What Liberals Say » Communism

Praising a ruthless dictator

Bobby Rush — Wed, 28 Oct 2009 13:33:01 +0000

“Raul Castro was a very engaging, down-to-earth and kind man, somone who I would favor as a neighbor. It was almost like visiting an old friend.”

We smoked cigarettes and wore leather jackets

Barack Obama — Thu, 28 May 2009 20:29:47 +0000

“To avoid being mistaken for a sellout, I chose my friends carefully. The more politically active black students. The foreign students. The Chicanos. The Marxist professors and structural feminists and punk- rock performance poets. We smoked cigarettes and wore leather jackets. At night, in the dorms, we discussed neocolonialism, Franz Fanon, Eurocentrism, and patriarchy. When we ground out our cigarettes in the hallway carpet or set our stereos so loud that the walls began to shake, we were resisting bourgeois society’s stifling conventions. We weren’t indifferent or careless or insecure. We were alienated. But this strategy alone couldn’t provide the distance I wanted, from Joyce or my past. After all, there were thousands of so- called campus radicals, most of them white and tenured and happily tolerant. No, it remained necessary to prove which side you were on, to show your loyalty to the black masses, to strike out and name names.”

Oil Companies Watch Out!

Hillary Clinton — Mon, 21 Jul 2008 20:24:25 +0000

“We’ll take on the oil companies and harness their record profits to create millions of clean energy jobs — high-wage jobs you can raise a family on. I’ll end their special tax breaks and give them a choice: invest some of your profits in alternative energy , or we’ll do it for you.”

Americans support Venezuela’s President Hugo Chavez.

Harry Belafonte — Mon, 05 Feb 2007 22:44:54 +0000

â€œNo matter what the greatest tyrant in the world, the greatest terrorist in the world, George W. Bush says, we’re here to tell you: Not hundreds, not thousands, but millions of the American people, millions support your revolution, support your ideas, and we are expressing our solidarity with you.â€

Friendship can defeat communism.

Ted Turner — Wed, 01 Nov 2006 17:50:37 +0000

“I believe that communism would have been gone from there [Cuba] if we’d just been friends with them.”

Communism’s restraint of U.S. power was beneficial.

Peter Kirstein — Mon, 30 Oct 2006 18:18:49 +0000

“One of the great achievements of Communism, rarely recognized in the West, is its relatively successful containment of American power from the early 1950s through the demise of the Soviet state in 1991.”

Advocating Marxism.

James Holstun — Mon, 30 Oct 2006 18:11:20 +0000

“I think Marxist theory and political practice are more relevant now than ever, given the global dominance of the capitalist mode of production and American imperialism.”

We need more Marxists.

Grover Furr — Mon, 30 Oct 2006 18:07:10 +0000

“What [American universities] need, and would much benefit from, is more Marxists, radicals, leftists — all terms conventionally applied to those who fight against exploitation, racism, sexism, and capitalism. We can never have too many of these, just as we can never have too few ‘conservatives’.”

Stalin was a great leader.

Bruce Franklin — Mon, 30 Oct 2006 18:04:23 +0000

“I used to think of Joseph Stalin as a tyrant and butcher who jailed and killed millions. . . . But, to about a billion people today, Stalin is the opposite of what we in the capitalist world have been programmed to believe. . . . From a Communist point of view, Stalin was certainly one of the greatest of revolutionary leaders. . . .”

Supporting Fidel Castro’s wishes.

Thomas Friedman — Fri, 27 Oct 2006 20:34:57 +0000

“Yup, I gotta confess, that now-famous picture of a U.S. marshal in Miami pointing an automatic weapon toward Donato Dalrymple and ordering him in the name of the U.S. government to turn over Elian Gonzalez warmed my heart.”