Legacy of Lies

How we got where we are today and why it matters

Most Americans believe communism no longer remains an issue. It died when the Berlin Wall fell, or so we have been told. As detailed in previous 2026 issues, though, nothing could be further from the truth. Instead of collapsing with the Berlin Wall, classic Marxism slyly morphed into cultural Marxism. Over the years, cultural adaptations have continued nonstop. Today’s manifestations of woke Marxism include the social justice movement; identity politics; victimhood culture; implicit bias training; and diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives. Sustainability activism is the latest permutation.

Why, then, is communism a non-issue for the majority of Americans? “This represents a total failure of our education system, not just in schools but also a basic dishonesty in our media and popular culture,” says Marion Smith, executive director of the Victims of Communism Memorial Foundation.¹ In other words, the story of communism in the United States is a big empty hole. Why has almost no one--not American history books, not the government, not the media—repaired this gap? Why isn’t everyone talking about Marxism? The answer lies in America’s lost history.

Regaining America’s lost history

Our lost U.S. history began nearly 100 years ago during the administration of Franklin Delano Roosevelt. Unlike prior presidents wary of communists, FDR saw communism as compatible with his vision of moving the U.S. toward socialism. He embraced a policy of “convergence.” During FDR’s 12-year reign, the U.S. federal government became infiltrated with Soviet secret agents and U.S. communists working aggressively to prioritize the USSR’s interests over those of the U.S.²

This truth was concealed until decades later when the former Soviet Union’s records were released. At the same time, declassified information from U.S. archives, including FBI and Senate records and the Venona decrypts, finally became available to the public.³ As researchers dug into the evidence, they uncovered something startling: Americans have been told a lot of lies. Here are highlights from the reckoning:

U.S. government infiltration. Since the 1930s Soviet agents and U.S. communists have infiltrated the U.S. federal government, stolen its secrets, and relentlessly transformed its policies to favor Moscow over the U.S. For instance, archival records indicate Soviet agent No. 19 was most likely Harry Hopkins, FDR’s closest advisor who lived in the White House. Betraying FDR’s trust, Hopkins intercepted cables meant for FDR, made U.S. policy as FDR grew increasingly ill, and facilitated shipments of atomic secrets and uranium to Russia. In addition to Hopkins, other U.S. officials—including Alger Hiss, Lauchlin Currie, Harry Dexter White, John Service and many more—expedited or let the communist infiltration happen. Many of these officials chose to keep the subversion under wraps.⁴

The historical fact is, secret Soviet forces had made massive incursions into the federal government following FDR’s first election in 1932 and reached every kind of inner sanctum during the United States’ wartime alliance with the Soviet Union (1941-45). The United States wasn’t just riddled by Communist agents; we were for all intents and purposes occupied by a small army—a small army being just what this kind of war requires. Expert estimates now peg the number of Americans assisting Soviet intelligence agencies during the 1930 and 1940s as exceeding five hundred. More than five hundred willing and variously able American traitors, many operating at the very highest levels of the federal government, with who knows how many more in support roles. This was a national security fiasco of magnitude that has never, ever entered national comprehension. —Diana West⁵

Media and textbook censorship. Communist penetration of the U.S. media skyrocketed under FDR. A host of communists, Soviet agents and pro-Soviet journalists in the United States advanced communist causes at the expense of U.S. democratic values and interests. This was supported and encouraged by officials in the Soviet-penetrated U.S. government. For instance, pro-communist U.S. reporters minimized the Nazi threat during the first two years of World War II, turning anti-Nazi only after Hitler invaded Russia. Simultaneously, our history was stolen by left-wing historians. Most history books published in the last 100 years completely omit major parts of American history. Required reading for America’s youth, these textbooks do not mention the communist penetration of the U.S. government initiated under FDR that persists to this day. They also fail to discuss the dangers of communism, the world’s deadliest ideology.⁶

McCarthyism myth. Practically everything we’ve been told about Senator Joseph McCarthy is false. Reports and testimonies from McCarthy’s 1950s investigations have been confirmed using Soviet and U.S. declassified records. McCarthy was right after all about the communist subversion of the U.S. government and the officials covering it up. Others validating this subversion include Elizabeth Bentley, John Bricker, Vladimir Bukovsky, William Bullitt, Whittaker Chambers, Robert Conquest, Martin Dies, George Earle, J. Edgar Hoover, George Jordan, Victor Kravchenko, Walter Krivitsky, Eugene Lyons, Malcom Muggeridge, Major Van Vliet and many more.⁷

Holodomor. An estimated seven million people died in the Ukrainian Terror Famine of 1932 to 1933. The genocide was ordered by Joseph Stalin, Russia’s communist dictator, to punish peasants protesting his communist regime. Despite overwhelming evidence at the time of the mass murder, the pro-Soviet FDR administration and the mainstream media covered it up. “There is no actual starvation or deaths from starvation, but there is widespread mortality from disease due to malnutrition,” said Walter Duranty, a New York Times reporter whose fabrications received a Pulitzer Prize. His work was later discredited.⁸

Hitler-Stalin Pact. Hitler and Stalin signed a non-aggression pact shortly before World War II began. They secretly agreed to carve up Europe between Germany and Russia. The invasion of Poland by Germany from the west and, two weeks later, by Russia from the east initiated World War II. A few months later, the Russians attacked and annexed Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania and parts of Finland and Romania. Stalin only left Hitler’s side and joined the Allied forces when Hitler violated the Pact, 22 months after it was signed, by invading Russia. Despite a change in alliance, Stalin never changed his goal; the objective of Marxist-Leninism was, and still is, to destroy Western democracies and replace them with worldwide communism. FDR never understood this. In the aftermath of World War II, Stalin gained most of the lands assigned to him in the Hitler-Stalin Pact, this time with the help of its U.S. ally.⁹

