"A general State education is a mere contrivance for moulding people to be exactly like one another, and as the mould in which it casts them is that which pleases the dominant power in the government." — John Stuart Mill
Last night I watched several films on the Turner Classic Movies channel. All the films I viewed focused on the Soviet Union and dated from 1940 to 1965. The first film I watched was Doctor Zhivago, the classic directed by David Lean. The film, based on the book of the same name by Boris Pasternak, depicts Russia from the time prior to the 1917 revolution through the period of the civil war between the forces loyal to the Czar (Whites) and the Communists (Reds).
The film shot in stunning color still captivated me with its wonderful shots of the Russian winter and spring (shot in Canada), its elaborate costuming, and its haunting musical score by Maurice Jarre. Who can forget those magnificent scenes of the fields of daffodils and birch trees and those scenes of the Russian winter where you can feel the bitter cold?
I first saw this film in 1967 in Hamilton, Ontario when my wife and I paid a visit to my Canadian relatives with my two-year old son. I always remember having to stand for “God Save the Queen” prior to the start of the film in the Canadian movie theater.
The next film I watched was the farcical comedy Comrade X staring Clark Gable and Hedy Lamarr. The story is about an American reporter smuggling news out of Soviet Moscow who blackmailed into helping a beautiful Communist leave the country. McKinley B. "Mac" Thompson (Clark Gable), American reporter in Moscow, smuggles out uncensored news under the alias "Comrade X," but hotel valet Vanya discovers his secret. Vanya fears for the safety of his daughter Golubka ("Theodore" – played by Hedy Lamarr) and blackmails Mac into helping her leave the country. Mac is happier about his task once he meets lovely Theodore, but can he convince her of his sincerity? The anti-communist humor becomes alternately grim and farcical.
While not a “classic” film it was fun with its satirical humor depicting the evils of Soviet Communism and life in the Soviet Union under the tyranny of Stalin. The film ends with Gable and Lamarr in the United States watching a ball game between the Brooklyn Dodgers and the Cincinnati Reds with Lamarr (once a dedicated Communist) jumping for joy when the Dodgers beat the “Reds.”
The third film was real humdinger of a 1943 Communist propaganda film called Mission to Moscow. The movie, starring Walter Huston, was made in response to a request by Franklin D. Roosevelt, and was one of the movies famously targeted by the House Committee on Un-American Activities. It chronicles the experiences of the second American ambassador to the Soviet Union, Joseph E. Davies.
Mission to Moscow is a book by the former U.S. Ambassador to the Soviet Union Joseph E. Davies published by Simon and Schuster in 1941. It was adapted into a film directed by Michael Curtiz in 1943.
The movie, starring Walter Huston, was made in response to a request by Franklin D. Roosevelt, and was one of the movies famously targeted by the House Committee on Un-American Activities. It chronicles the experiences of the second American ambassador to the Soviet Union, Joseph E. Davies. The movie covers the political machinations in Moscow just before the start of the war and presents Stalin's Russia in a very favorable light. So much so, that the movie was cited years later by the House Un-American Activities Commission (HUAC) and was largely responsible for the screenwriter, Howard Koch being blacklisted.
The movie chronicles Ambassador Davies' impressions of the Soviet Union, his meetings with Stalin, and his overall opinion of the Soviet Union and its ties with the United States. It is made in faux-documentary style, beginning with Davies meeting with President Franklin D. Roosevelt to discuss his new appointment as United States ambassador to the Soviet Union. It continues to show the Davies' family's trip by boat to Moscow, with stops in Europe
The movie chronicles Ambassador Davies' impressions of the Soviet Union, his meetings with Stalin, and his overall opinion of the Soviet Union and its ties with the United States. It is made in faux-documentary style, beginning with Davies meeting with President Franklin D. Roosevelt to discuss his new appointment as United States ambassador to the Soviet Union. It continues to show the Davies' family's trip by boat to Moscow, with stops in Europe.
Davies is shown witnessing the famous show trials conducted by Stalin in the 1930s (known as the Moscow Trials), which are portrayed as trials of Fifth Columnists working for Germany and Japan.
The voice-overs continue throughout the film, interspersing storyline with Davies' opinions. The basis of the film's narrative focuses on the journey of Davies and his family. First, their physical journey from the United States to the Soviet Union. And, second, their less tangible journey from skeptics of communism and the Soviet Union into converts and enthusiasts. The narrative of the movie and the book are almost identical.
