017. (Frederic J. Brown/AFP/Getty Images)
Trevor Loudon is an author, filmmaker, and public speaker from New Zealand. For more than 30 years, he has researched radical left, Marxist, and terrorist movements and their covert influence on mainstream politics.
by Trevor | Jul 31, 2019 | #EnemiesWithin, Antifa, Blog, Social Movements, Socialism/Communism
Commentary
Trevor Loudon | The Epoch Times | July 29, 2019, Updated: July 29, 2019
The left in the United States is on a path to acceptance and even encouragement of political violence.
Desperate to achieve traction against the obvious economic and political successes of President Donald Trump, the left is increasingly willing to use violence—from low-level “milkshaking” assaults to life-endangering terrorism—as a tool to shut down opposition. Unless stopped, the left will take the United States down a very dark path.
On June 1, it was reported that Pensacola, Florida, activist Amanda Kondrat’yev was “charged with battery” after throwing a drink—apparently a milkshake—at Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-Fla.).
The media generally made light of the assault, mentioning many times that Kondrat’yev had previously stood for Congress against Gaetz. The media failed to report, however, that Kondrat’yev is a leader of the Pensacola branch of the nation’s largest Marxist organization: Democratic Socialists of America (DSA). Most media also forgot to mention that Kondrat’yev was one of four plaintiffs involved in a lawsuit against the city of Pensacola to force the city to remove a 78-year-old cross, which was placed in Bayview Park in 1941 by the community as the United States was entering World War II.
Kondrat’yev’s attack on Gaetz was clearly premeditated. On four separate days preceding the attack, Kondrat’yev posted many memes on Facebook praising the practice of throwing milkshakes at political opponents.
Milkshaking started in the UK in May, with incidents targeting firebrand patriotic activist Tommy Robinson, UK Independence Party supporter Carl Benjamin, and Brexit Party leader Nigel Farage.
In a strikingly arrogant article on Popdust titled “In Defense of Throwing Milkshakes: Why Humiliating Far-Right Politicians Works” dated May 23, writer Dan Kahan wrote:
“Despite the physicality of milkshaking, the goal of the act is public humiliation and drawing attention to the ridiculousness of the target and their awful ideas. …
“A civilized marketplace of ideas is a nice sentiment, but it can’t exist when some of those ideas are inherently violent. Violent ideologies have no place in civilized society, and the best way to respond to them is not with civilized debate—which suggests such arguments are made in good faith (they never are)—but with outright humiliation. This public humiliation states loud and clear that such ideas are unwelcome in our society, and those who push them will be shamed and excluded until they change their ways.”
“Public shaming,” or loudly calling out damaging policies or activities, is a perfectly legitimate way to deal with genuine fascists, socialists, communists, Antifa thugs, global warming fraudsters, and other political criminals. However, Kahan deliberately blurs the line between “shaming” and physical violence or threat of violence. Milkshaking is a crime on the same continuum as a punch in the nose.
Any unlawful or unwelcome physical contact is an assault and has no place whatsoever in political or social interaction.
The Slippery Slope
It’s very clear that those who condone milkshaking are happy to advocate other forms of violence.
On June 30, for example, Hugo Award-winning author Sarah Gailey wrote on Twitter, “If we can’t throw milkshakes, I guess we’ll just have to go back to bricks.”
Multiple Antifa memes circulating on social media illustrate that milkshaking is just part of a range of violent tactics designed to shut down free speech. On May 27, “Antifa International,” an active Twitter account with more than 15,000 followers at the time of this writing, posted an image of Farage with an accompanying meme showing that after milkshakes come bricks, Molotov cocktails, and the guillotine.
Portland, Oregon
In Portland, Oregon, on June 30, journalist Andy Ngo was one of eight people who needed medical care in the wake of a brawl that included milkshaking.
Those arrested included Gage Halupowski, 23, of Oregon City, who was charged with first-degree assault, resisting arrest, interference with an officer, and attempted assault of a police officer. James Stocks, 21, was charged with harassment, and Maria Dehart, 23, was charged with second-degree disorderly conduct and harassment.
In a local article about the events that took place, Olivia Katbi Smith, co-chair of the Portland branch of the DSA, told the Portland Tribune that “she hoped to promote the concept of ‘everyday anti-fascism,’ since ‘antifa’ can be an intimidating term.”
Doesn’t the left just love their euphemisms?
Willem Van Spronsen
On July 13, Washington state anarchist and “former member” of the Puget Sound branch of the John Brown Gun Club (a spinoff of Antifa group “Redneck Revolt”) Willem Van Spronsen attempted to “set a fire with incendiary devices during an attack at an ICE [Immigration and Customs Enforcement] detention center in Tacoma. … [He] was armed with a rifle and threw ‘lit objects’ at buildings and vehicles in the parking lot,” according to Heavy.com.
In a manifesto given to comrades before his rampage, Van Spronsen wrote in part (typos included):
“the semi automatic weapon i used was a cheap, home built unregistered ‘ghost’ ar15, had six magazines. i strongly encourage comrades and incoming comrades to arm themselves.”
Not one of the people who received the manifesto notified the police.
It’s notable that Van Spronsen mentioned the outrageous phrase “concentration camps” three times in his manifesto to describe detention centers, a phrase popularized by DSA member Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.).
As an important aside, CNN’s W. Kamau Bell highlighted the Puget Sound John Brown Gun Club in May on his show “United Shades of America.” On Facebook, Bell gushed that the group is “actively working to end white supremacy” and encouraged readers to “She [sic] some support for the PSJBC.”
