WEBVTT - There Is A Spectre Haunting New York City 0:00:01.680 --> 0:00:12.760 Col Zone Media. On February eleventh, nineteen sixty seven, the 0:00:12.800 --> 0:00:16.520 Pittsburgh police raided an apartment near the University of Pittsburgh campus. 0:00:18.000 --> 0:00:21.560 They had a warrant to search the place for marijuana. 0:00:22.560 --> 0:00:27.000 Fifty three people were arrested, charged with the vague sounding 0:00:27.040 --> 0:00:33.840 crime of visiting a disorderly house. The party's host, Frank Goldsmith, 0:00:34.560 --> 0:00:39.640 was charged with possession of drugs, but there weren't any drugs. 0:00:40.320 --> 0:00:43.120 Perhaps frustrated at finding the place completely bare of so 0:00:43.200 --> 0:00:47.840 much as a loose joint, they ransacked Goldsmith's bathroom, where 0:00:47.840 --> 0:00:50.519 they found some tablets in a container in the medicine 0:00:50.560 --> 0:00:54.640 cabinet that were eventually proven to be prescription allergy medication. 0:00:56.360 --> 0:00:59.320 As the police tore through the apartment, one officer ripped 0:00:59.320 --> 0:01:02.600 a poster of a dong off the wall. He turned 0:01:02.600 --> 0:01:04.640 to one of the guests and demanded to know who 0:01:04.680 --> 0:01:08.399 the man in the poster is. Apparently the cop didn't 0:01:08.400 --> 0:01:12.399 get the joke because a college student told him that's 0:01:12.400 --> 0:01:15.959 Ho Chi Minh before he went on a diet, and 0:01:16.000 --> 0:01:18.640 when the officer produced the poster in court two weeks later, 0:01:19.520 --> 0:01:23.240 he told the judge it was Ho Chi Minh. One 0:01:23.240 --> 0:01:25.479 of the young men who was there that night, told 0:01:25.480 --> 0:01:27.920 the police that unless they were charging him with a 0:01:27.959 --> 0:01:32.280 specific offense, he would not submit to an arrest. As 0:01:32.280 --> 0:01:37.679 a foreign national. He'd specifically sought this guidance from his embassy, Mahmoud. 0:01:37.720 --> 0:01:40.360 Mum Dani would later tell The Washington Post that the 0:01:40.400 --> 0:01:43.559 officer responded by calling him a racial slur and telling 0:01:43.640 --> 0:01:48.280 him to go back where he came from. Eventually, all 0:01:48.280 --> 0:01:53.960 the charges were dropped. The FBI denied any involvement. The 0:01:54.000 --> 0:01:57.400 police may not have found any drugs that night, but 0:01:57.400 --> 0:02:06.040 they found evidence of something far more in city communism. 0:02:06.120 --> 0:02:27.200 I'm Molly Conger and this it's weird, little guys. I'll 0:02:27.240 --> 0:02:31.040 set your mind at ease right now. You may have 0:02:31.080 --> 0:02:34.120 recognized that name my mood mom Dannie as the father 0:02:34.240 --> 0:02:38.800 of Zoran Mamdanni, and neither of them are our weird 0:02:38.840 --> 0:02:44.320 little guy. But the news this week was a real distraction, 0:02:45.520 --> 0:02:47.360 and I didn't end up picking a weird little guy 0:02:47.400 --> 0:02:51.400 at all, but it did get me thinking about something 0:02:51.400 --> 0:02:54.959 that weird little guys spend a lot of time thinking about. 0:02:57.080 --> 0:03:00.680 Last week. On June twenty fourth, Zora Mama won the 0:03:00.680 --> 0:03:05.640 New York City mayoral democratic primary. The next day, the 0:03:05.680 --> 0:03:08.920 President of the United States, posted on truth Social, the 0:03:09.000 --> 0:03:13.400 social media platform that he owns, It's finally happened. The 0:03:13.440 --> 0:03:17.160 Democrats have crossed the line. Zorah Mumdani, a one hundred 0:03:17.200 --> 0:03:20.000 percent communist lunatic, has just won the dem primary and 0:03:20.000 --> 0:03:22.919 it's on his way to becoming mayor. We've had radical 0:03:23.000 --> 0:03:28.239 lefties before, but this is getting a little ridiculous. A 0:03:28.360 --> 0:03:35.560 one hundred percent communist lunatic. Huh, Zora Mumdani is a 0:03:35.600 --> 0:03:39.560 Democratic socialist. But that's a distinction that's lost on Donald Trump. 