A Conservative History of the American Left by Daniel J. Flynn

Author:Daniel J. Flynn [Flynn, Daniel J.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Crown Publishing Group
Published: 2008-04-28T16:00:00+00:00

17

COMMUNISM IS TWENTIETH-CENTURY AMERICANISM

That henceforth we be no more children, tossed to and fro and carried about with every wind of doctrine, by the wickedness of men, by cunning craftiness by which they lie in wait to deceive.

—EPHESIANS 4:14

THE HITLER-STALIN Pact required nimbleness and agility of Communists. They advocated war. They advocated peace. They advocated war again. The ability to move to and fro repeatedly benefited party members and their fellow travelers on the Left.

Earl Browder, who so opposed conscription during World War I that he served more than two years in prison for obstructing it, led the Communist Party during World War II as it supported the reinstitution of the draft.1 After directing Communist-led unions in the Congress of Industrial Organizations (CIO) to stop work at various defense-related factories during the Nazi-Soviet Pact, the CPUSA publicly committed to a wartime no-strike pledge once the Soviet Union became a co-belligerent with the Allies.2 “The worst section of the employers, those least anxious for the unconditional surrender of Hitler and the destruction of fascism, are the very ones who want the strike movement,” Browder claimed. “Is it getting tough when you give these employers what they want?”3 In spite of all the party’s denunciations of racial discrimination in America, Browder reacted to Pearl Harbor by purging the CPUSA of all members of Japanese ancestry. He rationalized the discrimination by stating that “the best place for any Japanese fifth columnist to hide is within the Communist party.”4

The only principle that failed to depart at expediency’s notice was subservience to the political line issued by the Soviet Union. On that, but only that, there could be no compromise. The dizzying turns in the Soviet line caused Browder, as leader of the Soviet Union’s American auxiliary, to regularly contradict earlier proclamations. Browder remained the leader of the CPUSA for so long not because he was a good leader but because he was a good follower.

If the Communist puppets were willing to publicly humiliate themselves at the behest of foreign puppeteers, what wouldn’t they do?

Hundreds of American Communists betrayed their country by spying for the Soviet Union during Earl Browder’s tenure as general secretary of the CPUSA and as president of its wartime replacement, the Communist Political Association. The primary functions of the espionage apparatus were to infiltrate the government to purloin secrets, promote and protect fellow agents, and influence policy; to obtain the technological and industrial secrets of the public and private sector; and to partake in Stalin’s paranoid campaign to eliminate Trotskyists and other imagined threats.

In pursuit of these ends, American Communists lied. They stole. They murdered. Earl Browder stood in the middle of it all.

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