This is the latest in a weekly series of exclusive interviews with Dr. Paul Kengor, professor of political science at Grove City College in Grove City, Pennsylvania, who has just released a major book revealing how communists, from Moscow to New York to Chicago, have long manipulated America’s liberals/progressives. Dupes: How America’s Adversaries Have Manipulated Progressives for a Century, is based on an unprecedented volume of declassified materials from Soviet archives, FBI files, and more, and is being hailed as groundbreaking. Big Peace’s own Peter Schweizer calls it the “21st century equivalent” to Whittaker Chambers’ classic Witness.
Over the last two weeks (click here and here), Kengor considered Frank Marshall Davis, a mentor to a young man named Barack Obama–and, as Kengor’s book shows through declassified documents, an actual member of the Communist Party.
Big Peace: Professor Kengor, this week we’re looking at “Progressives for Obama,” a group formed during Obama’s 2008 campaign. In your book, you say that the names on that list read like a “Who’s Who of the ’60s radicals called to testify before the House Committee on Internal Security.”
Kengor: Yes, a committee founded by and run by Democrats–back when Democrats were in the mold of Jack Kennedy and Harry Truman rather than Harry Reid, Barbara Boxer, Barney Frank, and Nancy Pelosi.
When I first saw that list of “Progressives for Obama,” I felt sick. I had been researching those exact names for Dupes. I took that list, set it on my desk, grabbed my Congressional reports, opened the indices, and was astonished. Bear in mind that Congress was investigating how these radicals attacked Democratic Party causes in particular, including the 1968 convention in Chicago. These radicals were, by and large, communists, and they hated Democrats.
Amazingly, however, in November 2008, these same ’60s radicals, who once sabotaged the Democratic Party, finally, at long last, for the first time in their lives, found a Democrat presidential nominee they could support, and with great enthusiasm. That, of course, was Barack Obama. They had despised Truman, JFK, LBJ, Jimmy Carter, and found even the Clintons too conservative for their tastes. In 2008, the Democratic Party finally put forward a nominee far-left enough for them.
Even more breathtaking to behold, our nation’s exalted “independents” and “moderates” joined them in electing Obama president, and decisively. Many moderates and traditional Democrats voted for Obama as “another JFK.” That’s insanity. JFK, a ferocious anti-communist, investigated people like Obama’s mentor, Frank Marshall Davis.
Big Peace: Share some examples of ’60s radicals who are members of “Progressives for Obama.”
Kengor: There were 94 original signers in the group, including four “initiators.” In the final chapter of Dupes, which is titled, “2008: A ‘Progressive’ Victory,” I detail the names at length. Here I’ll note three: Tom Hayden, Jane Fonda, and Mark Rudd.
Big Peace: Let’s hit Hayden first. He was one of the four “initiators.”
Kengor: Yes. To me, that’s profound. Hayden was a founder of Students for a Democratic Society (SDS), having written its founding manifesto, the Port Huron statement. Alas, there was Hayden in 2008 writing founding documents for Progressives for Obama.
Big Peace: Tell us about some of the documents in Dupes on Tom Hayden.
Kengor: On pages 291-292, there’s a June 4, 1968 letter from Hayden to a North Vietnamese official, Colonel Lau, celebrating: “The news from South Vietnam seems very good indeed…. Good fortune! Victory!”
Big Peace: He hoped for victory for the Vietcong?
Kengor: Many of these folks did. They wanted America to lose, which just happened to be the shared objective of the Vietcong, the Soviets, Mao, Castro, Kim, Pol Pot, the Khmer Rouge, and the entirety of the international communist movement.
Big Peace: Speaking of Vietcong victory, and Tom Hayden, tell us what you report on Jane Fonda.
