Too Much Schnapps

Taking the controversy over Diana West’s book as his jumping-off point, Takuan Seiyo discusses our occluded history — not to mention our occluded present.

Too Much Schnapps
by Takuan Seiyo

On instinctive shooting

One would have to be a pierced slacker or in a sensory deprivation tank to not take notice of the storm that erupted on the Left and the neoconservative semi-Right after the publication of Diana West’s American Betrayal. Citing Ms. West’s own early stock of her detractors’ forays, the most serious was Ronald Radosh’s 7000-word “McCarthy On Steroids” plus follow-up pieces — FrontPage’s own inventory is here — with echoes in Pajamas Media, The American Thinker, National Review and undoubtedly elsewhere, prodigiously.

My own favorite is Mother Jones’s “The Latest One-Upmanship on the Lunatic Right”, parsimonious in that it quotes generously from Andrew Sullivan’s critique of the book and its author. In a country where an Andrew Sullivan gets so much paid column inch space and bandwidth, one is in a Looking Glass world, an upside-down mishmash, so maybe even David Frum will soon inveigh with his conservative opinion in a syndicated column.

Horowitz, Radosh and Black are the only weighty names in the critics’ gallery, though I’ll omit Conrad Black from further consideration. His “Right-wing loopy who has [not been] house-trained” is so embarrassing for a man I came to expect more from that I wish he were back to tending his collections of cars, antiques and (reportedly $9-million-worth of) Franklin Delano Roosevelt memorabilia, instead of voicing strong opinions on the événements du jour.

I have not read American Betrayal, though I will as soon as time allows. I am also not a Sovietologist or specialist in modern American history — but I need not be. Having been born behind the Iron Curtain, I, my people, my family — those remaining by 1941 after Katyn, Kolyma, Kazakhstan, and the rest later, after Majdanek, Janowska and Belzec — have lived and endlessly argued the consequences of the history revisited by Diana West and so eagerly reburied by her detractors. I will, however, mostly stay clear of the fine points argued by both sides in the controversy, noting only that in its broad outline, which I know having read the reviews and the polemics between Diana West and her detractors, and bringing my store of information to bear, I side fully with Ms. West’s contentions even if, as her critics allege, one or another detail she discusses it erroneous.

What Messrs. Radosh, Horowitz et al. are doing is akin to a learned historian of the Spanish monarchy looking at Velazquez’s “Las Meninas” and foaming at the mouth: “What kind of dog is that? No such rough-looking mutts would have been allowed anywhere within the precincts of the Royal Palace! And what’s that coffered door on the back wall! This style had all but disappeared by the time Velazquez arrived in Madrid. What ignorance! What chutzpah! How could this pushy parvenu from Seville have purported to represent faithfully the fauna or the architecture of the Spanish Habsburg Court!”

Las Meninas, Diego Velázquez, 1656

But this tells more about the critic than the painter, for “Las Meninas” would remain one of the iconic paintings of our civilization even if that dog should have been a Pomeranian and the door should have been inlaid marquetry. In other words, the vehemence of Diana West’s detractors would be grossly out of proportion even if their allegations of error in fact or methodology were correct. Their failure to acknowledge the singular merit and critical timeliness of American Betrayal’s larger theme is highly troubling, in particular because of the urgency of her insight as to the parallel to the current infiltration of Muslims and Islam’s Useful Idiots in the halls of American power.

But the question remains: why the vitriol? Why would a smart, well informed, experienced, effective defender of what’s left of the United States, Clare Lopez, be dismissed from Gatestone Institute after having written a favorable review of Ms. West’s book? Diana West asked the “why” question in the context of quoting this phrase from her book:

“Once we finally incorporate the facts of Soviet-directed penetration of the U.S. government — the Communist-agent-occupation of the U.S. government — which began in earnest in 1933, everything we know about ourselves as a nation will also have to rearrange itself, our history taking on a brand-new pattern of revelation . . .”

Why should critics acknowledged as foes of Communism and, in the case of both FrontPage and Gatestone, also important members in the anti-Islamization coalition, be so disturbed by this “new pattern of revelation”?

Here I have to reveal my other qualification for entering this debate. For when Messrs. Horowitz and Radosh were still on the barricades of the Proletariat, I was learning both my English and my points of the political compass from the writings of William F. Buckley. And Bill Buckley had started his public career as a pioneer, fearless fighter standing athwart the March of the Left and yelling “Stop,” but would end it peeing habitually from the open door of his moving limo onto downwind traffic. He would pee metaphorically too: onto conservative writers still toiling in the topical fields of reality that he had by then found inconvenient to his social ambitions.

Once upon a time, Buckley wrote copiously and courageously on the subject of Commie infiltration, in defense of Joe McCarthy, in defense of Chamberlain and against Hiss, in scathing rebuttals of the Rosenberg denialists and other red-diaper intellectuals, in praise of various positions of the John Birch Society, and so on. He allowed race-realist and immigration — realist articles in National Review. But slowly, “the Pope of the conservative movement” started turning. First, he turned on the John Birch Society.

In March 2008, Buckley published an article entitled “Goldwater, the John Birch Society, and Me” in Commentary, of all possible venues, the premier organ of Jewish neoconservatism. In it, Buckley described why and how a group of conservative thinkers and machers, including himself, came to ditch the John Birch Society (JBS) in 1962. The trigger was their shared opinion that JBS founder Robert Welch was a man disconnected from reality, having written a book, “The Politician,” alleging that President Eisenhower had been a Communist agent.

National Review would be pivotal in the excommunication of the Birchers, starting with a 5000-word opinion piece Buckley wrote and published a week after that meeting. “The wound we Palm Beach plotters delivered to the John Birch Society proved fatal over time,” gloats Buckley at the end of his Commentary reminiscence.

Robert Welch may have gone overboard in his choice of words, but not in the sense of his allegations. For FDR, Truman and Eisenhower too may have been unwitting Communist tools, but tools they were. That alone, revived and refreshed in Diana West’s book, is a red cape in front of the neocons — and few conservatives remain in America who aren’t — for it’s linked to an old anathema already branded and excommunicated half a century ago.

Moreover, as much as it was clear that Welch had gone hyperbolic in some of his sweeping accusations, his paranoia was justified then and has been vindicated by history since. He was one of the first to attack Fidel Castro and his regime, already in 1959. He was perhaps the first to expose the United Nations for the Third-World run, global socialist government vehicle that it has plainly by now become[1]. He exposed odious conduct by U.S. presidents that looked like they were doing the Soviets’ dirty work. Among others, ‘Welch’s book about Eisenhower and the forces controlling American politics, relays, per the JBS précis, “300 pages and 150 pages of footnotes and documentation, including covering one of Mr. Eisenhower’s most immoral and despicable acts of authorizing ‘Operation Keelhaul’; which used American soldiers to repatriate anti-communist Poles to their certain death or torture.”

Polish history as the insufficiently known, unacknowledged and unwanted depository of much evidence of base, traitorous, Commie-manipulated conduct by the wartime leaders of the United States and Great Britain will feature prominently in this little review, for like Ms. West’s disclosures, it’s another skeleton that people with agendas wish to leave buried. But thus far in my defense of Welch, even neocons would probably not object too much, looking in hindsight. One would have to be brain-dead or snatched by alien spores from space not to notice that the now-thwarted causes Welch advocated already in the 1950s: limited government, individual liberty, the rule of law and restoration of the Republic as envisioned by the Founding Fathers are the causes that the entire conservative movement should have embraced and sustained from the beginning. Instead, they focused only on fighting formal Communism (but not the stealthy one), furthering capitalism, and continuing to play ball on a pitch whose goal posts were being continuously moved leftward without a pip of protest from the away team.

I believe that the herem (haram in Arabic) imposed on the John Birch Society by the “conservative movement” to this day may be due to its five decades of still-continuing rejection and opposition to two sacred American totems: “Civil Rights” and “Immigration.” That these two totems and other lesser ones are the work of a secondary infection of the polity by Communist agents either professional or instinctively sympathetic — what I call yin or estrogen-driven — is a separate subject that cannot be treated here[2]. But by 2013, when “Civil Rights” have for decades morphed into Equal Outcomes despoliation and hateful truculence, and “Immigration” has morphed into a disjoining compound injected by the tens of millions of units into the arthritic joints of a hobbled nation, these should not be controversial issues any more.

But still they are, and they are neocon anathema.

I don’t have a ready definition of neoconservatism myself, but like Potter Stewart with pornography, I know it when I see it. It’s not even useful to distinguish between “conservative” and “neoconservative” anymore, for the latter has subsumed the former, including the Republican Party. And it’s clear that the institutions and individuals on the Right who are attacking American Betrayal exhibit a particularly “conservative” set of values, proclivities and practices, the derision quote marks warranted by some idiosyncrasies that have nothing to do with genuine conservatism. In Samuel Francis’s words, “Despite their dislike of the New Left, their anti-communism, and their concern about destructive cultural and moral trends, the neo-conservatives for the most part never quite managed to break completely with many of the underlying liberal assumptions.”[3] Paul Gottfried, a prolific historian of conservatism and a fierce critic of conservatism-light has characterized this syndrome as “sentimentally drawn to the left despite conservative positions on many policy issues.”

Gottfried attributes this ambivalence to the cultural differences between the neoconservatives and the old right. In his words, “Both groups come largely from self-contained cultures that once confronted each other across an abyss of mutual suspicion: the one, Eastern urban-Jewish and the other, American heartland-Protestant.”[4]

To list the sieve layers in my own filter wherein “conservatives” with derision quotes are identified:

  • Support for “social justice” and the welfare state.
  • Fondness for Woodrow Wilson and FDR.
  • Support for immigration in all its forms
  • Extreme sensitivity to “racism” and omerta with respect to race and gender group genetic differences.
  • Unequivocal advocacy of democracy and of interventionist foreign policy to enforce it, particularly in the Middle East.
  • Fondness for abstract universalist principles (James Burnham referred to the latter as compassion, kindliness, love and brotherhood instead of what a true conservative ought to advocate: civic virtues).
  • Scorched-earth tactics against conservative ideological opponents such as Paul Gottfried, Pat Buchanan, Samuel Francis, John Birch Society etc. And now Diana West, though she was not aware that in the eyes of “conservatives” she had just written herself into that camp.

And two characteristics that, sadly, both sides involved in the American Betrayal brouhaha, including this reviewer, share:

  • Awareness of and activism against Islamization.
  • Strong support for Israel.

Let it be said that the presence of the last two items in the neoconservative agenda and their conspicuous lack in the paleoconservative one is, in my eyes, a credit to the former and a black eye to the latter. Still, even with the black eye, that visage looks truer to me.

American Betrayal revolves around a John-Birchey “extreme-right” theme. And JBS is not only tainted by some unfortunate choices of words and tackling of tribal taboos; it’s also uncool. Bob Dylan wrote a song mocking it. Norman Lear made a film mocking it. Stanley Kubrick mocked it in Dr. Strangelove. In other words, the liberals who dictate the terms of the discourse don’t like it.

Ms. West had ventured into taboo territory. She had to be shot down. Before her, Lawrence Auster had been. His supremely reasoned and reasonable arguments against racial preferences, about black criminality and white cowardice, about the crippling dysfunctions planted intentionally through Third World immigration got him banished from FrontPageMagazine’s pages, for “racism.” Before Auster it was Gottfried who had been picked, frozen, personalized and polarized — by the entire “conservative” establishment.

William Buckley himself went down this path much beyond his vendetta against the Birchers. He transformed into a neocon during the Reagan years, for that’s where the power, money and perks lay. Soon purges started at National Review, with the firing of all writers and editors who’d taken “controversial” positions with regard to “sensitive” subjects. John O’Sullivan, Rick Brookhiser, Peter Brimelow and others were let go.

