NYC Communists: We Prefer to be Called Progressives

Of course they do.

[By the way the reason the media report is so glowing is because RT = Russia Today – Editor]

The first “great” progressive thinker is Walter Lippmann. He is the founder of modern American journalism and advisor to President’s Wilson and FDR. He wrote this:

Throughout the world, in the name of progress, men who call themselves communists, socialists, fascists, nationalists, progressives, and even liberals, are unanimous in holding that government with its instruments of coercion must by commanding the people how they shall live, direct the course of civilization and fix the shape of things to come. They believe in what Mr. Stuart Chase accurately describes as “the overhead planning and control of economic activity.” This is the dogma which all the prevailing dogmas presuppose. This is the mold in which are cast the thought and action of the epoch. No other approach to the regulation of human affairs is seriously considered, or is even conceived as possible. The recently enfranchised masses and the leaders of thought who supply their ideas are almost completely under the spell of this dogma. Only a handful here and there, groups without influence, isolated and disregarded thinkers, continue to challenge it. For the premises of authoritarian collectivism have become the working beliefs, the self-evident assumptions, the unquestioned axioms, not only of all the revolutionary regimes, but of nearly every effort which lays claim to being enlightened, humane, and progressive.

So universal is the dominion of this dogma over the minds of contemporary men that no one is taken seriously as a statesman or a theorist who does not come forward with proposals to magnify the power of public officials and to extend and multiply their intervention in human affairs. Unless he is authoritarian and collectivist, he is a mossback, a reactionary, at best an amiable eccentric swimming hopelessly against the tide. It is a strong tide.

The first great thinker of the “progressive movement” openly states that progressivism and American liberalism are simply flavors of communism designed to control men and the economy by ever increasing the role of the state in our lives. This is not extremism folks, or fear mongering, it is simply the objective truth by their own words.

The Blaze:

AFL-CIO LEADER ACCEPTS COMMUNIST PARTY AWARD: ‘I STAND WITH THEM’

Those who doubt the connection between the communist party and the unions need only to read accounts of a recent awards ceremony to see how both groups view each other.

On Sunday, December 5, the Communist Party USA gave awards to a pair of labor leaders and a former state legislator and assistant attorney general.* Among the recipients was Connecticut AFL-CIO head John Olsen, who not only gladly accepted the award, but garnered “loud applause” when he said he stands with CPUSA.

CPUSA’s webzine People’s World reports Olsen was given the award at the Voices for Jobs, Equality & Peace – People’s World Amistad Awards Concert celebrating the 90th anniversary of the CPUSA.

“James Hillhouse High School auditorium was filled with the fabulous jazz sounds of Jeff Fuller & Friends, labor songs by Bill Collins of the Rabble Rousers, and poetry by Baub Bidon and Ken Brown,” the article describes the event. But besides offering a mental picture, it also gives a glimpse of Olsen’s acceptance speech, in which he says he will stand with the Communist Party:

“Anyone who stands with me for workers’ rights, I stand with them,” said John Olsen to loud applause as he acknowledged the Communist Party and took a strong stand against fear mongering and baiting, including the anti-socialist baiting of President Barack Obama.

The article goes on to praise the union for its work, and explains how important the union is in fighting for CPUSA causes:

The AFL CIO and local unions are now developing their legislative agendas.  For the first time in 22 years, a Democratic governor was elected in Connecticut.  It is widely recognized that union members made the difference in voter turnout.

 

Related – AFL-CIO Head Calls For Government Takeover of All Business