The Paramilitary CIA and the Seeds of a Secret War – LAOS 4 (objective view on Communism and “you’re not doing politics—you’re doing religion”.-Michael Parenti)

First, I would like to clarify that I am not a communist; I am a socialist/social democrat, and I am also a nationalist. I want to preface this because every time one points out the wrongdoing of the West, they are accused of being on “the other side.” I am not supporting the other side—I stand on the side of humanity, freedom, and truth.

The author of this video also takes an objective approach to history, much like Aaron Good, who, like me, views Michael Parenti as a guide and hero. Michael Parenti, while critical of Communist Russia, helped reveal our blind spots in understanding history. I have written before about the history of World War II:

Did Poland Bring on Her Own Destruction in 1939 Because of Her Aggressive Foreign Policy? (and History of WW2 as I see it and question were Nazi Socialists)

Explaining that while many claim Hitler was "crazy" for attacking Russia, the truth is more complex: he felt he had no choice. I discussed how Hitler was used by both Russia and the U.S. to start a war in Europe and how Russia was preparing for an offensive in Europe, an attack on Germany. Misunderstanding these facts leads to calling Hitler "crazy." I have said before that Hitler was stupid, but not insane. Whenever someone is labeled as "crazy," it’s worth re-examining whether that judgment is accurate.

One of Michael Parenti's great contributions, as Aaron Good pointed out, is his objective analysis of Communist Russia. Again, I am not a communist and oppose authoritarian rule, but what we in the West often fail to do is examine it objectively. I have explained how my country, Poland, fought against communism. Our leader, though a socialist, resisted international communism because it sought to create a single global state and destroy national cultures. Poland wanted socialism but rejected a one-world government or the erosion of its cultural identity. While Michael Parenti doesn’t agree with me and views Poland as fascist, he fails to recognize that, unlike Hitler—who dismissed Das Kapital as a Jewish invention—Józef Piłsudski studied and understood Marx’s work, making him a true national socialist.

What people in the West often overlook is that communism in Russia was under siege. The communists fought against the White Army, which was supported by much of the world. Even Poland and Japan formed an anti-communist union, which is why Japan never acknowledged Poland’s declaration of war. The whole world fought to stop communism, but after the communists prevailed in Russia, we are supposed to believe that this global opposition simply ceased. In reality, they continued to face attacks—whether through agents, propaganda, or other means. Recognizing that the rest of the world actively sought to undermine communism helps explain some of their policies, including censorship and pogroms. The West, especially the U.S., developed a modern propaganda machine to unconsciously manipulate people’s minds, as John Pilger noted: “For Edward Bernays, public relations was like a war on people, bending their will.”

Figures like Reinhard Gehlen infiltrated Communist Russia with agents who fueled internal repression. Similarly, Edward Bernays developed propaganda techniques that manipulated the unconscious, driving anti-communist sentiment in the West. Understanding these dynamics sheds light on why censorship existed in Communist Russia. Many call Communist Russia "crazy" without understanding these factors, just as they label Hitler "crazy" without recognizing he had no choice since Communists were preparing an attack and that he was manipulated by Communist Russia and the U.S.

I am not blind to the fact that Communist Russia was an authoritarian state, rife with propaganda and censorship. It did not represent genuine socialism but rather state capitalism, as Lenin himself admitted:
“Socialism is merely a state capitalist monopoly that is made to serve the interests of the whole people and, to that extent, ceases to be a capitalist monopoly. The new means of control were not created by us but by capitalism in its military-imperialist stage.”

So no, I am not a communist, nor do I support them, but my personal opinions should not prevent an objective analysis of history. We must acknowledge that Communist Russia was constantly under siege by global oligarchies, which shaped many of its actions. We cannot know how they might have behaved if they had been free to develop without external threats.

Perhaps without figures like Edward Bernays, there would have been less censorship and propaganda. Perhaps without agents like Reinhard Gehlen infiltrating Russia, there might have been greater freedom and no purges. Stalin, a brutal dictator responsible for ethnic cleansing, including the killing of many Poles, was undeniably a monster. Lenin himself warned against making Stalin leader. But perhaps if communism had not been under constant attack, Russia would not have turned to some monster like Stalin.

These are "what ifs," and I don’t claim to have definitive answers. What I do know is that dismissing Communist Russia’s actions as inherent to their ideology while ignoring the constant attacks from the West is not objective. Edward Bernays, the man who treated public relations as "a war on people," shaped Western perceptions of communism to the point some people treat it as akin to Satan. From the 1920s, the West brainwashed its people into hating communism. This long campaign, involving propaganda, organized crime, and even Nazi collaboration, eventually defeated communism.

Finally, let me reiterate: I am not a communist. I seek the truth, and truth requires objectivity.

Now to all people complaining about communism look objectively at our Western culture. States are full of brainwashed people benefitting the oligarchs, killing and oppressing the rest of the world in the name of those oligarchs who hid behind a flag or some ideology. Anyway,.the author of this video make similar cases in one of his episodes:

What if I told you that the history of the Cold War we are taught in school is inherently dishonest?

Beneath the surface of the decades-long Cold War between the United States and the Soviet Union was an extended "hot war" between the Western capitalist elite and the poor, peasant masses of the post-colonial world.

