As polls tighten and self-described socialist Bernie Sanders looks more like a serious contender than a novelty candidate for president, the liberal media elite have suddenly stopped calling him socialist. He’s now cleaned up as a “progressive” or “pragmatist.” But he’s not even a socialist. He’s a communist. Mainstreaming Sanders requires whitewashing his radical pro-communist past. It won’t be easy to do. If Sanders were vying for a Cabinet post, he’d never pass an FBI background check. There’d be too many subversive red flags popping up in his file. He was a communist collaborator during the height of the Cold War.
I suppose it was only a matter of time before Right-wing media outlets began openly smearing Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) as a “communist”…which only serves to demonstrate how little they understand the definition of “communism.” With flimsy arguments built on cherry-picked evidence, the New York Post is now proudly “outing” Sanders. Paul Sperry’s article is so thinly sourced and its animus so poorly disguised that it barely qualifies as journalism. He has to go back to 1964 to find “evidence to support their smears, but let’s allow Sperry to make a fool of himself his case, shall we? Because, according to this fine flag-bearer of journalistic integrity, Sen. Sanders isn’t merely a “communist,” he’s a “diehard communist” with a “radical pro-communist past.”
I’m not certain what that all means, but it sure sounds scary, eh? Be afraid of the big, bad “communist!!”
While attending the University of Chicago, Sanders joined the Young People’s Socialist League, the youth wing of the Socialist Party USA. He also organized for a communist front, the United Packinghouse Workers Union, which at the time was under investigation by the House Committee on Un-American Activities.
This is an easy one to pick apart:
- This may have escaped the fact-checkers at the Post, but the Socialist Party USA is not the same as the Communist Party.
- The reporter offers no evidence as to how he/she knows that the United Packinghouse Workers Union was a “communist front.”
- Being under investigation by the House Committee on Un-American Activities is not proof of anything, and certainly not of guilt. HUAC investigated all manner of people and organizations, sometimes for cause and sometimes for political harassment. When last I checked, Americans (individuals and organizations) are guilty until proven innocent. Oh, wait; that’s the Conservative definition of justice afforded Liberals. REAL Americans are still innocent until proven guilty, amiright??
And it only gets better.
After graduating with a political science degree, Sanders moved to Vermont, where he headed the American People’s History Society, an organ for Marxist propaganda. There, he produced a glowing documentary on the life of socialist revolutionary Eugene Debs, who was jailed for espionage during the Red Scare and hailed by the Bolsheviks as “America’s greatest Marxist.”
Again, I marvel at the thin gruel being served up by Sperry as evidence. It’s astonishing what can be cobbled together for a cheap hit job:
- How do we know the American People’s History Society was “an organ” (What…a kidney? Liver? Perhaps a lung?) for Marxist propaganda? Is it because it had “People” in its title?
- If Sperry knew anything about Eugene Debs, he’d understand that Debs was, in fact, a Socialist but started out as a Democrat (probably as egregious a crime in Sperry’s eyes).
- Being jailed for espionage during the Red Scare doesn’t exactly make Debs unique, nor is it proof of his guilt. Many people were arrested during that period, some because of evidence and some just because.
- Since when does by called anything by Bolsheviks carry weight or condemn a person as a communist?
There’s little doubt but that Sen. Sanders has advocated for Left-wing causes over the course of his long career in public service, but I’ve yet to come across anything that would demonstrate that he is now or at any time way back when was a Communist. In case anyone (especially Sperry) may not be familiar with the definition of “communist” or “communism,” I’ve included them below, courtesy of dictionary.com.
Communist [kom-yuh-nist]
noun
1. (initial capital letter) a member of the Communist Party or movement.
2. an advocate of communism.
3. a person who is regarded as supporting politically leftist or subversive causes.
4. (usually initial capital letter) a Communard.
adjective
5. (initial capital letter) of or relating to the Communist Party or to Communism.
6. pertaining to communists or communism.Communism [kom-yuh-niz-uh m]
noun
1. a theory or system of social organization based on the holding of all property in common, actual ownership being ascribed to the community as a whole or to the state. 2. (often initial capital letter) a system of social organization in which all economic and social activity is controlled by a totalitarian state dominated by a single and self-perpetuating political party.
3. (initial capital letter) the principles and practices of the Communist Party.
4. communalism.
It’s difficult to lend much in the way of credibility to an author so clearly willing to allow his ideology and personal bias to bleed through into his journalistic endeavors without even the pretense of camouflage. Sperry has taken a minimum of facts, mixed them with (thin) circumstantial evidence, and spread it over a layer of fantasy, fear-mongering, and red-baiting. There’s no solid evidence, no citations of sources, and certainly nothing that proves Sen. Sanders to be a “diehard communist”…except in the overactive imagination of Paul Sperry.
Sanders in 1981 managed to get elected mayor of Burlington, Vt., where he restricted property rights for landlords, set price controls and raised property taxes to pay for communal land trusts. Local small businesses distributed fliers complaining their new mayor “does not believe in free enterprise.”
Keep in mind that Sen. Sanders was democratically elected by Burlington voters. What he did sounds a lot like what’s happening in New York City these days…but I don’t hear anyone calling it “communism” or even “socialism.” The fact that local business may not have liked him doesn’t mean he doesn’t believe in free enterprise. What he believes in is FAIR free enterprise, and if that make him a “communist,” then sign me up.
It’s understandable that Sperry has a bias; we all do. I’d have respect for Sperry if he at least owned up to it and presented this as an opinion piece instead of an exercise in yellow journalism. Instead, he (poorly) camouflages a hit job as journalism…but perhaps my first mistake was expecting anything even faintly redolent of objective journalism from the New York Post. You’d think I’d know better by now.
