On July 2, the new Vietnam Memorial will play host to two rival demonstrations.
The Captive Nations Vigil Committee will sponsor a “Commemoration Ceremony” to honor the Captive Nations and the victims of Communist atrocities.
This will be preceded by a 21-hour “Chronology of Betrayal” — a reading of the names of victims of Communism and testimonies from those who have first-hand knowledge of life behind the Iron and Bamboo Curtains. July is also the month of the annual Presidential proclamation of Captive Nations Week, when those who truly care about human rights participate in observances to show solidarity with the nations enslaved by Communist aggression.
At the same place on July 2, a leftist rally will oppose U.S. aid to Central America and try to make the recent murder of an American serviceman in El Salvador a pro-Communist cause célèbre. The symbolism of staging this event at the Vietnam Memorial is obvious bait for the Communist propaganda mills.
It’s not hard to predict which rally will receive the more friendly network television coverage. Walter Cronkite made that clear in his one-hour primetime news special in May called “1984 Revisited.” That was CBS’s reinterpretation of George Orwell’s famous novel.
Orwell was a brilliant upper-class, educated British intellectual who was seduced by the Communists so completely that he fought for them in the Spanish Civil War in 1936.
He understood the Communist mind as few people ever have, and, disillusioned, he exposed the totality of its evil and its lust for power in a novel that has fascinated millions over succeeding decades.
Orwell described how “Big Brother” (the face of the total state) exercises thought control and how he alters history by dropping facts and events down the “Memory Hole” and fabricating documents to take their place. Orwell invented the words “Doublethink” and “Doublespeak” to show how language is manipulated to serve propaganda goals.
Unable to cope with the immense popularity of Orwell’s analysis of total state control and the accuracy of his predictions, the liberals have resorted to trying to tell us that “1984” is not about Communism. That is manifestly ridiculous, since the Communist war in Spain was the most influential event in Orwell’s life.
Walter Cronkite has joined the claque of those who are trying to drop Orwell himself down the Memory Hole, utilize the techniques of Doublespeak to reinterpret “1984,” and rewrite 20th century history.
Thus, the CBS production of “1984 Revisited” showed drawings depicting Orwell’s hero suffering the ultimate torture inflicted by Big Brother’s henchmen — being clawed and bitten in a cage with hungry rats. Then, Cronkite presented his viewers with examples of real-life torture, namely, the Middle Ages, Argentina, Guatemala, Chile, and Iraq.
Do you think that Walter just forgot to mention the hideous torture practiced by the Communists in country after country, a torture so systematic and so massively documented as to make it unnecessary to recite here? Do you suppose he never read Alexander Solzhenitsyn or James Michener’s “Bridge at Andau”?
Viewers of the CBS news special would conclude that the only similarity between Orwell’s description of Big Brother’s state and the Soviet Union was Khrushchev’s ordering the pages about Beria removed from the Soviet encyclopedia. The bloodier aspects of Communism were completely ignored.
The liberals of the 1930s had a love affair with the Soviets. They used a favorite cliché to excuse such embarrassments as Stalin’s Purge Trials: “You can’t make an omelette without breaking eggs.”
President Franklin D. Roosevelt affectionately referred to Stalin as “Uncle Joe” and cherished the belief that, if the Allies gave him everything he wanted, the spirit of “noblesse oblige” would motivate Stalin to return the favors. Of course, Stalin never fulfilled any obligations of nobility.
The smart liberals, such as George Orwell, outgrew their flimsy false illusions and figured out what Communist control really means in terms of individual freedom. Despite a mountain of historical evidence, including the invasions of Hungary, Czechoslovakia, and Afghanistan, many liberals haven’t yet faced up to reality.
Those who now engage in a vigil and ceremonies to commemorate the Captive Nations are witnesses to truth and history, even though they don’t have the TV networks on their side. By speaking up loud and clear, the friends of the Captive Nations still have time to prevent any more Western Hemisphere nations from falling under the heel of Communism.