0:03:40.560 --> 0:03:44.920 And he's not alone. The day after the primary, the 0:03:44.960 --> 0:03:47.880 New York Young Republicans Club tweeted a photo of Mumdanni 0:03:47.960 --> 0:03:53.040 with the word deport stampedon read over his face, accompanied 0:03:53.040 --> 0:03:57.720 by this rather alarming demand. A call to action from 0:03:57.720 --> 0:04:01.960 the New York Young Republicans Club. The radicals Zoronmumdanni cannot 0:04:02.000 --> 0:04:04.520 be allowed to destroy our beloved city of New York. 0:04:05.480 --> 0:04:09.440 The Communist Control Act. Lets President Trump revoke Zoron Mumdanni's 0:04:09.440 --> 0:04:13.800 citizenship and promptly deport him. The time for action is now. 0:04:13.840 --> 0:04:16.920 Stephen Miller and Tom Homan, New York is counting on you. 0:04:19.920 --> 0:04:23.279 A day later, Congressman Andy Ogles posted a letter that 0:04:23.320 --> 0:04:26.839 he'd sent to Attorney General Pam Bondi asking the Department 0:04:26.880 --> 0:04:30.120 of Justice to open an investigation into whether Mamdanni could 0:04:30.120 --> 0:04:35.520 have his citizenship revoked. Ogles too called him a communist. 0:04:37.279 --> 0:04:42.320 But what is a communist? I'm not actually going to 0:04:42.360 --> 0:04:46.799 tell you. It's not that kind of podcast. But more importantly, 0:04:47.880 --> 0:04:53.040 it doesn't matter, because if I'm being honest, my answer 0:04:53.040 --> 0:04:58.080 to the question of is Zoronmumdanni a communist, it's the 0:04:58.120 --> 0:05:02.280 same answer that most wing extremists would give you if 0:05:02.320 --> 0:05:07.120 they were being honest. I don't know, and I don't care. 0:05:09.279 --> 0:05:13.960 In the world of weird little guys, a communist can 0:05:14.040 --> 0:05:21.159 be anyone. Even you remember just two weeks ago you 0:05:21.279 --> 0:05:22.440 heard this. 0:05:25.120 --> 0:05:30.240 It doesn't matter. She's a communist. You need to stop talking. 0:05:32.000 --> 0:05:37.480 Nobody is an She is a communist and anti white liberal. 0:05:40.680 --> 0:05:45.800 That's James alex Field's talking about Heather Hire's mother. He 0:05:45.880 --> 0:05:49.080 was sitting in jail awaiting trial for a hate crime murder, 0:05:50.200 --> 0:05:52.000 and that's what he had to say about the mother 0:05:52.080 --> 0:05:57.480 of the woman he killed. She's the enemy, an anti 0:05:57.640 --> 0:06:03.680 white communist. In later sworn statements produced in civil litigation, 0:06:04.200 --> 0:06:06.599 Fields would agree that he believed every member of the 0:06:06.640 --> 0:06:11.880 crowd that day was Communist. A week after Fields murdered 0:06:11.880 --> 0:06:16.039 a counter protester at that Nazi rally, Jason Kessler, the 0:06:16.120 --> 0:06:22.120 man who organized the Nazi rally hosted Heather Hire, was 0:06:22.160 --> 0:06:26.880 a fat, disgusting communist. Communists have killed ninety four million. 0:06:28.160 --> 0:06:33.400 Looks like it was payback time. While he was in prison, 0:06:33.920 --> 0:06:36.800 Fields received a letter from Matthew Heinbach, the leader of 0:06:36.839 --> 0:06:40.039 the neo Nazi group the Traditionalist Worker Party, in which 0:06:40.040 --> 0:06:42.760 Heinbach referred to the counter protesters that Field hit with 0:06:42.800 --> 0:06:50.160 his car as quote rampaging communist boards. When Christopher Cantwell, 0:06:50.520 --> 0:06:52.840 one of the neo Nazi activists who was supposed to 0:06:52.839 --> 0:06:57.600 give a speech that day, got maced, he blamed, oh, 0:06:57.720 --> 0:07:05.240 you guessed it. Communists. 0:07:06.240 --> 0:07:09.840 Ye I don't know all that communists. 0:07:13.920 --> 0:07:19.560 This isn't unique in my work. I see this every day. 0:07:19.800 --> 0:07:25.320 Anyone who opposes fascism is a communist. Anyone advocating for 0:07:25.400 --> 0:07:33.200 racial equality a communist, Democrats, communists, gay people, Jewish people, immigrants, 0:07:33.240 --> 0:07:36.800 civil rights activists, progressive clergy, anyone who's ever attended a 0:07:36.880 --> 0:07:41.280 rally for any left wing cause, communists one and all, 0:07:43.480 --> 0:07:48.760 and it's been like that for decades. Here's George Lincoln Rockwell, 0:07:49.120 --> 0:07:52.840 the commander of the American Nazi Party, in nineteen sixty six. 0:07:54.840 --> 0:07:59.800 In my opinion, communism is the organized mutiny. I'm going 0:07:59.880 --> 0:08:01.880 to this law because it's a lot packed into a 0:08:01.920 --> 0:08:05.800 few words. In my opinion, communism is the mutiny of 0:08:06.000 --> 0:08:09.760 quantity versus quality. I think the communism is the organized 0:08:09.840 --> 0:08:13.320 mutiny of the inferior biological people in the world, led 0:08:13.360 --> 0:08:16.440 by the Jews, against the people who have built civilization. 