The Pittsburgh Press (October 26, 1944)
Lyons: Ignoring Communism as campaign issue is dangerous policy
Subversive groups aided by tendency to underestimate totalitarian conspiracies
By Eugene Lyons, written for the Scripps-Howard newspapers
EDITOR’S NOTE: Eugene Lyons, until recently editor of the American Mercury, is best known for the autobiography of his disillusionment with Soviet Russia, Assignment in Utopia, which he wrote after serving for six years as United Press correspondent to Moscow. Born in Russia, he came to America as a child, later wrote for various newspapers. After serving as an Army private in 1918, Mr. Lyons subsequently edited Soviet Russia Pictorial and was assistant director of TASS, the official Soviet newswire service, from 1923 to 1927. At present, he is editor of a new magazine, Pageant, the first issue of which will be published next month.
New York –
No intelligent voters can overlook the fact that Communist influence in the government, in labor and in American life is generally an important issue in this campaign.
Whether it is an issue important enough to outweigh other vital considerations in voting is for the individual citizen to determine.
But to pretend that the Communist issue is minor, or that it is a “red herring” dragged into the fight by Republicans, is just dangerous nonsense. The tendency to shrug off and underestimate the force of totalitarian conspiracies, whether Fascist or Communist, is one of the strongest advantages enjoyed by anti-democratic groups in democratic countries.
France, Germany good examples
Not until France collapsed did the world see how the Communist-inspired Popular Front government had undermined the stamina of that nation. Not until the Nazis came to power did the democratic elements in Germany realize their tragic blunder in discounting Nazism in the years when it seemed a minor crackpot affair.
The same kind of self-delusion is evident in our country today in relation to the rapidly-growing Communist penetration of American life. It is apparent in the silly optimism with which so many Americans assert that the Communists after all are just a handful; that they have dropped their Communist ideas anyhow; that their influence is exaggerated.
To begin with, the Communist issue in this campaign was not injected by the Republicans. It was injected by the Communists and their fellow travelers themselves – not in words, of course, but in actions.
Led 4th-term movement
Long before Democratic strategists had come out frankly for the fourth term, demands that President Roosevelt be drafted were being shouted by every Communist publication and every Communist-controlled organization in the land.
The united front of the Browder groups and the Communist wing of the CIO which blossomed into the Political Action Committee under Sidney Hillman did more to put the Communist issue in the forefront than any move by Republicans.
Most important, there is the notorious fact that the New Deal administration has been honeycombed with open and disguised Communists through most of its career.
Issue not invented
The issue thus did not have to be invented or inflated. It has been there, large as life, all the time. Indeed, the Republicans have played down the issue rather than exaggerated it – when one contemplates the ammunition that they have somehow ignored.
I suspect that some Republicans are as complacent as the Democrats about the whole matter, and for the same reason: Ignorance of the real magnitude of the Communist movement and how far it has already affected our political life, our schools, our literature, our labor unions, our entertainment and even our churches. At bottom, I suspect, the Republicans share the widespread illusion that because the Communist underground is numerically small it is not a real challenge.
For nearly a decade we have had, in effect, a Popular Front government. It has functioned through what might be described as interlocking directorates – through thousands of big and little officials serving in the government and at the same time supporting an array of Communist-front organizations.
Two groups interwoven
Look at the activities of any of these organizations – the League for Peace and Democracy, the American Peace Mobilization (which pushed isolationist propaganda until June 1941), the Workers Alliance, the National Maritime Union, the American Youth Congress, the Lawyers Guild, the Daughters of the American Depression, the American Negro Congress, the American Writers Congress, the so-called Friends of Spanish Democracy, etc.
Not one of these pulled a mass meeting or manifesto or picket line without the public blessings of some New Dealers.
In writing a history of the Communist movement in our country, in 1941, I found that after 1935, the record became in large part a history of the New Deal. So much of the personnel and the ideologies had merged that it was not easy to tell precisely where one left off and the other took over.
GOP ignoring real facts
The Republicans have failed dismally to bring this picture into such clear focus that the Americans could see and comprehend. They have contented themselves with slogans about “clearing everything with Sidney” when a mountain of concrete facts about a concrete situation covering nearly a decade was at their disposal.
But the Republican failure does not cancel the reality. Communism is not an issue “dragged in” by the Republicans. It’s an issue they found waiting and failed to exploit because they, too, tend to underestimate it.