One of the most revealing insights into the motives of Van Spronsen comes from his ex-wife, who, since 2013, obtained four domestic-violence protection orders against the Antifa adherent, according to The Seattle Times. Earlier this year, she claimed Van Spronsen spoke of committing suicide by police while carrying out an anarchist action. According to The News Tribune:
“’He would also talk about dying for a cause and anarchist actions,’ she wrote, among other concerns. ‘This was near the end of our marriage. I found it very scary and upsetting because I believed he would do it, even if it hurt someone and even if he died as a result.’”
He was barred from owning firearms as part of a court order against him.
Van Spronsen, who was born and raised in Holland, reportedly pointed his weapon at police officers. The weapon “malfunctioned” during his attack. He was killed at the scene and thankfully didn’t take anyone with him.
This wasn’t Van Spronsen’s first attempt at political violence. According to a local news report, he “lunged at an officer’s neck during a protest at the same detention center” in 2018, while an officer was attempting to detain a protester. Court records revealed that detectives found a “knife” and “baton” on Van Spronsen.
He was charged with third-degree assault, obstructing an officer, and resisting arrest, according to The News Tribune.
Shocking Support of Van Spronsen
Despite his violent tendencies and fanaticism, Van Spronsen has been labeled as a hero by the American Left—and not just stereotypical far left. Shockingly, Reps. Ocasio-Cortez, Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.), and Ayanna Pressley (D-Mass.) all refused to denounce the attack when confronted by Keean Bexte of The Rebel Media.
On Twitter, “tenure-track” professor Jorge Cuellar of Dartmouth College celebrated Van Spronsen, referring to his rampage as “an act of great courage” and said, in part, that “direct action is an important instrument in the activist and revolutionary toolkit.” In a since-deleted tweet, Black Lives Matter activist and Bernie Sanders fan Shaun King praised Van Spronsen as a “martyr” and said his rambling “manifesto” was “beautiful, painful, devastating.”
The Antifa group Seattle Antifascist Action praised Van Spronsen as a “martyr in the struggle against fascism” and touted his death as “a call to protest and direct action” in a now-deleted Facebook post.
The phrase “direct action” is the anarchist code for “violence.”
Teen Vogue writer Kim Kelly wrote on Twitter that the reporting surrounding the domestic terror attack was “biased in favor of ICE” and further said Van Spronsen was engaged merely in “righteous sabotage.”
Not a single Democratic presidential candidate condemned Van Spronsen’s attempted terrorism, much less any prominent left figures. The “top” search results for Van Spronsen’s name on Twitter return tweets sympathetic to his terrorist actions.
Violence As a Political Tool
The U.S. Left are now gripped by a “Lord of the Flies”-type mass psychosis. They genuinely believe they are battling a “fascist” enemy—which turns out to be Republicans, President Trump supporters, patriots, traditional Christians, border sovereignty advocates, and anybody who supports the U.S. Constitution.
During the late 1960s, the U.S. Left, marinated in self-righteous indignation over their opposition to the Vietnam War (which they conveniently forgot was started by a communist invasion of sovereign South Vietnam), carried out mass rioting and terrorist bombings all over the country.
The violence was stopped only through resolute federal government action. One particular action was the famous “Chicago Seven” trial.
After mass rioting around the 1968 Democratic Party convention in Chicago, seven ringleaders were put on trial. Five were convicted and imprisoned for five years each for crossing state lines to start a riot—a felony. These convictions “broke the back” of the protest movement. While protests continued until the end of the war in 1975, the movement never regained the momentum or magnitude that it had before the “Chicago Seven” convictions.
How many Antifa and Black Lives Matter leaders have crossed state lines to start riots in the last few years? Those laws are still on the books. Why are they not being enforced?
Without firm federal-level action, leftist political violence will only increase. More people will almost certainly die as a result. The fabric of this nation may become irreparably damaged.
Few well-balanced adults resent the well-deserved spankings they received for childhood misbehavior. Now is the time for the violent U.S. left to be subject a long-overdue federal government “spanking”—a crackdown on political violence and intimidation.
This will have to be organized at the federal level because many states and municipalities are either unwilling or unable to police their own political criminals, let alone those coming from other jurisdictions.
Unless the spoiled tantrum-throwing brats of the Left are put firmly in their place quickly, this country is heading for a world of hurt.
Many of these leftists, when confronted with and punished for their evil, will come to their senses. Many will one day be thankful that their violent tendencies were curbed early before they committed acts for which they could never make amends.
Mayor Rudy Giuliani turned around a crime-ridden New York (made much worse by the preceding mayor, DSA member David Dinkins), by instituting a “broken windows policy.” Giuliani decreed that minor crimes were to be dealt with harshly before the perpetrators were tempted to move on to bigger things.
It’s only a matter of time before some on the Left move from “milkshakes” to Molotov cocktails. Now is the time to stop them—before there is serious blood on the streets.
Feature Photo: Brexit Party leader Nigel Farage (R) has what is thought to have been a milkshake thrown over him as he visits Northumberland Street in Newcastle Upon Tyne during a whistle-stop UK tour on May 20, 2019, in Newcastle Upon Tyne, England. Ian Forsyth/Getty Images
Trevor Loudon is an author, filmmaker and public speaker from New Zealand. For more than 30 years, he has researched radical left, Marxist and terrorist movements and their covert influence on mainstream politics.
Trevor presents his movie, “ENEMIES WITHIN” DVD—BUY NOW!
by Trevor | Jul 25, 2019 | Asia-Pacific, CPUSA, North America, Russia, Socialism/Communism
Commentary
Trevor Loudon | The Epoch Times | July 24, 2019, Updated: July 24, 2019
Despite taking second place to the “mainstream” media, and the stiff competition from Hollywood, academia, and leftist churches, organized labor is still a major “transmission belt” for communist ideas to the American “masses.”