Mission to Moscow was the first pro-Soviet Hollywood film of its time and was followed by others, including Samuel Goldwyn's The North Star (1943), MGM’s Song of Russia (1944), United Artists’ Three Russian Girls (1943), Columbia’s The Boy from Stalingrad (1943) and Counter-Attack (1945).
It was Roosevelt himself who approved the creation of the film version of Mission to Moscow, even meeting with Davies several times (July, October, and November of 1942 and March 1943) during the film's production and discussing its progress.
As part of his contract with Warner Brothers, Davies had absolute right of control over the script, and could veto any dialogue not to his liking.
During production, Office of War Information officials reviewed screenplay revisions and prints of the film and commented on them. By reviewing the scripts and prints, OWI officials exercised authority over Mission to Moscow, ensuring that it promoted the "United Nations" theme. An administration official advised the film's producers to offer explanations for the Nazi-Soviet Pact and the Red Army's invasion of Finland. After reading the final script, in November 1942 the OWI expressed its hope that Mission to Moscow would "make one of the most remarkable pictures of this war" and "a very great contribution to the war information program."
The OWI report on Mission to Moscow concluded that it would:
“..be a most convincing means of helping Americans to understand their Russian allies. Every effort has been made to show that Russians and Americans are not so very different after all. The Russians are shown to eat well and live comfortably, which will be a surprise to many Americans.[6] The leaders of both countries desire peace and both possess a blunt honesty of address and purpose. One of the best services performed by this picture is the presentation of Russian leaders, not as wild-eyed madmen, but as far-seeing, earnest, responsible statesmen. They have proved very good neighbors, and this picture will help to explain why, as well as to encourage faith in the feasibility of post-war cooperation”
Government information specialists were equally enthusiastic about the completed print. Judging it "a magnificent contribution" to wartime propaganda, the OWI believed the picture would "do much to bring understanding of Soviet international policy in the past years and dispel the fears which many honest persons have felt with regard to our alliance with Russia." That was particularly so since "the possibility for the friendly alliance of the Capitalist United States and the Socialist Russia is shown to be firmly rooted in the mutual desire for peace of the two great countries."
The movie, made during World War II, showed the Soviet Union under Joseph Stalin in an extremely positive light. Completed in late April 1943, the film was, in the words of Robert Buckner, the film's producer, "an expedient lie for political purposes, glossily covering up important facts with full or partial knowledge of their false presentation." It whitewashed the Moscow trials, rationalized Moscow's participation in the Nazi-Soviet Pact and its unprovoked invasion of Finland, and portrayed the Soviet Union as a non-totalitarian state that was moving towards the American democratic model, a Soviet Union committed to internationalism. There was no mention of the death by starvation of a million Ukrainians due to collectivization of their farms nor the partition of Poland under Stalin.
The book was vague on the guilt or innocence of defendants in the Moscow trials, but the final screenplay portrayed the defendants as undeniably guilty. It also showed the purges as an attempt by Stalin to rid his country of pro-German fifth columnists. The fifth columnists are described in the film as acting on behalf of Germany and Japan. The film even contains "a quarter-hour dedicated to arguing that Leon Trotsky was a Nazi agent."
In the film, Davies proclaims at the end of the trial scene: “Based on twenty years’ trial practice, I’d be inclined to believe these confessions.”
Also, there are many anachronisms. For example, the trial with Nikolai Bukharin and Mikhail Tukhachevsky are depicted as occurring at the same time, but in reality the trial with Bukharin was two years after the execution of Tukhachevsky. Tukhachevsky and Tymoshenko are marshals at the same time, but Tukhachevsky was executed in 1937 and Tymoshenko became marshal of the USSR in 1940.
Mission to Moscow has been "universally despised" by critics. However, there have been a few notable exceptions. The critic for the New York Times, future McCarthy opponent Bosley Crowther a useful idiot, found the film's attempts to rehabilitate Stalin believable:
“Based entirely on the personal observations reported by Mr. Davies in his book, it will obviously prove offensive to those elements which have challenged his views. Particularly will it anger the so-called Trotskyites with its visual re-enactment of the famous "Moscow trials". For it puts into the record for millions of moviegoers to grasp an admission that the many "purged" generals and other leaders were conspirators in a plot.”
Similarly, Leonard Maltin, another useful idiot, gave the film three and a half stars.
Mission to Moscow was not a commercial success. Although Warner Brothers spent $250,000 advertising the film before its release on April 30, 1943, the company lost around $600,000 overall at the final accounting. Mission to Moscow's numerous factual inaccuracies and outright false portrayals of Soviet leaders and events resulted in criticism from those on both the left and the right of the political spectrum. According to Jesse Walker of Reason Magazine, "it would be a terrible movie even if its politics weren't so repulsive: It's stiffly acted, poorly plotted, padded with stock footage, and just generally clumsy. But it's a must for fans of propaganda kitsch."
