Speaker 1: Col Zone Media. On February eleventh, nineteen sixty seven, the
Speaker 1: Pittsburgh police raided an apartment near the University of Pittsburgh campus.
Speaker 1: They had a warrant to search the place for marijuana.
Speaker 1: Fifty three people were arrested, charged with the vague sounding
Speaker 1: crime of visiting a disorderly house. The party's host, Frank Goldsmith,
Speaker 1: was charged with possession of drugs, but there weren't any drugs.
Speaker 1: Perhaps frustrated at finding the place completely bare of so
Speaker 1: much as a loose joint, they ransacked Goldsmith's bathroom, where
Speaker 1: they found some tablets in a container in the medicine
Speaker 1: cabinet that were eventually proven to be prescription allergy medication.
Speaker 1: As the police tore through the apartment, one officer ripped
Speaker 1: a poster of a dong off the wall. He turned
Speaker 1: to one of the guests and demanded to know who
Speaker 1: the man in the poster is. Apparently the cop didn't
Speaker 1: get the joke because a college student told him that's
Speaker 1: Ho Chi Minh before he went on a diet, and
Speaker 1: when the officer produced the poster in court two weeks later,
Speaker 1: he told the judge it was Ho Chi Minh. One
Speaker 1: of the young men who was there that night, told
Speaker 1: the police that unless they were charging him with a
Speaker 1: specific offense, he would not submit to an arrest. As
Speaker 1: a foreign national. He'd specifically sought this guidance from his embassy, Mahmoud.
Speaker 1: Mum Dani would later tell The Washington Post that the
Speaker 1: officer responded by calling him a racial slur and telling
Speaker 1: him to go back where he came from. Eventually, all
Speaker 1: the charges were dropped. The FBI denied any involvement. The
Speaker 1: police may not have found any drugs that night, but
Speaker 1: they found evidence of something far more in city communism.
Speaker 1: I'm Molly Conger and this it's weird, little guys. I'll
Speaker 1: set your mind at ease right now. You may have
Speaker 1: recognized that name my mood mom Dannie as the father
Speaker 1: of Zoran Mamdanni, and neither of them are our weird
Speaker 1: little guy. But the news this week was a real distraction,
Speaker 1: and I didn't end up picking a weird little guy
Speaker 1: at all, but it did get me thinking about something
Speaker 1: that weird little guys spend a lot of time thinking about.
Speaker 1: Last week. On June twenty fourth, Zora Mama won the
Speaker 1: New York City mayoral democratic primary. The next day, the
Speaker 1: President of the United States, posted on truth Social, the
Speaker 1: social media platform that he owns, It's finally happened. The
Speaker 1: Democrats have crossed the line. Zorah Mumdani, a one hundred
Speaker 1: percent communist lunatic, has just won the dem primary and
Speaker 1: it's on his way to becoming mayor. We've had radical
Speaker 1: lefties before, but this is getting a little ridiculous. A
Speaker 1: one hundred percent communist lunatic. Huh, Zora Mumdani is a
Speaker 1: Democratic socialist. But that's a distinction that's lost on Donald Trump.
Speaker 1: And he's not alone. The day after the primary, the
Speaker 1: New York Young Republicans Club tweeted a photo of Mumdanni
Speaker 1: with the word deport stampedon read over his face, accompanied
Speaker 1: by this rather alarming demand. A call to action from
Speaker 1: the New York Young Republicans Club. The radicals Zoronmumdanni cannot
Speaker 1: be allowed to destroy our beloved city of New York.
Speaker 1: The Communist Control Act. Lets President Trump revoke Zoron Mumdanni's
Speaker 1: citizenship and promptly deport him. The time for action is now.
Speaker 1: Stephen Miller and Tom Homan, New York is counting on you.
Speaker 1: A day later, Congressman Andy Ogles posted a letter that
Speaker 1: he'd sent to Attorney General Pam Bondi asking the Department
Speaker 1: of Justice to open an investigation into whether Mamdanni could
Speaker 1: have his citizenship revoked. Ogles too called him a communist.
Speaker 1: But what is a communist? I'm not actually going to
Speaker 1: tell you. It's not that kind of podcast. But more importantly,
Speaker 1: it doesn't matter, because if I'm being honest, my answer
Speaker 1: to the question of is Zoronmumdanni a communist, it's the
Speaker 1: same answer that most wing extremists would give you if
Speaker 1: they were being honest. I don't know, and I don't care.
Speaker 1: In the world of weird little guys, a communist can
Speaker 1: be anyone. Even you remember just two weeks ago you
Speaker 1: heard this.
Speaker 2: It doesn't matter. She's a communist. You need to stop talking.
Speaker 2: Nobody is an She is a communist and anti white liberal.
Speaker 1: That's James alex Field's talking about Heather Hire's mother. He
Speaker 1: was sitting in jail awaiting trial for a hate crime murder,
Speaker 1: and that's what he had to say about the mother
Speaker 1: of the woman he killed. She's the enemy, an anti
Speaker 1: white communist. In later sworn statements produced in civil litigation,
Speaker 1: Fields would agree that he believed every member of the
Speaker 1: crowd that day was Communist. A week after Fields murdered
Speaker 1: a counter protester at that Nazi rally, Jason Kessler, the
Speaker 1: man who organized the Nazi rally hosted Heather Hire, was
Speaker 1: a fat, disgusting communist. Communists have killed ninety four million.