An instinctive “off with her head” is what I think the neoconservative reaction has been with respect to Ms. West’s book, too. But let’s look at the substance of the criticism, not just its springboard.

What we know we know and what we don’t know but need not prove

The gist of the critiques is that Diana’s West’s book is too much: an overreach mixing personal bias with incorrectly interpreted facts, as allege none too politely Messrs. Radosh et al. To this is added a self-serving contempt of the “expert,” e.g. Radosh is a “professional” historian with a PhD, and West is not, and Horowitz cited that expertise as his main reason for siding with its position.

Having completed the coursework for a PhD in a pre-Affirmative Action top shelf American university, and a Masters at another, I have come by my contempt for such contempt the hard way. Tocqueville had a couple of years of college and some law courses as his preparation for writing “Democracy in America.” Patrick Leigh Fermor — the most erudite travel writer and history savant who has ever put pen to paper — had only had a high school education, albeit in the days when high schools were for real. Epictetus earned his diplomas in philosophy from his slave insignia and crippled leg.

Even if some details of West’s vast painting of Communist infiltration of Washington’s power structure could stand correction, the tableau is not, cannot be, vast enough. For instance, a big part of the Radosh critique evolves around the assertion that FDR’s closest and most trusted advisor Harry Hopkins was not a Soviet agent like Diana West alleges; someone else was. He cites sources I am not familiar with, and so does she. I cannot decide who is right — but it matters so very little. What matters is that Hopkins might as well have been a KGB agent for all the stupendous commie-friendly damage he has wrought. And Ms. West amply and irrefutably makes that case, whatever formal label might apply.

If that is not shocking enough, warranting a moment of national silence and reflection even if Hopkins did not carry a KGB identity card, our survival instincts have been dulled. On purpose?

Professor Radosh’s objections remind me of the PC contortions in the U.S. and Great Britain to avoid “labeling” Muslim terrorists as Muslim terrorists. Apparently, one must have a rag wrapped around one’s head and a discful of emails from Bin Laden to be considered as a Muslim terrorist. If you wear a United States Army officer’s uniform and murder 13 American soldiers and wound 30 while screaming Allahu Akbar, that is only “workplace violence.”

But it’s Islam itself where the terrorism lies, with or without Al Qaeda. Just as nihilism, subversion and destruction lie in Marx/Engels/Lenin & Co, per se, with or without the KGB. And so Ms. West was on the correct track when having noticed the number of Muslims in high public positions swaying American policy, she had a déjà vu concerning the high number of Communists in earlier administrations.

It’s the extent of Communist infiltration that matters, not the exact relationship between the infiltrators and the ideology and organizations on behalf of which they were infiltrating. The scorn wrapped in defining Diana West as McCarthyist is risible when we now know that Communist infiltration was as wide and deep then as McCarthy alleged, and not as narrow as his Useful Idiot detractors have claimed ever since. Moreover, this infiltration remains all-important and destiny-shaping now, though mutated like a smart flu virus into Cultural Marxism riding piggyback on submerged Leninism.

But let’s revisit briefly the vast picture of the World War II Alliance, to understand why as detailed and scathing an expose as American Betrayal is, it’s not enough and cannot be, for no one book could contain all the horror, and minds would reel from contemplating the abyss then, just as they should reel when contemplating the abyss-in-progress now.

Class, raise your hands: how many have heard the name Władysław Sikorski? Poland had a quarter million men fighting in the Allied forces, often with great distinction (e.g. Squadron 303, Monte Casino, Narvik etc.). General Sikorski was their Supreme Commander and Prime Minister of the Polish Government in Exile, headquartered in London. He died on July 4, 1943, when the Liberator plane carrying him, his daughter and his staff plunged into the Mediterranean right after taking off from the British airfield in Gibraltar. A British Court of Inquiry decreed three days later that jammed elevator controls caused the crash but it was impossible to establish how this jamming occurred — except that it certainly was no sabotage (this and the reference are cited in Wikipedia’s entry on Sikorski, but I relied on Polish sources).

“Impossible to determine” yet possible enough to determine that there was no sabotage? In contrast, the unofficial and non-British explanations of Sikorski’s death differ only with respect to who ordered the hit and exactly how it was executed. Perhaps the most credible theory is that Sikorski’s plane was sabotaged by the KGB with full knowledge or at least a wink and a nod of the highest echelons of British government, perhaps even Churchill himself. The more radical version of this scenario has been presented in Rolf Hochhuth’s 1967 play “Soldaten.” He based it on personal revelations from Jane Ledig-Rowohlt, the wife of his publisher, who had worked during the war in the British Secret Service and knew Churchill personally.

Now what would Messrs. Radosh et al. comment if I wrote a book alleging based on such anecdotal and additional circumstantial evidence that Winston Churchill was complicit in the murder of General Sikorski? Maybe this would have been an irresponsible allegation, tarnishing the reputation of an otherwise great man, as great as they come. But a critique based solely on vituperation with regard to a perhaps-erroneous assertion of Churchill’s involvement would have been a great disservice to the broader truth, and a gross impediment to our understanding of those times and their implications for us who live now.

First, even if Churchill had no knowledge of the hit on Sikorski, he appeased Stalin constantly, ignobly and unnecessarily — though less so than Roosevelt did. He went as far as impeding the release of information about the Soviet massacre in Katyn[5]: “We shall certainly rigorously oppose any “investigation” by the International Red Cross or any other body in any territory under German authority,” he wrote in a telegram to Uncle Joe.

Second, just as America was riddled at the top with Communist agents both official and spontaneously sympathizing, so was Great Britain — and that’s the more important truth. There is little doubt that Great Britain’s wartime decisions too were formed partly by such agents of Communist influence.

What we know about Sikorski’s last day is that when his Liberator was about to take off from Gibraltar en route to London, NKVD/KGB asset Kim Philby, OBE [sic!], had been Chief of the Iberia subsection of the British MI6 for two years already. Which means that this Cambridge lowlife, incidentally son of an upper class British convert to Islam and, true to type for a diehard commie, a vocal supporter of the Islamic cause in the Arab-Israeli conflicts, was in charge of all British counterintelligence operation in Gibraltar too, including the security of the airport. And on July 4, 1943, the plane of the Soviet Ambassador to Great Britain, Ivan Maisky, was at the Gibraltar Airport, parked rather close to Sikorski’s Liberator, with KGB operatives on board. Maisky had just been recalled to Moscow for a consultation with Uncle Joe concerning major trouble that had erupted between Sikorski’s government and the Soviets. Philby was in Gibraltar too[6]).

Just two months before Sikorski’s all-but-certain assassination, the Germans announced the discovery of 20,000 bodies (21,768 eventually) of Polish officers and inconvenient intelligentsia murdered by the Soviets and buried in Katyn Forest. The Soviets denied this but Sikorski rejected the denial and demanded an international investigation. The Soviets then accused the Polish government-in-exile of cooperating with Nazi Germany and broke off diplomatic relations.

Sikorski had become a major burr under the saddle on which rode the troika of Roosevelt, Churchill and Stalin, for he had begun opposing such an alliance with the mega-murdering psychopath from Georgia. As to what the first two intended relative to Poland for the sake of appeasing Stalin may be inferred from their failure to invite a representative of the Polish government to the Teheran Conference. There, merely five months after Sikorski’s murder, Poland was preliminarily cast loose and abandoned to Uncle Joe’s tender ministrations. The two leaders of the free world also agreed that the Polish Government in Exile was not representing Poland anymore but a puppet Communist government would be set up in that country instead. The betrayal was formalized at the February 1945 Yalta Conference, again, without Polish participation.

Joseph Stalin, Franklin D. Roosevelt, Winston Churchill at the Tehran Conference, November 28-December 1, 1943

We have here a murder motive nonpareil. To the question of cui bono, one can answer that World Communism and the USSR would benefit, and so would the Alliance per its two Western leaders who were so innocent of street smarts that they were unable to realize the Soviets needed them far more than they needed the Soviets, and who were being played by Stalin as if they were rubes from the provinces standing before a practiced con man in a downtown dive. But where were their advisors?

To the singular opportunity on July 4, 1943 — and Sikorski’s planes had experienced three “malfunctions” in the preceding 12 months — we can now add a powerful motive. Although not proven, speculation that KGB agents in coordination with Philby and Maisky sabotaged Sikorski’s plane is not only possible but warranted[7].

The main issue is not whether orders to wipe out Sikorski had been given in London or Moscow[8]. The issue is, first, that the British government has obstructed the possibility of finding that out by sealing its relevant records as a “military secret” until 2050 — why, one wonders. The second issue is whether it has been fully disclosed to what extent the administrations of both FDR and Churchill were shot through with KGB operatives and “mere” Soviet sympathizers acting as trusted advisors and double-agent executors of their respective countries’ war efforts.

Diana West has now treated the Roosevelt-Truman-Eisenhower case comprehensively. The British case still begs re-examination, for the “Cambridge Five” were surely neither just in Cambridge nor just five.

Two of Diana West’s most irritating (to her critics) assertions in American Betrayal is that the Allies were swayed by Soviet agents not to pursue early peace overtures from Germany, and to land in Normandy rather than in Italy. She describes this as “the most serious indictment of the US Communist movement for having spawned the traitors, fellow travelers and dupes who worked inside the federal government to advance Stalin’s interests.”

I will not quote from Professor Radosh’s critique of these points, as West already does so in her rebuttal, showing that he criticized mostly what she had not written. But I happened upon a chance confluence that supports Diana West’s thesis. Reading up on Ivan Maisky, the very Soviet ambassador in London whose co-presence with Philby and Sikorski in Gibraltar on July 4, 1943 is so hard to brush off, I had to circumvent his memoir, not being able to judge without much further study what was truthful and what was a whitewash. However, the Wikipedia entry on Ivan Maisky includes the following paragraph, supported by bibliographical references:

“During these years in London, he reassured Joseph Stalin that Britain had no interest in signing a separate peace with Germany while pressuring Britain to open a “second front” against the Germans in northern France. [5] He maintained close contact with Winston Churchill and Anthony Eden and personally visited the Foreign Office every day to get the latest news. [*]

Is it not clearer now that the invasion of the continent through France rather than Italy, and the rejection of peace overtures from Germany were done for the sake of Soviet interests and in an implicit surrender of Eastern Europe to Stalin?

Ms. West summarized the saboteurs’ work and the damage it has wrought in these words:

“They appear to have successfully thwarted multiple attempts by anti-Nazi, anti-Communist Germans to gain US assistance that might have helped them overthrow Hitler, surrender German armies to US and British forces in exchange for unspecified assistance in keeping the Red Army out of eastern and central Europe — a mission we spent the next four decades fighting to achieve from beleaguered bases in Western Europe. This might have brought World War II to a close much earlier than 1945. In other words, there was a chance not taken due to Communist penetration of the policy-making chain in Washington and London that might have saved millions, even tens of millions of lives. It is the story of these German Underground efforts that I discuss in Chapter 10, and the obstacles they faced in both Washington and London, where pro-Soviet influence — and Soviet influence operators and agents — were able to keep these anti-Nazi, anti-Communists at bay.”

West explains, correctly, as anyone who lived in an Iron Curtain Soviet satellite country knows, that Stalin’s goal was to take Europe. I have to modify that, for this had been the original Soviet goal since the days when Stalin was still a semi-anonymous commie commissar. The Bolsheviks had already attempted to conquer Europe once when they attacked the newly independent Polish Republic in 1919 -1921. Their plan was to flatten Poland and push on to Germany and beyond.

After a series of bloody battles, the decisive one was fought in August 13-25, 1920 in the environs of Warsaw. The Polish Army beat back the Soviets, and from then on the tide would turn against the invaders. The implications of the Polish victory for all of Europe was such that the British diplomat Edgar Vincent D’Abernon wrote a book with the title The eighteenth decisive battle of the world: Warsaw, 1920.