The House Committee on Un-American Activities would later cite Mission to Moscow as one of the three noted examples of pro-Soviet films made by Hollywood, the other two being The North Star and Song of Russia. It's been called "unquestionably the most blatant piece of pro-Stalinist propaganda ever offered by the American mass media."
In 1950, the film became an object of attention by members of Congress, who saw it as pro-Soviet propaganda. Davies was largely silent on his role in the film, though he did submit a letter to the House Committee on Un-American Activities Committee (HCUA) in 1947. Called to testify under oath before Congress, Jack Warner at first claimed that the film was made at the request of Davies, who with the approval of FDR had asked Warner Brothers to make the film (this version of the facts was confirmed by Davies' letter as well). Warner later recanted this version, stating that Harry Warner first read Mission to Moscow and then contacted Davies to discuss movie rights. [Source: Wikipedia]
While watching this film I wavered from anger to laughing. The anger was due to the ignorance and lies pushed on the audience by Davies and the filmmakers. By 1943 the American people had been given plenty of evidence as to the tyranny and cruelty of the Stalin regime. This film flew in the face of all historical facts known at the time. Only a useful idiot or fellow traveler could have possibly bought into the films message. Yet the American Communist Party thought it was great.
The laugh ability stemmed from the corny lines and Soviet archival propaganda films used throughout the film to show the wonderful, happy workers, the stores filled with consumer goods, the dams and hydroelectric plants, and the wheat fields with giant harvesting machines working in tandem to bring the crop while people were starving in Moscow and Leningrad. What a farce of propaganda this film was.
Of course at the time the western allies were building a case to support the Soviet Union in the war against Germany. I can understand that. But the heavy-handed manipulation of historical facts was a farce.
Now we get to the point of this blog — the Obama Truth Squads and their indoctrination of our school children. They are just like the tactics used by the Young Communist League and Hitler Youth.
The left loves to talk about how America has been historically guilty of it. Every time a kid stands up, puts his hand over his heart, and recites the Pledge of Allegiance, he is being manipulated to love this country of ours, overshadowing the past American imperialist and human rights crimes that kids should be focused on.
And the indoctrination doesn't end there, they claim. Once these apple pie-loving robots leave the secondary schools, they continue their right-wing education on the airwaves of talk radio, where independent instructors are hired by private companies to compensate for the learning that they fail to get in those state-sponsored universities. Poor Joe Six-pack, don'tcha know, didn't have the benefit of learning the truths of the world from a college professor whose "coming-of-age" years could best be described as a montage of group sex and psychedelic acid trips set to "Time of the Season" by The Zombies.
Yet when educational institutions are systematically teaching their young children to chant phrases supporting Barack Obama's political agenda — well, there's just no harm in that. Schoolchildren singing in support of the notion of "spreading the wealth around": "Hooray, Mr. President! We honor your great plans to make this country's economy number one again!" Children too young to know the meaning or implications of Obama's proposed "change" involving expansive government infrastructure, yet creepily singing: "Obama's gonna change it, Obama's gonna lead 'em, we're gonna change it, and rearrange it." And most recently, children innocently singing the “nonpartisan phrase” "Who do we know is the man? Barack Obama is our man! He's our man, yes he can!"
All this, though it's all innocent in the eyes of the left. After all, don't you remember the schoolchildren singing: "Who's the greatest in the land? Why, Bush, of course, he's our man!" You don't? It never happened? Oh well, that doesn't matter. Because now Barack Obama is president, and you're just supposed to support him.
Of course, Talk Radio U. teaches those conservative robots to be wary about schoolchildren being uniformly instructed to sing praises to the president. Sure, Barack Obama takes opportunities to pitch increased federal education spending to schoolchildren in hopes they might get their archaic old parents on the trolley with the whole "hope and change" thing. But that doesn't mean he's trying to charge their thoughts with his brand of politics. No big deal, right?
Wrong, wrong, wrong. It is manipulation of the highest order — indoctrination meant to support the politicians and positions of the radical left. And it's evolving. It's not just in the mainstream media anymore. It's not just in the public schools. It's soon to be on every social network — the greatest propaganda campaign ever tweeted. It is just described as "grassroots communication."
ABC News reports:
The Obama campaign is today beginning a new effort to enlist and educate at least 2 million supporters for a "grassroots communications team" they're calling the Truth Team.
