Diary: The Right's Hatred of Communism Considered

We have gone through many troubling times in this nation, but one of the worst may gave been the hysteria surrounding the "godless Communist conspiracy" Americans were told was designed to enslave the entire world.

The staunchest anti-communist zealots out to save us all from such evil were our right-wing politicians and their supporters in business and the media. Earning his stripes as a leading anti-communist crusader was the late publisher and propagandist William F. Buckley Jr., who died late last year with his reputation in tact.

As David Brooks stated in tribute to Buckley in his NewYork Times column:

"To enter Buckley's world was to enter the world of yachts, limousines, finger bowls at dinner, celebrities like David Niven and tales of skiing at Gstaad.

"National Review's readers no doubt shared a hatred for Communism, but many of them simply wanted to be like Buckley. He had a Tory gratitude for the pleasures of life: for music, conversation, technology and adventure."

This was the life Buckley thought himself entitled to, a world inherited from others, not earned by himself, but one which assured him of his aristocratic superiority. There is a cartoonish stereotype of the American aristocrat, one who looks down his nose at the rest of us. But anyone who ever watched Buckley's public broadcasting television show "Firing Line" certainly remembers the elegant Mr. Bill purposely tilting his head upward while leaning back in his chair to assure that he looked down his nose in a manner that suggested deliberate use of the stereotype to emphasize who he was and who the rest of us are. The need to emphasize that class superiority explains why a certain percentage of Americans have an obsessive compulsion to live in mansions that are modern versions of medieval castles even though no one really needs such accommodations.

Of course Buckley ~ like his cohorts and readers of his magazine ~ hated communism, never had a kind word to say about it while remaining relatively quiet about fascism. The difference is that communism, or "scientific socialism" as Karl Marx named his philosophy, was a concept to rescue the common working class from the control and oppression by the aristocracy. Fascism, on the other hand, extolled the superiority of one class (corporate) of humans over all other classes; or Buckley's class over the rest of us. Buckley's hatred of communism is legendary, almost bordering on obsession, but finding a condemnation of fascism in his notable statements is rare, if even possible,

Ronald Reagan likewise assailed the "salvation of the working man" at his ever moment, even assisting and sponsoring the slaughter of hundreds of thousands of peasants in foreign lands under the guise that the mass murder was by "freedom fighters" guarding against communism. That the peasant "communism" was only a desire for social justice, or that thousands of those reds were infants, escaped Reagan's comprehension. Any uprising against oppression had to be crushed violently by those "freedom fighters" just as uprisings in Easern Europe had to be vioently crushed by Soviet Union Troops. But when visiting a cemetery in Germany, Reagan had the gall to honor dead Nazi military officers who died trying to spread their fascist hatred worldwide.

When Reagan falsely believed that communism was in its last throes, he uttered the words, "Communism is a sad bizarre chapter in human history whose final pages even now are being written" but never stated a similar opinion about fascism and its adherence to a "master race."

Our anti-communist ideologues have a morbid love for the corporation but an absolute hatred of working-class unions. And that is a puzzlement, because they claim to love democratic principles of freedom and hate collectivism. Corporate capitalism in its purest form is dictatorial, which should turn off those who claim they stand for freedom, but it does not for they love unfettered corporate capitalism.

The corporation ~ a collective ~ is run like the old Soviet Union that operated under a dictatorship of a privileged class just like unbridled capitalism, unlike labor unions, which use democratic means in choosing leaders. The benefits of a healthy income, health care, retirement and other goods a union can bring to its members also challenge the conservative concept of a master class because unions get for ordinary people what the aristocracy wants only for itself. When ordinary people have what the aristocracy has, only in limited amounts, class superiority is blurred.

The Soviet nation was controlled by the Communist Party just as the corporation is controlled by a board of directors. The Party was directed by the Central Committee as the board is directed by a cadre of top executives. The board of directors choses the chairman of the board, just as the Central Committee selected the Party Secretary. The Party Secretary, who often held no government position, appointed new members to the Central Committee just as the chairman, who may not hold a working position in the business end of the corporation, selects new members of the Board of Directors. The Party Secretary appointed members of the Politburo, a subdivsion of the Central Committe, just as the chairman of the board appoints members of committees that are subdivions of the board of directors. Officers of the corporation are chosen from the ranks of management just as officials of the Soviet Union were chosen from Party leadership which selected the premier the same way the corporation leaders select the company chief executive. In a communist government, the state was all important, the individual was nothing . In the pure corporate capitalism, the corporation is all important, the individual is nothing. Just as the Bolshevik regime felt that sacrificing individuals to maintain power for itself was justified, corporations will sacrifice individual employees to maintain its profits and influence.

