By
Tom McDermott
Last week a committee of the New Hampshire state House unanimously killed a proposal to display a memorial plaque in the state Capitol. The plaque commemorates the rather inappropriately named Abraham Lincoln Battalion, which was a group of American volunteers who fought against Franco's forces in the Spanish Civil War from 1936 to 1939.
State Sen. Bert Cohen, D-N.H., the main sponsor of the proposal, said the plaque was necessary to honor the Battalion's "early opposition to fascism." He added, "The courage demonstrated by these brave Americans should stand as a role model for young generations to come."
The truth is that although many of these "brave Americans" may have gone to Spain with the intention of halting the spread of fascism in Europe, the Battalion itself took its marching orders directly from Joseph Stalin.
One of the Battalion's veterans, Edward Lending describes, "Moscow had iron-fisted control of the International Brigades." They were largely under the control of Dolores Ibarruri, Stalin's shill in Spain. The Brigades were there to serve Soviet Communism first and foremost. Freedom for Spain was clearly a secondary concern. The Kremlin was more concerned with destroying the non-Stalinist left wing power base in Spain than with defeating fascism. Of the non-Communist Republic loyalists, Ibarruri said, "The Trotskyists must be exterminated like beasts of prey."
Stalin never intended to dedicate all his efforts to defeating Franco - only to keep him at bay while he dealt with Hitler and possibly to build some international support for communism in the process. Of course, he did deal with Hitler when he signed the non-aggression pact with Nazi Germany in 1939. When the so-called "anti-fascist freedom fighters" were no longer of any use to him, he hung them out to dry and all but served them up to Franco on a silver platter.
When the non-aggression pact freed up Hitler's forces to march across Western Europe virtually unopposed, Battalion veterans and other American leftists quickly became the strongest advocates for a non-intervention policy. One of the Battalion's commanders warned that Roosevelt was leading America down the road to "imperialist slaughter." As long as Mother Russia wasn't in jeopardy, why should they have cared?
When Germany invaded the Soviet Union in 1941, their tune changed again. Now it was back to a noble international struggle against fascism for the ever-obedient leftist American radicals.
The unremorseful veterans of the Abraham Lincoln Battalion and their admirers in the New Hampshire state legislature were called "useful idiots" by Stalin.
His inference was not to communism, but rather to radicals sympathizing with socialism, either believing it can be achieved without servitude, tyranny or widespread human destruction, or by simply ignoring its catastrophic effects altogether.
The "useful idiots" are the left wing historians who make apologies for the atrocities committed by the Soviet Union during their 70-year reign of terror. They are the professors and academians who believe the more than 60 million people slaughtered in the name of the "idea" during the 20th century are best left forgotten by history, which is exactly the fate Stalin, Pol Pot and Ho Chi Minh had intended for all counter-revolutionary "unpersons."
They are the politicians who delude themselves into believing that Fidel Castro would loosen his stranglehold on Cuba if only we were just a bit nicer to him. And they are the radicals who respond to anyone who attempts to expose the horrible truths about Communism with the typical, jaded, knee-jerk, one-word response of "McCarthyite!"
Bravo to members of the New Hampshire legislature who saw through this blatant attempt to legitimize a homage to communism by disguising it unconvincingly as a tribute to anti-fascism.
The plaque, which featured the Communist star, a clenched fist superimposed on a globe, and a quote from Ibarruri was propaganda pure and simple. By rejecting this affront to liberty, the people of New Hampshire have shown they are true to their motto, "Live free or die."
