CIA – Siress editions

Totalitarianism according to the CIA sponsored western intelligentsia (4)

Before refuting one by one the huge literature related to totalitarianism shaped, supported and funded by the American CIA and the British IRD, as ideological and political weapon directed against not only the Soviet Union and international Communism but also and in the last resort against any revolutionary movements over the world, it will be useful to investigate the starting point of this very well imaginative and chimeric story invented out of nothing by American and British’s propaganda agencies in the aftermath of the Second World War. The founding fathers of totalitarianism’s story were indisputably by the CIA and the IRD created in the aftermath of the Second World War within the Framework of American and British governments struggle against their old Ally during the war, the Soviet Union and their willingness to contain both the communism and nationalist movements emerging from their fight against their old colonizers. The totalitarianism’s story sponsored by the CIA in the aftermath of the Second World War was elaborated through three successive steps. First, the making up of the idea of totalitarianism such as conceived by their strategists specialized in the psychological warfare benefiting from two world wars experiences. That was the first step. The Second step was the recruitment of an anti-communist intelligentsia in the United States and especially in Europe where the European intelligentsia being already inveigling by the idea of communism must be converted and whose mission was to denigrate the socialist achievement in the Soviet Union and to fabricate the black legend of Stalinism by spreading according to Pavlov’s theory of conditioned reflex Locke’s associate ideas, consisting through an intense and continued psychological war of creating an associating idea comparing Stalin to Hitler and Mussolini and putting in the same basket the Communist regime in the Soviet Union the Nazi regime in Germany and fascist regime in Italy. The third step consists of financial support and the funding of myriad of networks and institutions enlisted by the CIA in its war again communism.

Casting of Totalitarianism’s idea. It is noteworthy to mention the key role played by the British propaganda agency, Information Research Department ( IRD), setting up in February 1948 by Clement Attlee’s Government, which was in fact despite its innocuous title, « a secret Ministry of Cold War » ( Frances Stonor Saunders, who paid the piper, p. 59) and whose mission was to denigrate the Soviet experiment and » to produce and distribute and circulate un attributable propaganda » (Ibid.p 59) The means implemented by IRD strategists consist of making up and compiling « factual » reports « for distribution amongst members of the British intelligentsia who then expected to recycle these facts in their own work » (Ibid) In this anti-Soviet and anti-communist campaign, it was very important according to Stonor saunder to hide the provider of these fabricated facts in order « to achieve the widest possible circulation for IRD material whilst protecting the existence of an officially sanctioned and secretly funded anti-communist propaganda campaign about which the public knew nothing » . As plainly claimed by the Ralph Murray, IRD’s first chief, the facts voluntarily fabricated by his propaganda department should be used as basic material at the disposal of the anti-communist recruits « engaged in the fabrication of propaganda directed against the Soviet Union » (F . Stonor Saunders, who paid the piper, p. 59). In short words, totalitarianism made CIA and IRD was born not from epistemological query about what is really this new study case which is totalitarianism but from a vast propaganda campaign waged by the governments of the United States and Britain against their old Ally during the Second World War, the Soviet Union, with the sole aim, turning aside the Western intelligentsia from communism and Marxism.
Recruitment of supporters. The second step concerns the recruitment and enlistment of anti-communist intelligentsia and the setting up of permanent and established institutions devoted to fight communism and the Soviet regime in Russia. I have already mention the name of William Henry Chamberlain and the formation of a new scholarship branch, the Kremlinology by Charles Bohlen. At these two names, we must add a third name who played a key role in the spread of idea of totalitarianism among American and European intelligentsia, the Hungarian-born renegade Arthur Koestler. The common characteristic of these three men: all together had lived in Russia during the Bolshevik revolution onwards. That is why they became privileged target of the CIA and the IRD in their psychological warfare against communism and its intelligentsia in Western Europe. British’s IRD recruited its first agent, the Hungarian-born, Arthur Koestler, whose role was to recruit other anti-communist warriors coming from the left-wing politics. IRD’s propaganda campaign began with the publication in 1947 of Arthur Koestler’s Darkness at Moon », depicting the Soviet union as a terror regime and as vast camp of concentration. In 1948, the CIA supported and funded a lecture tour in the United States where he met high ranking chiefs in State Department and the CIA strategists in the Psychological warfare.
Funding groups and organizations committed to spread Totalitarianism’s idea. After the creation of the American Intelligence agency (CIA), a new department National Security directive, NSC-68, was drafted in March 1950, by the new director of the Policy planning Staff, Paul Nitze who had replaced Kennan. This directive, NSC-68 aimed at spreading the « the superiority of the idea of freedom » and the « truth (which( also needs propaganda » (Frances Stonor Saunders, who paid the paiper, p. 97). For this purpose, the budgetary provisions planned by NSC-68 fixed the amount of $34 million to be spent on Psychological warfare in 1950 and was to be quadrupled during the coming years. This CIA’s money was to served to fund the psychological warfare against the Soviet Union and Communism through organizations such as the Congress for Cultural freedom and recruitment of anti-communist warriors especially among the Non-Communist Left in Western Europe. It was in this ideological context that took shape the idea of comparing two irreducible political and ideological system, the Soviet Union with Nazi Germany and fascist Italy and to put in the same basket the imperialist and racist doctrines of Nazism and Fascism with the principles of Soviet communism based on the abolition of exploitation of man by other men and the solidarity of the USSR with the colonized and oppressed peoples by western imperialism.