"The goal is to ensure that when Republicans attack President Obama's record, grassroots supporters can take ownership of the campaign and share the facts with the undecided voters in their lives," the campaign said in a statement.
Of course, grassroots implies an initiative by the people, bottom-up, and free of top-down influence, which is a curious description considering that this is actually an Obama campaign initiative. But anyway, here's how this unapologetically works. A nonpartisan, independent reader comes across this article. He reads in this post something that doesn't exactly paint Obama in a good light. Better do some fact-checking, he thinks. He goes to an Obama Truth Team outlet, like Media Maters or Move On.Org, online, saying, "I heard that Barack Obama wants children to take the political ideology they're learning at school home to challenge their parents' ideas." The millions of Obama's trained Truth experts, fed its "truth" by the ruling political regime and eerily reminiscent of the Ministry of Truth in the dystopian novel 1984, reply, "Of course not. That's just a conservative lie meaning to dress our administration with the trappings of totalitarianism." This is similar to the way the American Communist Party whitewashed the tyranny of Stalin through the 40’s. 50’s, and 60’s and the education campaign of the Nazis.
The Nazi policies towards young people could be viewed as one of the most successful aspects of Nazi Germany. This is because of a variety of reasons. The Nazis took advantage of the need for German youth groups and used what teenagers wanted to slip in Nazi ideals, took over the education system to portray Nazi views, and used the school system to glorify war; they also often alienated children from their parents. However it did have its flaws as there were several groups of youths who opposed Hitler such as the "Swing Movement" and the "Edelweiss Pirates."
The Hitler Youth group played a major role in Nazi control of youths especially in 1939 when it became compulsory to attend. The Nazis took what the children wanted such as group activities, hiking, camping and singing and added in extra activities such as marching, learning about Nazi policies and practicing military exercises. Many of the members were merely drawn to the youth group due to the leisure opportunities it offered and some just did not have a choice as other organizations were shut down and made illegal.
As the Nazis wanted to control each aspect of a child's life they realized that education played a very important role. They altered textbooks to include Nazi history and also Nazi views of History. Students were taught about the injustice of German government and how the Jews were slowly taking over. The National Socialist party also managed to glorify the military in each school subject. They also made sure that the students had to study race and ideology every day.
As the Nazis needed to control each aspect of a child's life to have full hold on the child they realized that it was a necessity to control a child's home or family life, in many cases this meant isolating a child from his/her family. It became increasingly common in Germany for the children of the household to be much more pro-Nazi than their parents. This is because the children grew up being controlled by Nazi forces and therefore found such things as routine household checks normal, whereas older family members found it an invasion of privacy. This often resulted in family disputes and caused unsettledness. This was also caused by the fact that the Nazi party always expected to be put before everything, even before your family.
Of course, I link evidence above of Obama doing this very thing, and the horse's mouth should absolve me. But that doesn't matter. Why do any thinking for yourself when the Obama's Truth Team can do it for you?
There is a well-known maxim that goes: "A lie, told often enough, becomes truth." And with millions of government-sanctioned propaganda distributors charged with taking the government's message to various social media in today's world, it can spread millions upon millions of lies each day. It seems that technology has vastly improved the efficiency with which an ambitious and power-hungry government can disperse the lies it disguises as "truth."
Every day millions of parents trundle their children off to the public school system for 6 to 8 hours each day believing they are getting an education and not worrying about them as the schools take control of their lives. In fact study after study and test score after test score shows that they are not being education for all the money being spent. They are being indoctrinated with left-wing ideology that contradicts our founding fathers, history, and Constitution. They are learning about class warfare, global warming, green energy, how we raped the Native Americans, how we stole the Southwest from Mexico, and other left-wing clap-trap.
They are being force feed unhealthy food by government inspectors and incompetent and pervert teachers are protected by the union. They are taken to left-wing demonstration and taught how unfair capitalism and free enterprise is. They are indoctrinated in atheism, homosexuality, and transgenders. They are forbidden under penalty of expulsion from hugging, exchanging Christmas and Valentine’s cards and that our rights stem from government not from God. As Adolph Hitler said, “Give me a child until he is seven and he is mine.”
Obama, a skilled community organizer and follower of Saul Alinsky, knows this just as Hitler and Lenin did. His supporters will fall in step with his radical agenda of transformation and one day we will wake up to the fact that he has captured the minds and souls of our children. This is why he speaks at middle and high schools where he can draw on the emotions of these young uneducated minds.
Unless we take back our public education and begin to kick out the union teachers with their radical left-wing agenda and left-wing educated academics we will be falling off the cliff as we follow the Nazis and Communists into oblivion.
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