1953, #5, p. 10
There is weeping by the rivers of Babylon, especially the Hudson. The “Joint” is plucked, revealing itself to be a vulture dressed up in luxuriant feathers of charity and philanthropy. The American secret service has suffered a catastrophic failure. The wind carried away many of those hundred million dollars which Truman assigned to spying and sabotage activity in the people’s democracies and the Soviet Union. It did not work out, it did not succeed, it collapsed!
Bourgeois newspapers ooze tears of ink. Reactionary radio commentators whine, asking for sympathy, and curse in despair. From Jerusalem to London spread the confused mumblings of leaders of Zionist organizations, forced to try to recall before the world their services, of which there are none, once more in vain tugging on the mask of virtuous benefactors to hide beneath it the grin of an American gangster. In the wasps’ nest of reaction, commotion and despondency reign.
We are a compassionate people, but in this case we say: let them wail, this does not move us to pity and does not redeem them! It does not move us to pity because we know the true worth of their business and their tears; it does not redeem them, because they belong to a class of those not even the grave can redeem. There is historical justice in this, that everything is easy for us, while everything is difficult for them. We go from success to success despite all of their attempts to hinder us; they go from defeat to defeat despite all their vile machinations. For us there is a revered and honest past, and a radiant future; they merely have a past, and it is putrid.
The exposure of a group of killer-doctors shocked the hearts of all honest people. Ordinary human consciousness accepts with difficulty the fact that the most noble, humane profession of healing was used for foul murder. On the bloody account of these monsters are the lives of comrades loved by the people and the Party A. A. Zhdanov and A. S. Shcherbakov. Previously another group of killer-doctors murdered the distinguished Soviet statesmen V. V. Kuibyshev and V. R. Menzhinsky and the outstanding Russian author Maxim Gorky. Cases of such hopeless savagery, such depths of moral degradation are unknown to history. But in the case of American reactionaries and their hirelings, they have their own logic -- the logic of the doomed. They fear their inexorably approaching end. It is worthwhile reading their newspapers and listening to the utterances of reactionary figures, to clarify what one can expect of them.
The New York [Brooklyn] newspaper “Eagle” writes: “In order to respond to the communist challenge, it is necessary to use force and to some extent brutality.” Let us recall that “the communist challenge” was a challenge for peaceful competition between two systems. But they fear this competition, because neither in the cultural field nor in the economic field have they anything to oppose world communism, so they shout “Attack!” The Italian tabloid “Popolo” quotes the words of the “Christian-Democrat” [Guido] Gonella: “It is time to be done with mere verbal anticommunism. It is necessary to find new tools to fight communism.” The conclusion is: “Attack!” The lackeys on the footboards sing the same song as the bosses. But both the lackeys and the bosses are equally afraid to get their reward. Hitler once tasted [it] and died like a rat from poison; Mussolini screwed up his courage and was hanged upside down by his feet. The family of socialist countries, with the Soviet Union at its head, makes a powerful force, which is not afraid of threats. The business of the capitalist world is evil, and it chooses as weapons lies, slander, falsification, ambush, treason, and sabotage.
Here is how their policy looks from its façade.
General Ridgeway says: “We are firmly resolved to protect such values as liberty and peace.”
Congressman Rayburn agrees: “We are talking about nothing less than saving world civilization from extermination by Soviet Russia.”
But here is their [actual] policy of dirty behavior.
From “American Scholar” magazine: “After the war Russia presents itself as the only country blocking our path to world domination.”
From “Nation’s Business” magazine: “Not a single official will acknowledge it, but we are preparing spies, saboteurs, and specialists in the most dangerous forms of psychological warfare. They are being trained to blow up bridges, railways and military facilities; they are being taught how to use all types of weaponry, American and foreign.”
Such are “western values” in practice; such are “the saviors of civilization.” With one hand, American political leaders paint heavenly pictures, but with the other, they pour poison and plunge a knife into the back of humanity. But the camouflage painting by American politicians has not yielded the results they were counting on. Columnist Drew Pearson writes in the “Washington Post” that America “has become the most unpopular country in the world today. In some places, we are even hated.” The “New York Times” is forced to admit that American radio propaganda “is criticized everywhere for several reasons: it all has too much of an obvious propagandistic character, it is all too boastful, it too often relies on the hard sell, and displays too much of an ostentatious quality.”
Thus the American “painters” fail. The masters of dark activities crawl out onto the stage.