Totalitarianism according to the CIA sponsored western intelligentsia (2)

The theorist who shaped the notion of totalitarianism sponsored by the CIA and the American foreign policy decision makers during the second anti-communist crusade initiated by Winston Churchill and Harry Truman was indisputably the renegade William Henry Chamberlain who was journalist during the Bolshevik revolution and who knew very well and frequented its leaders especially Lenin. After his turnabout and after becoming a renegade after the Second World War, he been recruited like all renegades and Trotskyists and had been enlisted like American and European intelligentsia in its struggle and ideological and psychosocial warfare against the Soviet Union and the International communism. like all renegades et especially those who were presents in Russia during the Interwar years was the preferred target of the CIA and the American foreign policy’s decisions makers. William Henry Chamberlain had been one the founding fathers of the second anti-communist crusade camouflaging under the expression of Cold war to make believe that there was war between two parties while there was only one attacker trying desperately to crush the defender. Chamberlain found with one, like him, who was in Russia and knew its leaders in 1930s, Charles E . Bohlen, a novel academic discipline known as Kremlinology. In around Chamberlain-Bohlen circle, orbited other anti-communist crusaders such as George Kennan, Isaiah Berlin, A.A. Berle former Secretary of State general William Donovan former head of the OSS, ancestor of the CIA, Allen W . Dulles, OSS representative in Switzerland, Joseph C . Grew, and Arthur Bliss lane, former Ambassadors.

William Chamberlain’s « theory » of totalitarianism had been exposed in his book » America’s second crusade, Chicago, Illinois, Henry Regnery Company, 1950″ where he expressed his debt and his gratitude to the founding fathers of the American warmongers after the WWII. in his Chapter 2, titled Communism and fascism, Offspring of the war, Chamberlain drew the founding scheme of what would be the imaginative story of totalitarianism, invented out of nothing by well and garssely paid western intelligentsia enlisted by the CIA and its numerous hidden agencies with the double mission, denigrate the Soviet communism and promote the pax Americana. Chamberlain’s ideological scheme was going to serve as model for the CIA’s propaganda tool and for its pen’s mercenary, for anti communist crusaders, for the western intelligentsia, for the Schlesingers, for the Arendts and Arons, for the Talmons, generally for « kampgruppe, a fighting squad unequivocally pledged to toppling Communism » (F . Stonor Saunders, Who paid the piper, p. 77)

Chamberlain’s ideological scaffolding of totalitarianism and its main features can be summed up as follows.