Speaker 1: Looks like it was payback time. While he was in prison,
Speaker 1: Fields received a letter from Matthew Heinbach, the leader of
Speaker 1: the neo Nazi group the Traditionalist Worker Party, in which
Speaker 1: Heinbach referred to the counter protesters that Field hit with
Speaker 1: his car as quote rampaging communist boards. When Christopher Cantwell,
Speaker 1: one of the neo Nazi activists who was supposed to
Speaker 1: give a speech that day, got maced, he blamed, oh,
Speaker 1: you guessed it. Communists.
Speaker 3: Ye I don't know all that communists.
Speaker 1: This isn't unique in my work. I see this every day.
Speaker 1: Anyone who opposes fascism is a communist. Anyone advocating for
Speaker 1: racial equality a communist, Democrats, communists, gay people, Jewish people, immigrants,
Speaker 1: civil rights activists, progressive clergy, anyone who's ever attended a
Speaker 1: rally for any left wing cause, communists one and all,
Speaker 1: and it's been like that for decades. Here's George Lincoln Rockwell,
Speaker 1: the commander of the American Nazi Party, in nineteen sixty six.
Speaker 4: In my opinion, communism is the organized mutiny. I'm going
Speaker 4: to this law because it's a lot packed into a
Speaker 4: few words. In my opinion, communism is the mutiny of
Speaker 4: quantity versus quality. I think the communism is the organized
Speaker 4: mutiny of the inferior biological people in the world, led
Speaker 4: by the Jews, against the people who have built civilization.
Speaker 2: That's what I think it is.
Speaker 1: Or how about David Lane, the man who came up
Speaker 1: with the fourteen words.
Speaker 2: Before we go any further, we might as well discuss
Speaker 2: three words that are considered by many to mean different things,
Speaker 2: but are in reality all one and the same thing.
Speaker 2: These three words are Judaism, communism, and the doctrine of equality.
Speaker 1: That clip is from a sermon that David Lane delivered
Speaker 1: at the Aryan Nation's compound in nineteen eighty one, just
Speaker 1: two years before he became a founding member of the
Speaker 1: Nazi terrorist organization The Order. And speaking of the Aryan Nations,
Speaker 1: here's their leader, Richard Butler.
Speaker 3: What they can destroy the will of the white man,
Speaker 3: who is that communism forever.
Speaker 1: Now, communism is real, It's a real political ideology that
Speaker 1: exists in the world. There are people who are communists,
Speaker 1: and anti communism was a significant force in American politics
Speaker 1: in the twentieth century, from the Palmer Raids during the
Speaker 1: First Red Scare in nineteen twenty to the years of
Speaker 1: paranoia and persecution led by Joseph McCarthy, but anti communism
Speaker 1: survived the death of McCarthyism. In his book Red Hunting
Speaker 1: in the Promised Land, Anti Communism and the Making of America,
Speaker 1: Joel Kovell argues that there is a difference between anti communism,
Speaker 1: that is, capital a anti hyphenpital C communism and anti
Speaker 1: communism all one word and lower case. Covelt defines capital
Speaker 1: C communism as actual communists, right, These actually existing movements
Speaker 1: and governments and people who organize according to the principles
Speaker 1: of communism and capital C anti communism, he says, is
Speaker 1: an objective dislike of capital C communism, so capital C
Speaker 1: anti communism is obviously about communism lower case anti communism.
Speaker 1: On the other hand, he calls the reigning ideology of
Speaker 1: the West and argues that it has very little at
Speaker 1: all to do with communism. In nineteen eighty seven, the
Speaker 1: Times Mirror commissioned Gallop to survey the American electorate. Over
Speaker 1: a period of several months, Bolsters conducted in person in
Speaker 1: interviews with four two hundred and forty four American adults
Speaker 1: all over the country, administering a long questionnaire that asked
Speaker 1: a variety of demographic and political questions. Seventy percent of
Speaker 1: respondents self identified as anti communist, compared to forty nine
Speaker 1: percent of people who said they were religious, forty seven
Speaker 1: percent who supported the civil rights movement, and twenty seven
Speaker 1: percent who identified as a supporter of unions. In the
Speaker 1: technical appendix, the Polsters note that quote as an identity
Speaker 1: anti communism is virtually universal in America, but if you
Speaker 1: dig through the responses to the other questions these people
Speaker 1: were asked, it kind of looks like most people who
Speaker 1: claimed that their political identity was as an anti communist
Speaker 1: might not really know what communisms and fifty six percent
Speaker 1: of respondents said they believed that it was the cause
Speaker 1: of most social unrest in America in nineteen eighty seven.
