The Daily Signal - Far Left Similar to Communist Movement, Former Student Radical Says

Episode Date: September 14, 2020

Disconcerting similarities exist between the modern progressive left and the communist movement. Take it from someone who knows. Tony Salinski, once a student radical and now an expert on communist ideology, identified as a communist for several years during the Vietnam War era. Salinski joins the podcast to explain why he was drawn to communism as a youth and to identify similarities between communism and socialism.  Learn more about the work of the Anticommunism Action Team here. And click here to learn more about Tony Salinski. Also on today's show, we read your letters to the editor and share a good news story about a school principal who is using his skill as a barber to mentor his students.   Enjoy the show! Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

You and Santa? Best rappers out there. But Reeses wants to know, what about the best unwrapping moment? Reese's peanut butter cups put your unwrapping skills to the test. And with three cups of creamy peanut butter and smooth chocolate per pack, you get your practice in. Experiencing that sweet and salty satisfaction again and again and again. Santa gets cookies. You get Rees.

Nothing else is Rees. This is the Daily Signal podcast for Monday, September 14th. I'm Robert Blewey. And I'm Virginia Allen. On today's show, we talk with Professor Tony Solensky, a former communist student radical. Selensky draws parallels between his own experience in the communist movement and what's going on in America today. We also share your letters to the editor and a good news story about a school principal who is using his skill as a barber to mentor his students. Before we get to today's show,

we want to tell you all about one of the most popular resources on the Heritage Foundation website, the guide to the Constitution. And with Constitution Day coming up later this week, you can find more than 100 scholars who have contributed to create a unique line-by-line analysis of the United States Constitution. The guide is intended to provide you with a brief and accurate explanation of each clause of the Constitution as envisioned by the framers and as applied in contemporary law. If you want to gain a deeper understanding of our founding document, visit heritage.org slash Constitution or simply search for Heritage Guide to the Constitution.

Now stay tuned for today's show coming up next. I am joined by Professor Tony Selinsky, a former student radical in the communist movement. Tony, thank you so much for being here today. You're welcome. Thank you for having me. The topic of communism and socialism is certainly getting a lot of attention. in the current political and social climate. And when you were a student, you were a part of the communist movement.

Can you just begin by telling us a little bit of your story? How did you come to identify with the communist movement? Well, I was actually for the war. This was back the time of Vietnam War. And I started out for the war. And, you know, like everybody, debating, you know, whether they wanted enlist or wait until they got called, drafted. And during that time, Lyndon Johnson did a TV special. They, I don't call it a special,

but he was on TV. He was arguing against the Republicans who had wanted to get in and get it over with and get out. And one of the things he said was, we're going to stay in there, we're not going to invade the North, we're just going to stay in there until we stop them. And it could take 50 years. I thought to my 50 years. 50 years of guys just getting killed for, you know, to finally just outkill these guys. And that started me to think, and this is not for me. I don't want to do this. Push comes to shove later. I was looking into means of getting out legally of the draft and went to a meeting house where a number of different groups were present, and one of them was a communist group.

and I was interviewed briefly by the people sponsoring the event, and they asked me if I would have fought in World War II, and I said, yeah, absolutely. And they said, okay, that's not what we're looking for. We're looking for people who wouldn't fight at all. And they motioned me over to the communists. And I went over and gathered some information. Later, I just sort of drifted into them.

The resistance was going because there was no other resistance. There was no resistance to what the communists were saying anywhere on the media. There was no Rush Limbaugh. And I was a blue-collar kid and didn't know anything about firing line or William Fuckley or anything like that. So there was no counter to what the communists were putting out about the war in Vietnam, and I got convinced that it was illegal and that it was immoral. And it just one thing led to another. pretty soon. I was doing, I was in a rock band at that time, and that was the big draw that

drew the communists to me. We were doing pretty well in getting good audience responses around the city of Pittsburgh, and eventually we started doing some shows for them, and one thing led to another, and I was involved. They asked me probably on three separate occasions to join the party. And I told them the same thing every time. I said Nixon's got a list, an enemy's list, and I don't want to be on that list. But I can work with you and help you out as we go here

without being a member of the party itself. And we came to that agreement, and they stayed with that. And from then on, it was just a matter of just going to the events that they put on helping them with this and that. And the other thing, and bringing the band. I find that interesting. You didn't join the party, but you were in the movement for a number of years, in the communist movement.

