The 1930s and 40s were the time labour unions gained their ground all over the world and American industrialists and politicians saw this as a threat. Russian Revolution was a warning shot for the industrialist. William Randolph Hearst is not a very popular name today, but for journalism students, he is a popular name. He is the father of what we call "Yellow Journalism". Citizen Kane movie is loosely based upon his life. A staunch anti-communist and Nazi Sympathizer throughout his life. He owned a media empire, Hearst Publications. At peak, it had 32 publications, majorly newspapers. By 1932, Hearst was publishing articles by Adolf Hitler, whom Hearst admired for keeping Germany out of “the beckoning arms of Bolshevism.”, as Hitler put it in a Hearst paper. Hitler instead promoted a transcendent ideal of nationalism—putting Germany first—and, by organizing devoted nationalist followers to threaten and beat up leftists, Hitler would soon destroy class-based politics in his country. Increasingly, Hearst wanted to see something similar happen in the United States.
In 1934, Hearst visited Nazi Germany and strike friendship with Hitler and many of his top leaders. Most importantly nazi leader and top commander of Luftwaffe- Hermann Göring. After that, he began writing a regular column in Hearst Newspapers. Hearst Newspapers on a daily basis was effectively anti-bolshevik propaganda, and it was deemed useful by the USA and left it be. It was during one of these columns by Hermann Göring the Ukraine Famine first-ever appear in English! This propaganda was already used in german and Ukrainian anti-semites circles, while for the first time it was printed in English. Communists orchestrated a famine in Ukraine and 60 million died, this was the propaganda campaign ran through Hearst Publications.
But once the United States declared war on Germany, Hearst could no longer maintain this stance, so he took up a new one. With American flags decorating his newspapers’ masthead, he declared that the freshly belligerent Americans should render no aid to the Allies also fighting Germany. After WW2, USSR & Stalin became a guiding force for the global south. Hearst Publications Nazi columns became a revival for the pro-capitalist press around the world, various urban legends were invented, figures added to it every now and then, they didn't hold back on lies. Information Research Department (IRD) was popular in subvert cultural war against gaining communist movement all over the world. Popular authors George Orwell and Robert Conquest were part of this division. George Orwell snitched fellow socialists by making a list of suspected Soviet sympathisers, the list includes popular names like actors like Charlie Chaplin & Michael Redgrave.
A step ahead Robert Conquest authored one of the most popular anti-Stalinist propaganda materials called "The Great Terror" in 1968. This parroted Hearst Propaganda. In his own "Harvest of Sorrow," the numbers are upscaled from 6 million to 15 million, just like that. The American government, and the CIA in particular, has long been keenly interested in using literature to promote American ideologies and undermine communism abroad. An instance, the C.I.A., it seems, was worried that the public might be too influenced by Orwell's pox-on-both-their-houses critique of the capitalist humans and Communist pigs. So after his death in 1950, agents were dispatched (by none other than E. Howard Hunt, later of Watergate Scandal fame) to buy the film rights to ''Animal Farm'' from his widow to make its message more overtly anti-Communist. The agency also changed the ending of the movie version of ''1984,'' disregarding Orwell's specific instructions that the story not be altered. In the book, the protagonist, Winston Smith, is entirely defeated by the nightmarish totalitarian regime. In the very last line, Orwell writes of Winston, ''He loved Big Brother.'' In the movie, Winston and his lover, Julia, are gunned down after Winston defiantly shouts: ''Down with Big Brother!'' (New York Times)
These propaganda & lies are debunked by many historians later with historical facts and sources. One of the earliest such debunkings happened from Canadian historian Douglas Tottle. His book was titled "Fraud, Famine and Fascism: The Ukrainian Genocide Myth from Hitler To Harvard" It was one of the earliest books which pointed out the unholy alliance between the "free press" and the govt secret services in the propaganda campaign against the USSR & Stalin using Nazi lies. Hearst Press reports and photos associated with the soviet famine was from a Ukrainian journalist named 'Thomas Walker', was none other than a British con-man named Robert Green who was deported to the USA for the crime of forgery. In February 1935, the Hearst press ran a series of articles by this 'Thomas Walker', which documented his own observations of an on-going Ukrainian famine in the spring of 1934 and illustrated with photos taken secretly with his own camera. In fact, Robert Green/Thomas Walker never set foot in Ukraine in his life! Many of the photos were from an earlier period (the Russian Civil war era) and the season was different from the time of publication.
Parts of Ukraine, including Odesa, have a dark history of Nazi collaboration. Nazi-occupied Ukraine had its own local SS Unit! recently The National Memory Institute in 2018 declared them as 'War Victims' and erected memorials for collaborators. It is also to be noted that the National Memory Institute is a body under Ukrainian Govt! There are vivid accounts of "Gulag Victims" from various media, some of them true. While many of them are accounts of nazi collaborators who ran away in the fear of repercussions after liberation from Nazis. One such name is Mykola Lebed. As the leader of OUN-B (Ukrainian nazi outfit), he is responsible for the genocide of Poles in Volhynia and Eastern Galicia. in 2007, the CIA declassified records pertaining to the activities of the Nazis and the Japanese Imperial Government that were not processed in time for the Nazi War Crimes and Japanese Imperial Government Records Interagency Working Group's (IWG) final report.
In 1949 he emigrated to the United States and lived in New York. Through Prolog Research Corporation, his CIA funded organization, he gathered intelligence on the Soviet Union as late as into the late 1960s. The CIA project name for the operation was AERODYNAMIC. The report stated that as late as 1991 the CIA, for fear of compromising the operation and triggering outrage within the Jewish refugee community, shielded Lebed from prosecution for war crimes by preventing the United States Department of Justice's Office of Special Investigations from learning about his wartime connections to the Nazis. Lebed headed a CIA-funded non-profit publishing company, the Prolog Research and Publishing Association, until his death in 1998.
Ioseb Besarionis dzе Jughashvili popularly known as Joseph Stalin is a very uncomfortable topic even for the left sympathisers. This is an aftereffect of the decades-long propagation of Red Scare & cold war era lies and urban legends. Joseph Stalin - son of a cobbler and washerwoman, paved the way and showed the light to the world that socialism works by turning a farmer state into a space superpower. Also, it was because of Stalin's undeniable leadership skills soviets could hold the lines by total mobilization. Entire union old, young and everyone capable fought against invaders for their leader, for the cause of survival. He was able to unite millions under the red banner to fight against Nazis. Upon Stalin's demise, the poet Vallathol wrote that India should cry that there is no more Stalin.
Post WW2 USSR under Stalin became undeniably involved in funding and helping towards the decolonization of the global south from the imperial powers. After WW2 many Nazis would escape to the USA and other western countries and some of them took refugees under puppet regimes in Latin America. Under Operation Paperclip these Nazis were given new identities in the USA and incorporated into various institutions including technical, political and scientific! For example, Wernher von Braun was a Nazi engineer and became NASA engineering program manager; chief architect of the Apollo Saturn V rocket.
Stalin is not beyond criticism just because he took strong measures with the willpower to protect the Soviet Union from its enemies. In fact, no one is beyond criticism. Relevant criticisms have been levelled against Stalin, including that the austerity measures taken during the war continued despite the change of circumstances & extensive bureaucratism. While appreciating Stalin's contributions, Stalin's mistakes must also be ruthlessly and thoroughly evaluated. No one is against it. There is no doubt that more serious study and research on Stalin, USSR and that period is yet to come. Stalin himself was opposed to the cult of Persona in politics beyond criticism. This also doesn't mean one can use Nazi propaganda and expect to dismiss Stalin, socialism and USSR altogether.
Comments
Post a Comment