Speaker 1: Covell calls this the black hole of anti communism quote
Speaker 1: a feeling that nullifies any reasoned or differentiated argument that
Speaker 1: distinguishes anti communism from a simple reaction to communism, and
Speaker 1: promotes it to the status of a great organizing force
Speaker 1: an American life, Anti communism took on a kind of
Speaker 1: religious fervor in American politics during the Cold War. Anything
Speaker 1: the government did in the name of fighting the Soviets
Speaker 1: was good. Any opposition to it was bad, to the
Speaker 1: point that people were tying themselves in knots. When religious
Speaker 1: leaders spoke out against the threat of nuclear annihilation, conservative
Speaker 1: writer William of Buckley accused them of idolatry, of venerating
Speaker 1: life at the great cost of ignoring the greater good,
Speaker 1: which is, I guess, having a large nuclear arsenal to
Speaker 1: resist the threat of communism. One of Ronald Reagan's own
Speaker 1: closest advisers admitted during a congressional hearing that he'd been
Speaker 1: unwilling to speak frankly to the President about the obvious
Speaker 1: illegality of the Iran Contra affair because he was afraid
Speaker 1: of being called a kami. Everything done in the name
Speaker 1: of fighting communism is good. Anything that needs to be
Speaker 1: fought is communism, and any resistance to that fight makes
Speaker 1: you no better than a communist. Quote. Viewed against this
Speaker 1: diabolical force, all moral and rational comparisons disappear like light
Speaker 1: sucked in by the virtually infinite gravity of a cosmological
Speaker 1: black hole. Covell wrote, communism could be anything, rendering the
Speaker 1: word effectively meaningless. An accusation I see quite often levied
Speaker 1: at well people like me, people who write about fascism,
Speaker 1: white supremacy, neo Nazis, etc. Is well, you just call
Speaker 1: everyone you don't like a Nazi. And I'm sure there
Speaker 1: are people out there getting a little too casual with it.
Speaker 1: But I can only speak for myself, and I know
Speaker 1: that words mean things, and I'm careful with them. I
Speaker 1: won't say I've never been wrong, but I'm not careless.
Speaker 1: There have been so many times that I've responded to
Speaker 1: that particular jab with just a quick citation. Here's a
Speaker 1: picture of his bedroom with a Nazi flag on the
Speaker 1: wall and a framed picture of Hitler. Here's a video
Speaker 1: of the band in question literally saying straight to camera,
Speaker 1: I am a fascist. Here he is in a clan robe,
Speaker 1: throwing a Roman salute, going on a podcast to talk
Speaker 1: about the sin of race mixing. Whatever. I try to
Speaker 1: use words carefully, but for the anti communist, the word
Speaker 1: is so all encompassing that you can call anyone a
Speaker 1: communist and you'll never be wrong. And no man in
Speaker 1: American history better exemplifies this quixotic project of rooting out
Speaker 1: imaginary communists than j Edgar Hoover. Ellen Schrecker, a historian
Speaker 1: of McCarthyism, wrote that if people had known in the
Speaker 1: nineteen fifties what we would eventually learn when the FBI
Speaker 1: was forced to disclose files from that era, McCarthyism would
Speaker 1: have been called Hooverism. In Hoover's nineteen fifty eight book
Speaker 1: Masters of Deceit, he explained just how devious the communists
Speaker 1: can be. The party's objective is to drive a wedge,
Speaker 1: however slight, into as many minds as possible. That is why,
Speaker 1: in every conceivable way, communists try to poison our thinking
Speaker 1: about the issues of the day social reforms, peace, politics, veterans,
Speaker 1: women's and youth problems. The more people they can influence,
Speaker 1: the stronger they will be. Responding to that passage. In particular,
Speaker 1: Fred Cook wrote in his review of the book for
Speaker 1: the Nation, obviously it is hardly safe to think about
Speaker 1: any of the issues in these all embracing categories for
Speaker 1: communists maybe thinking about them too, And how is one
Speaker 1: to know whether one's thoughts are actually one's own or
Speaker 1: the reflection of some subtle communists thought anoculation. By the
Speaker 1: nineteen sixties, there wasn't the same appetite for the outright
Speaker 1: McCarthyism of the forties and fifties, but Hoover's personal commitment
Speaker 1: to rooting out the specter of communism never faded. I know,
Speaker 1: the little opening vignette of an episode of this show
Speaker 1: is usually kind of a bait and switch, some interesting
Speaker 1: but only tangentially related tidbit that I don't really revisit,
Speaker 1: But this one's fascinating. Remember in nineteen sixty seven, Zoron
Speaker 1: Mamdani's father, Mahmoudmumdani, was a college student at the University
Speaker 1: of Pittsburgh. He was one of several dozen students caught
Speaker 1: up in a police raid at an apartment just off
Speaker 1: campus one night. The police claimed to be looking for drugs,
Speaker 1: They didn't find any, and the charges against all fifty
Speaker 1: three people were dropped. But this wasn't an ordinary college party.
Speaker 1: Half of the people taken into custody that night were
Speaker 1: students from nearby Saint Vincent College, their theology professor, Father Roseboro,
Speaker 1: had left the party early and wasn't there when the
Speaker 1: cops showed up. The party that evening was a reception
Speaker 1: for an out of town guest. David Dellinger, a pacifist activist,
Speaker 1: gave a talk earlier that day at the University of Pittsburgh,
Speaker 1: and he told the audience about his recent visit to Vietnam,
Speaker 1: where he'd gone to talk to the people who'd been
Speaker 1: affected by the American bombing campaign. Frank Goldsmith, the party's host,
Speaker 1: was the chairman of the local chapter of the Committee
Speaker 1: to End the War in Vietnam. Everyone in attendance that
Speaker 1: night was to some degree or another active in the
Speaker 1: anti war movement. Two months after those charges were dropped,
Speaker 1: Marcus Childs wrote an article about the raid in the
Speaker 1: Washington Post. Child was clear that both the FBI and
Speaker 1: the DOJ had denied any involvement in the incident, but
Speaker 1: he says that those close to the case believed that
Speaker 1: it was absolutely connected to the FBI's interest in the
Speaker 1: campus anti war group, writing quote, there is reason to
Speaker 1: fear a revival of the Red Scare, the Red Raids,
Speaker 1: and the mccarthuris hysteria. This particular incident itself doesn't get
Speaker 1: much press after that. I mean, there's nothing to report. Right,
Speaker 1: the charges were dropped, it was over. But the very
Speaker 1: day that newspapers ran April twenty first, nineteen sixty seven,
Speaker 1: an FBI agent carefully cut it out of the newspaper
Speaker 1: and xeroxt it. Later that day, that same FBI agent
Speaker 1: wrote a memo to his boss, William Sullivan, the head
Speaker 1: of the bureau's domestic intelligence division running the operation we
Speaker 1: now know as co Intel pro. Attached to the memo
Speaker 1: was that copy of Charles's article in the margins in J.
