Comment by intalentive
3 years ago
22. Continue discrediting American culture by degrading all forms of artistic expression. An American Communist cell was told to "eliminate all good sculpture from parks and buildings, substitute shapeless, awkward and meaningless forms."
23. Control art critics and directors of art museums. "Our plan is to promote ugliness, repulsive, meaningless art."
From 45 Communist Goals, published 1958 in "The Naked Communist" and read into the Congressional Record in 1963. Worth checking out, much of it came to pass.
https://www.lib.usm.edu/legacy/spcol/exhibitions/anti-comm/a...
It was published by the "Patriotic American Youth" - the youth wing of the precursor of the John Birch Society and affiliated with the (white) Citizens Council Movement, which was formed following Brown v Board of Education.
https://kinginstitute.stanford.edu/encyclopedia/white-citize...
https://www.lib.usm.edu/legacy/spcol/exhibitions/anti-comm/a...
https://mississippiencyclopedia.org/entries/patriotic-americ...
https://usmspecialcollections.omeka.net/exhibits/show/antico...
Yeah, it's fascinating how frequently the paranoid wingnuts of the past turned out to be right. Then you have people like Aldous Huxley and things like the Jaffe memo, painting basically the same picture but from an "inside" perspective.
These wingnuts you mentioned weren't democrats or republicans - they supported George Wallace and his "American Independent Party".
I for one like having the ability to vote without paying a poll tax or taking a poll exam and drinking from any damn water fountain I wish, which are rights Segregationist White Supremacist orgs like PAY, the John Birch Society, and the Citizen Councils wanted only for White Protestant Anglo-Saxon Americans.
The fact you were able to pull up a primary document published by a movement from an era that is largely not taught in depth about is honestly very suspect, unless you are studying for a BA in American History, which I honestly doubt.
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It's a summary of an FBI agent's report "Naked Communism". I'm thankful they were motivated to amplify the FBI's findings because the goals are heinous. And if we all agree the goals are heinous then I don't see anything left to contend with. If we can't agree they are heinous then I guess the communist agenda is alive and well.
That the provenance proudly includes "read into the Congressional Record" (Wikipedia also mentions this) is almost all you need to know about this.
The rest can be gleaned from the Wikipedia page on the author:
> W. Cleon Skousen ... was an American conservative author with the John Birch Society and a faith-based conspiracy theorist
Was this then a Conspiracy to discredit another Conspiracy?
The predictive power of the Birchers suggests they were onto something.
As much as our government interferes with other countries, makes you wonder how often our country is interfered.
Yuri Bezmenov was a Soviet informant and KGB operative who defected to the United States in the early 70s who has some choice words to say on this subject, words which turned out to be more than prophetic. It is worth watching the whole interview, about 1 hour 20 minutes in which he laid out the four stages of ideological subversion” created by radical Marxists to indoctrinate and weaken nations from within.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yErKTVdETpw
For those who voted down this factual answer to the question posed by hospitalJail a link to the Wikipedia page on Bezmenov may be helpful:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yuri_Bezmenov
The talk page is interesting as well as it shows that the same sentiment which most likely led some individuals to vote down this mentioning of Bezmenov here also leads some to try to get the article on Bezmenov deleted as "Not notable" [1], attempts to link him via his "popularity among the alt-right" to hoaxes like the "Protocols of the Elders of Zion" and insinuating mentioning Bezmenov "recklessly promotes far-right conspiracy theory" [2], calling Bezmenov and his story a "CIA fabrication" [3] and again lamenting the fact that Bezemov's [sic.] ideas of ideological subversion are often used by the Alt-Right and Anti-Communists [4], thereby attempting to not only smear Bezmenov but also to link anti-communism with "alt-right".
Yes, Bezmenov is a source often used by those who want to show examples of attempted subversion by the Soviet Union, this is why that interview I linked to is a good fit in the context of a question on foreign interference.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Yuri_Bezmenov#Not_notable?
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Yuri_Bezmenov#Popularity_...
[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Yuri_Bezmenov#Possibility...
[4] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Yuri_Bezmenov#Conspiracy_...
Wow. Check out no: 2. U.S. willingness to capitulate in preference to engage in atomic war.
I guess they had no clue how the American Psyche works. Japan sinks 6 vessels, U.S. drops the sun on Japan. Not once, but twice, for good measure. You'd think Russia would watch and learn. They haven't learned anything, even today.
Who's teaching them?
32. "Support any socialist movement to give centralized control over any part of the culture--education, social agencies, welfare programs, mental health clinics, etc."