This wasn’t always the case. For many years, labor in the United States was staunchly anti-communist. However, since 1995, American unions have largely fallen under Marxist control. This gives the far left the political muscle to implement socialist ideas through the Democratic Party—even when these policies clearly damage union members’ interests.
The father of the Bolshevik revolution, V.I. Lenin, prophetically said of the trade union movement, “It is an organization designed to draw in and to train; it is, in fact, a school: a school of administration, a school of economic management, a school of communism.”
Soviet Instruction
In the early days of American communism, the Communist Party USA (CPUSA) showed little interest in the labor movement. In those days, American unions tended to be craft-based and fairly conservative. The communists just didn’t think they had much revolutionary potential. But in 1921, the American communists’ Soviet masters set them straight.
On direct orders from Moscow, the CPUSA established the Trade Union Educational League as the U.S. affiliate of the Profintern, the Soviet-created Red International of Labor Unions. Progress was slow but steady through the 1920s and ’30s as the CPUSA began to infiltrate and initiate new labor organizations, both within and outside the “orbit” of the dominant union body in the country, the American Federation of Labor (AFL).
When miners’ union leader John L. Lewis established the forerunner to the more left-wing Congress of Industrial Organizations (CIO) in 1935, in competition to the AFL, the communists climbed on board.
The CIO supported President Franklin D. Roosevelt and his massive expansion of federal power known as the “New Deal.” In July 1943, the CIO established the first political action committee in the United States, the CIO-PAC, to help Roosevelt’s election. In contrast, the AFL was far less partisan, being more willing to work with either main party to get a better deal for its members.
The CIO came under pressure in the late 1940s as Americans started waking up to the massive Soviet-directed communist infiltration of their government and institutions.
Robert R. McCormick, publisher of the Chicago Tribune, claimed that the communist-infiltrated CIO had become the dominant faction in the national Democratic Party:
“They call it the Democratic national convention but obviously it is the CIO convention. Franklin D. Roosevelt is the candidate of the CIO and the Communists because they know if elected, he will continue to put the government of the United States at their service, at home and abroad. … The CIO is in the saddle and the Democrat donkey, under whip and spur, is meekly taking the road to communism and atheism. … Everybody knows that Roosevelt is the Communist candidate.”
In 1946, the Republican Party took control of both the House and Senate. That Congress passed the Taft-Hartley Act, which, among other things, made all union officers sign an affidavit declaring that they were not communists if the union wished to bring a case before the National Labor Relations Board.
Over the next few years, hundreds of communists were purged from the U.S. labor movement, until, when sufficiently “cleansed,” the CIO was allowed to merge with the AFL in 1955 to form what we now know as the AFL-CIO.
For nearly 40 years, American labor remained under conservative and patriotic leadership. That is, until the over-optimistically named “collapse of communism” convinced the U.S. public that “communism” was no longer a threat.
This country’s largest Marxist organization, the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA)—effectively the new “communist party”—would take deadly advantage of that dangerous illusion.
Re-infiltration
Around 1994, American Federation of State, County, and Municipal Employees President Gerald McEntee approached the AFL-CIO with his idea for “Project ’95,” a coalition effort aimed at retaking the House for the Democratic Party. Moderate AFL-CIO President Lane Kirkland turned down the proposal, wishing to keep the door open to some Republicans. McEntee and fellow DSA supporter John Sweeney of the Service Employees International Union immediately began plotting Kirkland’s removal.
According to DSA’s Democratic Left, September–October 1995 issue:
“In short order, they amassed support from a coalition that included not just the core of the old CIO (the Auto Workers, Steelworkers, Mine Workers), but the Machinists, Ron Carey’s new-model Teamsters, the Carpenters, and the Laborers. And what began as somewhat inchoate dissatisfaction among top labor leaders with the Big Sleep of the Kirkland era evolved in the course of the year to potentially the most profound reshaping of labor since the founding of the CIO.”
Sweeney formally joined the DSA just before the union elections and went on to oust Kirkland to become president of the AFL-CIO.
According to the Democratic Left article by DSA member and former Washington Post journalist Harold Meyerson, the “progressive coalition” of labor unionists who ousted Kirkland in 1995 was led by McEntee, Richard Trumka, and George Kourpias. McEntee and Trumka (the current AFL-CIO president) were both longtime DSA supporters. Kourpias was a confirmed DSA member.
According to Workers World, “After his victory, Sweeney called a number of high-level meetings with women’s organizations, such as the [CPUSA/DSA-led] Coalition of Labor Union Women, as well as establishment civil rights organizations, and met with the leadership of numerous central labor councils in different cities.” The aim was to build bridges across the American left, to create a unified mass front against the Republican Party.
Sweeney inherited an AFL-CIO constitution that formally banned communists from leadership positions in the organization. Ohio CPUSA leader Wally Kaufman led the charge to abolish that impediment.
According to the CPUSA’s People’s World:
“Kaufman had been nominated to represent the retiree council on the executive committee of the North Shore AFL-CIO Federation of Labor, but said he could not accept due to the anti-Communist clause. This caused an uproar with protests being sent to AFL-CIO President John Sweeney. At the following AFL-CIO Convention, the clause was quietly removed. The Painters and most other unions then followed suit removing similar provisions in their constitutions.”
Militants from the 1960s, 1970s, and 1980s communist, socialist, and student movements flooded into organized labor.
DSA’s Democratic Left letter’s page in the Spring–Summer 2000 edition assured readers:
“More DSA members and alumni of DSA’s Youth Section are moving up through the administrative and organizing reaches of AFL-CIO international unions, and global labor solidarity groups, than ever in recent memory.”
This change in organized labor explains the massive swing to the left in the Democratic Party in the past 25 years. As the unions moved to the left, they effectively took over local Democratic Party machines across the nation. The Democratic Party became increasingly dependent on union money, manpower, and organizational skills to win elections. There is hardly an elected Democrat at any level in this country who doesn’t rely on some degree of organized labor support.