Speaker 1: Edgar Hoover's handwriting, there's a little note, what are the
Speaker 1: facts as to our interest in this matter? The memo,
Speaker 1: written by Charles Brennan claims, quote, the FBI had absolutely
Speaker 1: nothing to do with this raid, and it concludes with
Speaker 1: this paragraph. This is another example of the increasing tendency
Speaker 1: of so called liberal writers and faculty in student groups
Speaker 1: to criticize the Bureau in an effort to stop our
Speaker 1: investigation of subversive elements active in campus groups. These individuals
Speaker 1: are consciously or unconsciously aiding the Communist Party in its
Speaker 1: lifelong fight to stop the FBI's investigation into subverse some
Speaker 1: influences on the campuses. A few days later, j Edgar Hoover,
Speaker 1: the director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation himself, wrote
Speaker 1: the journalist a nasty letter, calling the article irresponsible and outrageous,
Speaker 1: and again claiming that the FBI had no involvement in
Speaker 1: or knowledge of the raid. Now, I don't know if
Speaker 1: you can tell how I feel about Jaedgar Hoover, but
Speaker 1: I don't think he's telling the truth. Shocking, I know,
Speaker 1: but the story doesn't make sense. In several newspaper stories,
Speaker 1: the Pittsburgh police sometimes claim that they'd been surveilling Frank
Speaker 1: Goldsmith's apartment for weeks. Other articles are very specific that
Speaker 1: they had a search warrant that was signed by hours
Speaker 1: before the raid, and that the warrant specifically authorized for
Speaker 1: the search of marijuana. But the FBI memo and some
Speaker 1: of the newspaper articles claimed that the raid was actually
Speaker 1: just prompted by noise complaints from neighbors and the search
Speaker 1: for drugs was incidental. And then, of course there's the
Speaker 1: fact that declassified FBI files exist for a number of
Speaker 1: people who were at the party that night. Frank Goldsmith,
Speaker 1: the man whose apartment was raided, had been under investigation
Speaker 1: for his involvement in the anti war movement for over
Speaker 1: a year. In one FBI file bearing the title Communist
Speaker 1: Influence in Racial Matters, a memo dated just a few
Speaker 1: months before the raid outlined surveillance of Goldsmith performed by
Speaker 1: the Pittsburgh Police Department on behalf of the FBI, and
Speaker 1: the raid at Frank Goldsmith's apartment wasn't Mahmoud mam Danni's
Speaker 1: first rush with FBI surveillance. Two years earlier, in March
Speaker 1: of nineteen sixty five, he was one of one hundred
Speaker 1: and twenty eight college students from the Pittsburgh area who
Speaker 1: piled into buses that made the twelve hour drive to Montgomery, Alabama,
Speaker 1: and there they participated in a protest organized by these
Speaker 1: student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee.
Speaker 5: I was born in Kampala, Uganda, in East Africa. I
Speaker 5: was given my middle name Kuame by my father, who
Speaker 5: named me after the first Prime Minister of Ghana and
Speaker 5: decades ago in Uganda we won our independence from the
Speaker 5: British in nineteen sixty two. We can clap for that,
Speaker 5: and when we did. The United States government gave the
Speaker 5: Ugandan government twenty three scholarships as a gift for independence,
Speaker 5: and my father won one of those scholarships. He came
Speaker 5: to this country to study to be an engineer at
Speaker 5: the University of Pittsburgh, and sometime into his studies, his
Speaker 5: face buried in his book, he heard the words reverberate
Speaker 5: in the corridor around him. Which side are you on?
Speaker 5: Which side are you on? These were words being sung
Speaker 5: by members of SNICK, the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, recruiting
Speaker 5: students to get on the bus to go to Montgomery, Alabama.
Speaker 5: And my father got on that bus. He marched, He
Speaker 5: was hosed down, he was thrown in jail. He was
Speaker 5: given one phone call and he called the Ugandan ambassador
Speaker 5: the United States. He said, can you get me out
Speaker 5: of jail? The ambassador said, what are you doing in jail?
Speaker 5: We sent you there to study. My father said, you
Speaker 5: sent me here as a gift for our freedom. They
Speaker 5: are fighting for theirs. It's one and the same.
Speaker 1: His son's re counting of the story doesn't say how
Speaker 1: many students were on the buses, and neither did any
Speaker 1: of the newspaper stories that I could find from nineteen
Speaker 1: sixty five. But a memo that landed directly on J.