What was so appealing about the communist movement to you that kept you in it, that kept you saying, I'll support you all and I'll be a part of what you're doing? Basically, the idea that they were doing something, you know, they were active. They knew what their motives were. They knew that they wanted out of the war. And I agreed with that at first. They were organized. They could bring out a crowd like nobody's business. It was amazing to see how they were able to put a lot of people together to come out and make their point.

But I was never fully into the idea of destroying the United States of America. That was a problem for me from day one. And they got around that by saying, we don't want to destroy the United States. We simply want to improve it. and I bought it. I was 19 years old, 18 years old at the time, and I bought it. But that was it. Ideologically, I didn't get really aware ideologically until near the end.

And things started to become clearer and clearer and clearer. And I realized that from the very beginning, everything they had said was in one way or another a lie. and I just finally couldn't stand that. I kept confronting them, asking them, what about this, what about that? And I kept getting variations on the same answer. You're just not ready for the whole story yet. And being 19 years old, I knew everything anyway. I thought, well, yeah, I am ready for the whole story.

Why don't it just tell me? But it just kept going on and on and on like that. And finally, I just dropped away. So they were almost kind of teasing you along, giving you little bits of information, but never totally upfront and candid, it sounds like, about really what ultimately their mission was. Right.

And they did that to everyone, except the people who walked up and said, I want to join the Communist Party USA. Those people got, you know, moved to the head of the line, so to speak. But the rest of us were just drifting in and varying degrees of commitment, varying degrees of understanding. And yeah, they sort of reeled us in gradually. So fast forward to today. And what do you know of the communist movement's activity today? I mean, are some of the, you know, the unrest that we're seeing in the streets? Can we directly link that back to communism?

Well, when I got out of the movement, I just, I didn't want any parts of any of it. I said, you know, my wife at the time said, if you're drafted or you're going to go to Canada, I said, I'm drafted. I'm going to go to Vietnam. Okay. I just gotten sick of the whole thing. And after getting away from it for a little while, I started, I got into the Democratic Party, okay? And I was in, you know, semi-active as a Democrat and paid attention to all the news and everything like that. And I realized, wait a minute, these people are the communists on slow motion.

They're active. It's the same thing. What they want is the same thing. They just don't want to do this. The communists, they were in the process at that time of switching from Leninist tactics in the street, in your face revolution, to Gramsci. And the idea of, you know, gradual movement into a revolutionary pattern that wasn't in your face, wasn't on the street. And, you know, that really put me off because I just wanted to get it over with and get, you know, get things straightened out, as they said. But, yeah, from the Democratic Party, then, I'm moving on and watching these people.

And what happened was I just, it took a very short time, a year or so, before I just started watching them, watching everything they were doing. And I felt strange because my dad used to always say, oh, that's communist. I'd say, oh, Dad, you know, yeah, I know there's a communist under your bed. Well, there was. They were everywhere. And whether they called themselves communists or not, they were, in my estimation, communists because the goals were the same. The tactics were a little different, but the goals were the same.

One of the last things that they did that really pushed me away was they came up to us one day on the street. And this had come down from an activist, an agent, actually, a KGB agent who had been identified to me on the street several times. He was, I guess, code named Andre. But Andre had passed down this information that we were going to completely change our tactics. And I said, you know, what are we going to do? Well, you're going to stop calling yourselves communists. I said, really? Well, what are we going to call ourselves?

we're going to call ourselves liberals, progressives, socialists, anything but communists. So from that point on, if you identified yourself as a liberal, I just said, okay, check one communist. Progressive, check another, here's communist. And what I'm seeing today, in my mind, validates that. Wow. Well, Antifa. Well, Antifa is, and Black Lives Matter, is more a return to Leninist tactics. They're out in the street, obviously, burning things down and pushing people around and so on and so forth. But the main communist movement is behind them and is still chugging along with their idea of gradually moving the country. Over the past, what is now 50 years since this all happened, I'm watching it. Never, never stop moving to the left.

