Socialist Birds of a Feather: 1978

 

Democratic Socialists AmericaScott Johnson’s recent Power Line post on CRT took us back to 1978 and yet another commie lover. The American left has a long history of admiration for communist regimes, whether Russia, China, Cuba, or even North Korea. They see there an exercise of power such as they desire over us. The left is perfectly willing to say the quiet part out loud. We should take them seriously.

Scott Johnson was commenting on an important and clear recent explanation of how critical race theory led to Kendi. Johnson offered special insight into a very early advocate of CRT [emphasis added]:

Sibarium’s column struck a personal chord with me. He links to and quotes from Alan Freeman’s 1978 Minnesota Law Review article “Legitimizing Racial Discrimination through Antidiscrimination law: A Critical Review of Supreme Court Doctrine.” My last semester in law school I was a student in Professor Freeman’s Civil Rights course.

[ . . . ]

His remarks in class prompted my interest in his utopia. One morning after class I asked him if he would join me for coffee in the Riverbend Cafeteria then adjacent to the law school. In the course of our somewhat stilted conversation I asked him what country he would hold out as his real-world model. He said with only slight hesitation: “North Korea.”

In 1978, Kim Il-sung reigned over a prison state, in which everyone was sorted into one of three categories, according to imputed loyalty, and assigned basic resources accordingly. 1978 marked 30 years since the communist regime was founded. It was also the year Kim Il-sung’s son, Kim Jong-il, ordered the kidnapping of a famous South Korean actress and her director husband, holding them captive until they escaped in Vienna in 1986. Kim Jong-il did so to create a world-class North Korean film industry by forced labor. This is the regime that Alan Freeman, an early important CRT advocate, held out as the real-world model for his vision of equality in results. This is the regime Alan Freeman, writing from the critical legal studies perspective, had in mind when he claimed our constitutional system was racially rigged [emphasis added].

[As] surely as the law has outlawed racial discrimination, it has affirmed that Black Americans can be without jobs, have their children in all black, poorly funded schools, have no opportunities for decent housing, and have very little political power, without any violation of antidiscrimination law.

[ . . . ]

While all of the Supreme Court opinions to be discussed are, of course, technical assertions of legal doctrine, and can be analyzed as such, they are also an evolving statement of acceptable public morality. In their latter role, the opinions not only reflect dominant societal moral positions, but also serve as part of the process of forming or crystallizing such positions. Given a view that law serves largely to legitimize the existing social structure and, especially, class relationships within that structure, the ultimate constraints are outside the legal system. But if law is to serve its legitimation function, those ultimate constraints must yield up just enough autonomy to the legal system to make its operations credible for those whose allegiance it seeks as well as those whose self-interest it rationalizes.

Critical Race Theory was, in fact, grounded in socialist soil. Nor has it been transplanted, washed clean of the Marxist mire. Teddy Kennedy, “Lion of the Senate” actively colluded with Moscow, while the Democrats under Tip O’Neil provided top cover for the aggressive expansion of communism in Latin America. The Democratic Party’s praise of Cuban, and other Latin American socialist regimes, seamlessly transitioned from economic class-based socialism to identity politics socialism,  allowing conflation of economic class and ethnicity or race. As I illustrated in “Socialist Birds of a Feather,” the left’s celebrated author of the 1619 Project, “Nikole Hannah-Smith flocked to the Cuban communist regime’s side at least twice on the record, serving up standard international communist propaganda about education, racial equality, and medical care.” The Congressional Black Caucus members are full-on devotees of Cuban communism.

It is reasonable to take American leftists, the Democratic Party, seriously in their praise and protection of socialist regimes. It is not funny. Do not use their sound bytes and quotes as mere sources of ridicule or outrage. They admire and envy the degree of societal control they now seek to exert here. Act accordingly.

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  1. Dotorimuk Coolidge
    Dotorimuk
    @Dotorimuk

    They don’t want Sweden. They want Cuba.

    • #1
  2. DJ EJ Member
    DJ EJ
    @DJEJ

    After linking to it in my comment on your “Socialist Birds of a Feather” post, I rewatched Improper Conduct again for the first time in years. That led me to find a new posted version of it on YouTube, and through the video’s description to that same version available for legal download on archive.org. As one never knows how long the internet remains open and uncensored, I download documentaries like this whenever possible.

    Searching for “Venceremos Brigades” on YouTube didn’t yield many interesting results, except for the VB’s own national and local chapters’ propaganda videos. There was one video with a contrasting view listed in the results, another interesting documentary, The KGB Connections (1982). I’ve seen it before, so I know it’s longer than this, but the person who posted this version thought it important to begin with the segments on the Cuban DGI, leftist radical youth visits to Cuba for terrorist training, and their use of this training in domestic terrorist attacks. The discussion of the Venceremos Brigades begins at 10:55.