0:08:16.600 --> 0:08:17.480 That's what I think it is. 0:08:20.680 --> 0:08:23.200 Or how about David Lane, the man who came up 0:08:23.240 --> 0:08:24.760 with the fourteen words. 0:08:27.440 --> 0:08:29.679 Before we go any further, we might as well discuss 0:08:29.760 --> 0:08:33.920 three words that are considered by many to mean different things, 0:08:34.000 --> 0:08:37.120 but are in reality all one and the same thing. 0:08:38.400 --> 0:08:45.560 These three words are Judaism, communism, and the doctrine of equality. 0:08:46.800 --> 0:08:49.160 That clip is from a sermon that David Lane delivered 0:08:49.160 --> 0:08:52.640 at the Aryan Nation's compound in nineteen eighty one, just 0:08:52.679 --> 0:08:54.800 two years before he became a founding member of the 0:08:54.840 --> 0:08:59.680 Nazi terrorist organization The Order. And speaking of the Aryan Nations, 0:09:00.240 --> 0:09:01.680 here's their leader, Richard Butler. 0:09:04.040 --> 0:09:07.000 What they can destroy the will of the white man, 0:09:07.320 --> 0:09:10.640 who is that communism forever. 0:09:14.120 --> 0:09:20.880 Now, communism is real, It's a real political ideology that 0:09:20.960 --> 0:09:25.400 exists in the world. There are people who are communists, 0:09:26.760 --> 0:09:30.440 and anti communism was a significant force in American politics 0:09:30.440 --> 0:09:33.800 in the twentieth century, from the Palmer Raids during the 0:09:33.800 --> 0:09:37.520 First Red Scare in nineteen twenty to the years of 0:09:37.559 --> 0:09:43.119 paranoia and persecution led by Joseph McCarthy, but anti communism 0:09:43.240 --> 0:09:48.520 survived the death of McCarthyism. In his book Red Hunting 0:09:48.520 --> 0:09:51.520 in the Promised Land, Anti Communism and the Making of America, 0:09:52.280 --> 0:09:57.120 Joel Kovell argues that there is a difference between anti communism, 0:09:57.440 --> 0:10:03.160 that is, capital a anti hyphenpital C communism and anti 0:10:03.160 --> 0:10:09.680 communism all one word and lower case. Covelt defines capital 0:10:09.720 --> 0:10:15.160 C communism as actual communists, right, These actually existing movements 0:10:15.200 --> 0:10:19.199 and governments and people who organize according to the principles 0:10:19.240 --> 0:10:24.000 of communism and capital C anti communism, he says, is 0:10:24.559 --> 0:10:29.679 an objective dislike of capital C communism, so capital C 0:10:29.960 --> 0:10:38.200 anti communism is obviously about communism lower case anti communism. 0:10:38.280 --> 0:10:41.960 On the other hand, he calls the reigning ideology of 0:10:41.960 --> 0:10:45.240 the West and argues that it has very little at 0:10:45.240 --> 0:10:51.440 all to do with communism. In nineteen eighty seven, the 0:10:51.520 --> 0:10:56.760 Times Mirror commissioned Gallop to survey the American electorate. Over 0:10:56.800 --> 0:10:59.920 a period of several months, Bolsters conducted in person in 0:11:00.000 --> 0:11:03.079 interviews with four two hundred and forty four American adults 0:11:03.200 --> 0:11:06.880 all over the country, administering a long questionnaire that asked 0:11:06.920 --> 0:11:12.920 a variety of demographic and political questions. Seventy percent of 0:11:13.000 --> 0:11:19.840 respondents self identified as anti communist, compared to forty nine 0:11:19.920 --> 0:11:23.360 percent of people who said they were religious, forty seven 0:11:23.480 --> 0:11:27.280 percent who supported the civil rights movement, and twenty seven 0:11:27.400 --> 0:11:32.400 percent who identified as a supporter of unions. In the 0:11:32.440 --> 0:11:36.200 technical appendix, the Polsters note that quote as an identity 0:11:36.800 --> 0:11:42.440 anti communism is virtually universal in America, but if you 0:11:42.480 --> 0:11:45.080 dig through the responses to the other questions these people 0:11:45.120 --> 0:11:49.280 were asked, it kind of looks like most people who 0:11:49.320 --> 0:11:52.960 claimed that their political identity was as an anti communist 0:11:54.040 --> 0:11:58.920 might not really know what communisms and fifty six percent 0:11:58.920 --> 0:12:01.480 of respondents said they believed that it was the cause 0:12:01.520 --> 0:12:08.280 of most social unrest in America in nineteen eighty seven. 