Speaker 1: Edgar Hoover's desk did. The names of every student on
Speaker 1: those buses was turned over to the FBI by formant,
Speaker 1: and in the weeks that followed, Mamud Mumdani was one
Speaker 1: of scores of students who received a visit from a
Speaker 1: federal agent. In an interview in twenty thirteen, Mamoud Mumdani
Speaker 1: says that it was the FBI's obsessive attempts to root
Speaker 1: out communism that ironically introduced him to Marx. Reading from
Speaker 1: that interview, two or three weeks later, I was in
Speaker 1: my room. There was a knock at the door. Two
Speaker 1: gentlemen in trench coats and hats said FBI, and I
Speaker 1: thought wow, just like on television. They sat down. They
Speaker 1: were there to find out why I had gone, because
Speaker 1: this turned out to be big. It was after Montgomery
Speaker 1: that King organized his march on Selma. They wanted to
Speaker 1: know who had influenced me. After one hour of probing,
Speaker 1: the guy said, do you like Marx? I said, I
Speaker 1: haven't met him. I said, no, no, he's dead. Oh wow,
Speaker 1: what happened? No, No, he died long ago. I thought
Speaker 1: the guy Marx had just died, So then why are
Speaker 1: you asking me if he died long ago? No, he
Speaker 1: wrote a lot. He wrote that poor people should not
Speaker 1: be poor, and I said, sounds amazing. I'm giving you
Speaker 1: a sense of how naive I was. After they left,
Speaker 1: I went to the library to look for Marx. So
Speaker 1: that was my introduction to Karl Marx. He'd never heard
Speaker 1: of Karl Marx, but he was already a communist, because
Speaker 1: everyone who marched for civil rights was. There is a
Speaker 1: fascinating and complicated history of how anti communism functions, specifically
Speaker 1: in the South during the Civil rights era, But to
Speaker 1: be honest, I feel like I didn't do enough reading
Speaker 1: this week to really do it justice. Their short answer
Speaker 1: is just that it was often politically useful to label
Speaker 1: all civil rights activists as communists, and that was kind
Speaker 1: of the only answer in the literature for a long time.
Speaker 1: But there are a handful of books now that explore
Speaker 1: the complexities of anti communism in the South. Like I said,
Speaker 1: I didn't get a chance to read more than a
Speaker 1: chapter of any of these, so I couldn't tell you
Speaker 1: which I would recommend, but it seems like the best
Speaker 1: sources if you want more on this topic are George
Speaker 1: Lewis's The White South and Red Menace, Segregationists, Anti Communism,
Speaker 1: and Massive Resistance, Jeff Woods Black Struggle, Red Scare, segregation
Speaker 1: and anti Communism in the South, and yeah, Soohiro Kategii's
Speaker 1: Black Freedom, White Resistance, and Red Men. But here's the thing.
Speaker 1: Some of those civil rights activists were communists. That gets
Speaker 1: lost when you explain it all the way as McCarthy's
Speaker 1: hysteria and redbaiting. Some of them were communists, and proudly so.
Speaker 1: But who is or isn't a communist doesn't actually matter
Speaker 1: to the anti communist. Remember that clip of Christopher Caentwell
Speaker 1: being asked who maced him. He has no idea who
Speaker 1: it was, but it was communists, because whatever bad thing
Speaker 1: is happening to him is communism. So I suppose it's
Speaker 1: no surprise that Zoron Mumdani is being accused of being
Speaker 1: a communist, and I do mean accused. People like Congressman
Speaker 1: Andy Ogles are trying to have him investigated. Zoron Mumdani
Speaker 1: is an immigrant, was born in Uganda and moved to
Speaker 1: the United States as a child and became a naturalized
Speaker 1: United States citizen in twenty eighteen. There is no doubt
Speaker 1: about those facts. He is a United States citizen. In
Speaker 1: that post from the New York Young Republicans Club, the
Speaker 1: group cites the Communist Control Act of nineteen fifty four
Speaker 1: as grounds to have Mamdani deported. There are a couple
Speaker 1: of layers here. There's a lot going on, but I
Speaker 1: think they're wrong on every single front. That Act, the
Speaker 1: Communist Control Act, is technically still on the books, but
Speaker 1: it would only bar a member of the Communist Party
Speaker 1: from holding certain offices. It has nothing to do with
Speaker 1: his naturalization status. It was signed into law by President
Speaker 1: Eisenhower in nineteen fifty four, the same year that Eisenhower
Speaker 1: himself was accused of being a card carrying member of
Speaker 1: the Communist Party by Robert Well, the founder of the
Speaker 1: viciously anti communist John Birch Society. Those facts aren't actually
Speaker 1: really related in any way. It's just further proof that
Speaker 1: anyone the anti communist dislikes can be sucked into the
Speaker 1: black hole of anti communism. Even Dwight D. Eisenhower, and
Speaker 1: the Act itself was never really widely used. The Supreme
Speaker 1: Court ruled in the nineteen sixties that it didn't prevent
Speaker 1: the Communist Party from participating in the New York State
Speaker 1: Unemployments Insurance system as an employer, but the ruling didn't
Speaker 1: go further than that as to the constitutionality of the
Speaker 1: law as a whole. It was found to be unconstitutional
Speaker 1: by a federal court in Arizona in nineteen seventy three,
Speaker 1: but a challenge to the law was never heard by
Speaker 1: a higher court, so we don't have a Supreme Court