In a corporation's election, stockholders have the option of voting for a corporation-endorsed candidate to remain on the board of directors or abstaining. There are no alternative candidates to vote for, assuring the re-election of the board chairman's hand-picked board member. Voters have no say on who the board selects as board chairman or company president. In a communist election, the preferred party candidates often run unopposed ~ just as in the corporation election ~ where the voter can vote for the candidate or abstain. Voters have no say on who becomes party secretary or "CEO" of government. Owners of the corporation ~ stockholders ~ have virtually no say in how the busines is run just as the owners of a communist country ~ citizens ~ have no say in how the nation is run.

While there may be minor deviations between the corporation and a communist government, they are similar in too many ways to suit conservative minds. They rant passionately against communist regimes because such regimes remind them that they are essentially the same, and the hatred they have for communists is only transferring their own evil to their philosophical relatives.

During the Cold War, there was an almost-hysterical backlash against anything suggesting the collectivism of communism covering thought, censorship, blacklisting and criminal prosecution, just for thinking differently. Most silly was the effort by right-wing fruitcakes to ban any book or writing that detailed the communist ideology, as if the righties were saying that any exposure of Marxism to anyone would automatically transform a western democratic mind into a Marxist mind. Nobody knows why the right didn't argue that exposing Marxist minds to western democratic writings wouldn't transform in the other direction. Not only did banning such writings deny thoughtful persons the opportunity to understand the philosophy that their "enemies" embraced, it was a backhanded and unintentional way of proclaiming that communism was superior to western civilization.

But when in power in a democracy, the right usually resorts to the same tactics as Bolsheviks to maintain control, differing only in degree. Right-wingers will always claim to champion freedom and individualism but those will usually apply only to themselves, they do nothing to secure freedom for individuals when the corporation acts to ruin lives or small businesses. Bolsheviks said that their brand of Marxism was designed to represent democracy and protect the individual and the democratic rights associated with individualism. But when someone used the democratic principle of criticizing the system, that person was assailed for anti-democratic activities. In that way a democric act became anti-democracy. That is similar to a criticism of the corporation from within being greeted by retaliation against the critic and the political right's tarring any democratic criticism of the departed George W. Bush from the White House as an act of treason against the nation.

Buckley wrote in the first issue of his publication, National Review, that the purpose of the magazine, and of the conservative movement, was to "stand athwart history, yelling Stop!" That was a revealing statement because it is similar to Marx's axiom that his movement was to put an end to history.

When a right winger goes off on a tangent about communism and boasts conservative anti-communism credentials, rest assured he or she is essentially the same as any communist. While Bolshivism proved that Marxist economic theory doesn't work in a modern world, Reaganism-Bushism proved that conservative economic theories likewise don't work.

When USSR relations with the West began to thaw under Gorbachev's regime as he tried to reform the Soviet system to save it, a Russian TV journalist named Vladimir Pozner spent considerable time in the United States reporting on the improving relations. Pozner, who grew up in the United States and attended high school in New York City, was constantly assailed by the American right, most harshly by Buckley, because he refused to denounce the Soviet Union during the Cold War. Of course, Pozner was employed by the Soviet government and apparently saw no reason to attack his employer, instead choosing to remain loyal to his nation, but did admit after the USSR disintegrated that he had been a propagandizer and was sorry for his actions, which he continues to do after rejecting his communist ideology. There has never been any evidence that Buckley demanded that his employees at the National Review criticize and denounce him, his magazine, or his dogma in the way he wanted Pozner to do to his employer or to his beliefs.

We saw employees of former President George W. Bush going to great lengths to idolize their boss and defend his record, pretending it was a record of positive accomplishments and claim those of us who view his time in office as a disaster for the nation need to be informed because we couldn't see what had been developing right in front of us for eight years. And none of them are apologizing for their actions that have done great harm to this once-grand nation and left it a shell of what it used to be, nor admitting to being propagandizers or abandoning their doctrinaire nonsense. When former press secretary Scott McClellan recently published his book on the inside workings of the Bush administration and told of the illegal and incompetent dealings of the administration ~ that most on the political left already knew ~ he was viscously attacked by the righties. He was called delusional, disgruntled, turncoat, traitor and other degrading appellations for not remaining loyal to his ex-employer. But not one of the accusations thrown at McClellan demonstrated that he was wrong or dishonest.

So it appears the right has selective outrage that it applies differently depending on political allegiances; loyalty to a man is more important than allegiance to the nation, and honesty and truthfulness have no place in right-wing politics. It would be wonderful if America's ideologues on the political right would emulate the former communist Pozner and renounce their disastrous beliefs and apologize continuously for sending this nation to the edge of destruction as Bolshevism sent the USSR to destruction

It should be evident that the American right hates communism because it is an unflattering mirror image of conservatism with all of its ugliness being reflected by the ugliness that was the Bolshevik experiment in the Soviet Union.