Re: Gus Hall Dies

["Charles Brown" <CharlesB@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

>>> xxxxxxx@xxxxxxxxx 10/16/00 05:29PM >>>

> Hall, whose name became synonymous with the American communist movement,
> said harassment had ranged from FBI surveillance of the party's
> Manhattan headquarters to his inability to get a credit card for many
> years.
>
> Such persecution, he said, was responsible for the decline in party
> membership, from about 100,000 in the 1930s to about 15,000 in the
> 1990s.

Khruschev's secret speech, the invasion of Hungary in 1956 and the invasion
of Czechoslovakia in 1968 didn't help either.

(((((((((((((

CB: If Khruschev's speech was secret, how come so many Americans knew about it ?

The socialist Soviet Union was able to make public self-criticism of a major 
leader,
Stalin, when the U.S. , which claimed and claims to be more open than the SU 
was, has
not yet had its leadership self-criticize the many crimes of the U.S. state and
leaders. The U.S. today cannot admit its ongoing , centuries long genocide 
against the
Indigenous Peoples of America.  The U.S. today cannot admit to the crime of
enslavement of Africans that lasted for 350 years and ended 135 years ago. And 
it
cannot admit much more. The Soviet Union admitted crimes that had occurred just 
twenty
years before the admission, even implicating living individuals. Seems Soviet
dictatorship was more open than American democracy in this regard.

As far as Hungary 1956, what about all the Hungarian fascists who joined the 
Nazis in
the war on the Soviet Union in 1941 , just 15 years before ?  Can Xxxx 
demonstrate
that they were all gone from Hungary ? Why shouldn't Hungary be under "arrest" 
for a
while ? The U.S. still occupies Japan and Germany. Would the U.S. have allowed 
Japan
to just do whatever it chose in 1956 ? I doubt it.

If invasions hurt party membership, how come people didn't leave the DemRep 
Party with
the U.S. invasions of Korea and Viet Nam ? Those parties directly carried out 
those
invasions. The CPUSA had no direct role or control in the Soviet CP or Soviet
military.

It was capitalist anti-communist propganda which warped the interpretation of 
these
events that hurt CPUSA membership.