It's always moving left. So walk us through how exactly the Communist Party does go about enticing people. I mean, how have they essentially infiltrated the left to where, you know, we are seeing this kind of radical takeover? in this radical progressivism pushed forward that is very different from what I think the left used to look like? Well,

their motive has been all along to identify areas that certain groups, certain constituencies, and when it gets onto it, certain individuals like myself are interested in. They had a gold mine there during Vietnam because they had a war that nobody wanted

to get into and they use that to pull people in. But whatever it is, housing, jobs, anything that they can name that a group is interested in, they will use, even if they're counter to each other, even if there are two things, they're promising one group this, promising the other group that, and this and that, cancel each other out. But as long as those two groups don't figure that out, they're drawing people in. In your own experience, how open and honest are communists actually about their goals? Depends on where you are in the program. Up at the top, yeah, they're free and easy with talking about what they want to do, destroying the United States as we know it. And ultimately,

destroying all nations and all boundaries and borders. But, below the top level, it's just what you're given to know, what you're supposed to know, and you move on from there. The word honest and the word communist should never be used together in a sentence because they're not honest. Interesting. You have explained during previous presentations that the Communist Party really sees themselves as being at war when they're spreading their ideology.

Can you just explain that a little bit more what you mean by that? Well, yeah, and this was early on, too. I didn't get this late in the program. This was up front. We are at war. Now, I didn't tumble to all that that meant, but the phraseology was, we're at war, and that means anything goes. Marx said that the definition of morality is that which advances the revolution.

And I found that to be true with them. That's what morality is. There's no more. One of the things that really frustrates me when I'm dealing with people who are not real knowledgeable about this stuff is that idea that they think we're playing by the same rules that we've always played by. There's a Democratic Party. There's a Republican Party. Everybody's agreed on the fundamental principles of right and wrong. But that's not where the communists are.

They are at war. They are going to do anything. anything it takes to win. There's no ground for agreement or crossing the aisle or any of that stuff. It's just they're going to take advantage of every situation that offers itself, and they're going to use that situation to win. It's, you know, the end justifies the means in every case. Well, I find it fascinating that you say that because I think increasingly in the nation, that's what we're seeing, even through things like cancel culture. or that there's no room for disagreement or difference.

And, you know, we've seen, sadly, this real interest among young people in socialism. In your opinion, what separates socialism and communism? Does one naturally kind of deteriorate into the other? Well, I agree with Lenin. The end, the result of all socialism is communism. There's no – there are arbitrary – demarcations drawn along the historical line, but they're arbitrary and they're going, the moment they can be pushed aside, the moment they can be disposed with, they're going to be disposed with.

This is an argument I have with so many people in our own movement. Oh, well, he's not really a communist. No, not yet, but he's headed there, you know. There's a difference between their conception of and communism is an economic system in the end. They believe in what's called a closed economic system. There's X amount of dollars or whatever you want to refer to the resources as. And that's it. You have to move that around to people in the fairest possible way, ideally absolute equality. But capitalism is based on an open economic system.

You don't have enough wealth. We'll go create some. And that's what we do. And that's... Once I learned that, I learned that in college. I was long past the communist phase of my life. But when I learned that, it became crystal clear to me that why some people are drawn to communism or socialism or anyism that says it's going to share the money. Well, yeah, because there's only so much.

And if you have too much, then I have too little. But that's not reality. I mean, wealth is always being created. And you mentioned in college that that was where your capitalist views kind of were cemented. And that's wonderful that for you, that was your experience. But I do find that sad that today we see the exact opposite, that young people go to college and they are somewhat radicalized. They are introduced to socialist and communist ideas. and maybe that capitalist background that they grew up with is kind of lost to the waist side.