Soviet propaganda poster for the 1919/1920 Soviet war on Poland. Caption reads: “This is how the Polish squires’ undertaking will end”. 1920.

In his September 22, 1920 speech at the IX Conference of the Russian Communist Party, Lenin stated that “the centre of world imperialism’s entire system lies very close to [Warsaw].” By attacking it, though unsuccessfully, the USSR had been able to roil the working classes of Germany and Britain, he said, and had “a powerful effect on the revolutionary movement in Europe.” Lenin boasted that the attack on Poland was particularly successful in Great Britain, where it raised the proletariat to “an unprecedented level, to an absolutely new stage in the revolution.”

Lenin concluded with the words, “If we close our ranks and bend every effort, we shall win the victory.” Indeed, the ranks would be closed, the ears of Roosevelt and Churchill would be bent accordingly, and the Soviets won the victory — in 1943. Is this not just one of the issues wrathful avengers of “the truth” should chew on in quiet contemplation instead of excoriating Diana West on account that it was not Bupkin who said something to Zupkin but Zupkin who said it to Bupkin?

Schnapps

As I put the finishing touches on this on Sept 11, we, the happy few, celebrate the 330th anniversary of the Battle of Vienna. By the way, here is a subject for a great PhD dissertation in Education, Sociology, Contemporary History or Islamic Studies: Are high schools in the West (i.e. anywhere from Germany going west all the way to New Zealand) still teaching about Vienna 1683, and if so, what is it they are teaching? Hypothesis to be disproved: they are not teaching it, those that do teach it do so from the Turks’ point of view, and this tendency has a statistically significant correlation with each country’s weighted quotient of officially sanctioned Cultural Marxism.

Now, what do you think the chances are that such a dissertation would be approved, even if pared down to a more manageable single country, say Germany, or even a single zone in that country, say Lower Saxony? Academia is the very hatchery of Cultural Marxism; its desire to allow a critical investigation of its main raison d’être is very small.

By the way, since the term “Cultural Marxism” is flung about prodigiously, anchoring it to a definition is useful. As good as any is this one in David Horowitz’s invaluable DiscovertheNetworks guide to the Political Left. Which brings me to the sad issue of David Horowitz’s infantry and PJ Media’s dragoons and Gatestone Institute’s artillery firing on their own troops on the Anti-Islamization front. Particularly Horowitz, as so much of what he does is so good and important.

It’s another battle involving the Austrians and the Turks that’s relevant here: the Battle of Karansebes, whose 225th anniversary will be on September 17.

The instigator was Austria’s Emperor Joseph II (the full list of his domains and titles is too long). Joseph II — Mozart’s patron and Marie Antoinette’s brother — was a decent but not very bright man who hatched various liberty-promoting ideas but lacked the competence to implement them. Among those was his initiative to rid the Balkans of the cruel Turk occupier.

Joseph II personally led a large imperial army deep into Turkish-occupied territory, even though he had no knowledge of the military craft and had no bench of competent generals. The full tale of woes is too long for our purpose here, but let it suffice that when Joseph II finally parked his quarter-million troops and a corresponding number of horses and artillery pieces, to prepare for an engagement, it was in a swampy area by the Danube River near the town of Karansebes (present day Romania) that he parked them. Again, we shall skip the intervening troubles such as (by some reckoning) over 150,000 soldiers falling ill with malaria and dysentery, overstretched supply lines and so on.

On the fateful day, a scout unit of the Austrian hussars crossed the river to look for signs of an incoming Turkish army. They found no Turks but did find Gypsies who had schnapps for sale. The opportunity was too good to pass up.

When an infantry unit showed up much later looking for the hussars, they found their comrades drunk and happy. Naturally, the foot soldiers wanted some of the good stuff too. The problem was that by then the schnapps was running low. Arguments broke out that soon evolved into a shooting skirmish. It was pitch dark, with perhaps a Gypsy bonfire for illumination.

Then some foot soldier had the clever idea to shout “The Turks!” “The Turks!” so that the other guys would flee and he and his buddies would enjoy the remaining schnapps all to themselves. Unfortunately, a general panic ensued.

Austrian officers seeing this started shouting “Halt,” Halt,” but this was a truly multicultural army, and units of Hungarians, Slavs and Italians didn’t know German very well. So the soldiers thought they were hearing “Allah!” “Allah!” and rode and ran harder back toward the main camp. By then, the camp was waking to thundering hooves, shots, screams of “Allah” and “The Turks are coming!” The encamped units started firing on their own who were trying to re-enter the camp. Then the horses and cattle got so frightened they smashed their enclosures and fled by the tens of thousands, augmenting the aural impression of a large number of Allah’s cavalry attacking.

General pandemonium ensued. What was supposed to be a battle of the Austrians against the Turks, ended up with the Austrian Army fighting itself and retreating from a foe that wasn’t there. When the Turks arrived two days later, they found 10,000 dead and wounded Austrian soldiers amidst the smoldering ruins of what had been the Great Austrian Imperial Army’s camp.

Somewhere between the map coordinates of FrontPage Magazine, National Review Online, PJ Media, American Thinker, formally neoconservative magazines who may chime in on this (e.g. Commentary, The Weekly Standard) Gatestone Institute, the Republican National Committee et al. there lies the Karansebes encampment. Drunk with the schnapps of power, they see imaginary foes, retreat where they should regroup and attack, and when they attack, it’s their own they attack.

The GOP by now rides to battle under a standard with a caption it’s not even bright enough to read: “Republicans. They thirst for death.” The others do good work in the narrow areas they picked for their activism but act as though theirs were the only sectors under assault. They fire on soldiers on their own side who defend different sectors of the perimeter. Unfortunately, critical sectors through which the Turks are already pouring in, such as Open Borders, Immigration, “Civil Rights,” “White Privilege,” White Cowardice, Affirmative Action, United Nations and more.

Diana West is one more of the ablest soldiers shot by her own. There will be more. Until it may dawn on someone that the Turks are, in fact, coming. They are here.

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Notes:

1. The JBS is still at it, e.g. here.
2. See, inter alia:

3. Samuel Francis, “Neocon Invasion,” The New American, August 5, 1996
4. Paul Gottfried, “On Neoconservatism”, Modern Age, Winter 1983. Neoconservatism is by now no longer a primarily Jewish phenomenon but practically the only form of conservatism still abroad and allowed to show up in America.
5. I know that this point is covered in American Betrayal.
6. These are by no means uncontested statements. For instance, Maisky in his memoirs (Memoirs of a Soviet Ambassador, The War: 1939-43) states that his plane took off from Gibraltar on July 4th at noon; Sikorski’s took off at 11 PM. This author is unaware of any books published by British authors that presents any but the official version of the events, but contrary references in the Polish language are innumerable: books, articles, documentary and feature films, as Sikorski’s murder was one of the most tragic events in Polish history. Skirting the more arcane theories, I relied mainly on Gibraltar ’43, one of the three books by the Polish historian Tadeusz Kisielewski dealing with this topic. The Polish Wikipedia entry entitled “Aviation catastrophe in Gibraltar, July 4, 1943” presents a version of events fairly close to mine here, with a bibliography.
7. Such an assertion was made in detail in Gregory Douglas’s Gestapo Chief: The 1948 Interrogation of Heinrich Muller, Vol. 3: From Secret U. S. Intelligence Files. It is based on Kim Philby’s alleged personal account to Gestapo Chief Heinrich Müller and on other Müller materials from the late 1940s and 50s. However, outside of that book, no recognized, credible source has confirmed that the Gestapo chief was seen, let alone alive, after his 1945 disappearance; until one does, a question mark must hang over this source.
8. The French Sovietologist and specialist in USSR-Poland relations Alexandra Viatteau also supports (in her books and here) the “Philby done it” theory but asserts that the operation was conceived and executed solely by Moscow.
 

Takuan Seiyo is a European-born American writer living in exile in Japan. For his previous essays, see the Takuan Seiyo Archives.

Previous posts about the controversy over American Betrayal by Diana West:

2013   Aug   11   Diana West: On the Question of “Scholarship”
        13   Yet Another Circular Conservative Firing Squad
        14   Cordon Sanitaire: FAIL
        15   On Reading the Book
        16   Banishing the Cathars
        18   Form and Substance
        22   “It’s All in Plain Sight”
        30   When Should a Book Not Be Written?
    Sep   3   Recognizing the Wrong People
        6   The Totalitarian Impulse
        6   The Rebuttal: Part One
        7   Rebuttal: The Summary
        8   The Rebuttal: Part Two
        8   An Army of Kooks
        10   The Rebuttal: Part Three
 

84 thoughts on “Too Much Schnapps

  1. “But the question remains: why the vitriol?”

    I don’t see the primary problem and question with Horowitz and Radosh being their ostensible vitriol. Far more important and telling, I think, are the numerous elementary errors they make (or rather weave ) — dozens of them, exposed by Diana West’s scrupulously meticulous and exhaustive three-part Rebuttal. In this context, I think their ostensible vitriol is part of the deception, distortion and disinformation of their reaction. They are affecting to be angry, exasperated, irritated, and offended by West; but what they really are is simply afraid of the light she’s shining — on them and fellow travelers like them.

    I went back and made sure to check how old Radosh is, compared with Harry Hopkins. It turns out Radosh was age 9 when Hopkins died. The way he has been behaving with this West affair, and the way he behaved in reaction to Stanton’s book made me wonder if he had been personal friends with Hopkins. It’s not too late, though, to find out that Hopkins was his Scout Master…

  2. Wow. So much good material.

    You even started out with one of the strangest of the strange things Horowitz has done, in your link to his page on Discover the (Leftist) Networks, a page devoted to Diana West!

    I only happened upon this frantic perversion in my Twitter flow, where a fellow had a screen cap of it and was informing Mr FreedomForMeButNotForThee that while he had read DH’s work for years, he was now done. Told him he was gonna burn Horowitz’ book for good measure, since Horowitz now stood for shameful censorship.

    Horowitz’ response? Diana West had attacked him and she was a witch. Bizarre. As his interlocutor said, he didn’t know what was wrong with DH, but something was seriously amiss.

    Your history of WFB is intriguing. Did he really feel entitled to urinate downwind of his limo? If true, it bespeaks the corruption of power. Such dictatorial aggrandizement appears to lead to a malignant sense of entitlement, and now it looks like Horowitz is sitting in that throne, micturating on lesser beings.

    Neoconservatism seems to have taken a right turn against the Obama foreign policy wars which are much wilder and woolier than Bush’s many presentations to the UN and Congress… Maybe they have seen the damage of “we don’t need no stinkin’ permission” and want out? Or is it merely that a Leftist has taken charge of the same policy – e.g., Afghanistan and our COIN r.o.e. – and it scares them to look in that mirror?

    My conservatism – more or less Russell Kirk’s ten principles – have fallen on hard times. I will take up the Tea Party philosophy for lack of another home. It is they who are pushing back against the GOP invertebrates on immigration and security invasions. No one else is and they scare the bejayzus out of the Beltway fops…

    What to do until things fall apart all the way down…

    Thank you for this excellent exposition.

    • Thanks. I should have mentioned GoV in the list of the victims. There is no doubt that PJ Media — also as neocon as they come — felt uncomfortable with some features of our reality the were discussed at GoV despite their being on the proscribed list.

      Buckley did engage in the unsavory behavior I described. He had a partially exculpatory circumstance, suffering at that time from prostate cancer. But surely, a more hygienic and less offensive solution could have been implemented. I loved him, among others, for one of his maxims: Quod licet Jovi, non licet bovi. But that’s a good one as long as you don’t take it too literally. My impression of Conrad Black is that he too believes that he is “Jovi.” And the rest of them, schmoozing with the rich, elegant elite in fund raisers, retreats and cruises, having big little black books with important telephone numbers etc., have also acquired a conviction of privilege even as the whole elegant ship they have been steering is sinking due to the navigation map having omitted some of the harder rocks and shoals of our social reality.

