The passing of Nobel Peace Prize Laureate Nelson Mandela this week was met with reverential coverage by the major networks, and of course with President Obama’s aligning himself with the man whose life bore no resemblance to his whatsoever, aside from skin color and continent-of-origin of their fathers. Oh, and their Marxist leanings.
Generally speaking, though, President Mandela’s ties to Marxist/Communist leaders were mentioned only by right-leaning media, some of which accepted them within the greater context of the remarkable transformation he helped bring to South Africa. The conclusion of National Review’s editorial “Nelson Mandela, R.I.P. The good he did was enormous”.was this:
Nelson Mandela, like many another great man, had blind spots and other defects. His selectivity where human rights were concerned was hard to fathom. But he certainly knew that apartheid was wrong. And the good he did, especially as president of the new South Africa, was enormous. The continent of Africa could do with more such leaders, and so could the world at large. His Nobel Peace Prize is richly deserved, and so is the gratitude of his country.
Newt Gingrich exhorted those conservatives who criticized his praise for Mandela:
I would ask of his critics: where were some of these conservatives as allies against tyranny? Where were the masses of conservatives opposing Apartheid? In a desperate struggle against an overpowering government, you accept the allies you have just as Washington was grateful for a French monarchy helping him defeat the British.
Finally, if you had been imprisoned for 27 years, 18 of them in a cell eight foot by seven foot, how do you think you would have emerged? Would you have been angry? Would you have been bitter?
Nelson Mandela emerged from 27 years in prison as an astonishingly wise, patient, and compassionate person.
He called for reconciliation among the races. He invited his prison guard to sit in the front row at his inauguration as President. In effect he said to the entire country, “If I can forgive the man who imprisoned me, surely you can forgive your neighbors.”
Far from behaving like a communist, President Mandela reassured businesses that they could invest in South Africa and grow in South Africa. He had learned that jobs come from job creators.
I was very privileged to be able to meet with President Mandela and present the Congressional Medal of Freedom. As much as any person in our lifetime he had earned our respect and our recognition.
In “The Mandela Cover-up Unravels” Cliff Kinkaid from Accuracy in Media focused on Mandela’s association with the South African Communist Party (SACP)- in fact, he had been a high-ranking official in the organization – as well as the media’s whitewashing of his history.
Now that we know what’s going on, what will we do about it? Three American presidents—Obama, Clinton, and George W. Bush—are going to South Africa for his state funeral on December 15. Obama has ordered American flags to remain at half-staff in his honor until sunset on December 9. The con will continue. Still, the facts matter.
Many in the media are calling Mandela a “political prisoner” when he served prison time. But on the Fox News “Special Report” show on December 5, Jesse Jackson admitted Mandela told him that he was planning bombings of hospitals and schools in South Africa when he got caught. That is why Mandela went to prison. He ran Umkhonto we Sizwe, the terrorist wing of the African National Congress (ANC) and South African Communist Party. The white minority made a deal to release him because they feared for their lives against a Soviet-sponsored terrorist onslaught that was documented in 1982 Senate hearings entitled “The Role of the Soviet Union, Cuba, and East Germany in Fomenting Terrorism in Southern Africa.” ….
In addition, from the “new media,” there were numerous articles with quotations from and about atrocities committed by Nelson Mandela and the African National Congress. Some examples are here here here , here and this video of his praise for Yasser Arafat. And Buzzfeed had this compilation of quotations. Two of the more startling are ““If there is a country that has committed unspeakable atrocities in the world, it is the United States of America. They don’t care for human beings.” and “The cause of communism is the greatest cause in the history of mankind!”
So after reading all this – the Mainstream media idolizing him, Barack Obama identifying with him (an interesting study of the absurdity of this here) , conservatives pointing out his communist and anti-American sentiments while the MSM generally kept this hidden – I was stunned to find this on Huffington:
“Mandela was closely aligned with Marxists around the globe until his death” was the lead-in to the article “Here Are 6 Moments From Mandela’s Marxist Past That You Won’t Hear On CNN”
How astonishing! HuffPo, admitting that their hero was a Marxist? How was this even possible! And even from the title, they set themselves apart from “competitor” CNN with their seeming even-handedness.
The first paragraph sets the stage:
Nelson Mandela is one of the greatest political heroes of the last century — a man who earned the highest accolades from those at every point on the American ideological spectrum, and who punctuated his political life by working for pragmatic racial political reconciliation. But he also spent much of his life as a radical Marxist allied with global communist luminaries, leading a political party that eventually embraced the violent overthrow of the apartheid government in South Africa.
In fact, however, they don’t see his connction with Marxism as a forgivable flaw, or an indictment of any kind. On the contrary – what Huff has done is use the hero-status of this Marxist as a means for making Marxism cool, of fomenting an acceptance of its tenets in conjunction with this “great political hero” who is, of course, practically the same person as President Obama.
Huffington, in a stroke of genius, is packaging the horrors of Marxism in a ready-made wrapper of idolatry and hero-worship, tied to the policies that Obama has been working on foisting on us. Many of us have known that his agenda is Marxist; this article by Zach Carter and Shadee Ashtari of Huffington could not make the point more clearly. What are the main Marxist elements?
1) Poverty is a social evil: “Overcoming poverty is not a gesture of charity. It is an act of justice. It is the protection of a fundamental human right, the right to dignity and a decent life. While poverty persists, there is no true freedom.”
2) Support for Marxist revolutionary and former Cuban president Fidel Castro during the Cuban Revolution of the 1950s : “It is a case of freedom or death. The Cuban revolution has been a source of inspiration to all freedom-loving people.” Viva la revolución, aligning Castro with our founding fathers.
3) Mandela’s efforts to equalize wealth distribution by nationalizing South African industries – what has been Obama’s pet issue? wealth inequality. Who can forget this Marxist comment: “I mean, I do think at a certain point you‘ve made enough money.” Is Obama nationalizing industries? Remember the power-grab of the car industry? He’s taking various other means, but the goal is the same.
4) His ardent support for labor unions – when he visited the Ford Motor Co. auto plant in Dearborn, Mich., he expressed his affinity with union workers in 1990: “Sisters and brothers, friends and comrades, the man who is speaking is not a stranger here. The man who is speaking is a member of the UAW. I am your flesh and blood.”
5) Associating the Communist party with race-equality policies: “What unites us today is the struggle against racial oppression, and we are not prepared to investigate the political ideology of any particular member of the [African National Congress] as long as he or she supports the basic aim of destroying racial oppression.”
By holding up these often benign ideals and connecting them with communism and/or Marxism, HuffPo has neatly managed to elevate Marxism into something acceptable, perhaps even desirable. This isn’t an indictment of of Mandela at all but a means for justifying Marxist ideology on the coattails of their hero and thus, of course, helping to make more acceptable all that Obama is working to do.
A further aspect to consider is this. Huff clearly sees these policies as Marxist – support for labor-unions, embracing race equality, fighting poverty etc – when associated with Mandela. Would they write such an article about Barack Obama’s Marxism? The sleight of hand here is bizarre and unnerving. Is it deliberate? One must assume, yes.
The corollary to all this, too, is that those who are against these ideals – that is, conservatives – are evil, greedy, anti-heroic and just plain wrong.
HuffPo. Making Marxism Cool.