0:12:08.800 --> 0:12:13.600 Covell calls this the black hole of anti communism quote 0:12:13.600 --> 0:12:17.640 a feeling that nullifies any reasoned or differentiated argument that 0:12:17.720 --> 0:12:21.920 distinguishes anti communism from a simple reaction to communism, and 0:12:22.040 --> 0:12:24.960 promotes it to the status of a great organizing force 0:12:25.000 --> 0:12:29.199 an American life, Anti communism took on a kind of 0:12:29.320 --> 0:12:33.440 religious fervor in American politics during the Cold War. Anything 0:12:33.480 --> 0:12:35.400 the government did in the name of fighting the Soviets 0:12:35.440 --> 0:12:40.960 was good. Any opposition to it was bad, to the 0:12:40.960 --> 0:12:45.800 point that people were tying themselves in knots. When religious 0:12:45.840 --> 0:12:50.040 leaders spoke out against the threat of nuclear annihilation, conservative 0:12:50.040 --> 0:12:54.559 writer William of Buckley accused them of idolatry, of venerating 0:12:54.679 --> 0:12:57.680 life at the great cost of ignoring the greater good, 0:12:58.640 --> 0:13:02.560 which is, I guess, having a large nuclear arsenal to 0:13:02.679 --> 0:13:06.920 resist the threat of communism. One of Ronald Reagan's own 0:13:06.960 --> 0:13:10.760 closest advisers admitted during a congressional hearing that he'd been 0:13:10.840 --> 0:13:13.800 unwilling to speak frankly to the President about the obvious 0:13:13.800 --> 0:13:17.600 illegality of the Iran Contra affair because he was afraid 0:13:17.840 --> 0:13:22.120 of being called a kami. Everything done in the name 0:13:22.160 --> 0:13:26.400 of fighting communism is good. Anything that needs to be 0:13:26.440 --> 0:13:31.280 fought is communism, and any resistance to that fight makes 0:13:31.320 --> 0:13:35.600 you no better than a communist. Quote. Viewed against this 0:13:35.679 --> 0:13:40.360 diabolical force, all moral and rational comparisons disappear like light 0:13:40.559 --> 0:13:43.960 sucked in by the virtually infinite gravity of a cosmological 0:13:44.040 --> 0:13:50.960 black hole. Covell wrote, communism could be anything, rendering the 0:13:51.000 --> 0:13:57.559 word effectively meaningless. An accusation I see quite often levied 0:13:57.600 --> 0:14:01.480 at well people like me, people who write about fascism, 0:14:01.520 --> 0:14:06.400 white supremacy, neo Nazis, etc. Is well, you just call 0:14:06.440 --> 0:14:10.160 everyone you don't like a Nazi. And I'm sure there 0:14:10.200 --> 0:14:12.400 are people out there getting a little too casual with it. 0:14:13.240 --> 0:14:15.960 But I can only speak for myself, and I know 0:14:16.000 --> 0:14:20.080 that words mean things, and I'm careful with them. I 0:14:20.120 --> 0:14:23.200 won't say I've never been wrong, but I'm not careless. 0:14:24.520 --> 0:14:27.480 There have been so many times that I've responded to 0:14:27.520 --> 0:14:32.440 that particular jab with just a quick citation. Here's a 0:14:32.440 --> 0:14:34.440 picture of his bedroom with a Nazi flag on the 0:14:34.440 --> 0:14:36.920 wall and a framed picture of Hitler. Here's a video 0:14:36.960 --> 0:14:39.440 of the band in question literally saying straight to camera, 0:14:39.800 --> 0:14:42.440 I am a fascist. Here he is in a clan robe, 0:14:42.480 --> 0:14:44.960 throwing a Roman salute, going on a podcast to talk 0:14:45.000 --> 0:14:48.800 about the sin of race mixing. Whatever. I try to 0:14:48.920 --> 0:14:53.800 use words carefully, but for the anti communist, the word 0:14:53.880 --> 0:14:57.480 is so all encompassing that you can call anyone a 0:14:57.520 --> 0:15:02.560 communist and you'll never be wrong. And no man in 0:15:02.600 --> 0:15:07.360 American history better exemplifies this quixotic project of rooting out 0:15:07.360 --> 0:15:14.280 imaginary communists than j Edgar Hoover. Ellen Schrecker, a historian 0:15:14.280 --> 0:15:17.520 of McCarthyism, wrote that if people had known in the 0:15:17.600 --> 0:15:21.160 nineteen fifties what we would eventually learn when the FBI 0:15:21.280 --> 0:15:25.640 was