ALAN writes:

In a comparison of “free speech” in the USSR and the USA, Lev Tsitrin wrote that there is little substantive difference between restrictions placed upon such speech by the dictators of Communist Russia and the limitations placed upon it today here in the US by the sweetheart alliance of Big Government, Big Corporations, and the Mass Communications/Propaganda industry.

From their standpoint, Mr. Tsitrin concludes, “free speech that is epitomized in ‘samizdat’ [i.e., self-published writings] can — and should — be suppressed. In their mistrust of free speech, …. the US and the USSR ultimately converge.”

[Lev Tsitrin, “Free Speech in the USSR and in the US”, New English Review, August 2022]

Now when I read that, why did it catch my attention?  Because of his choice of words in that last sentence about a “convergence” of the US and the USSR.  That sounds awfully familiar, doesn’t it?  And here is why:

In 1953, Norman Dodd was research director for a committee of the House of Representatives whose job it was to investigate ideas and policies promoted by tax-exempt foundations.  He spoke that year with Ford Foundation president Rowan Gaither, who said to him:

“Mr. Dodd, all of us who have a hand in the making of policies here have had experience either with the OSS during the war or the European Economic Administration after the war.  We’ve had experience operating under directives, and these directives emanate and did emanate from the White House.  ……Mr. Dodd, we are here to operate in response to similar directives, the substance of which is that we shall use our grant-making power so to alter life in the United States that it can be comfortably merged with the Soviet Union.”

[Transcript of 1982 interview with Norman Dodd by G. Edward Griffin, [Available here; emphasis added.]

Isn’t that a coincidence?

Laura writes:

The problem with Communism is not that it restricts free speech — obviously none of us believe in absolutely free speech; we don’t want pedophiles or traitors to have free speech, for example.

The problem with Communism is that it bans the truth. Same thing in America today.

— Comments —

Terry Morris writes:

“The problem with Communism is that it bans the truth. Same thing in America today”.

Too many Americans (essentially all of the political left, and more of the political right than any of us care to admit) are Communists, they just don’t know it. I put together a “top ten” list some months back, by way of which Americans, honest with themselves, may effectively guage their commitment to communism and communist principles. Fair warning: not one of my “top ten” refers to direct commitments to Karl Marx per se, nor to Joseph Stalin, the USSR, Red China, et al. What we’re talking about is a political and economical and cultural mindset; the American Left likely comprises the purest form of communism the world has ever known. I’m not talking in terms of mass murders (which they will eventually get around to here, as they always have elsewhere), but to mass psychosis which will inevitably lead to mass murders on the scale we associate with Communist Russia and Red China. Zippy used to talk about this quite a lot, before his untimely death. Anyway, here is my “top ten” list aforementioned.

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