Totalitarianism was offspring of the First World War
the fathers founders of totalitalariansm were Vladimir Ilytich Lenin, Benito Mussolini and Adolf Hitler
totalitarianism is a new type of plebeian dictatorship which had been begotten by the despair, brutalization and discarding of old economic forms and moral restraints associated to the First Wold War
Totalitarianism was a new kind of state based on the unlimited power of a single political party and this party regarded itself as an elite
Totalirainsim is characterized by submission of the individual to a powerful state which paralyze and annihilate the dindivual’s will
the all-powerfull and supposedly infaillible leaders who have been subject to no check or limit in law or public opinion
Under Communism, fascism and nazism, only a single suling pary allowed to exist legally . parliaments in the Soviet Union, germany and Italy became mere rubber stamps for teh registration of the party décisions
Under totalitarian regimes voting is virtually unanimous and altoghter meaningless no voice for independent criticism is ever heard
Communism, fascism and nazism had teh monopole of propaganda, terrorism and flatetry of the masses. All three dictatrosphips developed very powerful methods for molding teh minds of the epople Under theri rule
Under Communism, fascism and nazism there are Citizen, there aere only sub ject who had been envelopped in a cloud of state-directed propaganda; from the carddle to teh grave teh diea is drummed into his head through the newspapers, teh scholls, teh ardio, that he is living in the best of all possible wolrds, taht his highest glory and happiness are to be found in serving the existing regime.
al open counetrpropaganda and free dsicusion are ibanned and impossible Those indivduals who arer not again convereted the re was always the grim threta of the secrete political police, cheka, OGPU, NKVD, the MVD in Russia, gestapo in germany and teh Ovra in italy
Under Communism, fascism and Nazism the Citizen enjoys not the slightest defense against the arbitrary violence of the state; he can be seized held in prison sent to a concentration camp, tortured killed all without the publicity which would inspire in some resisters the sprit of martyrdom more that his family exposed to reprisals if he falls into disfavour. A soviet law, published in the spring of 1934 authorizes the banishment « to remote parts of Siberia » of the relatives of a Soviet Citizen who leaves the country without permission Totalitarian secret police organizations habitually employ threats against relatives as a means of extorting confessions.
Exaltation of militarism. Every soviet family, school, or political organization is in duty bound to instil in the Soviet youth from the earliest age those qualities necessary to the Red soldier : military sprit, a love of war, endurance, self-reliance and boundless loyalty; This statement appeared in Komsomol-skaya Pravda, official organ of the Soviet Union of Communist Youth on may 21, 1941. One of the reasons for abolishing coeducation in soviet elementary schools was to give boys an earlier start on military starting
full government control of Labor power in this field the original methods of the totalitarian regimes Communism started out as a violent social revolution expropriating all kinds of private property which profit was derived and confiscating almost all private wealth; Labor was organized, regimented and prorpagndized in very similar fashion Under all three regimes. The labor movement in russia, in germany and in Italy were run by Communist, Nazis and fascists . the individual worker came always second to the supposed intérêts of the state and the Policy of the ruling party
widespread use of slave labor this a a natural and logical conséquences of the Communist-fascist belief that the individual ahs no rights which the state is bound to respect. Nazi-imposed forced labor came to an end with the mùiliatry colaspes of germany in 1945. so a vast network of slave-labor réservations which no indepenedent foreign investigator has ever been allwoed to visit mostly located in northern Russia and Siberia developepd Under the direction of the political police s. Serious students of the subject estimate that there may be eight or ten million human beings in the Soviet labor camps. The methods of punsihment make negro slavery in the United States before the Civil War seem almost humane
Hostility to religion dictatoshipare inevitbly hostile to any form of belief in a trasncendetn moral law with divine sacntions. ths modern dictator’s frirts demadn on his subjectsis unconditonal obedience the totaliatrina state recognizes no distinction between what is due to God and what is due to Caesar. the soviet Governement has persecuted all forms of religion
chauvinism and antionalism Hitler and Mussolini made a national supeirority complex the very basis of their creeds the nazi »master race » theory has been denouced and aprodied soviet communsim preached and still preaches a doctrien of internaitonal revolution to be accomapgnied by an abolition of racila and antioanl disticntions but communist theory and russian rpactice have become Stalin has been cultivating a form of Russian »mster arce » delusion this takes the form of announcing that some unknown or litthe-known Russian ahs anticipated almost
The cultivation of fear hatred and suspicion of the outside world these were the three stock themes of the Nazi propaganda master Josef Goebbels and his counterparts in the Soviet Union and in Italy. the propaganda machines are adept in conjuring up demons to serve as scapegoats Jews in Germany, for instance Trotskyites saboteurs « grovelers before the West » in Russia. Normal free contacts with foreign countries are discouraged and forbidden this policy has been carried to its greatest extreme in Russia few foreigners are admitted to that country and they find themselves under constant police surveillance Foreign anti-communist newspapers are not sold and Russians may not receive them. Hitler and Mussolini never imposed such a complete blackout on foreign contacts; But these was a constant attempt by Nazi and Fascist propagandists to cultivate a spriti of bellicose suspicion of foreigners as spies. Under all three dictatorships it was stock procedure to represent independent foreign journalists as malicious slanderers
the most ominous common trait of the totalitarian creeds is an almost paranoid conviction of world-conquering mission. belief that the Russian revolution is only the first step toward a Communist Revolution that will encompass the entire globe is the every essence of Lenin’s and Stalin’s teachings. in his book problems of Leninism which has in Russia all authority which Hitler’s mein Kampf possessed in Nazi Germany, Stalin quotes with approval the following statement by Lenin . Hitler’s idea of Teutonic racial destiny is an equivalent of Stalin’s and Lenin’s faith in the messianic role of the proletariat and the international revolutionary Communist movement. Both Communism and Nazism created fifth columns(the Communist far more numerous and better organized) and thereby contributed one of the great divisive and subversive forces of modern times. and Mussolini boasted that » if every century has its peculiar doctrine, there are a thousand indications that fascism is that of the twentieth century
Common trait of the Soviet and Nazi brands of totalitarianism is the capacity and willingness to commit atrocities(in the full sense of that much abused word) on a scale that makes the most ruthless and oppressive governments in the nineteenth century seem positively humanitarian. the Nazi slaughter of millions of Jews during the war stand on a lonely pinnacle of state-inspired criminality if it were not for much less publicized horrors which must be laid to the account of the Soviet regime First of these was the « liquidation of the kulaks as a class » officially decreed in March 1930; under this procedure hundreds of thousands of peasant families whose only crime that they were a little more prosperous than their neighbours were stripped of all their possessions and impressed into slave labour. there were no gas-chamber of kulaks but many perished as a result of overwork underfeeding and maltreatment. Second was the man-made famine in the Ukraine and the North Caucasus in 1932-33; this was not a an unavoidable natural disaster it was a deliberate reprisal inflicted by the government on the peasants because of their failure to work enthusiastically in the collective farms several millions people perished in the famine Third was the establishment of a vast system of slave labour as normal feature of the Soviet economy this system is far more cruel than was serfdom in Russia before the abolition in 1861 or slavery in the United states before Abraham Lincoln issued the Emancipation proclamation just because it I s completely dehumanized