Denis Nowell Pritt: What are the Communists? Our capitalist Press and propaganda has for so many years built up a "Communist bogey" that for most non-political people a Communist is a mythical monstrosity. He is either just a man who is born lazy, or an agitator paid by foreign gold, who is remarkably successful in persuading honest and intelligent workers to strike for no reason; he is in any case anti-social and unpatriotic. The real truth is very different; the Communists in every country have numbered in their ranks some of the most highly skilled and conscientious workers, scientists, teachers, and writers; they are on the whole well informed and read The Times and the Financial News assiduously! They spend a good part of their leisure in mastering the intricacies of Marxist philosophy, in studying and seeking to improve social conditions, and in Trade Union and political activities. They include people of wide general culture and lively intellect. And above all, they are international in their outlook, sympathy, and philosophy. All the gangsters and fools who were welcomed into the Nazi party are assiduously excluded from the Communist ranks. Their professional politicians live on limited salaries and must maintain a high standard of personal conduct; (this rule is particularly strict in the Soviet Union). For a practical example of the difference between a Communist and a Nazi, one may recall the superb contrast of Dimitrov and Goering during the course of the Reichstag Fire Trial in 1933. wordsmith.social/protestation/…
E. P. Thompson: The foulest damage to our political life comes not from the 'secrets' which they hide from us, but from the little bits of half-truth and disinformation which they do tell us. wordsmith.social/protestation/…
Gramsci: Above all, the worker must resolutely reject any solidarity with a bourgeois newspaper. And he must always, always, always remember that the bourgeois newspaper (whatever its hue) is an instrument of struggle motivated by ideas and interests that are contrary to his. Everything that is published is influenced by one idea: that of serving the dominant class, and which is ineluctably translated into a fact: that of combating the laboring class. And in fact, from the first to the last line the bourgeois newspaper smells of and reveals this preoccupation. wordsmith.social/protestation/…
Bertrand Russell: Justice between classes is difficult where there is a class that believes itself to have a right to more than a proportionate share of power or wealth. wordsmith.social/protestation/…
Bertrand Russell: In the middle ages when there was an epidemic of the Plague, people crowded into the churches to pray, thinking that their piety would move their god to take pity on them; in fact, the crowds in ill-ventilated buildings provided ideal conditions for the spread of the infection. If your means are to be adequate to your ends, you must have knowledge, not merely superstition or prejudice. wordsmith.social/protestation/…
George Orwell: At any given moment there is an orthodoxy, a body of ideas which it is assumed that all right-thinking people will accept without question. It is not exactly forbidden to say this, that or the other, but it is “not done” to say it, just as in mid-Victorian times it was “not done” to mention trousers in the presence of a lady. Anyone who challenges the prevailing orthodoxy finds himself silenced with surprising effectiveness. A genuinely unfashionable opinion is almost never given a fair hearing, either in the popular press or in the highbrow periodicals. wordsmith.social/protestation/…
Neil Postman: Disinformation does not mean false information. It means misleading information - misplaced, irrelevant, fragmented or superficial information - information that creates the illusion of knowing something, but which in fact leads one away from knowing. wordsmith.social/protestation/…
Noam Chomsky: The media want to maintain their intimate relation to state power. To do that, you've got to play the game, and playing the game means telling their lies, serving as their disinformation apparatus. wordsmith.social/protestation/…
Michel Chossudovsky: Carl Bernstein's 1977 article in Rolling Stone entitled "The CIA and the Media" exposed that more than 400 American journalists had secretly carried out assignments for the Central Intelligence Agency, according to documents on file at CIA headquarters. (1950-1977). Some of these journalists' relationships with the Agency were tacit; some were explicit. Reporters shared their notebooks with the CIA. Editors shared their staffs. Some of the journalists were Pulitzer Prize winners, Most were less exalted: foreign correspondents who found that their association with the Agency helped their work. Tthe CIA's use of the American news media has been much more extensive than Agency officials have acknowledged publicly or in closed sessions with members of Congress. wordsmith.social/protestation/…
Edward Herman: Once an enemy is demonized the media display a form of hysteria that helps mobilize the public in support of whatever forms of violence the government wishes to carry out. They become a virtual propaganda arm of the government, joining with it in the common fight against "another Hitler." Under these conditions remarkable structures of disinformation can be built, institutionalized, and remain parts of historic memory even in the face of ex post confutations, which are kept out of sight. wordsmith.social/protestation/…
Eric Zuesse: Media corporations function like giant magnifying glasses that roam the world, highlighting facts that benefit corporate-friendly parties, leaders, allied states and voices. They also magnify facts that undermine and harm corporate-unfriendly parties, leaders, groups and voices. wordsmith.social/protestation/…
Brandon Turbeville: A few alternative media outlets have begun to question whether or not certain mainstream media outlets are actually connected to the Deep State, most notably the CIA. An unimaginable scale of disinformation is being released and promoted throughout mainstream media channels on a daily basis, all propagandizing the public to go along with the desired direction of the American establishment. wordsmith.social/protestation/…
Federico Pieraccini: Print and broadcast media outside the US play their role in contributing to a wave of disinformation, omissions and lies in the interests of US propaganda. wordsmith.social/protestation/…
Hajo Meyer: If we want to stay really human beings, we must get up and call the Zionists what they are: Nazi criminals. wordsmith.social/protestation/…