With this support came strings. All over the country, the Marxist unions imposed their candidates and policies on what little was left of a once vibrant and patriotic Democratic Party. The unions helped the Democrats win elections.
In an essay in the same issue of Democratic Left, Meyerson wrote:
“The differences here are magnified because the strategic importance of unions in American politics has increased almost exponentially since John Sweeney took the helm at the AFL-CIO in 1995. It’s the unions that have brought the Democrats back to brink of retaking Congressional power.”
But it was a devil’s bargain. The further left the Democrats went, the smaller their traditional base became—the more they needed union help—the more far-left they veered. It’s a vicious cycle of destruction that is now almost impossible to reverse.
That’s why the Democrats and their union and Marxist masters are so fixated on securing amnesty for the 20 million-plus illegal immigrants now in this country. The Democrats have so destroyed their traditional base that they can now only win by importing millions of new voters from south of the border.
Illegal Immigration
As late as the mid-1990s, both the Democrats and the unions vehemently opposed illegal immigration. They rightly saw that illegal workers would undercut U.S. workers and undermine union organizing.
In 2000, at the AFL-CIO’s national convention in Los Angeles, Service Employees International Union leader and DSA comrade Eliseo Medina engineered a complete turnaround in AFL-CIO policy toward illegal immigration. Illegal aliens were no longer to be shunned. Democrats would no longer campaign to close the borders. From now on, unions would campaign in support of illegal immigrant amnesty.
Medina revealed the real reason for the about-face at the “America’s Future Now!” conference in Washington on June 2, 2009. Medina addressed the gathered comrades on the vital importance of “comprehensive immigration reform”—a code phrase for amnesty.
Medina failed to mention the plight of illegal aliens, focusing instead on how—if given amnesty—they would eventually vote for Democrats.
Speaking of Latino voting patterns in the 2008 election, Medina said:
“When they [Latinos] voted in November, they voted overwhelmingly for progressive candidates. Barack Obama got two out of every three voters that showed up. …
“[If] we reform the immigration laws, it puts 12 million people on the path to citizenship and eventually voters. Can you imagine if we have—even the same ratio—two out of three?
“If we have 8 million new voters … we will be creating a governing coalition for the long term, not just for an election cycle.”
But now, according to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, it’s 22 million illegal immigrants. In other words, Medina wants to create a socialist one-party state by overwhelming the Republican Party base.
Tough luck for U.S. workers thrown out of jobs or living on incomes much lower than they were accustomed to. The Marxist-led unions don’t care about workers—they only care about revolution and raw power.
American union members are now being asked to accept the DSA-originated Medicare for All, which would put most of them in endless waiting lines for the most routine operations. They’re also being commanded to accept the Marxist Green New Deal, which would completely destroy America’s industrial base, which provides their jobs, and the U.S. military, which guards their freedoms.
Today’s Democratic Party is the tool of the unions. Today’s unions are controlled by revolutionary Marxists. Millions of veteran-supporting, gun-owning, stars and stripes-loving, patriotic union members are being led into socialism by their treacherous anti-American leadership. And they may drag all of the rest of us to hell with them.
That’s why Donald Trump Jr. was correct when he recently stated that the 2020 election would be “about communism versus freedom.”
Photo credit: AFL-CIO President John Sweeney during an AFL-CIO rally on Capitol Hill on June 19, 2007. (Alex Wong/Getty Images)
Trevor Loudon is an author, filmmaker and public speaker from New Zealand. For more than 30 years, he has researched radical left, Marxist and terrorist movements and their covert influence on mainstream politics.
Trevor presents his movie, “ENEMIES WITHIN” DVD—BUY NOW!
by Trevor | Jul 15, 2019 | Asia-Pacific, Blog, China, Commentary, Democratic Party, Enemies Within, Liberty, North America, Socialism/Communism
Commentary
The Epoch Times | July 11, 2019, Updated: July 11, 2019
President Donald Trump and the Republican Party had better be ready for a tsunami of new Democratic voters coming their way in 2020.
Far from the easy victory many pundits are predicting, there’s a strong chance that the president and his party (strong economy notwithstanding) may be overwhelmed by an unexpected wave of new voters coming mainly from the South and Southwest.
The same pro-China, communist-led organizations that almost won gubernatorial races in Florida and Georgia in 2018, and have almost turned once-reliably Republican Virginia blue, are aiming to mobilize a staggering 40 million new voters against President Trump.
If this network can mobilize just 20 percent of the new voters they are targeting, Trump will be a one-term president. Donald Trump Jr.’s recent prediction that the 2020 election will be a battle between “freedom and communism” will prove horribly accurate.
While most commentators are focusing on Midwestern “battleground” states, the American far-left is looking further South. The Freedom Road Socialist Organization (FRSO) and its allies are looking to the millions of black, Latino, and low-income white potential voters in the South and Southwest who lean heavily Democrat but traditionally vote in low numbers.
If the FRSO can mobilize several million new Democratic voters in North Carolina, Georgia, Florida, Texas, and Arizona over the next 18 months, Trump will find victory extremely difficult—even if he makes some gains in Northern, Midwestern, and Western states.
Florida, North Carolina, and Arizona are all extremely vulnerable. Georgia isn’t far behind, and even Texas is in play. If the communists can flip Florida and Arizona for the Democrats, Trump almost certainly loses. If Georgia and North Carolina turn blue, Texas is not even needed. If Texas goes blue, the Democrat/communist alliance rules the United States forever.
Who Is Jon Liss?
