5 Times the New York Times Defended Communism
The New York Times confused many on Tuesday publishing an opinion piece calling for “fully automated luxury communism” (?), a supposed “new politics” to liberate us from disease, starvation, and boredom.
Communism is nothing new; it is a nearly 200-year-old death cult that has taken 100 million lives, a low estimate given that communist states like China, North Korea, and Cuba continue to add to the death count on a daily basis – and the fact that the ideology has spread even further to places like Venezuela, South Africa, and Sri Lanka through its cuddlier alter ego, “socialism” or “democratic socialism.”
Only slightly younger than the political dinosaur that is communism is the New York Times‘ insistence on publishing propaganda that defends it. Aaron Bastani’s asteroid mining fever dream is merely the latest in a century of apologism, revisionist history, and fake news designed to promote authoritarianism. Below, seven of boundless examples of America’s most prominent newspaper using its rights in a free society to glamorize, fetishize (literally), or otherwise defend violent Marxist totalitarianism.
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‘Happy Birthday, Karl Marx. You Were Right!’
A real headline in a newspaper claiming to be objective and using the tagline, “the truth is worth it,” this opinion piece claims that “educated liberal opinion is today more or less unanimous in its agreement that Marx’s basic thesis … is correct.” The piece does not specify if “liberal” is being used in the American sense of “leftist” or in the more common global way of meaning “anti-authoritarian,” though the context suggests the latter. Marx’s claim that capitalism is destructive and will end itself has no serious naysayers, the piece declares.
The boldest statement in this birthday celebration, however, is the blatant dismissal of the fact that every real-world attempt to apply Marxism has failed. Marx’s entire goal of a “classless and stateless society” – and the millions killed to impose it, don’t matter – or, as the piece puts it, “their philosophical relevance remains doubtful, to say the least.”
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The Original Fake News: The NYT Invents Fidel Castro
In 1957, Cuban terrorist Fidel Castro, architect of the 1953 Moncada barracks attack, was all but washed up. He had, perhaps, 20 supporters backing him. He was hiding from the larger political turmoil on the island in the Sierra Maestra, waiting for various political factions to destroy each other before swooping in. Leaders like José Antonio Echeverría and Frank País were far more successfully challenging President Fulgencio Batista, their political careers ended by their untimely deaths.
Then the New York Times decided to intervene, publishing a blatantly false story claiming that “General Batista cannot possibly hope to suppress the Castro revolt.” The author, Herbert Matthews – an American leftist with a clearly woeful expertise on Cuba – alleged that Castro was “fighting hard and successfully in the rugged, almost impenetrable Sierra Maestra” (against who? Batista was fighting in the cities) and that “thousands of men and women are heart and soul with Fidel Castro.” The “rebel leader of Cuba’s youth” was inevitable as the country’s new leader.
Two years later, when Castro finally made Batista flee the country, he bragged that the “hundreds” of men that Matthews reported were behind him were actually the same 20 men marching in a circle around Matthews, too dense to notice. He faked “messengers” interrupting his talk with Matthews claiming to bring news of Castro battalions that didn’t exist. It was, Castro said, his “greatest ploy.”
Read the entire article HERE.
To be fair, one of pre-Castro Cuba’s leading publications, Bohemia magazine, did much to promote the “revolution,” including concocting the still-repeated lie about the 20,000 people supposedly killed by Batista.