Katyn Forest Massacre. Communist Russia under Stalin executed 22,000 Polish military officers and intelligence prisoners of war in the forest of Smolensk, Russia. The prisoners were captured after Russia invaded Poland at the beginning of World War II. The Russians then tried to deceive the world by blaming the mass murder on Germany. Even after overwhelming evidence showed the Russians were to blame, a pro-Soviet Roosevelt administration and the press continued to conceal the truth from the American public. The truth was not acknowledged until decades later when the USSR officially acknowledged its guilt in the killings and coverup.  Yet, the truth is still not commonly known.¹⁰

Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor. Russia double-crossed the U.S. repeatedly in the Pacific theater. Soviet agents and U.S. communists successfully plotted to ensure the Japanese did not attack Russia. Pro-Soviet operatives promoted an attack on Pearl Harbor using propaganda, political influence and message tampering. Additionally, the Russians took American Lend-Lease supplies sent to Russia and diverted them to the Japanese in exchange for materials Russia wanted from Japan. When U.S. officials notified their superiors of these Soviet betrayals, they were ordered to make no mention of them. Oddly, Russia was rewarded with Asian land grants at the war’s end despite participating only five days in the Pacific fighting.¹¹

Yalta Conference and its aftermath. At the end of World War II, this infamous meeting between Roosevelt, Churchill and Stalin led to disastrous consequences. Inexplicably, the U.S. and Britain consented to the use of slave labor as “reparations” for Russian wartime losses. Civilians from Germany and Eastern European nations were sent against their will to Soviet gulags as were 2 million anti-Soviet Russian refugees living in Europe. In addition, the Russians imprisoned nearly 20,000 American soldiers and another 20,000 British soldiers, who never returned home from the gulag. The soldiers’ fate was kept hush-hush by U.S. government officials unwilling to oppose Russia, their supposed ally. The Russians violated the Geneva Convention rules of warfare, which granted asylum to prisoners of war and refugees, yet were never punished with a war crimes trial. After the conference, Stalin seized Eastern Europe, gaining most of the lands assigned to him in the Hitler-Stalin Pact—ironically, this time with the help of the U.S. Almost immediately, an iron curtain fell across Europe and the Cold War began.¹²

Real winner of World War II. Standard textbooks declare the U.S. and British winners of the war. This conclusion completely ignores the reality that one totalitarian regime, Nazi Germany, was replaced by another totalitarian regime, communist Russia. As a result of the Yalta Conference, communism swept through Eastern Europe and Asia and tens of millions were executed or put in forced labor camps. “What the world needs is not to turn one crowd out of concentration camps and put another crowd in, but to end the concentration camp idea,” said U.S. Supreme Court Justice Robert Jackson at the time. But concentration camps proliferated as gulags in communist Russia—the real winner of the war.¹³

Communist expansion into China and SE Asia. After World War II, Soviet agents and pro-Soviet U.S. communists manipulated our foreign policy to benefit the USSR instead of the U.S. They successfully ended long-term U.S. support for Chiang Kai-shek’s Chinese Nationalist government and diverted it to the Mao-led communist rebels who meant the U.S. harm. After China became communist, a ripple effect led to takeovers of North Korea, Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia, all still communist nations.¹⁴

Why it matters today

Communism’s legacy is one of lies. Since we have let communism infiltrate every level of our country—from the government to the culture—lies have become part of our legacy too. U.S. citizens have been deceived on a massive scale by the federal government, educational institutions and the media. “We now understand why the West was so against putting the communist system on trial. It is not only that the West was infiltrated by the Soviets much deeper than we ever thought, but also that there was ideological collaboration between left-wing parties in the West and Soviet Union. This ideological collaboration ran very deep,” said Vladimir Bukovsky, winner of the Truman-Reagan Medal of Freedom.¹⁵

The results of our legacy of lies include the communist occupation of Eastern Europe and Asia all the way to the Marxist cultural revolution dominating U.S. institutions today. Marxism’s goal has always been to supplant Western democracies with worldwide communism. If the U.S. is to survive as a free nation, widespread acknowledgment of our lost history matters more than ever. Let our future decisions be based on facts instead of lies.

1. Fifth Annual Report on U.S. Attitudes Toward Socialism, Communism, and Collectivism. 2020. Victims of Communism Memorial Foundation, 10/2020. https://victimsofcommunism.org/annual-poll/2020-annual-poll/

2. West, Diana. American Betrayal: The Secret Assault on Our Nation’s Character. New York, St. Martin’s Press, 2013.

3. Kengor, Paul. Dupes: How America’s Adversaries Have Manipulated Progressives for a Century. ISI Books, 2018.

4. Evans, M. Stanton. Stalin’s Secret Agents: The Subversion of Roosevelt’s Government. Simon & Schuster, 2012.

5. See footnote 2.

6. See footnote 4.

7. Evans, M. Stanton. Blacklisted by History: The Untold Story of Senator Joe McCarthy and His Fight Against America’s Enemies. Forum Books, 2009.

8. See footnotes 2 and 4.

9. See footnotes 2 and 4.

10. See footnotes 2 and 4.

11. See footnotes 2 and 4.

12. See footnotes 2 and 4.

13. See footnotes 2 and 4.

14. See footnote 4.

15. See footnote 2.