Bernie’s Bolshevik Bona Fides

Written by Robert Knight

So, it’s come to this: one of America’s major parties is in the grip of a crazy old communist – Bernie Sanders, 77 – and a crazy young communist – Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, 29.

The two of them are driving the Democrats’ green microbus upon which the other presidential wannabees are scrambling to get aboard.

This column is about the crazy old communist – Vermont U.S. Senator Sanders, who just announced his candidacy for the presidency and raised $6 million.  He prefers the less scary term Democratic Socialist.  But his Marxist economics, Marxist cultural activism and well-documented support for communist causes—such as Fidel Castro’s revolution in Cuba — speak volumes.

Quicker than you can say Joe McCarthy this will be dismissed as another Red Scare. But even though truth is not much of a defense in this fake news era, let’s look at Sen. Sanders’s background, and you can make up your own mind.

At the University of Chicago, Mr. Sanders was a member of the Young People’s Socialist League.  In 1963, he lived in Israel at Kibbutz Sha’ar Ha’amakim (KSH), which was co-founded by Aharon Cohen, who was arrested for spying for the Soviet Union in the 1950s.  According to Discoverthenetworks.org, “the founders of KSH referred to Joseph Stalin as the “Sun of the Nations,” and a red flag was flown at outdoor events held at the kibbutz. Sanders stayed at KSH as a guest of the Zionist-Marxist youth movement Hashomer Hatzair (HH), which pledged its allegiance to the Soviet Union.”

HH founder Ya’akov Hazan lamented Soviet mass murderer Stalin’s death in 1953, saying, “His huge historical achievements will guide generations in their march towards the reign of socialism and communism the world over.”

In 1971, Mr. Sanders joined the Liberty Union Party (LUP), which called for a government takeover of all U.S. banks and private utility companies.  In the mid-1970s, Sanders headed the American People’s History Society, which journalist Paul Sperry  describes as “an organ for Marxist propaganda.”

As Mayor of Burlington, Vermont in the 1980s, Mr. Sanders hung a Soviet flag in his office in honor of Burlington’s Soviet sister city, Yaroslavl, where he honeymooned in 1988 with his second wife, Jane O’Meara Sanders.

Sanders set price controls, raised taxes and placed restrictions on the rights of landlords.   He named Burlington’s softball team the “People’s Republic of Burlington,” and its minor league baseball team the “Vermont Reds.”  Remember, he’s just a “Democratic Socialist.”

In 1980, he backed for president Socialist Workers Party candidate Andrew Pulley, a Marxist who called for a government takeover of America’s energy industry.

According to Accuracy In Media, Sanders collaborated with Soviet and East German “peace committees” whose goal was “to stop President Reagan’s deployment of nuclear missiles in Europe.”

In 1985, Mayor Sanders went to Nicaragua to celebrate the sixth anniversary of Daniel Ortega’s communist Sandinista regime and speak at an anti-American rally.  He arranged for Burlington and Puerto Cabezas, Nicaragua to be sister cities, and also visited communist Cuba.

When Ortega orchestrated mass arrests of critics and shut down opposition media, Mr. Sanders refused to condemn him, later saying the crackdown “makes sense to me.”  He now supports Venezuelan dictator Nicolas Maduro, who has turned that once-prosperous country into a communist nightmare.

In 1989, Mr. Sanders addressed the U.S. Peace Council, a Communist Party USA front whose members were committed, according to the FBI, to advancing “the triumph of Soviet power in the U.S.”

As an admirer of crackdowns on pesky opposition media, U.S. Senator Sanders in 2007 co-sponsored the Media Ownership Reform Act, which, among other things, would have reestablished the misnamed Fairness Doctrine in order to muzzle conservative talk radio.

In 2011, Sanders was the first U.S. senator to support the violent Occupy Wall Street movement and opined:

“These days, the American dream is more apt to be realized in South America, in places such as Ecuador, Venezuela and Argentina, where incomes are actually more equal today than they are in the land of Horatio Alger. Who’s the banana republic now?”

Lest we write all this off as earlier exuberance, here’s a short list of his current positions:

Government takeover of healthcare and drug companies; “free” college tuition; “free” childcare; confiscatory taxes on “the rich,” and much of Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s Green New Deal. That hare-brained scheme calls for a massive government expansion to do away with airplanes, the internal combustion engine, “farting cows” (thus, hamburgers), and all fossil fuels within 11 years.  Don’t laugh; they’re serious.

It would take not only trillions of dollars but suspension of most basic liberties to do this.  Karl Marx summarized communism as “abolition of private property,” which ultimately requires violence.

Sen. Sanders also has a problem with religious liberty.  In June 2017, he assailed the Christian faith of Russell Vought, President Trump’s nominee to be Deputy Director of the White House Office of Management and Budget.

There’s much more, but it should be clear that “Democratic Socialist” Bernie Sanders is a communist in sheep’s clothing.

This article was originally published at Townhall.com