Speaker 1: opinion on the matter. But again that's because it was
Speaker 1: so rarely used. This wasn't something that was happening a lot,
Speaker 1: and I guess it's no longer safe to make a
Speaker 1: prediction like this, But I would say, in a world
Speaker 1: that stayed even half sane, barring him from holding office
Speaker 1: under the Communist Control Act of nineteen fifty four would
Speaker 1: not hold up. It would not hold up to a challenge,
Speaker 1: although again everything's out the window now. Other Magaspear influencers
Speaker 1: quickly identified another line of attack, one that wouldn't just
Speaker 1: keep him out of office, but could get him out
Speaker 1: of the country. Under the Immigration and Nationality Act, another
Speaker 1: relic of the MacArthur era, members of the Communist Party
Speaker 1: are not eligible to become naturalized citizens. Specifically, Title eight
Speaker 1: US Code, Section fourteen twenty four prohibition upon the naturalization
Speaker 1: of persons opposed to government or law, or who favored
Speaker 1: totalitarian forms of government. It's a lengthy section, it managed,
Speaker 1: which is to be incredibly vague and open ended, despite
Speaker 1: taking over a thousand words to explain itself. Section A
Speaker 1: just lists six different situations that would make a person
Speaker 1: ineligible for naturalization, and here is just one of those
Speaker 1: six sub sections. A member of or affiliated with, the
Speaker 1: Communist Party of the United States, any other totalitarian party
Speaker 1: of the United States, the Communist Political Association, the Communists,
Speaker 1: or other totalitarian party of any state of the United States,
Speaker 1: of any foreign state, or of any political or geographic
Speaker 1: subdivision of any foreign state, Any section, subsidiary, branch, affiliate,
Speaker 1: or subdivision of any such association or party, or the
Speaker 1: direct predecessors or successors of any such association or party,
Speaker 1: regardless of what name such group or organization may have used,
Speaker 1: may now bear or may hereafter adopt, unless such alien
Speaker 1: establishes that he did not have knowledge or reason to
Speaker 1: believe at the time he became a member of or
Speaker 1: affiliated with such an organization, and did not thereafter, and
Speaker 1: prior to the date upon which such organization was so
Speaker 1: registered or so required to be register, have such knowledge
Speaker 1: or reason to believe that such organization was a Communist
Speaker 1: Front organization? What the fuck does that mean?
Speaker 6: Now?
Speaker 1: As always, I'm not a lawyer. I didn't go to
Speaker 1: law school. Nobody taught me how to read the laws.
Speaker 1: But I looked at this pretty hard, and I looked
Speaker 1: very hard for definitions. You see, when legislators write a law,
Speaker 1: they'll often include specific definitions of unique terms or words
Speaker 1: or terms that could be ambiguous. And there are some
Speaker 1: words and phrases in this section that I don't know
Speaker 1: that I would say, have a clear, straightforward, plain language
Speaker 1: meaning that is not ambiguous. So surely there is a
Speaker 1: section somewhere in this chapter that defines specifically what they
Speaker 1: mean by communist front or organization, because that could mean
Speaker 1: a lot of things. But it isn't there. There is
Speaker 1: no definition in this chapter for that term. And I looked,
Speaker 1: and I looked, and it's not in the US Code
Speaker 1: at all. But it used to be. The term was
Speaker 1: originally defined in a law that was passed two years earlier,
Speaker 1: in the Internal Security Act of nineteen fifty, in the
Speaker 1: section of the Code that established the Subversive Activities Control Board.
Speaker 1: The Supreme Court ruled in nineteen sixty five that it
Speaker 1: was unconstitutional to force members of the Communist Party to
Speaker 1: register with the Subversive Activities Control Board, and that entire
Speaker 1: Code section would eventually get repealed in nineteen ninety three,
Speaker 1: which is why it no longer appears in the US
Speaker 1: Code at all. So the Code section we were just
Speaker 1: talking about, the section that would allow for the vitualization
Speaker 1: of people who were members of organizations that were required
Speaker 1: to be registered with a body that no longer exists
Speaker 1: and was found to be unconstitutional. I'm not sure how
Speaker 1: you can sort that out. I'm not sure how you
Speaker 1: can apply a law whose terms are defined in a
Speaker 1: Code section that is unconstitutional and repealed and again at
Speaker 1: the risk of being repetitive. There is another huge problem here.
Speaker 1: He's not a communist, he's not a member of the
Speaker 1: Communist Party. He's a member of the Democratic Socialists of America.
Speaker 1: And I promise you it's not a communist organization. So
Speaker 1: even if you were to accept the outrageous argument that
Speaker 1: this law born of Cold War hysteria is valid and
Speaker 1: that it could and should be applied, it doesn't apply.
Speaker 1: He's only a communist in the sense that that's the
Speaker 1: word used to attack people like him. A lot of
Speaker 1: these rabid anti communist armchair attorneys who are posting online
Speaker 1: are pulling in another section of that same Immigration and
Speaker 1: Nationality Act, Title eight USC. Fourteen fifty one, Revocation of naturalization.