    • “one of the strangest of the strange things Horowitz has done, in your link to his page on Discover the (Leftist) Networks, a page devoted to Diana West! ”

      I didn’t see any mention of Diana West on that Discover the Networks page which Tekuan linked. What were you referring to?

      • do a search on the post for this string:

        FrontPage’s own inventory is here.

        “Here” is linked to the Discover the Network’s page on Diana. Most strange because this is purportedly a network of leftist orgs. Thus the fact that Mr Horowitz chose to put his “information” proving whatever about Diana West on an otherwise worthy effort shows the extent to which he has entered his own alternate reality.

        No wonder the talking heads on neocon websites are so very quiet. Obviously Diana West is meant to serve as an example pour les autres. Obviously they got the message. Loud and clear.

        • Ah ok, thanks. So Diana West is now part of the “network of the Political Left” according to Horowitz. Certainly, that’s preposterous; but even if it were true, it would be better than still being a Communist.

          • Fascinating. And troubling.

            It does give us a far better picture of the dangers of “conservatism”. The essential problem is that there are two very different origins of America, and while our history is taught as though the second “Founding” encompassed the mission of the first and thus rejection of it is tantamount to rejecting the first, there are distinct ideological differences between the two such that it would be proper to view the Progressive agenda as a revolution against the results of the Declaration of Independence.

            The essence of the first American Revolution was based on the premise that humans were by nature free and ought to be subject to the consequences of their own actions rather than rewarded or punished for the former deeds of their kindred or kind. That government (as well as society) was created by the efforts of individuals seeking to exercise and protect their natural rights, and thus voluntarily committing a portion of their efforts to nurture and protect the networks of beneficial relationships they entered with each other. When a government began to infringe upon the rights of individuals to exercise their natural rights, it was the right and duty of those individuals to overthrow the government and institute a new one calculated to protect their rights to self-reliance (both in production of the means of life and in protection of life and property), voluntary association, and free economic exchange.

            The immediate result of the success of the American Revolution was the liberation of the people generally from hardships imposed by a burdensome government which restricted their economic freedom to produce, exchange, and consume the necessities of life freely. The nearly miraculous expansion of wealth and social mobility that resulted over most of the next century proved beyond further question that the real nature of human existence is best served by individual freedom and personal responsibility. Or, to put it in more neutral terms, the nature of humans is to thrive by virtue of individual adaptations rather than complex social adaptations.

            The fruits of the Declaration of Independence also proved something that would have been uncontroversial to the generation which established it by their wisdom, valor, and productive efforts. When humans are free to pursue their own ends and held accountable for the results of their own choices, some have much better outcomes than others as a result, and the efforts of one kindred and kind may do little to benefit anyone who did not themselves put forth the effort, despite superficial commonalities.

            That is to say, the flip-side of wealth and social mobility is economic disparity and social insecurity, and in a nation where people are really held to be accountable for their own actions, shifting the blame for one’s own failures to others becomes problematical.

            The establishment of Progressivism isn’t easy to trace to a single definitive statement or historical moment like the Declaration of Independence. People might point to sources as divergent as the pro-slavery ideology which refused to accept the implications of the American Revolution for the systematic practice of involuntary labor imposed by birth rather than as a result of crime or the various utopian communal experiments which proliferated under the broad social tolerance of a constitutionally limited republic. One could also say that the source is ultimately coexistent with the desire for liberty which informs the nature of human thriving, an opposite tendency to reject personal accountability which is at the root of all human failing.

            But what is becoming increasingly clear is that a person may be sincerely called and thought an “American conservative” while striving to protect either of the directly opposed ideologies which have shaped America today.

  3. William F. Buckley was mother’s milk to a generation of conservatives, largely do to his PBS show, Firing Line. The first place Id seen conservative thought unshackled from Leftwing framing on broadcast television. Im sure Im not the only one.

    He like Horowitz is a blessing, but imperfect, to be sure. As all men are.

    I think of Buckley in his twilight years as kin to his son Chris Buckley, whom endorsed and voted for Obama (famously parodied by Iowahawk). What the F happened? I mean really.

    PS – In my online discussions, it is very common or Leftists to sing the praises of Buckley for ostracizing the John Birch Society. Buckley is an acceptable type of conservative, who may bring well informed principled objections to Leftist policy and agenda, but in a polite unthreatening manner, whom will politely accept the Leftwing policy implementation in the end, because there will be no other end. The good conservative. By Jove, we gave it the ole college try, chaps. Those pesky Marxists have foiled us again! Ah well, meet me at the dock for a sail and stogie, the hoi polloi will just have to suffer it.

    • Good description of attitude. WFB’s noblesse oblige.

      What happened to Buckley’s only son? Probably too much of Dad, or not enough. Raising the next generation is sooo fraught with circumstances beyond our control.

      The future Baron, now fully-fledged, is a pleasure to talk to…iow, the Baron succeeded in that undertaking, but he realizes full well that children are very much hostages to fortune and with just a tweak of the kaleidoscope it could have turned out very differently.

      If your grown kids like and respect you, have more or less the same values as the father who raised them…success. A large sigh of relief…

      So despite all his fame and money, WFB failed. Sad. Especially when you consider the gaggle of kids in which pere was raised all did pretty well. Not perfect – no one is – but not the Kennedy’s fatal flaws, either…

      I feel sorry for his son.

      • I think Chris Buckley is what the Brits call a toff. He couldnt bring himself to vote for a true conservative from hicksville. Rather preferring the well groomed Marxist Anti-American.

        Pathetic.

  4. I admit that I have not been keeping up with this debate… however, one issue that I’m trying to understand is – why would it have been more beneficial, for the purposes of liberating Europe from both the Soviets and Nazis, to go through Italy rather than invade France? Indeed, Italy was invaded prior to France – but Italy’s terrain is much more mountainous than that of Northern France… this mountainous terrain – ideal to defend, difficult to attack – created large problems for the Allies after the invasion of Italy 1943, with the Gustav Line having only been broken after the Battle of Monte Cassino. Having conquered Italy, the Allies would have then had to work their way through even more mountainous Austria and the Balkans, no doubt taking a long time, and incurring large losses along the way… Would this have been more advantageous than an invasion of France at D-day?

    • The Normandy campaign was a huge risk, and was very nearly defeated by the bocage, let alone the Germans. In Italy the high risk work was done, without detracting at all from the huge achievement that was Overlord, one must question the wisdom of it. Would the resources have been better used advancing up through Italy and northwards either side of Germany (through France and Austria/Slovakia/Czech Republic as they are now).

      This Eastern leg would not have helped Soviet Union plans….

      • Wrong. The problem with Italy is the geography. If the Germans can concentrate their forces at the top of the boot, in the mountains of the Alpes Maritimes, the Dolomites, the Alps, etc, they can defend huge chunks of territory with a couple of battalions of Hitler Jugend armed with catapults.
        In WWI the Austro-Hungarian Empire defended that front for 3 years with less than a quarter of their Army, and only broke in October 1918 when the entire AHE collapsed. Additionally on the pre-War French-Italian border there were the between Wars French fortifications facing into Italy that hadn’t been dismantled and would have been a ridiculously hard nut to crack.
        What probably would have happened if the Allies had tried to drive north out of Italy is that they would have been relieved by the Soviets about the same time the Soviets were arriving on the Biscay coast of France.
        The two longest single battles of WWII were fought in Italy, on the Gustav and Gothic Lines, and neither of them were a patch on the country on Italy’s northern frontier, yet both of those battles lasted months against minimal German forces.

        • I’ll repeat what I’ve said before, there cannot in principle exist a worse terrain disadvantage than a mass amphibious assault on a heavily defended coastline.

          The epic sacrifice of life and limb by the soldiers who carried out the D-Day invasion makes us hesitate to say that it was in vain or could have been avoided. That doesn’t change the simple fact that it was absolutely unnecessary.

          • You are quite correct in that you shouldn’t assault a heavily defended coast. In fact, COSSAC agreed with you 60 years ago, which is why D Day happened in Lower Normandy, not the Pas de Calais or Upper Normandy, which were heavily defended coastlines.

            Lower Normandy, the Bay of the Seine, was not heavily defended, it had a handful of second rate divisions scattered over miles of sea front with unfinished and thin fixed defences. In other words, it wasn’t a heavily defended coastline.

            By not landing in France as early as possible in the summer of 1944 you would have gifted all of central and western Europe to the Soviets, and the British wouldn’t have been able to pry Greece out of the Soviet sphere either.

            Europe would have ended up communist from the Urals to the Pyrenees.

          • It was entirely unnecessary to supply the Soviets through Lend Lease, then.

            I see that you have erased Italy from your map. Such is the wisdom of those who are not constrained by realities.

    • A massive invasion through Italy would not have been more beneficial for the sake of liberating Europe but it would have been more beneficial for the purpose of preventing Stalin from “liberating” the Balkans and Eastern Europe.

      • Look at the terrain map of Italy. The access to Germany is protected on all sides by mountains, except through a corridor through Yugoslavia, involving VERY long lines of communication and supply.

        In addition, this approach would allow the Germans to concentrate their troops and supply trains to their west, focusing on both the Soviets and the Allies with the same efforts, rather than having to totally split their military resources between east and west.

        If the move to the west of Germany is seen as a move against the Soviet armies, it seems that it would be easy for the Soviets to derail the effort, without directly engaging the Americans. They could put barriers up against the very long supply routes the Americans would have to establish. The Americans would then be engaging the German armies directly, in exactly the same path as the Soviets would take, with the Soviets determining the extent of supplies they would allow to reach the American armies. Once both the Americans and Germans were exhausted, the Soviet armies could just resume their advance.

        It’s difficult to see a successful strategy for penetrating Germany from the south, as enticing as that might be. It would be fraught with assumptions, and would depend on the forbearance of the very Russians that the strategy was designed to block.

        • If there was any chance whatsoever of the Russians actually attacking Allied forces, then it is utterly impossible to justify the Lend Lease program. Of course, I’m willing to grant that Lend Lease aid to Russia was basically treasonous and that there would have been a real risk of Soviet attack on Allied forces at an exposed flank, so the swing through Yugoslavia does not look good to me even though securing a few ports on the north-east coasts of the Adriatic would make the logistical situation much less tenuous than you seem to suggest.

          And while attacking into mountainous terrain initially favors the defenders, once advancing through mountainous terrain the advantage swings to those forces with better air/artillery support because the ability to disrupt enemy logistics (or even engage isolated force elements at maximum advantage) with those force elements is dramatically increased. As the Allied forces had gained strategic air superiority and had a massive industrial advantage relative to Germany, the attack through mountainous terrain should actually have been preferred to open terrain maneuver anyway (the push overland through France was tragic precisely because the Allied advantages couldn’t be brought to bear properly).

          The rate of advance through mountainous terrain against a determined defense will be slower, but the relative distances of a push through France rather than Italy and Austria still leaves the mountain road the clear winner in total time as well as providing far greater security against counter attack.

          And the massive deception operation attending the Normandy operation would have been even more effective if it was a matter of keeping German forces deployed on the other side of Europe from the real action rather than just keeping them guessing about which beaches on the English Channel to defend, where the loss of the horrific advantage of defending against an amphibious assault by a given force would still leave it immediately available for attacks on the flanks of the advance.

          I had never been able to understand the rational for abandoning the Italian campaign in favor of a mass amphibious assault on France. It was nothing short of mass murder of the Allied servicemen, and at the cost of an existing strategic advantage.