forced to disclose files from that era, McCarthyism would 0:15:25.640 --> 0:15:30.720 have been called Hooverism. In Hoover's nineteen fifty eight book 0:15:30.920 --> 0:15:35.120 Masters of Deceit, he explained just how devious the communists 0:15:35.160 --> 0:15:39.080 can be. The party's objective is to drive a wedge, 0:15:39.200 --> 0:15:43.640 however slight, into as many minds as possible. That is why, 0:15:43.640 --> 0:15:47.360 in every conceivable way, communists try to poison our thinking 0:15:47.400 --> 0:15:52.960 about the issues of the day social reforms, peace, politics, veterans, 0:15:52.960 --> 0:15:56.600 women's and youth problems. The more people they can influence, 0:15:57.520 --> 0:16:03.000 the stronger they will be. Responding to that passage. In particular, 0:16:03.920 --> 0:16:05.880 Fred Cook wrote in his review of the book for 0:16:05.920 --> 0:16:09.920 the Nation, obviously it is hardly safe to think about 0:16:09.960 --> 0:16:13.400 any of the issues in these all embracing categories for 0:16:13.560 --> 0:16:16.520 communists maybe thinking about them too, And how is one 0:16:16.560 --> 0:16:19.240 to know whether one's thoughts are actually one's own or 0:16:19.320 --> 0:16:24.240 the reflection of some subtle communists thought anoculation. By the 0:16:24.320 --> 0:16:27.800 nineteen sixties, there wasn't the same appetite for the outright 0:16:27.880 --> 0:16:32.080 McCarthyism of the forties and fifties, but Hoover's personal commitment 0:16:32.120 --> 0:16:36.920 to rooting out the specter of communism never faded. I know, 0:16:37.080 --> 0:16:39.960 the little opening vignette of an episode of this show 0:16:40.040 --> 0:16:43.680 is usually kind of a bait and switch, some interesting 0:16:43.760 --> 0:16:47.960 but only tangentially related tidbit that I don't really revisit, 0:16:49.480 --> 0:16:55.320 But this one's fascinating. Remember in nineteen sixty seven, Zoron 0:16:55.400 --> 0:16:59.160 Mamdani's father, Mahmoudmumdani, was a college student at the University 0:16:59.200 --> 0:17:02.720 of Pittsburgh. He was one of several dozen students caught 0:17:02.800 --> 0:17:04.760 up in a police raid at an apartment just off 0:17:04.800 --> 0:17:09.760 campus one night. The police claimed to be looking for drugs, 0:17:11.080 --> 0:17:14.440 They didn't find any, and the charges against all fifty 0:17:14.520 --> 0:17:20.520 three people were dropped. But this wasn't an ordinary college party. 0:17:22.119 --> 0:17:24.800 Half of the people taken into custody that night were 0:17:24.840 --> 0:17:30.400 students from nearby Saint Vincent College, their theology professor, Father Roseboro, 0:17:30.840 --> 0:17:33.280 had left the party early and wasn't there when the 0:17:33.320 --> 0:17:37.600 cops showed up. The party that evening was a reception 0:17:37.760 --> 0:17:42.919 for an out of town guest. David Dellinger, a pacifist activist, 0:17:43.600 --> 0:17:46.480 gave a talk earlier that day at the University of Pittsburgh, 0:17:47.640 --> 0:17:50.360 and he told the audience about his recent visit to Vietnam, 0:17:51.000 --> 0:17:52.879 where he'd gone to talk to the people who'd been 0:17:52.880 --> 0:17:58.359 affected by the American bombing campaign. Frank Goldsmith, the party's host, 0:17:58.920 --> 0:18:01.080 was the chairman of the local chapter of the Committee 0:18:01.080 --> 0:18:05.199 to End the War in Vietnam. Everyone in attendance that 0:18:05.320 --> 0:18:09.480 night was to some degree or another active in the 0:18:09.480 --> 0:18:14.679 anti war movement. Two months after those charges were dropped, 0:18:15.640 --> 0:18:17.959 Marcus Childs wrote an article about the raid in the 0:18:18.040 --> 0:18:22.800 Washington Post. Child was clear that both the FBI and 0:18:22.840 --> 0:18:27.399 the DOJ had denied any involvement in the incident, but 0:18:27.480 --> 0:18:29.879 he says that those close to the case believed that 0:18:29.920 --> 0:18:33.080 it was absolutely connected to the FBI's interest in the 0:18:33.119 --> 0:18:37.679 campus anti war group, writing quote, there is reason to 0:18:37.760 --> 0:18:41.440 fear a revival of the Red Scare, the Red Raids, 0:18:41.760 --> 0:18:49.639 and the mccarthuris hysteria. This particular incident itself doesn't get 0:18:49.720 --> 0:18:53.400 much press after that. I mean, there's nothing to report. Right, 0:18:53.960 --> 0:18:58.120 the charges were dropped, it was over. But the very 0:18:58.320 --> 0:19:03.240 day that newspapers ran April twenty first, nineteen sixty seven, 0:19:04.280 --> 0:19:07.399 an FBI agent carefully cut it out of the newspaper 0:19:07.880 --> 0:19:12.680 and xeroxt it. Later that day, that same FBI agent 0:19:12.720 --> 0:19:15.920 wrote a memo to his boss, William Sullivan, the head 0:19:15.960 --> 0:19:19.679 of the bureau's domestic intelligence division running the operation we 0:19:19.800 --> 0:19:23.639 now know as co Intel pro. Attached to the memo 0:19:23.840 --> 0:19:27.560 was that copy of Charles's article in the margins in J. 0:19:27.760 --> 0:19:31.480 Edgar Hoover's handwriting, there's a little note, what are the 0:19:31.520 --> 0:19:36.119 facts as to our interest in this matter? The memo, 0:19:36.840 --> 0:19:41.880 written by Charles Brennan claims, quote, the FBI had absolutely 0:19:41.960 --> 0:19:45.960 nothing to do with this raid, and it concludes with 0:19:46.040 --> 0:19:51.040 this paragraph. This is another example of the increasing tendency 0:19:51.080 --> 0:19:54.560 of so called liberal writers and faculty in student groups 0:19:54.880 --> 0:19:57.119 to criticize the Bureau in an effort to stop our 0:19:57.160 --> 0:20:02.199 investigation of subversive elements active in campus groups. These individuals 0:20:02.240 --> 0:20:06.560 are consciously or unconsciously aiding the Communist Party in its 0:20:06.640 --> 0:20:09.960 lifelong fight to stop the FBI's investigation into subverse some 0:20:10.040 --> 0:20:15.399 influences on the campuses. A few days later, j Edgar Hoover, 0:20:15.600 --> 0:20:19.800 the director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation himself, wrote 0:20:19.840 --> 0:20:25.359 the journalist a nasty letter, calling the article irresponsible and outrageous, 0:20:26.160 --> 0:20:28.800 and again claiming that the FBI had no involvement in 0:20:29.080 --> 0:20:33.800 or knowledge of the raid. Now, I don't know if 0:20:33.800 --> 0:20:35.960 you can tell how I feel about Jaedgar Hoover, but 0:20:37.240 --> 0:20:41.000 I don't think he's telling the truth. Shocking, I know, 0:20:42.520 --> 0:20:48.120 but the story doesn't make sense. In several newspaper stories, 0:20:48.359 --> 0:20:52.520 the Pittsburgh police sometimes claim that they'd been surveilling Frank 0:20:52.560 --> 0:20:57.879 Goldsmith's apartment for weeks. Other articles are very specific that 0:20:58.000 --> 0:21:00.399 they had a search warrant that was signed by hours 0:21:00.440 --> 0:21:03.840 before the raid, and that the warrant specifically authorized for 0:21:03.880 --> 0:21:08.920 the search of marijuana. But the FBI memo and some 0:21:08.960 --> 0:21:12.720 of the newspaper articles claimed that the raid was actually 0:21:12.840 --> 0:21:16.320 just prompted by noise complaints from neighbors and the search 0:21:16.400 --> 0:21:21.000 for drugs was incidental. And then, of course there's the 0:21:21.080 --> 0:21:25.520 fact that declassified FBI files exist for a number of 0:21:25.560 --> 0:21:29.840 people who were at the party that night. Frank Goldsmith, 0:21:30.200 --> 0:21:33.399 the man whose apartment was raided, had been under investigation 0:21:33.520 --> 0:21:35.640 for his involvement in the anti war movement for over 0:21:35.680 --> 0:21:40.800 a year. In one FBI file bearing the title Communist 0:21:40.880 --> 0:21:44.840 Influence in Racial Matters, a memo dated just a few 0:21:44.840 --> 0:21:49.200 months before the raid outlined surveillance of Goldsmith performed by 0:21:49.240 --> 0:21:54.199 the Pittsburgh Police Department on behalf of the FBI, and 0:21:54.240 --> 0:21:58.360 the raid at Frank Goldsmith's apartment wasn't Mahmoud mam Danni's 0:21:58.359 --> 0:22:03.200 first rush with FBI surveillance. Two years earlier, in March 0:22:03.200 --> 0:22:05.879 of nineteen sixty five, he was one of one hundred 0:22:05.880 --> 0:22:08.680 and twenty eight college students from the Pittsburgh area who 0:22:08.720 --> 0:22:12.159 piled into buses that made the twelve hour drive to Montgomery, Alabama, 0:22:13.320 --> 0:22:16.239 and there they participated in a protest