As the Second World War came to an end, millions of former colonial subjects fought for their rights to autonomy, prosperity, and independence from their previous imperial overlords. This clash between the landless masses of the Global South and the bourgeois elites in Washington, D.C., New York, London, and Paris was fought sometimes openly but often in the shadows throughout the second half of the 20th century—and into the present day.

While the USSR and the United States aimed increasingly large nuclear weapons at each other and launched rockets into space, a different yet intrinsically linked war for the hearts and minds of the colonial world was underway.

The United States and its Western allies, however, had a secret weapon in this fight—one they would continue to refine and perfect throughout the struggle: the Central Intelligence Agency.

Folks, welcome to the Cold War. And welcome back to the history of the CIA.

It’s not about picking sides or believing in something, but about understanding and objectivity. Here is a great example of objectivity and a description of our problem:

“…you realise that you’re not doing politics, you’re doing religion. It’s religion you’re dealing with, because you’re dealing with belief and it’s hard” -Michael Parenti

12:33

“Now, if people cannot challenge the validity of the evidence you present, they have fallback positions. I remember the Moscow intellectuals back when the Soviet Union existed. In the 1980s, there was a very interesting article written, of all places, in National Review, a conservative right-wing magazine, where the author described the Moscow intellectuals as loving Ronald Reagan, Marlboro cigarettes, and the Confederacy during the Civil War. I thought that was a very accurate description, given the ones I met when I was there. They hated socialism.

A friend of mine had the same experience. She happened to be in Leningrad with the Soviet intellectuals there, and one guy said to her, "The poorest people in your country live better than I do." Now, here's a guy who had gone to Moscow University. He spoke fluent English, had a small but comfortable apartment, a wall full of books, and never missed a meal in his life, but he was convinced that the poorest in your country, in America, lived better than he did. When I used to hear them talk, their eyes would begin to sparkle: "America, America!"

She said, "Well, that's not true. We have people in our country who sleep in doorways and pick through garbage cans and such." And you know what they said to her? They said, "That's all right, you don't have to lie to us anymore." She said, "No, really," and she cited some statistics, talking about this. They asked, "What's the fallback?" The first fallback position was, "Where did you get those figures from?" She said, "From the federal government, Bureau of Labor Statistics, U.S. Census Bureau; it's public knowledge."

So their second fallback position was, "Oh, those are just the blacks. The blacks, they're lazy and stupid, and so yeah, they're poor." Yeah, that's a rhetorical fallback position. I've given that a technical term, a descriptive term, and I forgot what I did. Oh yes, racism. I call that racism.

So it so happened that she had a copy of Mother Jones with her, and there was a special photo feature in that issue about the poor of Appalachia, 30 years after Kennedy's war on poverty. In Appalachia, these people were as poor as ever, and there were pictures of their destitution. So she brought this out and said, "Look, Appalachia, they're all white, you know, 90-97%, kind of like Seattle." She said, "Look at this." They looked at the pictures, and they had another fallback position, which was, "Oh, so there are a few white people who are poor out in the country, and so that's so unusual that they made a whole article with photographs about them."

You see, beliefs are not surrendered easily. Beliefs are, rather, frighteningly impervious to evidence. Sometimes the Soviet intellectuals believed America was a capitalist paradise. They knew, by the way, when I spoke to the ones I met in Moscow, they knew so much more about America than I did. I was handicapped by experience and reality, which, as you know, is a messy, multi-dimensional thing. They had all the certainty of inexperience.

The believers in the capitalist paradise were a mirror image of the believers in the Soviet Union as a workers' paradise. There were many people I knew—people in the party, fellow travelers, and such—who had heard so much negative about the communist countries. Everything about them was bad, every single thing. There wasn’t a single positive thing ever said, so their reaction was to reject every single criticism.

A girlfriend I had back in the '80s was a party member, and I remember I would raise questions—not from a position of hostility, but from a position of wanting the system to work a lot better and be more viable. I said, "Look, there are real problems here." We would end up banging heads together. It was just impossible to have a rational discussion and introduce things. I can think of another lady I know, who was in New York—well, it doesn't matter, this was another friend of mine, a third-generation Communist party member.

She says to me, "There is no prostitution in the Soviet Union." I said, "Esther, what are you talking about? This is a country of 340 million people, with wars, scarcities, all the imperfections of human beings, and self-serving exploitations and motives. Are you telling me that in this whole country there is no prostitution?" She said, "There is no prostitution."

A year later, I headed a delegation to the Soviet Union made up of economists and political scientists. I remember our guide in Moscow, a woman in her late 40s or early 50s, saying, "There is no prostitution in my country." Now, we’re trying to explore the nature of belief here. How do people believe? I said to her, "There may not be any prostitution in your country, but there sure is a hell of a lot of it in our hotel right here downstairs."

And you know what she said? Without missing a beat, she said, "Yes, well, I want you to know all those girls have full-time jobs during the day." Talk about a fallback position!

So, if you're engaged in political discourse and political struggle, as I am all the time, you realize you're not doing politics—you're doing religion. It's religion you're dealing with because you're dealing with belief. And it’s a rough deal. I mean, it’s with good reason that we use words like "political dogma" and "sectarian"—these are religious terms.”

You are not supposed to believe in free-market capitalism or communism. It’s about objective logical analysis, not treating it like a religion and picking sides.