Jon Liss is one of the most influential and little-known political operatives in the United States today. A longtime leader of the FRSO, Liss has been building political influence in Northern Virginia for over three decades. He has been active in Tenants and Workers United, the Rainbow Coalition/Jesse Jackson presidential campaign, the Fairfax County Taxi-drivers Association, and the Left Strategies Collective.
Liss’s organization, FRSO, itself grew out of the Maoist “New Communist Movement” of the 1970s and has maintained ties to the People’s Republic of China. The FRSO is probably about 2,000 members strong, but it works in partnership with the 5,000 members of the equally pro-China Communist Party USA (CPUSA) and the nearly 60,000-strong Democratic Socialists of America (DSA).
Working together in an alliance called the “Left Inside/Outside Project,” these three groups have infiltrated the Democratic Party in every state of the union.
Mass Voter Registration
In recent years, Liss has led New Virginia Majority (NVM), an Alexandria-based voter registration operation that has signed up several hundred thousand, mainly minority voters to turn Virginia to Democratic-leaning from a reliably Republican state. NVM is able to micro-target potential Democratic voters by using sophisticated demographic information and maps generated by an FRSO supporter based in the Geography Department of Wuhan University in China.
NVM’s Florida partner organization, New Florida Majority (NFM), almost elected far-leftist Andrew Gillum to the governorship of Florida in 2018, by helping raise the Democratic vote in the Sunshine State by more than 40 percent. Similar communist-directed mass engagement of minority voters almost elected Stacey Abrams to the governorship of Georgia and Beto O’Rourke to the U.S. Senate from Texas. They did succeed in electing Democrats Kyrsten Sinema and Doug Jones to the U.S. Senate from Arizona and Alabama, respectively. In North Carolina, FRSO activists have used minority voters to elect several leftist Democrats to local government positions.
State Power Caucus
The lessons learned in Virginia, Georgia, Florida, North Carolina, Alabama, Arizona, and Texas are now being applied on a national scale to oust Trump.
One of the main coordinating bodies for this ambitious project is the State Power Caucus, headed by Liss and FRSO affiliate Andrea Mercado of NFM.
Liss writes about this new strategy on the FRSO-aligned website Organizing Upgrade:
“Inspired by the disaster of Trump and Trumpism two years out, most organizers are engaged in barroom or coffee shop speculation about the 2020 election.
“Among the two dozen announced Democratic candidates, many debate: will it be Sanders or Warren, with their attacks on corporate Democrats? Will it be one of Hillary’s heirs, with their cozy relationship with Wall Street? Will Harris be the first Black woman nominated by a major party? If it’s Biden, do we sit it out?
“All of it is idle speculation unless ‘we’ collectively organize tens of millions of the 108 million eligible voters who didn’t vote in 2016. That’s right, one hundred and eight million eligible voters chose not to register or to vote in 2016. The non-voting block is disproportionately young, poor, and people of color.”
So what’s the solution?
“Dozens of state-based power building organizations have banded together to lead efforts to build a bottom up long term front against Trump and Trumpism. Over the last twenty-five years, state power organizations have grown to fill the political space created by the decline of Democratic Party local organization, the breakup and collapse of ACORN, and low levels of voter turnout. This reflects a shift from narrow Alinskyism and its very limited political engagement.”
For years, communist-influenced groups such as ACORN and its spinoffs have chipped away at the Republican voting base in scattered efforts across multiple states. What Liss reveals here is an effort to consolidate these groups into one front to massively amplify their effects.
Building the Caucus
According to Liss:
“Starting in the summer of 2017, many leading state-power organizations have come together as a caucus to support peer-to-peer learning and incubate innovate organizing practices. Included among the organizations that have been leading the State Power Caucus are New Virginia Majority, New Florida Majority, California Calls, Washington Community Action Network, and Kentuckians for the Commonwealth.
“All told, there are 22 organizations from 15 states involved in the Caucus. Importantly, these organizations recognized the need to develop a systematic and long-term alternative to Trumpism.”
These groups, all affiliated with the FRSO, can credibly claim to have had a significant effect on voting patterns since the 2016 election cycle. However, they acknowledge that a much greater effort will be required to defeat Trump.
“We’ve also begun to assess the collective impact of state-based organizations. Looking at 2016, our rough estimate is that at most 4 million people were contacted and encouraged to vote. This is our high-water estimate. The actual number who actually voted is probably much lower still.
“Now, recall the 108 million people who were eligible but not voting? They are largely our ‘core’ constituency, or in other terms, they are our unorganized social base. This 108 million, when compared to the voting electorate, is more Black, more immigrant, more working class and poor.
“If we initially target just half of the 108 million, and we acknowledge that some in that half are going to disagree with our values and politics, some aren’t going to vote no matter what, and some are in geographies that we just can’t reach, we believe our real voter mobilization target number is 40 million, and we’ve agreed as a caucus to that number as our target. That’s our natural constituency.”
Liss sees this goal as a means to elect more socialists and communists to public office, but also to decisively defeat Trump as a step toward moving the country much further down the socialist road.
“The long game to defeat white nationalism and move past neo-liberal corporatism is by building a bottom up movement of 40 million people.”
New Party, New Society
In a follow-up article on Organizing Upgrade, Liss makes it clear that the State Power Caucus aims to go way beyond defeating Trump. The real goal is to build a new mass socialist party that will eventually be able to challenge for state power.
Liss is happy that the communist left has finally acknowledged the necessity of electoral work on the road to a socialist America. The Bernie Sanders movement has been a big part of this tactical shift. Liss writes:
“I’m old, but a little too young to have lived through the New Communist Movement of the 1970s and its battles to form revolutionary parties and pre-parties, that is, to build a disciplined band of professional revolutionaries to carry out a political line. … On the other hand, there is a unique, maybe even historic opportunity to build a political-strategic space to carry out electoral organizing.