Speaker 1: So that last section says that you can't get naturalized
Speaker 1: if you're a member of the Communist Party, but this
Speaker 1: one goes further. Even if you were not a member
Speaker 1: at the time of your naturalization. If you decide later
Speaker 1: to join the Communist Party after you've become a citizen,
Speaker 1: they can take it back. If a person who shall
Speaker 1: have been naturalized after December twenty four, nineteen fifty two, shall,
Speaker 1: within five years next following such naturalization become a member
Speaker 1: of or affiliated with any organization, membership in or affiliation
Speaker 1: with which at the time of naturalization would have precluded
Speaker 1: such person from naturalization. Under the provisions of Section fourteen
Speaker 1: twenty four of this title, it shall be considered prima
Speaker 1: fascia evidence that such person was not attached to the
Speaker 1: principles of the Constitution of the United States and was
Speaker 1: not well disposed to the good order and happiness of
Speaker 1: the United States at the time of naturalization. And the
Speaker 1: section continues saying that naturalization in this situation could be
Speaker 1: revoked for a quote having been obtained by concealment of
Speaker 1: a material fact or by willful misrepresentation. So they're not
Speaker 1: saying you were a communist at the time, we didn't know,
Speaker 1: we caught you later. They're saying that even if you
Speaker 1: never thought about communism until after you were a citizen
Speaker 1: for several years, they can take it as proof that
Speaker 1: you lied on purpose, years before the thought ever entered
Speaker 1: your head. Denaturalization is not common, at least it didn't
Speaker 1: used to be. Between nineteen ninety and twenty seventeen, there
Speaker 1: were an average of eleven cases per year. And when
Speaker 1: I punched in this code section into court listener who
Speaker 1: website that let's use search federal court filings, I browsed
Speaker 1: a handful of the cases that popped up. They're mostly
Speaker 1: pretty serious, like it's not gray area stuff, it's big
Speaker 1: red flag obvious problem. Tize situations like you could see
Speaker 1: why this was a big deal and had to happen
Speaker 1: in many of these cases, like a handful of very
Speaker 1: old men who obtained United States citizenship by covering up
Speaker 1: that they'd been Nazi war criminals. There were a surprising
Speaker 1: number of those. In the nineties. We were deporting eighty
Speaker 1: five year old SS officers at a pretty good clip
Speaker 1: there for a minute. Twenty report from the National Immigration
Speaker 1: Project of the National Lawyer's Guild, though, warned that the
Speaker 1: number of denaturalization cases increased dramatically during Trump's first term.
Speaker 1: In twenty eighteen, United States Citizenship and Immigration Services announced
Speaker 1: that they were prepared to refer sixteen hundred cases to
Speaker 1: the DOJ for potential denaturalization proceedings. In twenty twenty, the
Speaker 1: DOJ formed a new office dedicated to investigating and litigating
Speaker 1: denaturalization cases. Although, aside from the mention of that office
Speaker 1: in some of these publications that were by and for
Speaker 1: immigration attorneys, I can't actually find anything about the existence
Speaker 1: of that office past the date of the DOJ press
Speaker 1: release announcing it, so it's hard to say if they
Speaker 1: actually did that. But denaturalization cases have been increasing in
Speaker 1: recent years and now the administration is seriously considering reviving
Speaker 1: it as a tool of suppressing political dissent. In early
Speaker 1: June of twenty twenty five, the Justice Department published a
Speaker 1: memo directing attorneys in the DOJ's Civil Division to quote, prioritize,
Speaker 1: and maximally pursue denaturalization proceedings in all cases permitted by law.
Speaker 1: The memo lists ten categories of denaturalization cases. It's got
Speaker 1: the basics, you know, war crimes, terrorism gangs, people who
Speaker 1: lied about their criminal history or made other material misrepresentations
Speaker 1: during the naturalization process. But it also includes as a
Speaker 1: separate category of people to target for having their citizenships
Speaker 1: stripped away. Quote individuals who engaged in various forms of
Speaker 1: financial fraud against the United States, including paycheck protection program
Speaker 1: loan fraud, and medicaid or Medicare fraud. The tenth category
Speaker 1: is just vibes. Quote any other cases refer to the
Speaker 1: Civil Division that the Division determines to be sufficiently important
Speaker 1: to pursue. And it kind of feels like that one
Speaker 1: means any immigrant who makes the president mad. At a
Speaker 1: White House press briefing on June thirtieth, Caroline Levitt declined
Speaker 1: to say whether Trump had weighed in on Congressman Ogle's
Speaker 1: calls to deport Mamdanni. Does President Trump want Zooran Mamdani deported.
Speaker 7: I haven't heard him say that. I haven't heard him
Speaker 7: call for that, but certainly he does not want this
Speaker 7: individual to be elected. I was just speaking to him
Speaker 7: about it and his radical policies that will completely rush.
Speaker 1: But she did say, quote, it's something that should be investigated,
Speaker 1: and that he is quote quite literally a communist. These
Speaker 1: McCarthy's and Earl laws target communists, so it kind of
Speaker 1: matters what a communist is, or at least what they
Speaker 1: think it is. Here are some things that Donald Trump
Speaker 1: has called communism. There's a ro on, Mom, Donnie, of course,
Speaker 1: what did you make of the New York Democrat primary?
Speaker 1: I'm Donnie.
Speaker 3: He's a communist.
Speaker 8: I think is very bad for New York.
Speaker 6: I don't know that he's going to get inconceivable that,
Speaker 6: but he's a communist, and he's a pure communist. I
Speaker 6: think he admits it.
Speaker 1: And for all the noise he's making about New York
Speaker 1: City getting its first communist mayor, he seems to have
Speaker 1: forgotten they already had one five years ago. He took
Speaker 1: time out of a busy day to call into an
Speaker 1: episode of Fox and Friends to call Bill de Blasio
Speaker 1: a communist.
Speaker 6: Oh, the mayor has no response. He doesn't know what
Speaker 6: he's doing. He's a fool. He's a socialist communist. Maybe
Speaker 6: he's a fool.
