FERRET-FACED FASCIST FIEND

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What’s more American than denigrating the un-American balderdash of Communism / Socialism? Nothing! And that’s why I have decided to do just that on this Fourth of July.

The June 20, 2011 edition of The New American magazine included an article written by Charles Scaliger titled “FRED KOCH: Oil Man Against Communism” which I found full of truisms about Communist viewpoints and tactics. I don’t know anything about Fred Koch, but my studies of the life and times of Senator Joseph McCarthy have naturally taught me plenty about Communism, and I can certainly confirm that Koch’s understanding was solid.

Following are some excerpts from the article that I suspect will be most valuable to the average reader who may not be so well informed about Communist aims and means. The entire article, however, can be found HERE.

The general thrust of the article pertains to Fred Koch’s business dealings in Russia during the early 1930s and the knowledge he gained about Communist dictatorships – their methods and their aims – while traveling with his Russian handler, a diminutive fellow named Jerome Livshitz. (I’m going to fight hard against the tremendous temptation I am feeling to make some comical and derogatory remark about Livshitz’s surname.)

“[Livshitz] told me that if his own mother stood in the way of the revolution he would strangle her with his bare hands,” Fred Koch once wrote. “This is the mark of a hard-core Communist. They will do anything — anything.”

Below is a photograph of Fred Koch on the left and business associate Jack Giles on the far right. The little ‘shitz in the middle is Jerome Livshitz. (Oops! I guess the temptation was just too great. But I tried to fight it, really I did. [;-)



Livshitz - now there’s a Ferret-Faced Fascist Friend Fiend if I ever saw one!

[My sincere thanks to The Great L.C., the blogger behind the blog DiscConnected, for making that photograph possible! ]

On to the excerpts:

[Fred] Koch was exposed to communism by precept as well as by experience, thanks to the unflagging evangelism of Jerome Livshitz, his handler during his time in the Soviet Union. Livshitz, like many elite Russian revolutionaries, was well educated and eager to debate the alleged merits of the Soviet system with his captive American audience. “In the months I traveled with [Livshitz] he gave me a liberal education in Communist techniques and methods,” Koch recalled:

He told me how the Communists were going to infiltrate the U.S.A. in the schools, universities, churches, labor unions, government, armed forces, and to use his words, “We will make you rotten to the core.” I believe that due to his American experience he was one of the original architects of the Communist plan of subversion of the U.S.A.

[Hmmm . . . no sign that the Commies ever succeeded in those aims, is there?]

But Livshitz — whose life had once been saved by capitalists who plucked him from beneath an automobile — suffered a no less indecorous end than many of Koch’s other Soviet associates; he was liquidated by Stalin in 1936.

But Koch was no reflexive fear-monger; he perceived, correctly as affairs have turned out, the comprehensive character of the communist threat. Where others saw only the military danger, Koch understood, thanks to the indiscreet boasting of Livshitz, that the communists’ aim was to conquer by subversion. He comprehended their patience and their willingness to appear to give ground tactically for strategic advantage. He perceived that the communists were masters at long-term planning:

“If you do not think dialectically, you are at the mercy of any trick they pull. They are working it all around the world today — the dialectic thrust and then retreat.

“When a Communist says he wants peace he means he wants Communism. When he says he wants “peaceful coexistence” he means he wants no outward violence while he bores from within and conquers you by treason and subversion.”

Koch warned that American institutions were honeycombed with communist subversives, from labor unions and tax-free foundations to universities and churches. Art and newsprint, radio and television — all these media had been transmuted into vehicles of communist propaganda.

“The United Nations … has been a rotten core of subversion. It is a haven for subversives and security risks. UNESCO has been spewing forth Communist and World government propaganda into our schools for years. The U.N. was conceived by the Russians during World War II as a device to continue collaboration with the United States which had proven so profitable to them.

The argument that the U.N. is an instrument of peace is entirely fallacious. Is there any indication that since the U.N. has been in existence there is any less war than formerly? As a matter of fact there are more arms, hatred, threats, brush fires and threats of war than there have ever been.... The U.N. will undoubtedly be one of the most important tools for the Communist take-over of America.... Let us give Red China a seat in the U.N. — our seat!!!!”

To those too young to remember the Cold War, some of Fred Koch’s concerns may seem anachronistic. After all, goes received wisdom, the Soviet Union and Eastern Bloc collapsed without a shot being fired, and freedom is now breaking out the world over. Yet America is less free now than at any time in her history, excepting perhaps the extreme regimentation during World War II. While we are still a far cry from the Soviet Union of Stalin, Americans now seem willing to tolerate comprehensive attacks on our liberty carried out in the name of a war on terror. ...

Where America once took pride in a laissez-faire business climate, businessmen and consumers alike seem to positively embrace the growing ascendancy of the federal government, with its legions of bureaucrats and regulators, over every facet of the economy. From perverted full-body patdowns in our airports to our newly socialized medical system, Americans — large numbers of them, at any rate — seem eager to participate in a Gadarene rush into full-blown socialism of a sort that would have made the Stalins and Khrushchevs of yesteryear proud.

[D]espite the demise of the Bolsheviks, their program for America, as a wispy little revolutionary explained it to [Koch] so long ago, is still very much in force. The process of subversion, corruption, and compromise of liberty continues apace, even if its authors are nowadays known (to the extent that they are recognized at all) by different names.

And what are those different names? Try “Democrats”, “Socialists”, “Progressives”, “Statists”,
“Collectivists”, “Fabianists”, and in too many instances, “Republicans” as well.

Jerome Livsihitz’s idealism naturally made him a sucker for unrealistic, unworkable, un-Godly Marxist dogma.

My prayer for America is:

“O God, please save us from the atheists and from the idealists. But most of all, dear God, please save us from the idealistic atheists!”



~ Stephen T. McCarthy

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