“Increasingly, there is a sector of radical organizations who believe that electoral work is a key area of struggle. That is a huge shift from the last few decades: credit Bernie and his campaign for revitalizing the notion of socialism and the importance of elections, credit many immigrant rights, Occupy and Movement for Black Lives leaders for recognizing the need for mass action AND an electoral strategy.”
But all this new energy will be wasted without centralized coordination:
“It’s time to create a ‘general command’ or a place where all organized groups of people who view elections as key area of struggle and who view growing a base of radical ‘new majority’ Democratic voters as a central task. To be explicit, new majority Democrats refers to women, especially women of color, Black and immigrant voters, and sectors of young and working-class voters.”
It’s also imperative to support whoever the Democrats choose to challenge Trump:
“Our task is to build an organizational vehicle, what I call a ‘party-like space’ … around the following points: a) build a stronger, larger base of voters of color, younger voters and women voters (in Virginia, for example, Black women voters have been the motor for all progressive change), b) support existing state power organizations that is ,some of the dozens of social movement organizations contending for state level governing power, or at least organizations that are outside of the Democratic Party structures c) agree to support the Democratic candidate who emerges to take on Trump in the general election.”
So what would this party-like structure do? According to Liss, it would be “a valuable step toward a coherent approach for building a socialist movement.”
“On a strategic level, this party-like space would exist in order to build the foundations for a mass left organization capable of challenging elites in the two dominant parties, leveraging the strengths and demands of multiple movements, and making possible a struggle for life beyond Trump and Trumpism. Practical next steps should include:
1. Agree to these or similar points of unity …
2. Coordinate electoral plans.
3. Do real world work both together and apart, regularly and collectively assess progress, learn lessons and adjust strategies.
4. Recruit other projects and organizations to join this political space.
5. Develop working relationships to funnel members and volunteers to state power organizations, DSA, or the Working Families Party who are building independently of the Democratic Party, while also expanding the electorate and building the broadest front against Trump and Trumpism.”
Communist Inspiration
In order to illustrate the past successes of this approach, Liss cites the example of El Salvador’s often ruling FMLN, an electoral alliance built around the Communist Party of El Salvador.
“In El Salvador, 5 organizations under life-threatening duress managed to unite to create the FMLN. They started with very different strategic positions but created a process for collaboration and coordination. Over time, many of the differences were not nearly as important as the need to work together. Again, while longer term strategic considerations may develop over time, getting this real work started for 2020 is the way to start.”
Credible Threat
The FRSO and its allies have enough people and resources to make possible their plan to mobilize 40 million new voters against Trump.
Their leadership of the State Power Caucus and their control of 22 voter registration organizations in 15 states is no small army. Add to that massive funding from the Democracy Alliance, labor unions, and leftist foundations, and possible ongoing informational support from China. It’s clear that Trump has some serious under-the-radar opposition coming from the FRSO and the State Power Caucus.
These groups will work in California, Ohio, and other states, but the real focus will be Southern and Southwestern Republican-held states with high minority populations. North Carolina, Georgia, Florida, Texas, and Arizona may well be the real battleground states this election cycle.
The outcome of the next election will either set the United States on a new upward spiral of freedom and prosperity, or it could send the United States and the West into a nearly unstoppable downward spiral into socialism and tyranny.
In World War II, the battle for civilization was decided in the battles of the Coral Sea, Midway Island, Normandy, and “The Bulge.”
Trevor Loudon is an author, filmmaker and public speaker from New Zealand. For more than 30 years, he has researched radical left, Marxist and terrorist movements and their covert influence on mainstream politics.
Trevor presents his movie, “ENEMIES WITHIN” DVD—BUY NOW!
by Trevor | Jul 15, 2019 | #EnemiesWithin, Asia-Pacific, China, Commentary, Socialism/Communism, Socialist Opinion Shapers
Commentary | The Epoch Times | June 10, 2019 | Updated June 10, 2019
Russia and China formed an international power bloc in 2001 that puts the old Soviet-led military alliance—the Warsaw Pact—to shame. It’s called the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO).
Most Westerners have never heard of it, yet it’s rapidly becoming one of the most powerful forces on the planet.
In fact, most Western leaders operate under the delusional belief that Russia and China are antagonists and can at times be played against each other. The idea that Russia and China are allies and are jointly working to destroy the West is just too much for most Western leaders to contemplate.
The “Russia and China are enemies” disinformation campaign led former President Richard Nixon to open diplomatic and trade relations with Beijing in the mid-1970s. Nixon believed he could play communist China against the communist Soviet Union. Nixon’s massive blunder undermined the United States’ industrial base, while building up a new powerful enemy. Today, the United States faces two world-class enemies rather than one.
Worse, Russia and China are now open allies.
Alliances
The SCO is a permanent intergovernmental international organization, created on June 15, 2001, in Shanghai by the Russian Federation, the Muslim-majority “former” Soviet republics of Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, and Uzbekistan, and the People’s Republic of China.
The SCO maintains two permanent bodies: the SCO Secretariat, based in Beijing, and the Executive Committee of the Regional Anti-Terrorist Structure (RATS), based in Tashkent, Uzbekistan. The organization’s official languages are Russian and Chinese.
The SCO’s stated goals are “strengthening mutual trust and neighborliness among the member states; promoting their effective cooperation in politics, trade, the economy, research, technology and culture, as well as in education, energy, transport, tourism, environmental protection, and other areas; making joint efforts to maintain and ensure peace, security and stability in the region; and moving towards the establishment of a democratic, fair, and rational new international political and economic order.”
That is double-speak for Russian–Chinese world domination.
The SCO has expanded considerably since its early days, especially since June 2017, when India and Pakistan were granted full membership status.