organized by these 0:22:16.280 --> 0:22:18.159 student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee. 0:22:20.800 --> 0:22:24.679 I was born in Kampala, Uganda, in East Africa. I 0:22:24.760 --> 0:22:27.200 was given my middle name Kuame by my father, who 0:22:27.240 --> 0:22:30.439 named me after the first Prime Minister of Ghana and 0:22:30.560 --> 0:22:34.280 decades ago in Uganda we won our independence from the 0:22:34.280 --> 0:22:37.760 British in nineteen sixty two. We can clap for that, 0:22:39.640 --> 0:22:43.359 and when we did. The United States government gave the 0:22:43.440 --> 0:22:47.120 Ugandan government twenty three scholarships as a gift for independence, 0:22:47.640 --> 0:22:50.680 and my father won one of those scholarships. He came 0:22:50.720 --> 0:22:52.560 to this country to study to be an engineer at 0:22:52.560 --> 0:22:55.960 the University of Pittsburgh, and sometime into his studies, his 0:22:56.040 --> 0:22:58.800 face buried in his book, he heard the words reverberate 0:22:58.840 --> 0:23:01.400 in the corridor around him. Which side are you on? 0:23:02.119 --> 0:23:05.440 Which side are you on? These were words being sung 0:23:05.480 --> 0:23:10.359 by members of SNICK, the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, recruiting 0:23:10.400 --> 0:23:12.800 students to get on the bus to go to Montgomery, Alabama. 0:23:13.359 --> 0:23:16.199 And my father got on that bus. He marched, He 0:23:16.320 --> 0:23:18.359 was hosed down, he was thrown in jail. He was 0:23:18.400 --> 0:23:21.600 given one phone call and he called the Ugandan ambassador 0:23:21.600 --> 0:23:23.520 the United States. He said, can you get me out 0:23:23.520 --> 0:23:26.639 of jail? The ambassador said, what are you doing in jail? 0:23:27.320 --> 0:23:30.359 We sent you there to study. My father said, you 0:23:30.400 --> 0:23:32.280 sent me here as a gift for our freedom. They 0:23:32.280 --> 0:23:34.200 are fighting for theirs. It's one and the same. 0:23:37.320 --> 0:23:40.719 His son's re counting of the story doesn't say how 0:23:40.720 --> 0:23:44.600 many students were on the buses, and neither did any 0:23:44.640 --> 0:23:46.879 of the newspaper stories that I could find from nineteen 0:23:46.920 --> 0:23:51.920 sixty five. But a memo that landed directly on J. 0:23:52.119 --> 0:23:57.639 Edgar Hoover's desk did. The names of every student on 0:23:57.720 --> 0:24:00.520 those buses was turned over to the FBI by formant, 0:24:01.640 --> 0:24:04.040 and in the weeks that followed, Mamud Mumdani was one 0:24:04.080 --> 0:24:06.679 of scores of students who received a visit from a 0:24:06.720 --> 0:24:12.240 federal agent. In an interview in twenty thirteen, Mamoud Mumdani 0:24:12.280 --> 0:24:15.560 says that it was the FBI's obsessive attempts to root 0:24:15.560 --> 0:24:22.560 out communism that ironically introduced him to Marx. Reading from 0:24:22.560 --> 0:24:26.600 that interview, two or three weeks later, I was in 0:24:26.640 --> 0:24:30.320 my room. There was a knock at the door. Two 0:24:30.400 --> 0:24:34.480 gentlemen in trench coats and hats said FBI, and I 0:24:34.480 --> 0:24:39.919 thought wow, just like on television. They sat down. They 0:24:39.960 --> 0:24:42.600 were there to find out why I had gone, because 0:24:42.640 --> 0:24:45.240 this turned out to be big. It was after Montgomery 0:24:45.280 --> 0:24:48.399 that King organized his march on Selma. They wanted to 0:24:48.400 --> 0:24:52.840 know who had influenced me. After one hour of probing, 0:24:52.880 --> 0:24:57.800 the guy said, do you like Marx? I said, I 0:24:57.800 --> 0:25:03.920 haven't met him. I said, no, no, he's dead. Oh wow, 0:25:03.920 --> 0:25:09.600 what happened? No, No, he died long ago. I thought 0:25:09.600 --> 0:25:12.840 the guy Marx had just died, So then why are 0:25:12.920 --> 0:25:16.439 you asking me if he died long ago? No, he 0:25:16.520 --> 0:25:19.000 wrote a lot. He wrote that poor people should not 0:25:19.040 --> 0:25:25.200 be poor, and I said, sounds amazing. I'm giving you 0:25:25.240 --> 0:25:29.080 a sense of how naive I was. After they left, 0:25:29.320 --> 0:25:33.399 I went to the library to look for Marx. So 0:25:33.520 --> 0:25:38.879 that was my introduction to Karl Marx. He'd never