The grand deception

Those who fear Russia are easily mocked. "The Russians Are Coming, the Russians Are Coming," is on video. Watch it and laugh. Concern about communist subversion is also mocked. All you have to do is remember what a bad egg Joseph McCarthy was, if you remember at all. To allay any lingering doubt or fear, go to Russia and take the KGB tour. See all the rusting submarines and missile boats you want. You can even see rusty signs in front of Russia's ABM radar at Sofrino.

If you subscribed to "National Review" when it was still under the influence of Whittaker Chambers and James Burnham, you may remember a completely different magazine than exists today. It's funny how vigilance and a sense of danger can be turned into smug self-satisfaction over time.

Twenty years ago, a Russian KGB defector named Anatoliy Golitsyn went to see William F. Buckley, the editor of "National Review." Golitsyn needed help on writing a book with the title "New Lies for Old." It was about Russia's strategy of faking the collapse of communism in Eastern Europe. As it happened, Buckley showed Golitsyn the door.

After the "patron saint of American conservatives" closed the door on the truth about communist strategy, few would have the courage to look back and say that Golitsyn was right. The changes in Eastern Europe have been deceptive, orchestrated and calculated from on high. The strategy has been to disarm the West and get communist bloc countries inside NATO – to subvert the alliance from within.

Consider the Czech Republic as an example. Having entered NATO, it is yet controlled by the old communists who are waiting for a signal from Moscow. That's all it will take for them to reverse the changes that have taken place since 1989. Yesterday, I received a letter from a politically active Czech citizen, Hana Catalanova. "I know how hard this is to make people see," she wrote. "You might think it is better over here ... no, it is not!"

The big lie of 1989, the grand deception, was cynically calculated to take advantage of modern apathy and ignorance: "... we are actually living our lives in such lies, and people don't care," wrote Catalanova. "What about the next generation, our kids?"

Hana worries about freedom and the truth. Explaining how the communists retained control after the Velvet Revolution of 1989, she noted, "The problem here is that too many people were involved and engaged in shady deals with the secret police and corruption ... betraying their friends, fellow workers, next door neighbors. And this is such a small country."

America has a different excuse for turning its back on freedom and the truth. As I once told a leading Russian military defector who asked about America's unpatriotic attitudes, "They're too busy shopping and having fun."

The Czechs have another problem. "In towns and villages everyone knows everyone," explained Catalanova, "They are hiding their past behind the silence. They stay deaf to everything that doesn't concern them, because if they speak up, somebody might tell who they were before. I can tell you, it is all very depressing."

Hana Catalanova has written an important essay on the imprisonment of Captain Vladimir Hucin, a Czech official who has uncovered the truth about secret communist structures controlling important public institutions. "The whole world must know that communism is not dead," wrote Catalanova. "It is very much alive and threatens to overthrow the world democracies."

People here in America look around and wonder why the environmentalists are so strong, why business is under assault and rural property rights are no longer secure. They wonder why so many are teaching Marxist propaganda in schools and universities. Some of us cannot understand why our political leaders keep insisting on further military cutbacks as they continue to do business with the gangsters in Beijing and Moscow.

The short answer is: We've been subverted, infiltrated, duped and manipulated by communists and leftists. We have been too busy shopping and having fun to notice their "long march" through our institutions. We have been too absorbed in our careers and personal satisfactions. And now our country has its own hidden (or not so hidden) communist structures. As Russia and China prepare new missiles against us, our own state system allows itself to be unthinkingly nudged toward self-dissolution.

The danger is real, despite all the ridicule that comes to mind about "communists under every bush." Have you talked to your daughter's social studies teacher? Have you any idea where all this political correctness ultimately comes from?

If I joined the present chorus writing about shark attacks, the response to my column would be huge. But since I write about the advance of communism, about evidence that our Cold War enemy has been playing a trick on us, I get hardly any response at all. Americans have lost their sense of self preservation, their sense of history.

Do you really think that an enemy of more than four decades simply ran up the white flag because he couldn't "pay the bills"?

Of course, that's what you want to believe to keep your peace of mind. But this peace of mind is for fools. Give it up and get with the facts and testimony. The superficial reports on Russia, Chechnya, Eastern Europe and the collapse of communism are laced with falsehood and distortion. Such reports do not convey a real understanding of events.

French journalist Anne Nivat's book on the Chechin war has recently been translated into English. It deserves to be widely read, though few will understand its importance. Nivat disguised herself as a Chechin refugee and watched events close up. Many of the Chechins she interviewed felt the war was a Kremlin puppet show. "I'm ashamed for Western Europe, where you live in a world of lies," an elderly Chechin told Navat. "We are all victims, manipulated by the politicians in Moscow."

The same could be said for America.