Lenin: The more violent the slander and lies against the Bolsheviks these days, the more calmly must we, while refuting the lies and slander, reflect upon the historical interrelation of events and the political, i.e., class, significance of the revolution’s present course. wordsmith.social/protestation/…
Michael Parenti: There is no free and independent press in the United States. The notion of a "free market of ideas" is as mythical as the notion of a free market of goods. wordsmith.social/protestation/…
Bertrand Russell: Fear is the main source of superstition, and one of the main sources of cruelty. To conquer fear is the beginning of wisdom. wordsmith.social/protestation/…
Bertrand Russell: The fundamental cause of the trouble is that in the modern world the stupid are cocksure while the intelligent are full of doubt. wordsmith.social/protestation/…
Ulrike Meinhof: Protest is when I say this does not please me. Resistance is when I ensure what does not please me occurs no more. wordsmith.social/protestation/…
Ulrike Meinhof: If you throw a stone, it's a crime. If a thousand stones are thrown, that's political. If you set fire to a car it's a crime; if a hundred cars are set on fire that's political. wordsmith.social/protestation/…
Harpal Brar: As for the ‘democratic’ imperialist powers, they had done everything possible to rearm Germany, to free it of the shackles of the Treaty of Versailles and to help the Hitlerites gain power as the only possible bastion against Bolshevism. wordsmith.social/protestation/…
Harpal Brar: In spite of their repeated promises, Great Britain and the US did not open a second front against Germany until June 1944 – at a time when it had become clear that the Soviet Union was on the way to defeating Germany single-handedly. The D-Day landings were more an effort to prevent the Red Army liberating western Europe than a contribution to the defeat of nazism. If one listens to imperialist myths, one gets the impression that it was Anglo-American imperialism that defeated Nazi Germany, but the truth is that the Red Army and the Soviet people made the most decisive contribution to the defeat of nazism. The price of this victory was terrible for the Soviet Union. Twenty-seven million Soviet citizens, including 7.5 million soldiers, lost their lives. By comparison, the US only lost 300,000 men, and the losses of the British empire reached the number of 353,652 men, with not more than 224,723 for Great Britain. To this number one must add 60,000 dead from the civilian population. wordsmith.social/protestation/…
Lenin: The majority of the people are with us. The majority of the working and oppressed people all over the world are with us. Ours is the cause of justice. Our victory is assured. wordsmith.social/protestation/…
Albert Einstein: Your ancestors dragged these black people from their homes by force; and in the white man's quest for wealth and an easy life they have been ruthlessly suppressed and exploited, degraded into slavery. The modern prejudice against Negroes is the result of the desire to maintain this unworthy condition. wordsmith.social/protestation/…
Stalin: Let the bourgeois Trotskyite gossips chatter about the peasantry being counter-revolutionary by nature, about its mission to restore capitalism in the U.S.S.R. The facts show that these gentlemen slander the U.S.S.R. and the Soviet peasantry. wordsmith.social/protestation/…
Stalin: Strikes, boycott, parliamentarism, meetings and demonstrations are all good forms of struggle as means for preparing and organising the proletariat. But not one of these means is capable of abolishing existing inequality. All these means must be concentrated in one principal and decisive means; the proletariat must rise and launch a determined attack upon the bourgeoisie in order to destroy capitalism to its foundations. This principal and decisive means is the socialist revolution. wordsmith.social/protestation/…
Lenin: We must follow the rule: Better fewer, but better. We must follow the rule: Better get good human material in two or even three years than work in haste without hope of getting any at all. wordsmith.social/protestation/…
Paul Robeson: (The USSR) is home to me. I feel more kinship to the Russian people under their new society than I ever felt anywhere else. It is obvious that there is no terror here, that all the masses of every race are contented and support their government. wordsmith.social/protestation/…
Lenin: The European war is a tremendous historical crisis, the beginning of a new epoch. Like any crisis, the war has aggravated deep-seated antagonisms and brought them to the surface, tearing asunder all veils of hypocrisy, rejecting all conventions and deflating all corrupt or rotting authorities. wordsmith.social/protestation/…
Stalin: We Communists are people of a special mould. We are made of a special stuff. We are those who form the army of the great proletarian strategist, the army of Comrade Lenin. There is nothing higher than the honour of belonging to this army. There is nothing higher than the title of member of the Party whose founder and leader was Comrade Lenin. It is not given to everyone to be a member of such a party. It is the sons of the working class, the sons of want and struggle, the sons of incredible privation and heroic effort who before all should be members of such a party. That is why the Party of the Leninists, the Party of the Communists, is also called the Party of the working class. wordsmith.social/protestation/…
Fidel Castro: China is no longer the China of the feudal lords, nor the constant victim of the aggressions of colonial and imperial powers. This is the new China that emerges from the victorious national liberation struggle and the socialist revolution, exploits unsurpassed in human history. Everything was carried out under the immortal ideas of Marxism-Leninism and their wise application to China’s conditions. The path China has had to travel following liberation has been long, difficult, and risky in a world where imperialism exercised and still exercises power and hegemonic influence. Colossal successes have been attained. The era of disasters and famines has been left behind. Only socialism could have been capable of the miracle of feeding; clothing; providing with jobs, education, and healthcare; raising life expectancy to 70; and providing decorous shelter for more than 1 billion human beings in a minute portion of the planet’s arable land. Thanks to such a feat at this difficult time for the world’s peoples, over one-fifth of humanity remains under the banner of socialism. wordsmith.social/protestation/…
