CNN Stumbles Across a Map of the Swamp Written by: Diana West
CNN has done something no other media have done. They actually found a connection between American Betrayal and Steve Bannon.
Not that this is hard to do. There is a massive queue of stories about American Betrayal at Breitbart under Bannon’s helmsmanship.
These include:
1) A “breaking history” series in five parts that I wrote for Bannon/Breitbart, drawing from American Betrayal’s discoveries.
2) Numerous pieces covering American Betrayal, the controversy (i.e., the disinformation campaign spearheaded by Horowitz and Radosh), as a continuous news beat amid a total news blackout at other conservative media.
3) Op-eds about American Betrayal by David “she should not have written this book” Horowitz, Frank Gaffney, myself, etc.
4) Two lengthy essays co-authored by Vladimir Bukovsky about the book and the controversy — “Why Academics Hate Diana West” and “West’s `American Betrayal’ Will Make History.”
5) My replies to hit pieces at National Review, American Thinker, which I published at Breitbart after these same conservative websites refused to run what I had written.
6) Breitbart also published Chapter 9 of American Betrayal in its entirety!
7) There were so many lies told by Radosh and Horowitz about my book and me, personally, that, on the advice of counsel, I wrote 20,000+ words rebutting all — and Breitbart ran every word in a three-part series, which I later brought out as a book, The Rebuttal: Defending American Betrayal Against the Book-Burners.
There are some related bonuses as well. As a follow-on to his second essay about American Betrayal, Bukovsky would publish the opening chapter of his book, Judgement in Moscow, for the first time in English at Breitbart.
The late M. Stanton Evans, a strong supporter of American Betrayal, would also publish an original essay at Breitbart. It was a project he conceived of during the attacks against my book, so many of which hinged on the continuing slander and belittlement of Joseph Raymond McCarthy, the subject of Stan Evans’ unrivaled expertise. (For instance, I was called “McCarthy on Steroids,” “McCarthy’s heiress” and other terms not meant as endearments.) Indeed, the exciting new kind of research I was able to do in American Betrayal was predicated on my first having read Evans’ trailblazing McCarthy book.
In his Breitbart study, Stan tallied up for the first time exactly how successful McCarthy had been. He culled the historical record to date to put together a table of suspects, as he explained, “named by McCarthy, his aides, or before his committee, who are identified in sworn testimony, FBI archives, or other official security records as Communists or Soviet agents; or took the Fifth Amendment when asked about such matters.”
He stopped when he hit 50. (I came across two more here.)
This becomes pertinent all over again in CNN’s “breaking news” today:
“Steve Bannon in 2013: Joseph McCarthy was right in crusade against Communist infiltration”
(CNN) — Donald Trump’s chief White House strategist Steve Bannon said in 2013 that Sen. Joseph McCarthy was right in his 1950s campaign claiming widespread Communist infiltration into the United States government.
OMG — smelling salts for the newsroom!
Now, a Big Heap of #FakeHistory, which Stan’s Breitbart story (let alone his McCarthy tome) explodes into rubble.
The Wisconsin senator’s inquisitions of those he suspected of communist ties — which eventually led to his censure by the United States Senate — was a key moment in the Red Scare and led to the coining of the term “McCarthyism.”
This is relatively subtle stuff. Note CNN doesn’t use the word “witch hunt,” which is demonstrably false since real communists and agents existed.The word “inquisitions,” however, is strongly suggestive of persecution. So, too, is the verb “suspected,” which implies McCarthy did not have evidence, which McCarthy most assuredly did. And, no, sheesh, this did not lead to his censure. Then we’re back to #FakeHistory with the “Red Scare,” which, of course, puts a reader in mind of false alarms and paranoia — and not the documented existence of over 500 Soviet agents (defined as Americans assisting Soviet intelligence agencies) as quantified even by the likes of your Haynes and Klehrs. Many experts consider that to be barest minimum, especially since there were (are?) Moscow-directed espionage cells in Washington that were never even discovered.
The infiltration of Communists and fellow travelers into American insitutional life was wide, dense, and deep. As part of its yeoman efforts to gauge the covert infiltration of communists and fellow travellers into the federal government, for example, the House Un-American Activities Committee under Rep. Martin Dies (D-TX) established by 1941 that 1,124 federal employees, including Alger Hiss, Harry Dexter White and other infamous Soviet agents with their most catastrophic treason ahead of them, were or had been participants in Communist front organizations as identified as “subversive” groups by the US attorney general. All was “forgotten” by Rooseveltian diktat, however, as the administration embraced “Uncle Joe” as our wartime ally — while “Uncle Joe’s” covert intelligence war against us never stopped. It would hit warp speed and to catastrophic effect.
One more word about Communist fronts: The committee spun off from its hearings into front activities its prized “Appendix IX,” a 1944 compendium of over 2,000 pages that catalogues and offers details on some 500 Communist front organizations involving over 22,000 people. As Stanton Evans explained, “It contains many minute details about the the listed groups, with emphasis on thier interlocking nature and ties to the Red apparatus, and would be cited often by McCarthy.”
Of course, to the #FakeMedia of the day, there was “nothing to see here,” and woe to anyone who tried. Given all, it was pretty darn amazing of McCarthy to drag into the light 50 in his short career, even as he was being continually persecuted himself by a series of real witch-hunting Senate investigations for the entire time. He was dead at age 48.
Back to CNN:
Over the weekend, President Trump accused former President Obama of McCarthyism, making the unsubstantiated allegation the president wiretapped his phones in Trump Tower during the campaign.
Bannon made his comments in July 2013 while interviewing conservative pundit Diane [sic] West about her book “American Betrayal: The Secret Assault on Our Nation’s Character.”
Here, for CNN, is the *incriminating* quotation:
“Today in modern pop culture, you know they call Ted Cruz the Joe McCarthy — if you want to think of who devils are it’s Ronald Reagan and those who name-names at the House Un-American Activities, the Hollywood Ten are heroes right?” Bannon said. “Alger Hiss is a hero, right? Richard Nixon’s a villain? Joe McCarthy is a villain.
Your book makes very plain that these guys were right. The place was infested with either traitors that were on the direct payroll of Soviet military intelligence or fellow-travelers who were kind of compliant in helping these guys get along. I mean, there’s absolutely no question of it. How has pop culture so changed it that white is black and black is white?”
CNN: “A White House spokesperson did not respond to a request for comment.”
Oh, to know the question, would be rich. To be able to answer it — heaven.
During the conversation, Bannon and West compared communist infiltration of America during the Cold War to what Bannon referred to as a “dramatic influence campaign” by the Muslim Brotherhood in today’s Washington, D.C.
“Here, one fundamental difference is that, it’s the banks, it’s the investment banks, it’s the hedge funds, it’s the private equity funds, it’s the law firms, it’s the power establishment, in the United States, is inextricably linked with the cash coming out of the Middle East,” Bannon argued. “One of the reasons, you look around this town, and I keep telling people, the reason that you have a dramatic influence campaign going around with the Muslim Brotherhood and everything you say is absolutely correct, when you listen to Major Coughlin, Stephen Coughlin’s presentation, you get it, right? There are voices there of rationality that are being mocked and derided every day and the reason that the establishment looks the other way and the Bush apparatus looks the other way is because there’s so much cash, there are so many petro-dollars being funneled back to this town.”
The rest of the piece is here, including a short audio clip of our interview.
Funny, wouldn’t it have been even more incriminating to post our full interview?
Bet they were afraid it would sell too many books.
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