What do you think is the responsibility of educators, parents, ventures to actually be speaking to the younger generation honestly about the realities of socialism and communism? Well, I think that there are responsibilities to go there and do that and open up that conversation. But at this point, you're going to – well, even – Even back then it was the case, but now it's even more the case, you're going to risk losing your sons and daughters because they're bought into it. And I should add that I was not educated in capitalism in college. I drew that from the opposite of everything they said was bad. I thought, well, that sounds pretty good to me. That actually doesn't sound bad at all.

So it was not that they were out there promoting capitalism at that time. I just drew that from what they were promoting. Because I had already been there. I had seen the whole communist thing up close and thought, yeah, yeah, yeah, that's not true. You know, what you're saying there won't work on. And certain times you could speak that out and say, well, my experience is this, and you'd get support. And other times, you know, you just learn to it.

keep your mouth shut if you want to get that grade and get out where you can do some real damage, which I did. I ended up teaching college, and in my classroom, you know, they got the truth. You know, when I say they got the truth, they got both sides. They got a fair treatment of communism and a fair treatment of capitalism. And I have to tell you, once it's laid out like that, once it's laid out like that I used to finish the course with just a little well other things that they had to do

but one of their tasks at the end of the course was to write me a two-page paper on what they thought of the material in in the course regarding communism and capitalism and 90% of them plus went for capitalism

when they realized what the difference was well I think unfortunately a few college students today have a professor like you that will clearly lay out both sides. So are there any resources that you would recommend for young people who, you know, they're in college, they're facing, essentially being indoctrinated with these ideas, and they just want to hear both sides of the argument. Are there certain books that you would recommend or individuals maybe to look up on YouTube? Well, among the things that I, well, first of all, the Constitution, including the

the Bill of Rights, you know, the Declaration of Independence, they should become familiar with that. And the history behind it, that in itself is quite a task, but they need to do that. But writing's more directly concerned with it. What started me off was W. Graham Sumner. I don't have you ever heard of Sumner, but he was an anti-socialist back in, I think he died in 1910 or something like that in 1912. So he was in the progressive era and he was noted as an anti-progressive, but he frequently got onto out-and-out socialism and, you know, just laid out the differences. Let's see, Gramsci. Well, they should read Gramsci.

They should read something of Gramsci because that tells them what they're hooked up in now. they should read rules for radicals that they haven't already, which is, again, a Marxist source. But it lays out what they're being asked to do and why. Any of the writings from Heritage, any of the writings from people like Pat Buchanan back in the 90s especially, there's a lot of material out there. They have to look it up, though. Absolutely. How can our listeners follow your work? through ACAT mostly and I do some things around here I'm doing a speech on the 29th about communism

well it was originally in a library but then this coronavirus came along and shut the library thing down so they've moved it across the alleyway to the to a church over there you could look me up online most of I'm trying to think whether most of my talks are still up there. I know we took a lot of them down, but they have a way of getting back up there. So you can just look up my name and see what comes out in that. But always through ACAT anti-communist action team.

Great. Thank you. So that's the anti-communist action team. We'll be sure to link that in the show notes today. Tony, thank you. We just really appreciate your time. you coming on and talking about your own personal experience. Really fascinating. Well, thank you very much for having me.

This is Virginia Allen, host of the Daily Signal podcast. I don't know about you, but YouTube is certainly one of my guilty pleasures. I really enjoy watching short videos on a variety of topics, so I'm always looking for videos that are actually educational and beneficial to me in some way. And the Daily Signal YouTube channel never disappoints. There is so much binge-worthy content, from policy and news explainers to documentaries. If you're not driving, go ahead and pull out your phone and subscribe to the Daily Signal YouTube channel so you can be in and know on the issues you care about most. You can also search for the channel by going to YouTube.com slash Daily Signal.