  5. Horowitz tries to defend his position by saying that although Ms. West argued that the strategic placement of hundreds of agents of Stalin’s influence inside the US government and other institutions amounted to a “de facto occupation” Radosh was correct to attack West’s work by claiming: “She argues that during the New Deal the United States was an occupied power, its government controlled by Kremlin agents who had infiltrated the Roosevelt administration and subverted it. ” (see link)

    When Ms. West responded to this by pointing out that she had not said that the United States was an occupied power at all (and Radosh was attacking a straw man), Horowitz dismissed her response altogether, as if Radosh was quite right to misrepresent the actual words of Ms. West in Radosh’s so-called “takedown” which Horowitz published on his website.

    There are many problems with this. If you want to criticize someone’s work then you are obliged to fairly represent their work and deal with precisely what they have said. Not something close to it, and not something that you would like for them to have said because it is easier for you to criticize.

    Radosh and Horowitz make a big deal of their academic experience and backgrounds, but a first year philosophy student could tell them that creating then attacking a straw man is intellectually dishonest.

    And funnily enough, there are several articles on Horowitz’ own website employing the “de facto” concept – just go over there and do a search for the term, & see what you get.

    Here’s one I liked: Yes, American University Is Practicing De Facto Censorship (Guardino, J. Frontpage, April 6th 2010).

  6. Great insight indeed, and that despite your error about the number of Polish officers shot at Katyn. It wasn’t 21,000 but “only” 4,000 plus. The larger number refers to all three camps where Polish officers were held and murdered. Dzieki.

    • I did not refer to “officers” but to victims. The majority of the victims were not military; the accepted figure is that 10,000 were. As to how many were buried in Katyn and how many in the satellite locations associated with this action, the exact numbers are not readily available. And there have been more than three such locations; the total is probably six. Still, it has been common to refer to all this as the Katyn Massacre.

      • It is my understanding that many of the victims were not full time soldiers but reservists, who in civilian life were lawyers, university lecturers and medical professionals. I cite here Anne Applebaum’s book Iron Curtain: The Crushing of Eastern Europe 1944-1956 (iBooks version, p. 236)

        Could this account for any confusion re. numbers, I wonder? (As to how many of the Poles were officers and how many civilians? Apparently, many of the victims were both.)

        • My mother’s cousin who was murdered at Katyn was a military doctor. I have no idea whether he was counted as “civilian intelligentsia” or “officer.”

    • I was under the impression that approximately 15 000 Polish soldiers were taken prisoner by the Soviets before being murdered by NKVD agents; I take my numbers here from the book Bloodlands, by Timothy Snyder:

      “Instead, about fifteen thousand Polish officers were taken to three Soviet prison camps, run by the NKVD: one in the eastern part of Soviet Ukraine, in Starobilsk, and two more in Soviet Russia, at Kozelsk and Ostashkov. The removal of these men— and all but one of them were men— was a kind of decapitation of Polish society.”

      Snyder, Timothy (2011-08-31). Bloodlands: Europe between Hitler and Stalin (Kindle Locations 2559-2563). Random House. Kindle Edition.

      I do know that there is a memorial at Cannock Chase in England, and one of the things on my “to do” list is driving down there to pay my respects. Perhaps next May …?

      http://www.flickr.com/photos/gary_crutchley/5991913666/

      • >The furious pace of NKVD activity in 1940 exceeded even that of >‘44, ‘45 and many a subsequent year.   Suffice it to recall that 1940 >was the Year of Katyn.   Polish officers were not murdered in >Katyn Forest alone, though, but also in at least two other places – >each with no fewer victims.   Moreover, Lithuanian officers, after >all, were also being slaughtered back then, along with their >Latvian and Estonian counterparts.     The executioners did not >target just officers, either:   Teachers, clergy, police, writers, >jurists, journalists, hard-working farmers, entrepreneurs and all >other population strata suffered exactly the same fate the Red >Terror visited on the Russian people.

        Suvorov, Viktor (2012-04-22). _Icebreaker. WHO STARTED THE SECOND WORLD WAR?_ (Kindle Locations 1090-1095). PL UK Publishing. Kindle Edition.

        Suvorov, a former GRU officer who has researched WWII thoroughly and believes that Stalin planned the war in order to conquer Europe, here leaves open the number killed, but makes clear at least some of the categories of persons targeted, as well as adding that the total destruction encompassed the Baltics and other countries, as well as Poland.

        Elsewhere (at location 1034 of the Kindle edition) in _Icebreaker_, he points out that the distinguishing feature of Katyn is that it was the only mass murder the Soviets ever confessed to, albeit belatedly.

        His title, _Icebreaker_, incidentally, refers to the man he claims Stalin and the other top Soviets secretly referred to as “the Icebreaker of the Revolution,” carefully chosen and put into power, then guided into leaving Europe defenseless before the Red Army juggernaut: namely, Adolf Hitler.

        • Whoops, sorry for the formatting error. The entire first paragraph is a direct quote from Suvorov’s book.

          • It’s easy enough using the Kindle for PC software, just copy and paste and it will add the citation automatically.

            Would the baron be able to read the screens on the Kindle for PC, I wonder?

            (it’s free from amazon)

  7. This article sums up my feelings on the decline of America. This has put into words my feelings on this subject in a way I could not express myself. I have read American Betrayal, when finished, I wept for my country.

    • Every time I read Diana West’s articles and reports on her blog (been reading it for about 2 years now), I get very depressed. I wish she’d stop doing that…

      • I am encouraged rather than despondent, because if Americans can be awakened to the nature of the real enemy they have a better chance of surviving, both individually and as a people.

  8. So good to hear from you Takuan San.

    I did not learn about Vienna 1683 in French schools here in my little island in the South Pacific, because only French history was taught then in primary schools. But I first learned about Charles Martel and how he stopped the invading arabs at Poitiers when I was a child in primary school in the sixties. Now my eldest daughter, 17 years old, had never heard of Charles Martel, before I told her about him, because he has been dropped from the cursus. And so has Napoleon because some black association objected to it. And now Clovis, Louis IX (St Louis) because he went a-crusading, and Louis XIV are being dropped too. And soon they will start to teach kids how wonderful and peaceful the islam civilization was and still would be if not for the evil colonialists.

    You sure can’t miss what you don’t know. A nation of malleable morons, that’s the goal of the marxists.

    A growing sense of isolation and hopelessness… Only chaos can save us now. Maybe!

    Thank you for shedding some light on the numerous facets of reality that otherwise would remain obscure.

    • Thank you. I went to a good French high school where they taught me about Moliere, Racine and Corneille, for which I am grateful. However, Shakespeare was just one page — an omission that I’ve found necessary to rectify on my own time for the past 40 years– and Milton, Trollope, Johnson, Johnson (sic) et al. might have as well not existed.

    • “And soon they will start to teach kids how wonderful and peaceful the islam civilization was and still would be if not for the evil colonialists.”

      In the United States, this is already the movement.

      I recently learned of a program being pushed by the National Endowment for Humanities called “Bridging Cultures.” This program was funded in 2011 and 2012, and the first segment is “Muslim Journey” that includes books, films and speakers designed to garner sympathy toward Muslims and their “journeys” through life. But as you research the NEH program, you find that Islam apologists like John L. Esposito, editor of Oxford Islamic Studies Online and close friend of convicted terrorist funder, Sammy Al Arian, a former professor at Florida State University, are interwoven all through the program.

      I equate this tactic to soft porn. Not really indoctrination, it is soft indoctrination designed to create the opinion that Muslims, and consequently Islam, is no different than any other religion or people.

      Knowing that any program that supports Islam as the “religion of peace” is often met with opposition from angry parents of students in our public schools, the NEH directed their attention toward U.S. universities where parents have little say in curriculum, and to our public libraries.

      Antonio Gramsci would be proud to know that his philosophy on how to turn the western world Marxist is working swimmingly in the United States.

      What is so surprising in the attack on Diana West is the fact that Amity Shales, in her book “The Common Man” starts with the trip, made by the high rollers that would wind up in the FDR administration, to Stalinist Russia. One of the most famous of that group was Rex (The Red) Tugwell, who FDR put in charge of communal farms designed on the Stalinist model. Tugwell, who failed miserably, was not called “The Red” because he blushed a lot. Shales also explained that although FDR built his campaigns on the “common” man, the term originally applied to those taxpaying producers who lived simple lives in a day of robber barons and westward moving ordinary citizens. FDR simply co-opted the term to appeal to a class of people he had never associated with in his entire life.

  9. WFB’s reaction to the excesses of the JBS always seemed excessive, just as Horowitz’ reaction to West’s excesses seem so now. I happen to agree with the Haynes-Klehr analysis on “agent 19” but so what? No one doubts that Hopkins was pro-Soviet. And no one doubts that the Anglo-alliance refused to face the evil nature of communism. The decade of the 30s isn’t called the “Red Decade” without reason.

    Horowitz ends his latest essay saying “There are a lot of facts in West’s book with which neither Radosh nor I have any quarrel. These pertain to the large numbers of Soviet sympathizers, and significant numbers of Soviet agents in Washington and Hollywood that West writes about.” They seem to object to something about West’s emphasis that I’ll judge when I read the book.

    H&R seem to believe that West’s book will embarrass the conservative cause. None of this justifies their vitriol. For years, Horowitz appeared to have a big-tent approach (with the exception of the late Mr. Auster) that I enjoyed. When he disagreed, he silently parted ways. A polite critical review of West’s book would have been appreciated but the hysterics are uncalled for. I agree with Paul Weston on this; the internecine warfare is damaging, distracting, and should have been avoided. But I’m not naive enough to believe this won’t happen again.

    Best to everyone here. -JP

  10. For background checks to miss something and a covert Communist agent penetrate to a high place was (and I hope still would be considered, though one wonders these days) a failure of security precautions and counterinintelligence.
    Admitting a Harry Hopkins, overtly on board the Communist train, to the inner chambers was a failure of first principles. Whether he was directed by Moscow and was just hiding in plain sight or was a lone wolf jihadist following the Prophet Karl and his apostle Uncle Joe doesn’t change the damage he did.

    Diana West has the temerity to criticise FDR for that.

    David Horowitz’ story about himself is of a man who, thinking he was on the right side of history, got a friend killed, searched his soul, got on the real right side of history and then used his considerable energy and talent to promote his new cause using some of his old tactics to repair the damage his old friends did and continued to do in what — thanks be to the God he can’t believe in — turned out to be the losing side. So, now being on the right side of history, let’s move on, there’s a new fight.

    West is disturbing that heroic picture. She says “Not so fast. You were right to call your book ‘Destructive Generation’ but despite your best efforts, in important ways your old side won; you can’t console yourself by saying that history has spoken and approved your turning your coat.” (Remember, Whittaker Chambers feared that he had joined the losing side, but to him, he was rejecting a false god for the true One and was willing to die without an earthly triumph because he was certain that remaining a Communist would have damned him. Horowitz remains a materialist.)

    • Philby, Burgess and Mclean were part of the ‘in crowd’, they were born to the ‘right’ family, went to the ‘right’ school and joined the ‘right’ societies, they were good chaps and it was simply unbelievable that they could be traitors, why, they were probably even members of the same ‘Club’ as me…..

      Blunt was almost part of the Royal Family (wrong side of the blanket I understand) he counld not possibly be a traitor.

      Its called denial, and its why Stalin purged the KGB/NKVD at regular intervals.

      The cost of this betrayal alone has been huge, but Saudi Arabia is much better funded than the KGB, and isn’t the real question here into which pockets the corrupt money is currently going?

      Let us use the lessons of the past as Ms. West intended, to consider the future. Or is it that Ms West’s critics don’t want?

      • “Let us use the lessons of the past as Ms. West intended, to consider the future.”

        Indeed! But would those of conservative sensitivities be able to stomach a deep purge against neoliberalism and the neocons of the progressive right.

        Paleoconservatives with bulldozers demolishing and obliterating the established order down to the rockhead.

