Marxism in America
An insider's view
It’s a myth that communism died when the Berlin Wall fell. Instead, it became a wolf in sheep’s clothing. Communist infiltration in the U.S. proceeded in “the guise of other forms.”1 It became Marxism applied to race, gender and anything else about the culture in addition to class. How did we get here?
The story is eloquently told through the life of an individual in The Devil and Bella Dodd: One Woman’s Struggle Against Communism and Her Redemption. Written by Mary A. Nicholas, MD, and Paul Kengor, PhD, the meticulously documented book describes the life of Bella Dodd, an immigrant to America who became the most powerful woman in the Communist Party USA during the first half of the 1900s.2 Since communism conflicted with her Catholic religion, Dodd eventually defected. Her penance was to reveal the inner workings of the communist party to U.S. congressional investigative committees, students and the public for the rest of her life.
Here are some snapshots of what Bella Dodd witnessed as a communist activist, a card-carrying communist and, eventually, a part of the leadership of the Communist Party USA:
Dodd worked as the chief organizer of public-school teachers—the teachers’ unions—for the Communist Party. She helped communists infiltrate the teachers’ unions and enabled communists to get on executive boards where they gained control. Dodd also helped communists infiltrate many other U.S. labor unions.
She helped grow many communist fronts, swelling their numbers with leftists and Christians who sympathized with communist facades like peace, anti-fascism, social justice and reducing poverty. The fronts used names like the “American League Against War and Fascism” and the “American Peace Mobilization.”
Communists infiltrated churches in America, especially non-Catholic denominations. In particular, American Protestant churches were targeted mercilessly. Bella Dodd herself infiltrated the Catholic church, personally admitting about 1,200 communists into Catholic seminaries to receive training that could lead to priesthood.
Marxism is not just an economic philosophy. It is an comprehensive worldview that involves every aspect of life. It is a totalizing ideology. “The communist movement is nothing but a more intensified kind of fascism,” Dodd said.
Hate is a defining feature of communism and its precursor socialism.
The [Communist] Party expressed that hate both verbally and by its actions of murder, violence, and even deliberate starvation in countries like the Ukraine. The founder of the Soviet state, Vladimir Lenin, put it concisely: ‘Hatred is truly the beginning of all wisdom, the basis of any socialist and communist movement and of its success.’
Communism is a culture of lies. According to Dodd, “The Communist organization definitely advocates lying if it will accomplish their purpose.”
Communism is an expansionistic ideology that aims for worldwide conquest while pretending to advocate for peace. “Peace” really means “world socialism” in communist double-speak.
Marxism-Leninism states that you can’t achieve peace as long as there is a capitalist country left. In other words, war and revolution are going to be the fate of man until the Communists have taken over the entire world. This, she noted, is what the American Communist Party believed and followed.
Many Americans are blind to the dangers of communism.
Propaganda is the most effective weapon in the hands of the Communists in beclouding the minds of American people. What communists do to young people throughout the world…They make them unhappy, and dissatisfied, and ashamed of their own country…In various subtle ways students are led to believe that everything communistic is admirable and everything democracy stands for is dogmatic, illogical or outmoded.
Bella Dodd said of American communists: “They always use the word ‘democracy.’” She learned from her boss, Communist Party leader Alexander Trachtenberg, that “when communism came to America, it would come in labels acceptable to the American people.” Trachtenberg elaborated:
When we get ready to take the United State, we will not take it under the label of communism; we will not take it under the label of socialism. These labels are unpleasant to the American people, and have been speared too much. We will take the United States under labels we have made very lovable; we will take it under liberalism, under progressivism, under democracy. But take it we will.
The bottom line
The secret of communism’s spread is centralization and organization. Communists like Bella Dodd are often great community organizers—much like another community organizer we know, Barack Obama, whose mentor, Frank Marshall Davis, was a well-known communist.
Dodd identified communism as a global criminal conspiracy. This is the same conspiracy, by the way, that Senator Joseph McCarthy uncovered infiltrating the U.S. federal government at about the same time. According to Dodd, communism is “not a ‘conspiracy theory’ but a real conspiracy to infiltrate US society.” The goals of the communist conspiracy are to destroy Western civilization and replace it with totalitarian rule.
Why do communists advocate a collective society? “So that those on top can have power over those below,” Dodd emphasized.
The Marxist fist is a symbol commonly displayed by Marxists and their supporters in this country.
Mary A. Nicholas, MD, and Paul Kengor, PhD. The Devil and Bella Dodd: One Woman’s Struggle Against Communism and Her Redemption. TAN Books, 2022.
See footnote 1.
This is an outstanding post.
"It’s a myth that communism died when the Berlin Wall fell."
Yes. The true history of the Communist Party in the U.S. has been successfully buried by leftist media and academia. Leftists need to hide the truth about the past, so that they can lie about communism here and now. And that truth is that, since the USSR dissolved, U.S. communists/leftists have gradually taken control of almost every institution in America.