Currently, the SCO comprises eight member states: India, Kazakhstan, China, Kyrgyzstan, Pakistan, Russia, Tajikistan, and Uzbekistan.
The SCO counts four observer states: Afghanistan, Belarus, Iran, and Mongolia. The SCO also maintains six “dialogue partners,” namely Azerbaijan, Armenia, Cambodia, Nepal, Turkey, and the “Democratic Socialist Republic” of Sri Lanka.
The SCO “family” currently consists of two openly communist states—China and Nepal—and eight formerly communist states, all of which maintain communist-era security structures—Russia, Kazakhstan, Tajikistan, Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan, Armenia, Belarus, and Cambodia. Further, the SCO includes three major Islamic powers: Iran, Pakistan, and Turkey, plus Afghanistan and two heavily communist- and Islamist-influenced South Asian nations: India and Sri Lanka.
I believe that North Korea is effectively a Russia/China client state and an ally of Iran, and should also be counted as a de-facto member of the SCO alliance.
One of these countries—Turkey—is still nominally a NATO member, which was established to defend Europe from Moscow’s expansionist ambitions. Turkey is also increasingly becoming the leader of the global Islamist movement.
The SCO is now the largest regional organization in the world in terms of geographical coverage and population, encompassing 60 percent of Eurasia and almost half of the world’s population.
Even more disturbingly, the SCO is a formal, if little-reported-on, military/national security alliance.
War Games
The SCO’s first joint military exercise was held in 2003, with the first phase taking place in Kazakhstan and the second in China. Russia and China have since cooperated in large-scale war games involving thousands of troops—called Peace Missions—in 2005, 2007, 2009, and 2010, and every two years since.
India and Pakistan joined the exercises for the first time in 2018.
During the 2007 war games in Russia, with leaders including then-Chinese President Hu Jintao present, Russia’s President Vladimir Putin announced that Russian strategic bombers would resume regular long-range patrols for the first time since the end of the “Cold War.”
“Starting today, such tours of duty will be conducted regularly and on the strategic scale. … Our pilots have been grounded for too long. They are happy to start a new life,” Putin said, according to The Associated Press.
These patrols now regularly skirt Western Alliance air space.
Of the world’s top 15 military powers (the United States still claims the No. 1 position), the SCO family includes:
- No. 2: Russia
- No. 3: China
- No. 4: India
- No. 9: Turkey
- No. 14: Iran
- No. 15: Pakistan
Of these, Russia, China, India, Pakistan, and probably Iran are nuclear powers. It’s also possible that many of the former Soviet republics now in the SCO network maintain some covert nuclear stockpiles.
The United States claims about 6,200 nuclear weapons, all developed before 1992, while France, the United Kingdom, and Israel have around 600 between them, for a total of about 6,800.
Russia publicly claims nuclear weapon parity with the United States (but likely secretly maintains several thousand more), most of which are state-of-the-art weapons; China has around 290 nuclear weapons; India and Pakistan have around 140 each; and North Korea has around 10—for a total of around 7,100.
In the event of all-out war, India may go its own way, as may France, but it’s clear that the SCO has more than enough firepower to mount a serious challenge to a very shaky Western alliance.
It’s foolish to believe that if the United States ever gets in a shooting war with China that Russia will stay on the sidelines. Almost certainly, war with either Russia or China will turn rapidly into a war with the SCO. India under the Hindu nationalist Prime Minister Narendra Modi may well be the wild card, either remaining neutral or possibly allying with the West. However, India did formally join the SCO well after Modi came to power in 2014.
Certainly, India’s very strong communist movement would push to support Russia and China.
According to an article in the Oct. 25, 2006, edition of the Communist Party of Australia’s Guardian newspaper, Communist Party of India (Marxist) leader Prakash Karat said: “The Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO) countries are going to be the new powerhouse of the world. It is in India’s enlightened interest that we understand its importance as we are a country which desperately needs energy. … Trilateral co-operation between India, China, and Russia has symbolic significance as it can dispel the notion that the 21st century is an American century.”
Naivety and cowardice toward the totalitarian regimes of Moscow and Beijing got us to the point we are at today. Nixon’s foolish opening to China built a hostile superpower in less than five decades. Reagan’s toughness on Russia forced Moscow into a 20-year retreat. Not defeat—retreat. Now, Russia is ahead of the United States in most key military areas. A disproportionate focus on the Islamic threat for the past 20 years—while perpetuating a belief that Russia and China could be managed separately—has proven a disastrous strategy.
President Donald Trump has been tough on both Russia and China and their puppets in Iran and North Korea. The only way out of the mess now is to quickly rebuild the United States’ military capabilities while isolating the new Evil Empire until Russia or China—or hopefully, both—is forced into real regime change.
That’s a risky strategy, but any other approach virtually guarantees defeat—and the end of Western civilization as we know it.
Trevor Loudon is an author, filmmaker and public speaker from New Zealand. For more than 30 years, he has researched radical left, Marxist and terrorist movements and their covert influence on mainstream politics.
Trevor presents his movie, “ENEMIES WITHIN” DVD—BUY NOW!
by Trevor | Feb 16, 2019 | Blog, Social Movements, Socialism/Communism, Socialist Opinion Shapers, Welfare
By Trevor Loudon | The Epoch Times | February 8, 2019
Commentary
The welfare state is a pernicious and destructive system that saps the moral fiber of a nation and leads inevitably, if unchecked, to tyranny. On the way to slavery welfarism, it cancerously eats away at our humanity. Government welfare obliterates the best side of human nature. It destroys generosity and kindness and genuine concern for the welfare of others.
The welfare state is the deadly enemy of the “welfare society.”