Speaker 1: And it's not just mayss of New York pledging their
Speaker 1: allegiance to communism in the president's imagination to everyone. I'm
Speaker 1: sure it wasn't the only C word he wanted to
Speaker 1: call her, but he called Kamala Harris a communist throughout
Speaker 1: the few months leading up to the twenty twenty four election.
Speaker 8: She's a Marxist, she's a Marxist. A lot of people say,
Speaker 8: don't use the term Marxist because people don't understand. Okay,
Speaker 8: she's a communist.
Speaker 9: She's a communist, and our country is not ready for
Speaker 9: a communist.
Speaker 8: It will never be ready for a communist.
Speaker 1: And of course everyone involved in his criminal prosecution was
Speaker 1: a communist.
Speaker 3: Every time the radical left, Democrats, Marxist, communist and fascists
Speaker 3: indicte me, I consider it a great badge of honor
Speaker 3: because I am being indicted for you. I am being
Speaker 3: indicted for you.
Speaker 1: He couldn't quite make up his mind about Elizabeth Warren.
Speaker 1: At some twenty twenty campaign rallies she was an avowed communist,
Speaker 1: a Marxist even, but other times she's just borderline communist.
Speaker 8: And frankly, had Elizabeth Warren been loyal to her philosophy,
Speaker 8: which is radical left socialism, perhaps communism, I don't know,
Speaker 8: Perhaps it's verging on communism, right.
Speaker 1: He Warren voters in Georgia that John Ossef and Raphael
Speaker 1: Warnock were going to bring about the communist revolution.
Speaker 9: Very simply, you will decide whether your children will grow
Speaker 9: up in a socialist country or whether they will grow
Speaker 9: up in a free country. And I will tell you
Speaker 9: this socialist is just the beginning for these people. These
Speaker 9: people want to go further than socialism. They want to
Speaker 9: go into a communistic form of government.
Speaker 1: And I have no doubt about.
Speaker 2: This.
Speaker 1: Twenty twenty appearance on the Rush Limbaugh Show is reminiscent
Speaker 1: of the sort of classic Civil Rights era anti communism. Right,
Speaker 1: only radical Marxism could explain black people having an interest
Speaker 1: in racial equality. They must be getting riled up.
Speaker 6: The first time I ever heard of Black Lives Matter,
Speaker 6: I said, that's such a terrible term because it's such
Speaker 6: a racist term. It's a term that show's division between
Speaker 6: blacks and whites and everybody else. And it's a very
Speaker 6: bad term. Four blacks, but they were very angry. It's
Speaker 6: a Marxist organization.
Speaker 1: That's the key.
Speaker 6: It's pigs in a blanket, pigs.
Speaker 1: In a blanket. And of course Bernie Sanders is a communist.
Speaker 1: And then some and just this week you call Bernie
Speaker 1: Sanders a maniac and a communist and a communist. Christy Nomes,
Speaker 1: Stephen Miller, Andy Ogels, Marjorie Green, Caroline Levitt, the Libs
Speaker 1: of TikTok Lady the Maga Sphear can't stop talking about it.
Speaker 1: They're surrounded by communists. Trump was surprisingly candid about this
Speaker 1: at a press conference last summer.
Speaker 6: All we have to do is define our opponent as
Speaker 6: being a communist or a socialist, or somebody that's going
Speaker 6: to destroy our country.
Speaker 1: They're communists, they're the enemy. All we have to do
Speaker 1: is call our opponent a communist. It's a little cliche,
Speaker 1: I think, to remind you of the poem, you know,
Speaker 1: the one first they came for. But what do you
Speaker 1: think the first line is? Because this is the opening
Speaker 1: of Martin Eimuller's poem in the original German.
Speaker 5: That's the Nazis de communist nor words k sweeden ishvaja
Speaker 5: con communist.
Speaker 1: That recording is from the website for the Martin Emuller House,
Speaker 1: a museum in Berlin dedicated to preserving the memory of
Speaker 1: the role played by the Confessing Church and resisting Nazi Germany.
Speaker 1: The first line is not first they came for the socialists,
Speaker 1: but that's probably the line you had in your head
Speaker 1: underneath the palm. On the museum's website they note that
Speaker 1: the poem is by Martin Emuller and it says widely
Speaker 1: used worldwide, often carelessly modified. Communists means communists. First they
Speaker 1: came for the Communists, then the trade unionists, then the
Speaker 1: social Democrats, then the Jews. But I don't think Americans
Speaker 1: can bear to admit that when someone starts imprisoning and
Speaker 1: deporting communists a little bit like a Nazi government. Weird
Speaker 1: Little Guys is a prorection of Cool Zone Media and
Speaker 1: iHeart ratio. It's researched, written and recorded by me Molly Conger.
Speaker 1: Our executive producers are Sophie Liechtman and Robert Evans. The
Speaker 1: show is edited by the wildly talented Ory Gagan. The
Speaker 1: theme music was composed by Brad Dickert. You can email
Speaker 1: me at Ridttle Guys Podcast at gmail dot com. I
Speaker 1: will definitely read it, but I probably won't answer it.
Speaker 1: It's nothing personal. You can exchange conspiracy theories about the
Speaker 1: show without the listeners on the weirdsle the Guys subreddit.
Speaker 1: Just don't post anything that's going to make you on
Speaker 1: my weird Little Guys