        • It’s internecine warfare at its most destructive. Many neocons are much like Mr. Horowitz: liberals and socialists mugged by reality. But it doesn’t mean that in becoming neocons they find it at all necessary to take on conservative values. Scratch beneath the surface, as Diana West did, and you find a howling totalitarian only too willing to scorch the earth on which their opponents stand.

          What you suggest: Paleoconservatives with bulldozers demolishing and obliterating the established order down to the rockhead. is the kind of action that paleos do not take since it violates their own principles. The bulldozer demolition is a neo construct – or rather, DEconstruct, borrowed from the totalitarians.

          That is why paleoconservatism has been so marginalized. It relies on rules of order, of decorum, of treating others as one would wish to be treated.

          Neoconservatism exists because those liberals and socialists, upon seeing how truly evil was the company they were keeping, had to flee. Unfortunately, they brought their weapons with them and continue to play various forms of “Heretic Spotting”…

          As the world falls apart and literally diminishes (the population implosion will be worldwide) we will learn its true constituent pieces. Only a truly civilized world can afford true conservatism. The latter accepts the permanent flaw in all mankind and has long since relinquished dreams of utopia along with their other childhood fantasies.

          • I would say that only those who take personal responsibility for individual actions create the wealth and security on which civil society depends for existence. It is thus never a matter of the civilized world being able to afford “true conservatism” so much as only a people invested with principles of individual freedom and personal responsibility being able to afford a civilized world.

            When we identify someone as a “conservative”, we must ask what it is that they are trying to conserve. America, for better or worse, is irrevocably a “propositional” nation rather than one based on a traditional ethnicity and culture. So the propositions matter. At this point, those who champion the Progressive (or Fabian Socialist) ideals might well legitimately call themselves conservators of a legitimately American tradition, one that is endangered by those who champion the ideals of independence and individual natural rights on which the nation was founded and became the envy of the world (let us make no mistake about that, whatever one thinks of “exceptionalism”, the envy is real and enormous).

            This current controversy makes it abundantly clear that we can no longer rely upon the term “conservative” to mean anything helpful, it may even be the case that it really should be unambiguously ceded to those who want to preserve and incrementally expand the Global Socialist agenda (as opposed to those who wish a revolution either towards socialism or away from it). Few now living remember America before the agenda of gradual socialism was in full swing, after all. The proponents of restoring individual freedom and personal responsibility under impartial rule of law as the basis of America must look to something that they really know only through books and theory, having only directly experienced tantalizing hints of it in their lives.

      • The Cambridge Four were irrelevant.

        The scientist who shook up the balance of cold war power was a physicist of the tribal variety at King’s College Cambridge.

        Philby et al were a fig leaf for the real transfer of data.
        —–
        From Dymphna, a provisional acceptance of this comment. If “Dan” can explain satisfactorrily what he means by “of the tribal variety” then the comment will stand. If he is attempting to drive this comment thread sideways, then I will delete it and all the subsequent remarks which seem to flock to this kind of underhand code. Simply give us a name and stop with the conspiracies about tribes. We’ve seen too much of this on our blog for me to feel comfortable with what you have written here. The fact that you failed to give the physicist in question a name but hint at some kind of loyalty is suspicious. So is your lack of sourcing your accusation.

        • “Tribal” in the context of malfeasance in high circles is usually a code for “Jew.” It’s a highly legitimate discussion to reflect on the disproportionate number of Jews in Communist ranks, among top Bolsheviks, top commie spies etc. — but not here, as it’s a complex phenomenon that could consume a whole website. It’s another major failure of neoconservatism, given the disproportionate number of Jews among its leaders, that instead of confronting this subject head-on they are punting, pleading antisemitism etc. As a result, people who seek the truth have to go to neo-Nazi websites — where they get only the neo-Nazi version of it, often right on the facts adduced, but still lying by omitting all contradictory facts and attenuating context.

          On the other hand, the only spy I know associated with King’s College was Alan Nunn May, and I don’t know of any source even alleging that he was Jewish. He was a commie and a major malefactor; it’s just another peg on the wall of shame that instead of being drawn and quartered he served a short term in prison and would live to 91 in serenity, in Cambridge.

          • The reasons for “Jewish” resentment of Western Civilization are hardly complex. For an extraordinarily long time every descendant of Judah who embraced Christianity (probably the single most important pillar of Western Civilization) has been firmly booted out of the “Jewish” club. Christians were always too busy accepting converts from the heathen nations to worry much about no longer being considered Jews by their kin.

            Whatever one thinks of the theological implications of this, the sociological consequences aren’t unexpected. Jews resisted Christianity for centuries by painting it as a vast conspiracy to destroy their heritage, with conversion being considered a fate worse than death. Whether or not they were “right” to do so, there are going to be hard or at least mixed feelings about the civilization that resulted from nearly total social domination by Christians.

            My own feeling is that Western Christianity did have really significant failings in upholding the central importance of voluntary confession of the faith and clear distinction between obligations to God and Caesar. Much of that took the form of unnecessary persecution of Jews. Not that I laud rejection of Christ, but forced conversion is not acceptance of Christ but submission to Caesar. I can hardly blame generations of faithful who put allegiance to God before earthly authority. As I honor my own ancestors who did the same, whether or not they had ever even heard of Christ, so I must acknowledge the feelings of those who show respect to such courage in their own lineage.

            Of course, a substantial number of my ancestors who had never heard of Christ lived in China, and they didn’t usually get to be anyone’s ancestors by standing up to the state on matters of religion. So perhaps that affects my perspective.

        • The Cambridge 4 may, or may not be irrelevant, that is not the point being made here. In both the UK and the US there are elite families who get first pick at the plum jobs.

          Because of their privileged backgrounds, and the fact that they have moved in elite circles for most of their lives, they are put through ‘on the nod’ so to speak.

          Experience should by now have demonstrated the high risk of this kind of selection process, just how did O get the top job and yet conceal his past from public scrutiny?

        • Dan is, erroneously, alluding to Klaus Fuchs as the “physicist of the tribal variety”. Fuchs was Jewish and a Soviet agent who did tremendous damage through atomic espionage, but he obtained his PhD at Bristol University and was never at Kings College, Cambridge. Alan Nunn May was a physicist, Cambridge man and Soviet agent – he was not Jewish.

          There is much ignorance and malice in Dan’s brief comment.

  11. I’m much less au fait with the world of espionage and Soviet penetration of US Govt than I am with the purely military aspects of WWII. That being said, if West is as far off in her espionage theories as she is in her discussion of some of the military decisions she looks at then I have to say I’d be very dubious about the entire book.
    When she talks about the decisions regarding Italy she shows amazing ignorance of both the strategy and geography involved in attempting to drive out of Italy into Austria. Whilst errors were made, a lot by some estimations, in the Italian Campaign, attempting to push out of the Venezio and into Styria wasn’t one of them.

    • Churchill, as was his wont, had the postwar situation in mind with his Balkan proposal and hoped to limit the USSR’s territorial grab. FDR was more inclined to generously give away other people’s countries to Stalin. West is asking how much Soviet agents of influence — Hiss had unlimited access to an increasingly ill and out of it FDR at Yalta, for example — might have had to do with that.

      Regarding the military side, if I understand West’s sources correctly, Eisenhower himself was for the Balkan option until he was against it (and in his memoirs, he failed to mention that he had favored it) so while she may not be qualified to assess how hard a Balkan campaign was, some who seriously considered it were.

    • Diana West isn’t advocating any military strategies or tactics of WW2; she is simply considering all the facts of what policy-makers and military strategists thought and said and wrote at the time.

      People continue to declaim about, and defame, West without bothering to read what she said. This is past tiresome.

      • Thanks, Hesperado.

        There is this erroneous notion abroad that in I formulate military strategy in American Betrayal. Not so! I am not a military strategist, nor do I claim to be. In my examination of Soviet influence on the Allied policy-making chain I consider the arguments posed by leading military strategists of the day — many of whom, in this case, championed continuing Allied efforts in southern Europe.

        To wit (from pp. 263-264):

        The decision to abandon Italy as an expanding, leading front at the end of 1943 made very little sense—unless, cynically, the true objective was to ensure that Central and Eastern Europe remained open for Soviet invasion. Then again, maybe that’s putting things too crudely, too harshly. Let me rephrase: The advantages to enlarging upon Anglo-American gains in Italy were obvious. There was no good strategic objective to be served by virtually abandoning this theater. Not because I say so. The top U.S. commander of strategic bombing in Europe, Gen. Carl Spaatz, said so, too. Capt. Harry C. Butcher recounted Spaatz’s views as expressed to Harry Hopkins on November 23, 1943, in the run-up to the Cairo Conference.

        ” `Spaatz didn’t think OVERLORD was necessary or desirable. He said it would be a much better investment to build up forces in Italy to push the Germans across the Po, taking and using airfields as we come to them, thus shortening the bombing run into Germany. He foresaw the possibility of getting the ground forces into Austria and Vienna, where additional fields would afford shuttle service for bombing attack against the heart of German industry, which has moved into this heretofore practically safe area.’ …”

        p. 264:

        “More significantly, the top U.S. commander of ground forces in Europe, Gen. Dwight D. Eisenhower, agreed with this same assessment—at least he agreed with it before he was made top U.S. commander of ground forces in Europe. On November 26, 1943, at the Cairo Conference, which immediately preceded the Tehran Conference, Ike told a beribboned, bemedaled gathering of the American and British brass how vital Italy and southern Europe were to the war. Quote:

        ” `Italy was the correct place in which to deploy our main forces and the objective should be the Valley of the Po. In no other area could we so well threaten the whole German structure including France, the Balkans and the Reich itself. Here also our air would be closer to vital objectives in Germany … The next best method of harrying the enemy,’ Eisenhower continued, `was to undertake operations in the Aegean . . . From here the Balkans could be kept aflame, Ploesti would be threatened and the Dardanelles might be opened.’ ”

        Additionally, Gen. Ira Eaker, Gen. Mark C. Clark, Churchill, of course, all supported a similar strategy. They did not prevail. Men and materiel were withdrawn from the region for the “reinvasion” of Europe in northern France. I draw on Gen. Clark’s memoir for his discussion of this, for him, perplexing episode. And it wasn’t perplexing just for him.

        p. 268:

        “The disappearance of Allied men and matériel from Italy seemed completely incomprehensible to another professional military man, Field Marshal Albert Kesselring, top commander of German forces in Italy. Clark writes that Kesselring’s intelligence section `was completely mystified in coming weeks when our great forward drive failed to take full advantage of its chance to destroy the beaten and disorganized German Army in Italy.’

        “Clark continued, `It was some time before the Germans understood what had happened to the American troops in Italy; for weeks the Counterintelligence Corps, under the able direction of Lieutenant Colonel Stephen J. Spingarn, was catching enemy agents who had orders to find out “where in hell” were various Allied divisions that were being sent to France”… Historian Dennis J. Dunn offers a crystallizing description of the seemingly incomprehensible Great Switcheroo in progress. `It is paradoxical that the Americans were insisting on a withdrawal from the Continent in order to reinvade the Continent from another angle.’ ”
        American Betrayal considers whether it was only “paradoxical” — or whether Soviet influence, overt and secret, played a role in these and other momentous events.

    • I had the same doubts concerning this military strategy aspect of her southern front thesis.

      However, the fact that the Sovs pushed so hard for a ‘2nd front’, at a time when there was already fighting on eight fronts, and the fact that Eisenhower favored a southern strategy before being named SHAEF commander, then rewrote history to pretend otherwise in his memoirs, (as Peter B earlier remarked in this thread,) leave me wanting to reexamine the issue. The lady does pack some power in her argument, even if her thinking on this military issue could be questioned.

      Also, iirc, she did not necessarily favor an advance directly over the Alps, but, rather, a.) keeping the Allied troops who were already in Italy in Italy to advance that front faster, yielding locations for air bases to attack the vital Axis logistics facilities, such as Ploesti, rather than pulling the GIs out to prepare for the Overlord D-Day operation and Anvil, and b.) using Italy as a springboard for a Balkans amphibious liberation operation.