    • #2
  3. Gary McVey Contributor
    Gary McVey
    @GaryMcVey

    Also give a look to Tongues Untied and Bitter Sugar

    A good, brave post, CAB. Keep ’em coming. 

    • #3
  4. CACrabtree Coolidge
    CACrabtree
    @CACrabtree

    Another great post Clifford.

    A recent article in the Washington Examiner made the point that the Left wants America to fail because they refuse to come to grips with success.  In the words of the author of the article, “Success undermines the progressive politics of suffering.”

    Take a look at the objects of Progressive hatred; Israel, Asian-Americans, or any white that strives for success and will sacrifice for it.  They’re the enemy; they must be eliminated.

    When I look at these people (usually from a safe distance), I see angry, illogical people whose only success lies in their association with like-minded angry people.

    • #4
  5. DJ EJ Member
    DJ EJ
    @DJEJ

    CACrabtree (View Comment):

    A recent article in the Washington Examiner made the point that the Left wants America to fail because they refuse to come to grips with success. In the words of the author of the article, “Success undermines the progressive politics of suffering.”

    I interpret the events of last summer following the death of George Floyd through this lens. The rapidity at which nationwide protests and riots erupted, how quickly BLM and AntiFa deployed throughout the country to instigate violence and chaos, and how Democrat city officials all responded to riots (and in the case of Seattle an armed insurrection) the same way – by ordering their police forces to stand down, back off, and allow looting, arson, property destruction, and violence, tells me that there was an organized, pre-planned strategy ready to enact. All they were waiting for was the spark, i.e. the next video showing a tragic encounter between a white police officer and a black male. The post-election Time article admits it while ignoring the extreme violence that occurred and laughably denying the political motivations at the same time:

    The racial-justice uprising sparked by George Floyd’s killing in May was not primarily a political movement. The organizers who helped lead it wanted to harness its momentum for the election without allowing it to be co-opted by politicians. Many of those organizers were part of Podhorzer’s network, from the activists in battleground states who partnered with the Democracy Defense Coalition to organizations with leading roles in the Movement for Black Lives [BLM umbrella organization].

    …The summer uprising had shown that people power could have a massive impact. Activists began preparing to reprise the demonstrations if Trump tried to steal the election. “Americans plan widespread protests if Trump interferes with election,” Reuters reported in October, one of many such stories. More than 150 liberal groups, from the Women’s March to the Sierra Club to Color of Change, from Democrats.com to the Democratic Socialists of America, joined the “Protect the Results” coalition. The group’s now defunct website had a map listing 400 planned postelection demonstrations, to be activated via text message as soon as Nov. 4. To stop the coup they feared, the left was ready to flood the streets.

    The main reason was chaos in “Trump’s America” before the election, but it was also a necessity for the left to attempt to reassert control over and double their efforts to enforce black Americans’ dependency on the Democrat Party. As that Washington Examiner author writes, “Success undermines the progressive politics of suffering.” Rising lower and middle income wages, low crime, opportunity zones, declining black unemployment, etc. – the Left wanted all of these things halted immediately. Prior to that, the Obama years were great for Wall Street, bad for the lower and middle class. We can’t allow people to become independent of government now, can we? They’re willing to prevent that by any means necessary.

    • #5
  6. Clifford A. Brown Member
    Clifford A. Brown
    @CliffordBrown

    DJ EJ (View Comment):

    The main reason was chaos in “Trump’s America” before the election, but it was also a necessity for the left to attempt to reassert control over and double their efforts to enforce black Americans’ dependency on the Democrat Party. As that Washington Examiner author writes, “Success undermines the progressive politics of suffering.” Rising lower and middle income wages, low crime, opportunity zones, declining black unemployment, etc. – the Left wanted all of these things halted immediately. Prior to that, the Obama years were great for Wall Street, bad for the lower and middle class. We can’t allow people become independent of government now, can we? They’re willing to prevent that by any means necessary.

    Yes, AND the RepubliCAN’Ts were fully complicit, as all the wrong people, from working class Whites, to urban Blacks and Latinos/Hispanics, were getting economically and electorally empowered. The Bush Romney Ryan McConnell party is all about doling out spoils to a plurality carefully threaded together for close wins that excuse not delivering big on the party platform. The Chamber of Commerce, Big Food, and the national security industrial complex win. All others are blamed, patronized, or placated.

    • #6
  7. Clifford A. Brown Member
    Clifford A. Brown
    @CliffordBrown

    See @kephalithos “David French and the Dialectic.” French has adopted the 1978 communist professor’s position on systemic racial injustice, proclaiming “structural racism isn’t wokeness, it’s reality.” He claims Christian grounds, just like the Soviets’ dupes in the religious wing of the anti-nuclear movement during Reagan’s administration.

    • #7
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