Thanks for sending us your letters to the editor. Each Monday, we feature our favorites on this show. Virginia, who is up first. In response to the Daily Signal story, how American civil society depends on marriage, family, Harold Harmon writes, I read the article with great interests. I have been married for 58 years and raised three children, a daughter, a son, and a granddaughter. I have watched the steady decline of the family through the years brought about by progressives and humanists. The family's demise is a tragic reality of our broken and disease. society. Keep up the good work. And in response to the podcast episode, he went to the scene of

the fatal shooting in Portland. Here's what he saw. Rob Coleman writes, thank you for this insider piece. It's refreshing to get some real insider perspective. For a long time now, truth has become a rarity because so much news is homogenized by the political left, particularly if it's pro-American. Like Gabe Johnson, I am also a veteran. I have lost family and friends as part of our inherent duty to keep this country free and safe with service as far back as the Civil War, up to and including Afghanistan. I have, and presume the same for Gabe, witnessed the results of tyranny and mayhem in other countries. Personally, I've been to the killing fields of Cambodia and Laos, two of the detainment camps in Poland and Germany, Cuba and Venezuela. I can't begin to explain some of my

experience in regions of China. What I can tell you is once tyranny rears its head, it's hard. to cut off. Your letter could be featured on next week's show. So send us an email at letters at daily signal.com. Americans have almost entirely forgotten their history. That's right. And if we want to keep our republic, this needs to change. I'm Jared Stepman. And I'm Fred Lucas. We host the Right Side of History, a podcast dedicated to restoring informed patriotism and busting the negative narratives about America's past. Hollywood, the media, and academia have failed a generation. We're here to set the record straight on the ideas and people who've made this country great. Subscribe to the right side of history on Apple Podcasts, SoundCloud, and Stitcher Today.

Virginia, you have a good news story to share with us today. Over to you. Thanks so much, Rob. Terrence Newton is the principal of Amalia P. Warren Elementary School in Wilmington, Delaware. He's also a skilled self-taught barber. There was a time when Newton thought he would pursue Barbary as a profession, but now he's found a way to combine his love of cutting hair with his passion for mentoring his students. The principal offers haircuts to his students after school, but much more than just a haircut, Newton uses the time with the young men to learn about their lives and offer them guidance and support. Humankind, a project of USA Today, spoke with Newton about why he began offering

haircuts to the young men at his school 15 years ago. I used to build relationships, relationship with the parents, relationship with the kids, and just let the families know that, you know, we are a community and warn or here, we're a part of their families.

Newton created the small barbershop in the school because he says that if young men look and feel good about themselves, they're more likely to act good. As the young men sit in the barber chair, Newton uses the time to listen to his students and encourage them in their dreams for the future. Well, I'm in a barbershop. I'm not Dr. Newton, their principal. I'm more of Dr. Newton, their barber. And I'm able to use this time as a mentoring time. Some students may express some of the issues that they're dealing with at home or in a community.

and at this time, I'm able to listen and get them some feedback. I know when I was coming up as a kid, being in a barbershop, just to have barbershop conversations was always great. So that's what I kind of utilized with my kids here. I just love how creative and out of the box this idea is. It's such a powerful and yet simple way for one man to really make a lasting impact on these young men's lives. It certainly is, Virginia. Thanks so much for sharing that with us.

We're going to leave it there for today. You can find the Daily Signal podcast on the Rurcashay Audio Network. All of our shows can be found at daily signal.com slash podcasts. You can also subscribe on Apple Podcasts, Google Play, or your favorite podcast app. And be sure to listen every weekday by adding the Daily Signal podcast as part of your Alexa Flash briefing. If you like what you hear, please leave us a review into five-star rating. It means a lot to us and it helps us spread the word to other. listeners. Be sure to follow us on Twitter at DailySignal and Facebook.com slash the DailySignal

News. Have a great week. The Daily Signal podcast is brought to you by more than half a million members of the Heritage Foundation. It is executive produced by Rob Blewey and Virginia Allen, sound design by Lauren Evans, Mark Geinie, and John Pop. For more information, visitdailySignal.com.