The Social Security Act was signed on Aug. 14, 1935, as part of President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s “New Deal.” When speaking about the proposed Social Security program during his 1935 State of the Union message, Roosevelt added this prophetic warning:
“The lessons of history, confirmed by evidence immediately before me, show conclusively that continued dependence on relief induces a spiritual and moral disintegration fundamentally destructive to the national fiber. To dole out relief in this way is to administer a narcotic, a subtle destroyer of the human spirit. It is inimical to the dictates of sound policy. It is a violation of the traditions of America.”
We have been told for decades that government welfare is necessary to temper the rapaciousness of “capitalism.” It has been repeated so often and most people’s lives are now so government-oriented that most of us, even many conservatives, now believe it.
The alternative is false.
Our choice is not an exploitative unchecked capitalism versus the kind and benevolent welfare state.
The real options are harsh, brutal, impersonal, and uncaring state welfare socialism, or a vigorous, dynamic, wealth-producing, free enterprise economy coupled with a well-funded private network of charitable institutions able to humanely and personally help those few individuals and families suffering from a temporary setback or coping with a permanent disability.
A Moral Obligation
British writer James Bartholomew argues in his excellent book “The Welfare State We’re In” that Britain in the 19th century was a model not of exploitation and human degradation in a heartless industrial state, but of a society where private charities, benevolent societies, and insurance cooperatives served the poor and working classes very well indeed.
The culture of Britain, before the welfare state destroyed it, regarded private charity as a great moral virtue and as almost an obligation for the middle class and better off.
According to Bartholomew, in 19th century Britain, it was regarded as normal that surgeons would devote two days out of their five-day working week to treating the poor in charitable hospitals. The average British middle-class family spent more on charity each year than they did on food and clothing.
Six out seven British working men had health insurance through the dozens of major “friendly societies” that operated at the time.
According to the Shepherd’s Friendly website:
“The majority of friendly societies started as locally based groups, usually a few villagers or neighbours, where members would contribute a small payment each month so that they could receive a lump sum payment in times of need. The money would be invested or saved if it didn’t have an immediate requirement.
“There was an agreed risk when paying a fee to the society, and the pay-out conditions could be in many forms such as the death of a cow, the cost of a funeral, regular sickness payments or an old age pension. …
“People joined Friendly Societies in large numbers and by the late 1800’s there were approximately 27,000 registered Friendly Societies. At the end of the nineteenth century, friendly societies provided most insurance, benefits, and pensions across the UK.”
That was the culture. It wasn’t Dickensian grinding poverty with urchins and beggars on every street corner. That picture is largely leftist propaganda. It was a functioning, efficient, and humane society that looked after its less fortunate way more humanely than is the norm today.
What destroyed it? The introduction of widespread government social programs in the 1930s, and the introduction of socialized health care in the 1940s.
As the government stepped in, the churches, friendly societies, and private charities moved out. Private charitable giving dramatically reduced as higher taxes bit hard and people abandoned their responsibilities to their less-fortunate fellow citizens to the state.
Today, there are fewer than 200 friendly societies remaining in Britain. Many church and private charities get more of their income from the state than they do from private donors. They are effectively state contractors.
Private charitable networks are still very strong in most Muslim countries. The Mormon Church is well known for its extensive charitable networks and its efforts to keep members off the government welfare rolls. Private charities and self-help networks are still very common in the Chinese Diaspora.
They were once also common in the United States, particularly in Black and ethnic communities. Wave after wave of government welfare programs destroyed that culture.
Why it Works
Private welfare works best for very simple reasons. It’s voluntary, it tends to be local, and it’s personal. Private charities take money from generous people in their communities and use it as efficiently as possible to assist distressed individuals and families. The goal is to use the money wisely and to get the recipient back on his or her feet as quickly as possible. Everybody involved is closely connected. The charity feels its obligation to both donor and recipient. The donor feels good, and the recipient feels grateful and motivated to improve their situation as quickly as possible. If recipients try to cheat the system, they will be quickly found out and the resources will be re-allocated to a more deserving case.
Private local charities have every incentive to be frugal and efficient with the resources they are given. Often this means using a little “tough love,” which is sometimes what’s required to get some people back on the right path. Private charity done well is a win-win for all involved.
State welfare is neither voluntary, local, nor personal. Huge amounts of money are taken by compulsory taxation and given to armies of bureaucrats, who dole it out to often ungrateful and irresponsible ”beneficiaries.” A state welfare bureaucracy has every incentive to keep as many people on the rolls for as long as possible. There is little demand for beneficiaries to get jobs, go into training, or stop having illegitimate babies. More welfare recipients mean more jobs and higher salaries for welfare workers. It’s a self-perpetuating system that does immense financial, psychological, and spiritual damage to all involved.
Private welfare encourages increased personal responsibility in all the voluntary parties involved. Government welfare increases irresponsibility in everyone it touches.
A Better Future
If a brave and responsible government legislated that all state welfare was to be phased out completely over 10 years, and all state pensions were to be phased out over 30 years, there would be a huge uproar. The left would go ballistic. Predictions would abound on mass starvation and poverty ahead.
If the government stayed the course, however, we would see a flourishing of new Friendly Societies, church charities, and mutual aid groups in every community in the nation. With taxes way down, the economy would boom and wages and salaries dramatically increase. Demand for welfare would plummet, and those in genuine need would be amply and humanely cared for.
The benevolent welfare society would make us all better people, and the ugly and cruel welfare state would no longer blight our free nation.
What are we waiting for people?
Trevor Loudon is an author, filmmaker and public speaker from New Zealand. For more than 30 years, he has researched radical left, Marxist and terrorist movements and their covert influence on mainstream politics.
Trevor presents his movie, “ENEMIES WITHIN” DVD—BUY NOW!