      The Balkans are also mountainous, but not as impenetrable as the Alps, or, at least, that was apparently the thinking of Churchill and Eisenhower, prior to Eisenhower getting the big Normandy promotion and changing his mind, again as Peter B mentioned.

      She also singled out Anvil (the “Champagne Campaign” landing in southern France, as the straw that broke the camel’s back in stripping Italy of resources that otherwise could have been devoted to a Balkan liberation in the final months of the war.

      Anvil did not close the gap between the Med and the Swiss Alps fast enough to prevent the Germans from evacuating Italy, so what good did it accomplish, and at what cost? It did draw Germans away from resisting Overlord in northern France, but was this significant enough, early enough, to be worth it, when we balance it against the overall result of the Western Allies winding up as silver medalists in a war Stalin won.

      Three other things I recalled of Italian history, when mulling over my doubts concerning Ms. West’s strategic vision:

      When the German command in Rome received word that Allied armies based out of Sicily had landed on the mainland of the Italian boot, they began making plans to evacuate their HQ, assuming that they were close to being overrun. A little later, upon intelligence of how far south (i.e. unambitious) the landings were, they laughed off their earlier fears and began preparations to give the allies a long hard slog up the peninsula.

      Many Americans died at Salerno, in part due to a new German ‘secret weapon’, a missile system that was used in an attempt to repel the landing. Now, if this was a new weapon design, why were reports of it ignored in preparing for the operation, and how did it happen that the Germans had so many of them, with troops already skilled in their use, right in Salerno, at a point of the coast south of where they were expecting the Allies to land?

      When the Allies made it north to Monte Casino, among the Polish troops there were some pro-Communist Polish units that were loyal to Stalin, and had been foisted off on us somehow. When the front was advancing up the mountain at that point, and the going became very slow, these Stalinist puppets stabbed the real Allies in the back and made things much worse.

      I mention these three points to raise the issue: at a time when we were fighting in so many places, and Stalin, nevertheless, was screaming for a ‘second front’ to be opened, were these miscues deliberate? To what extent did his puppets or secret admirers (makes not much difference which,) in the White House, Pentagon, and elsewhere, sabotage our Italian campaign? Did Italy seem more difficult to us than it needed to be, because the eventual gold medalist did not want us to achieve success on that front?

      If any of these speculations are valid, it would add a great deal of substance to Ms. West’s southern front thesis.

      At any rate, I’ve read a lot of secondary and tertiary literature concerning the clandestine history of the mid-20th century, and found Ms. West’s particular claims and central themes in that area to be very solid and credible, whatever qualms I have about the issues of military strategy that she raises.

  12. Larry et al. —

    I think all this talk about a second front in Italy is causing somewhat of a misunderstanding.

    I haven’t read the book either, but I’ve read the rebuttal and enough of Diana’s summaries to have a fair idea of what she was referring to.

    IIRC, the proposed “Italian” second front was to have been opened somewhere in the area of the Istrian peninsula; that is, at the head of the Adriatic. It was to push up through the mountainous area in the northern Balkans with the objective of capturing Vienna.

    It was reckoned to be a dicey proposition, due to the difficult terrain and the lengthy, vulnerable supply lines through the mountain passes.

    In other words, it had nothing to do with Sicily and the landing on the “boot” of Italy. This was an entirely separate strategic concept.

    • That’s it. I don’t think it possible that DW –who posts all kinds of astute things about the farce going on in the US military– could have advocated a push from Italy into Austria. Even a basic quality education, say familiarity with Hemingway’s “A Farewell to Arms” would preclude such enthusiasm. BTW, a superb American novelist, Mark Helprin, a conservative who seems to have no footprint in the “conservative” dialogue except at The Claremont Review, wrote the definitive novel about that very madness of “Venezio-into-Styria.” It’s called “Soldier of the Great War” and is one of the three or four best novels I’ve ever read, with Schweikian elements galore, too.

      • Mountains are hell for infantry and armored cavalry, but are paradise for artillery and air power, the areas where the Allies had the most significant advantages.

        War is never anything other than terrible, but you don’t pass up an advantage like that if it’s available on your most direct route. Even if an invasion of the coast of France were eventually decided upon, think how much easier it would have been with most of Hitler’s forces reduced to ruins in the Alps by superior Allied air power and artillery.

    • The Baron hasn’t read the book because he can’t. The publisher’s decision to print in such small font leaves him at a permanent disadvantage. He’s tried using Kindle but it doesn’t work for him.

      However, I will continue to nag re The Device since I don’t really grok his vision problems – or never internalize them anyway. We live in different perception worlds. He is far-sighted to the point that he has several kinds of glasses in his attempt to *see* the written word. I am near-sighted but it’s my astigmatism that is so bothersome.

      At any rate, Kindle is a godsend for me and for others like me – one just fiddles with the font size, line spacing, etc. until it resolves into something readable. It has made reading “screens” bearable.

      I used to think being far-sighted was an advantage, but I don’t anymore.

  13. I have said this before about Harry Hopkins and Obama fits as well. Are or were they Communist agents? Who cares. They act as if the were and the consequences are the same. Maybe the guy running Dachau or Bergen Belsen wasn’t a Nazi Party member. If you were in those camps it didn’t make a dimes worth of difference.

    • Same on the question, is Barack Hussein a Muslim? You could build a library from the material published on that one. But it’s a diversion onto a dead-end track. The main issue is that, judging by his deeds and words, he might as well be one.

  14. I wonder if the Russians had anything to do with the recent mysterious aircraft malfunction with Polish leaders. Werent they going to a Katyn memorial service?

    • The only person Kremlin might want to get rid of was L. Kaczynski and his term was about to end soon with little chance of reelection, so however tempting such a conjecture may appear, it would be completely unnecessary.

  15. “I wonder if the Russians had anything to do with the recent mysterious aircraft malfunction with Polish leaders. Werent they going to a Katyn memorial service?”

    Although that question must have leapt to mind for many people, this is the first expression of it I have seen. I had no one outside of a confidante I could say it to and received no reaction. Why has no one, left or right, asked this question publicly? Are we all afraid to be called conspiracy theorists?

    • This issue has generated so much polemics in Poland that you could fill a 24-wheeler if you printed all of it. Considering the available evidence, and the fact that some of the evidence was witheld or tampered with on the Russian side, the general conclusion on the Right is that, again, the Russkis done it, while the Left, just like in the U.S., talks of “paranoid delusions” of the Right. In my footnote#8, a French Sovietologist links Katyn and the Smolensk crash and reminds that among the dead in the latter calamity was Janusz Kurtyka, the “pugnacious” president of the Institute of National Remembrance that researches crimes committed by the Soviets against the Polish people.

    • I have encountered the theory, probably on talk radio, iirc. I definitely recall someone saying, publicly, that it seemed suspect, and I think some details of the conditions were also mentioned.

    • Watch this. It purports to show the Russian Special Brigade finishing off those who survived the plane crash. The cameraman, Andrij Mendierej, was later murdered. Several enhanced and translated versions of this video exist on youtube. The video says it all.

      Enhanced Smolensk Russia crash site video:
      https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fL5pO2PVKvE

  16. Your frontpiece picture entitled Too Much Schnapps by Takuan Seiyo was lifted from the work of the Czech artist Josef Lada. It is used here without attribution. The drawing was originally created as an illustration for the book “The Good Soldier Schweik” by Jaroslav Hasek.

  17. Mr. Drotar,

    Actually, I did attribute it, in the “title” attribute of the image tag. Pass your cursor over the image, and you’ll see “The Good Soldier Schweik” by Jaroslav Hasek.

    The source of the illustration did not list the artist, so I couldn’t credit him. Thank you for supplying the name; I’ll add it to the title.

  18. “Their failure to acknowledge the singular merit and critical timeliness of American Betrayal’s larger theme is highly troubling, in particular because of the urgency of her insight as to the parallel to the current infiltration of Muslims and Islam’s Useful Idiots in the halls of American power.”

    Troubling, or telling?

    Methinks they protest too much.

  19. “Support for “social justice” and the welfare state.”
    I don’t remember any articles supporting these.

    “Fondness for Woodrow Wilson and FDR.”
    I don’t remember reading articles of this kind. There have been many, many anti-communist articles and discussions on FPM.

    “Support for immigration in all its forms”
    There is currently an anti mass immigration or anti-amnesty article on the front page.

    “Extreme sensitivity to “racism” and omerta with respect to race and gender group genetic differences.”
    There have been numbers of articles recently about black-on-white violence and the mainstream media’s ignoring and cover-up of this.

    “Unequivocal advocacy of democracy and of interventionist foreign policy to enforce it, particularly in the Middle East.”
    There have been numbers of articles recently about the stupidity of our intervening in Syria and the nature of the so-called “Free Syrian Army.”
    Even Robert Spencer has weighed in about this on FPM.

    “Fondness for abstract universalist principles (James Burnham referred to the latter as compassion, kindliness, love and brotherhood instead of what a true conservative ought to advocate: civic virtues).”
    Off hand, I don’t remember any articles in his vein.

    “Scorched-earth tactics against conservative ideological opponents such as Paul Gottfried, Pat Buchanan, Samuel Francis, John Birch Society etc. And now Diana West, though she was not aware that in the eyes of “conservatives” she had just written herself into that camp.”
    Yes, unfortunately. The current controversy underlines this.

    And of importance to the readers of GoV:
    “Awareness of and activism against Islamization.
    Strong support for Israel.”
    Yes indeed. FrontPageMag has many, many articles about Islam and Islamization. It’s a primary thrust.

    Horowitz’s “Discover the Network” is a brilliant and much-needed expose of the stranglehold that leftist ideology has upon academia, government, institutions, foundations, media, etc.

    I’m sure that I’m not saying anything in this comment of which Takuan, the Baron and Dymphna are not aware. But it looks like some of the commentators need to be reminded or informed about this.

    FPM’s good work makes the current circular firing squad situation all the more tragic–given the dire situation we face.

    • Discover the Networks is an important place. I’ve used it to research groups in the past and have written about it before. That’s why, when I saw the screen cap of a separate page devoted to Diana West up at DTN, I was gob-smacked.

      Last Sunday, in my Twitter feed, someone had posted this image and asked Horowitz to explain himself. Mr.Horowitz’ comeback? Diana West had “attacked me”.

      At that point, I realized he was simply ’round the bend on this one.

      I like a lot of Front Page. However, it does suffer from the same strictures as the rest of the neo-conservatives. When you say,

      There have been numbers of articles recently about black-on-white violence and the mainstream media’s ignoring and cover-up of this.

      the key word is “recent” – and that goes for many “recent” changes of editorial direction. Thanks to BHO’s encouragement of black violence – e.g., when he stood up for the thug, Trayvon Martin – the rate and severity of black-on-white violence has sky-rocketed. It has now become ‘safe’ for neo-cons to talk about it without being slammed as racist. In the past, however, FP did the same kind of smear attack on authors who wrote about it before it was a safe meme.

      Edward Cline hasn’t had a high opinion of some of FP’s tactics in the past, nor of the origins of neo-conservatism itself. At Family Security Matters, he had this recent essay:

      Of Malice and Memory Holes

      A snip:

      The chief problem with Neocons is that while they are against Islam and make token noises about their opposition to “big government,” they are not for anything. This partly explains why the Neocons are fulminating against West. West, after all, is for the truth about the U.S.’s role in aiding and abetting, by design or by default, the perpetuation and arming of the Soviet Union. She is for revealing the depths and scope of the Big Con, a con which is reflected in academia and in the history of WWII found in most standard textbooks and read by most living Americans in their formative years. That con has been established dogma and narrative, and that dogma and narrative originated with FDR and his administration.