heard 0:25:39.160 --> 0:25:44.080 of Karl Marx, but he was already a communist, because 0:25:44.119 --> 0:26:01.480 everyone who marched for civil rights was. There is a 0:26:01.760 --> 0:26:05.840 fascinating and complicated history of how anti communism functions, specifically 0:26:05.840 --> 0:26:09.159 in the South during the Civil rights era, But to 0:26:09.200 --> 0:26:11.280 be honest, I feel like I didn't do enough reading 0:26:11.359 --> 0:26:15.560 this week to really do it justice. Their short answer 0:26:15.640 --> 0:26:19.920 is just that it was often politically useful to label 0:26:19.960 --> 0:26:25.080 all civil rights activists as communists, and that was kind 0:26:25.080 --> 0:26:27.480 of the only answer in the literature for a long time. 0:26:28.720 --> 0:26:30.880 But there are a handful of books now that explore 0:26:30.920 --> 0:26:34.680 the complexities of anti communism in the South. Like I said, 0:26:34.680 --> 0:26:36.240 I didn't get a chance to read more than a 0:26:36.320 --> 0:26:38.480 chapter of any of these, so I couldn't tell you 0:26:38.520 --> 0:26:41.280 which I would recommend, but it seems like the best 0:26:41.359 --> 0:26:44.840 sources if you want more on this topic are George 0:26:44.920 --> 0:26:48.640 Lewis's The White South and Red Menace, Segregationists, Anti Communism, 0:26:48.680 --> 0:26:53.600 and Massive Resistance, Jeff Woods Black Struggle, Red Scare, segregation 0:26:53.680 --> 0:26:57.600 and anti Communism in the South, and yeah, Soohiro Kategii's 0:26:57.720 --> 0:27:03.240 Black Freedom, White Resistance, and Red Men. But here's the thing. 0:27:04.960 --> 0:27:11.160 Some of those civil rights activists were communists. That gets 0:27:11.200 --> 0:27:13.520 lost when you explain it all the way as McCarthy's 0:27:13.640 --> 0:27:18.679 hysteria and redbaiting. Some of them were communists, and proudly so. 0:27:20.440 --> 0:27:24.480 But who is or isn't a communist doesn't actually matter 0:27:25.000 --> 0:27:29.760 to the anti communist. Remember that clip of Christopher Caentwell 0:27:29.800 --> 0:27:33.680 being asked who maced him. He has no idea who 0:27:33.680 --> 0:27:38.920 it was, but it was communists, because whatever bad thing 0:27:39.000 --> 0:27:44.120 is happening to him is communism. So I suppose it's 0:27:44.160 --> 0:27:47.240 no surprise that Zoron Mumdani is being accused of being 0:27:47.280 --> 0:27:52.520 a communist, and I do mean accused. People like Congressman 0:27:52.560 --> 0:27:57.720 Andy Ogles are trying to have him investigated. Zoron Mumdani 0:27:57.840 --> 0:28:01.320 is an immigrant, was born in Uganda and moved to 0:28:01.359 --> 0:28:04.200 the United States as a child and became a naturalized 0:28:04.320 --> 0:28:07.960 United States citizen in twenty eighteen. There is no doubt 0:28:08.040 --> 0:28:13.399 about those facts. He is a United States citizen. In 0:28:13.480 --> 0:28:16.800 that post from the New York Young Republicans Club, the 0:28:16.880 --> 0:28:20.560 group cites the Communist Control Act of nineteen fifty four 0:28:21.240 --> 0:28:26.679 as grounds to have Mamdani deported. There are a couple 0:28:26.680 --> 0:28:29.879 of layers here. There's a lot going on, but I 0:28:29.920 --> 0:28:36.199 think they're wrong on every single front. That Act, the 0:28:36.240 --> 0:28:40.520 Communist Control Act, is technically still on the books, but 0:28:40.640 --> 0:28:42.880 it would only bar a member of the Communist Party 0:28:42.920 --> 0:28:46.640 from holding certain offices. It has nothing to do with 0:28:46.640 --> 0:28:51.200 his naturalization status. It was signed into law by President 0:28:51.280 --> 0:28:55.160 Eisenhower in nineteen fifty four, the same year that Eisenhower 0:28:55.280 --> 0:28:58.080 himself was accused of being a card carrying member of 0:28:58.120 --> 0:29:01.440 the Communist Party by Robert Well, the founder of the 0:29:01.600 --> 0:29:07.400 viciously anti communist John Birch Society. Those facts aren't actually 0:29:08.040 --> 0:29:11.560 really related in any way. It's just further proof that 0:29:11.840 --> 0:29:15.120 anyone the anti communist dislikes can be sucked into the 0:29:15.160 --> 0:29:21.840 black hole of anti communism. Even Dwight D. Eisenhower, and 0:29:21.880 --> 0:29:26.560