Shortly after it was pulled, Front Page published a hysterical review from Ronald Radosh accusing Diana West of being hysterical.
Radosh embarrassed himself like a teenage boy caught milking it by his mom.
As for my title, let's be clear, the reason Diana West's book is important is it details Soviet success in infiltrating the highest echelons of our government, particularly, the "Agent of Influence" Harry Hopkins in the White House, dictating American/Soviet Policy during WWII.
It has happened before, and it is happening again. We have Agents of Influence in our government. Huma Weiner is the one who may come to mind first. But, there really is no other explanation for John McCain's absolutely irrational descent into support of the Al-Nusra Front (Al Qaeda in Syria) rebels other than that he is a bought-and-paid-for Agent of Islam.
We've got big problems in our government. Our President has overseen an expansion of Muslim Brotherhood power. We must thank the Egyptian people for pushing that backwards a bit. But, as we sit here, Obama is planning a war in support of the Muslim Brotherhood-backed Al-Nusra Front.
And, he is doing it in the name of mercy and Human Rights.
Deception is the essence of Islam, just as surely as it is the essence of Communism.
From Ruthfully Yours:
The author of American Betrayal: The Secret Assault on Our Nation’s Character is the fearless, incisive columnist and blogger Diana West, who also wrote The Death of the Grown-Up: How America’s Arrested Development Is Bringing Down Western Civilization, and who is the co-author of Shariah: The Threat to America. With her characteristic fierce passion, West argues in her new book that the Communist infiltration led to a successful “assault on our nation’s character” during the Cold War that left us the “heirs to a false and hollow history” and “unwitting participants” in “a secretly subverted pageant.” In other words, perhaps we didn’t win the Cold War after all.
For West, one of the clear indications that something in the American consciousness had changed is the fact that, thanks not only to Soviet propaganda but also to domestic peer pressure, many Americans were more outraged by Ronald Reagan’s unapologetic phrase “evil empire” than by the evil empire itself. This is the result of “the hocus-pocus transformation of liberty-loving anti-Communism into a force of repression to be reviled” and its flip side: “the hocus-pocus transformation of totalitarian Communism into a force of liberalism.”
Thus, post-Cold War generations of Americans have a kneejerk revulsion toward the witnesses and investigators who tried to raise the alarm about the presence of traitors in positions of influence. “In each and every instance,” West writes, “it was the anti-Communists, the ex-Communists, and the Cassandras who were punished and castigated by the Washington Establishment, and then ostracized for their ‘crimes’ of exposing treason.” The names of those demonized Cassandras either have been forgotten by history or live in infamy.
The most notable example, of course, is Sen. Joseph McCarthy, whose name has become synonymous with red-baiting and Cold War “paranoia.” True, McCarthy’s hyperbolic theatrics “enabled lots of people to dismiss the whole issue as a witch hunt or the product of a demagogue,” notes Harvey Klehr, author of Spies: The Rise and Fall of the KGB in America. But West is certainly correct that McCarthy and Whitaker Chambers and their ilk were and still are hardly hailed as patriots.
And yet the infiltration and deception of which they warned was vaster than most Americans know. “Expert estimates,” West writes, “now peg the number of Americans assisting Soviet intelligence agencies during the 1930s as exceeding five hundred.” She quotes the former chief of intelligence in Communist Romania, who told her, “During the Cold War, more people in the Soviet bloc worked for the dezinformatsiya machine than for the Soviet army and defense industry put together.” She quotes Joseph D. Douglass Jr. as saying, “The Soviets live and breathe deception. You cannot understand what they are doing without understanding this. Indeed, you can’t even begin to understand Communism without understanding deception.”
9 comments:
I want to buy her book. Will have to wait till I get my student loan in November.
This looks like a really good one to read.
Why do you think David Horowitz said she should not have written the book?
Have I misread Horowitz?
here's his statement - http://frontpagemag.com/2013/david-horowitz/editorial-our-controversy-with-diana-west/
Clare Lopez was fired . . .see Gates of Vienna's post The Totalitarian Impulse.
From which I quote: on September 4, when Ms. Lopez received an email from Nina Rosenwald notifying her that her relationship with the Gatestone Institute had been terminated at the request of the Gatestone Board of Directors. On September 5, Ms. Rosenwald confirmed in an email sent to Ms. Lopez and others what some had already suspected, that her firing was due to her “choice of books to promote…,” a clear reference to Ms. Lopez’ citation of historical events from Ms. West’s book.
With John Bolton serving as Chairman of Gatestone, one cannot help but be confused as to what Gatestone's 'belief system' is morphing into.
Over the last couple of days I was searching for Clare's contact information to ask her directly, 'why' her review was pulled -- None was readily found.
This incredible revelation of Ms. Lopez being fired triggers that increasingly familiar déjà-vu-whirlwind-of-emotion reminiscent of the betrayals of Charles Johnson/LGF, and that of Hesham- Islam's-faux-credentials trumping Stephen Coughlin's expertise at the Pentagon.
When one imagined the proverbial [prayer?] rug being pulled out from underneath, one never anticipated witnessing it slip under a resurrected -door-[strike] "Iron Curtain" of AMERICAN National Security.
Pastorius @1:31:00 re FPM's David Horowitz' statement. . .quote:
"My position on these matters should be perfectly clear. Some years ago I wrote a lengthy review of Ann Coulter’s book Treason (in which, by the way, she trashed my friend Radosh). I adore Ann Coulter’s writings on liberalism, and most of the sharp wit she displayed in Treason amused me to no end. But in the course of her book Ann went too far and drew a picture in which the demagogic Joe McCarthy became not just right in that the targets he went after were Communists, but also an American hero;..."
Recognize certain talking points in recent negative reviews of West's book? Also, do we see the irony there? Horowitz/Radosh minions mirror the very actions they resented about McCarthy. As McCarthy was lionized by Coulter, so too is Radosh by FPM groupies.
I am not familiar with Radosh or his work beyond this bruhaha about West's book. But I can tell you that Radosh & FPM's adolescent reactions have not increased my curiosity about his work. Just the opposite. As a matter of fact, I haven't been a regular reader of FPM because this behavior is rampant in the comments at FPM. For a source once respected (and still regard "Discover the Networks" a useful tool), this persistently childish 'you're-no-longer-welcome-in-our-clique, nyah-nyah, nyah-nyah-nyah' nonsense isn't helping their cause.
Yeah, I agree.
On the other hand, here's the thing: Horowitz and Radosh are ex-lefties.
So am I.
so, is Reliapundit, who I write with at Astute Bloggers.
One thing I've noticed about lefties who convert to the right is that we carry over the methods of the left to our right-wing work.
I'm not on the level those guys are but obviously, I am a firebrand. I'm not always fair. I tend to think in terms of stunts, more than reasoned activity (not that I believe I am incapable of being reasonable.)
And, Horowitz attempts to triangulate and excommunicate people. That's a very leftie thing to do.
I don't think the right ought to jettison us lefties, because I think our tactics are useful sometimes. But the right ought to probably recognize that our tactics are useful, but we're kind of like loose cannons. Be careful with us.
Now, I'm speaking for those guys. I probably shouldn't do that. But, I am including myself in there, cuz I think I get why they do what they do.
I am also an ex leftie and proud of it. :)
You, me, and Epa.
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