Kengor: Jane Fonda, who married Hayden, was a go-go girl for communism, telling student audiences: “[I]f you would understand what communism was, you would pray on your knees that we would someday be communist.” Jane jetted to Hanoi, where she became a cheerleader for the Vietcong. The pro-Vietcong glamour girl had her face splashed everywhere by an ecstatic communist press, as she grinned aside Vietcong weaponry. The Soviets and North Vietnamese were smitten.
Big Peace: You say that Fonda’s trip was partly arranged by a Soviet agent?
Kengor: The trip was arranged (in part) by Wilfred Burchett, who has since been identified as a Soviet agent. Burchett also reportedly helped script Fonda’s talks. In Dupes, see page 327, among others, for sources.
Big Peace: And Fonda was another signer of “Progressives for Obama,” openly endorsing Obama in 2008.
Kengor: Yes. A Los Angeles Times reporter said of Fonda’s endorsement, “there goes [Obama’s] crossover vote.” Nah. Our nation’s thoughtful moderates were unperturbed. They voted for “change.”
Big Peace: How far to the left is Fonda today?
Kengor: That’s one of the critical mysteries regarding these modern “progressives.” Are they really progressives, in the mold of traditional early 20th-century progressivism, or are they still communists, masquerading as “progressives?” That’s the trillion-dollar question. It’s telling, though, that marquee names on “Progressives for Obama” were onetime infamous communists, and quite un-American in their views and activities.
Big Peace: Tell us about Mark Rudd, another member of Progressives for Obama.
Kengor: I’m intrigued by Mark Rudd. I read his memoir cover to cover, which was brutally, commendably honest. In the 1960s, he was an SDS leader. He and his comrades shut down Columbia University in 1968. He eventually found SDS too reactionary, and launched the Weather Underground with Obama friends, Bill Ayers and Bernardine Dohrn–who, incidentally, supported Obama not only with words but campaign contributions, as I record in Dupes.
Rudd modeled himself after Che Guevara, a sadistic rogue who today is a hero to useful idiots on college campuses. “Like a Christian seeking to emulate the life of Christ,” wrote Rudd. “I passionately wanted to be a revolutionary like Che.”
Invoking the precise words of Che, Rudd wished: “Our every action is a battle cry against imperialism and a battle hymn for the people’s unity against the great enemy of mankind: the United States of America.”
The young American apparatchiks shared Che’s wish for more Vietnams to take down the United States. Che urged “create two, three, many Vietnams!”
Big Peace: And Rudd, again, was a “progressive” for Obama. What was Rudd’s take on the November 2008 election?
Kengor: It was dead on. Rudd appreciates that it was moderates and independents that made the difference in 2008. He noted the crucial importance of Obama gaining those votes by not openly conceding his far-left views. “Obama is a very strategic thinker,” wrote Rudd. “He knew precisely what it would take to get elected and didn’t blow it…. He knew that what he said had to basically play to the center to not … scare centrist and cross-over voters away. He made it.” Rudd noted, “And I agree with this strategy.”
So, Obama campaigned on “change,” and the centrist and cross-over voters projected onto him whatever they hoped that change might be, with no evidence of moderation anywhere in Obama’s background, from Hawaii to Chicago to Washington. It was jaw-dropping to behold. I’ll never again trust the American voter.
Big Peace: Is the Tea Party movement a reaction to this?
Kengor: Certainly. And how egregious to frame Tea Party people as bigots. Here’s an extremely significant finding that liberals ignore at their great peril: Gallup did a major survey of the Tea Party and found only 50% were Republicans, with the remainder being independents and Democrats. It was a perfect split. Those latter 50 percent include Obama supporters in November 2008. They became quickly disgruntled with Obama-Pelosi-Reid, and now the left is smearing them?
My message to Tea Party folks is this: If you’re tired of being maligned as a racist, go vote against the Democrats on Tuesday. It looks like that may happen big-time, and liberals will have only themselves to blame.
Big Peace: This is an election that Progressives for Obama will take on the chin?
Kengor: I think so. November 2010 stands to be very different from November 2008.
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