      Woe to those who depart from it or challenge it.

      That is Diana’s mortal sin: daring to deconstruct the FDR narrative they worked so hard to carve and polish…

      • I am a firm supporter of Diana West. And you are right, something has put a burr under their saddle as we used to say in Colorado. And it may very well involve, as you say, the exposure of the FDR Administration’s role in aiding and abetting–by design or default–the perpetuation and arming of the Soviet Union, to paraphrase.

        But I also think that Horowitz is terrified of losing credibility. Horowitz and Radosh do not want to understand–or they think that others whom they want to impress will not understand–the fact that whether Hopkins was a paid agent or a friend of the Soviet Union is a distinction without a difference.

        I find Takuan’s comparison with William F. Buckley’s turning on the John Birch Society to be very instructive. I can remember that William F. Buckley was allowed to speak on college campuses (although he was picketed). While John Birch Society spokespeople were absolutely banned after they became “hyperbolic” and, for example, called Eisenhower a communist.

        Horowitz speaks on college campus and wants to do more of this. He considers this to be a mission–to turn the tide against the pro-Islamic, pro-socialist thinking in academia, at least among the students.

        • P.S.

          The NY Times still does not consider black-on-white violence to be a safe theme, so I welcome any media outlet’s exposing it, no matter how belated.

          Horowitz has organized at least one (maybe more?) days on numbers of college campuses across the country during which anti-Islamization speakers appeared. I know because I attended one such speech on the UC Berkeley campus. (Of course the poor speaker, Nonie Darwish, was almost shouted down.)

          How many of *us* have organized such events?

          I think he will do nothing that he fears will jeopardize his ability to speak, fund and organize such events.

          This is not a defense of Horowitz. It is an explanation and an attempt at balance.

          • Ok, but Horowitz could have remained separate from Diana West by not reviewing her book and by not saying anything about her or it on his website.

            Or, having published a short favorable review, he could have published an unfavorable review next to it, that stuck to particular claims against her data and against her arguments based on that data, in a reasonable, objective fashion.

            If this putative, objective, decorous piece failed to hold water, well, people could see that for themselves and make their own judgements regarding Ms. West’s book. At least he could tell her other critics that he wasn’t supporting her.

            The problem of Radosh’s hit piece is not just that it is critical of _American Betrayal_: It is a dishonest misrepresentation of what is in the book, and a dishonest personal attack on Diana West, making numerous scurrilous charges against her intellectual integrity, overall character, and fitness to earn a living in her chosen career.

            For such an attack to be mounted on someone like Diana West, who has methodically researched her topic and heroically followed the trail of the evidence through rarely-trodden ground, in the forum of a previously reputable site, that had earned its own reputation as a courageous bastion of Western civilization in the culture wars, is an outrageous scandal. The higher the previous reputation of FPM, the more damaging was the underhanded blow it struck against her.

            Any balance that might have weighed in Ms. West’s favor in the mind of a hypothetical FPM reader, by publication of the earlier, positive, Mark Tapson review, was nullified by the piece’s removal, without explanation, to the memory hole.

            I used to make donations on a semi-regular basis to Horowitz’s organization, and looked forward to receiving in my mail his little pamphlets on various topics, sometimes authored or co-authored by Robert Spencer or other experts in specialized fields.

            I am so done with that.

            Horowitz apparently has major donors that can’t bear the thought of the false reputations of those louses FDR and Truman being sullied by contact between the American people and the truth. Very well. These donors obviously have deeper pockets than do I. Horowitz can raise funds in the future without my help, and will no longer have it.

      • I don’t know if my comment went through. There was an “Internal Server Error” I was told. So I am re-producing it.

        The NY Times still does not consider the topic of black-on-white violence to be a “safe” theme, so I welcome anyone media outlet’s taking it up, no matter how belated.

        I write as a firm supporter of Diana West and I’m absolutely appalled at the way she has been treated–there is no excuse for the ad hominem attacks. And it may well be that Diana West is being excoriated for exposing the FDR Administration’s role “in the U.S.’s aiding and abetting, by design or by default, the perpetuation and arming of the Soviet Union.”

        But I also think that Horowitz is terrified of losing credibility in the eyes of those he wants to impress. For example, Horowitz appears to not want to understand–or they fear that those they want to influence will not understand–that whether Hopkins was a paid agent of the Soviet Union or a friend is a distinction without a difference.

        I found Takuan’s account of William F. Buckley’s turning on the John Birch Society to be instructive. Because I remember that William F. Buckley was allowed to speak on college campuses (although usually picketed). On the other hand after the John Birch Society spokespeople became “hyperbolic” and accused Eisenhower of being a communist, they were banned from college campuses.

        Horowitz speaks on college campuses and wants to do more of this. He has organized days on campuses during which anti-Islamization speakers appear. I know because I attended one of these on the U.C. Berkeley campus. (Of course the poor speaker, Nonie Darwish, was almost shouted down). It appears to me that Horowitz considers it to be a mission help turn the tide against the pro-Islamic and pro-socialist trend in academia, at least among the students.

        It appears that he will not do anything to either jeopardize this or jeopardize his funding.

        This is not a defense of Horowitz. It is an explanation.

      • Quote:
        The chief problem with Neocons is that while they are against Islam and make token noises about their opposition to “big government,” they are not for anything.
        end

        Not true. A Straussian believes that the people need their opium; it enables the “vanguard,” the perfect group of philosopher kings, the knowledge-holding elite, to dominate them more effectively.
        Neoconservatism is the brainchild of Leo Strauss.
        Most of our leaders are flattered by this philosophy, and adhere to it either out of teaching or sheer arrogance.
        In the context of foreign policy, it justifies endless benevolent ethnocentrism and endless war.

        • It just so happens that this very idea was Lenin’s contribution to the Left. Marxism per se is based on the premise of a revolution of the proletariat, and not necessarily a violent one either. Lenin amended this to an all out assault led by a revolutionary vanguard of intellectuals and ComParty core members. Translate that into how America has become a self-wounded socialist/corporatist country and you’ll see the parallel immediately. Our “Change” also has not come from the people, but from Harvard and Yale, the legal establishment in its entirety, Soros and the Tides Foundation, etc.

  20. You are commenting on FPM and I commented on the neoconservative movement in general. Not every feature I listed is in every component institution or person of that movement. What I meant to say was that I pull out the neoconservative marker when I detect the co-presence of just a couple of the ingredients I listed, not necessarily all of them. The socially-progressive components were most evident in the Jewish thinkers/ professors at the inception of that movement. Read the Paul Gottfried piece I linked and many other of his books and articles on this subject.

    I don’t go to FPM often but I have noticed that in the past year they have relaxed and moved into areas I hadn’t seen explored there, e.g. a soft exposition of black criminality, or featuring an anti-Jihad “radical” like Fjordman. And yes, I noticed the criticism of the Syrian caper — I had not, however, earlier, noticed a trenchant critique of the Iraq and Afghanistan capers when they were unfolding — an area in which the hard-hitting pieces by Diana West brought her first to my attention. Moreover, on the crucial issue of our time: demolition of America by destroying its white heritage, the morale of its white majority, its Anglo-Protestant culture and, through immigration, the majority of its white majority, FPM is conspicuously silent, as is the entirety of the “conservative” media, nonthink tanks, orgs etc. And this is a monstrous evasion, for its a total sham to fight on the front of, say, support for Israel or a laissez-faire economy without showing up on the most imperiled and almost unattended section of the camp’s perimeter, which happens to be where the heaviest concentrion of the attacking forces is. Because any chance of survival of such avowed holy grails of neoconservatism are a direct function of the white majority’s being able to push back against Migra, against the “refugees” racket, against BRA (that’s Black Ruled America, a term coined by the necessarily alias-handled blogger “Paul Kersey”), and so on.

    This is a war, the enemy units are not hiding who they are (e.g. try this http://www.reviewjournal.com/sherman-frederick/be-young-and-socialist) and exactly which breaches they are pouring through. It’s a disgrace that these are the unmanned sectors where no neocon is to be found.

    And yes, FPM is a good asset on our side (though in this affair they are not only against DW but also for FDR) . And if they don’t want to get into the really “sensitive” areas — for instance, its almost useless to critize “Amnesty” if you are not also vehemently against legal immigration as controlled by the 1965 law — I can understand, for that would entail heavy social and financial penalties. But at least don’t freeze and throw stones at those who do risk their fortunes and their lives and stand alone in those no-see/ no-hear/no-speak sectors of the perimeter, under the heaviest fire.

      • And that behavior and the arguments used against Ms. West are–to use the Baron’s descriptive word–irrational. Which means Horowitz is afraid of something. Whether it’s losing funding or being booted off campus, I don’t know.

        • It’s funding, I am sure, though perhaps something else too. I have been booted off another neoconservative and anti-Jihad website, not Horowitz’s, specifically because major contributors were at stake as I was told. I have no doubt that the same happened to John Derbyshire at NRO. It’s to their eternal shame –and regret that’ll come much too late –that the few major contributors on “our ” side, which is no longer mine, exactly, are dyed in the wool neocons like the Kochs and Adelson, extremely averse to the main issues of our time: among others (1) Immigration and (2) the Black+Hispanic assault, under White Socialist guidance, with White Socialist donors’ money, and with White Useful Idiots’ complicity, on the ideas and reality that made America great. In contrast, the far more numerous and generous contributors on the extreme left side, say Soros and Lewis, are openly subversive, proudly flaunting their demolition work.

  21. I am nowhere near up to speed on all of this (or the related history). However, I have read M Stanton Evans & Chambers & Horowitz.

    How many times have I heard, “Saul Alinsky didn’t self-identify as a Communist?”

    • I guess the consensus is that it would be outlandish for any Communist infiltrators to be a) still trying to infiltrate in our time; and b) infiltrating by pretending to be anti-Communist through years of establishing credentials as such.

      I mean, we all know that Communists a) would never think of such an idea; and b) would never do it if they had thought of it.

  22. Pingback: Descriptive vs. Normative | Gates of Vienna

  23. I also thought that the illustration from “The Good Soldier Schweik” by Jaroslav Hasek,
    showing Sgt. Ripka holding his fist up to Schweik’s nose, saying “This is the smell of death;” deserved some comment. Here are two Czechs in the Austro-Hungarian army during World War I on opposite sides. One, a brutal cog in the military machine, and the other a draftee who was there only because he couldn’t escape, and by being “feeble-minded, fair and square,” as he himself put it, did his best to help disable that machine. Most Czechs wanted out from under the Hapsburgs in the worst way by that time. The Czech nobility did elect a Hapsburg as king of Bohemia back in 1526, “because of the Turkish menace”, as the Czechoslovak Declaration of Independence written around 1916 put it. The Hungarian nobility also elected a Hapsburg as king of Hungary at the same time. The Turks were invading Hungary and heading straight for Bohemia; getting help from the Austrians seemed like a good idea in 1526. The Hapsburgs did indeed help save Bohemia (along with a small part of Hungary) from the Turks at that time.

    Interestingly, most people who knew a lot of Czech history, did not know how they got stuck with the Hapsburgs in the first place, except that the Czech nobility elected one “for some reason”. Another selective blackout on muslim involvement in European history?

    Going forward to World War II. It is a fact that the American forces were ordered to stop at the city of Pilsen, even though at least one field commander was “screaming to go on to Prague”, as my father, who became the Czechoslovak desk officer in the State Department as soon as he got out of the Navy after WWII, put it. The Soviets were allowed to liberate Prague. When they approached Prague, the Czech underground rose up against the Nazis. The Soviet army waited outside Prague until the Nazis were able to finish off the Czech resistance fighters before moving in. They understood very well that people who were against the Nazis would also be against the Communists, and wanted to facilitate a later Communist takeover. This is a small piece in the puzzle, but consistent with the larger point that Diana West seems to be trying to make.

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