◆ SpookStack

6 THE TECHNIQUES OF SOVIET PROPAGANDA In these schools the future activiste are first depersonalized, then indoctrinated to a severely orthodox mental and behavioral pattern; trained to be zombies, totally controlled by their leaders, thoroughly qualified in the techniques of organization and agitation. The puty teaches them to pursue con’ over men more than knowledge; power more than riches, and covert power in preference to overt power. Thus the party 1s able to restrict its servants to anonymous tasks, and to require the performance of any conceivable assignment, and all for very modest pay. Compared to the propagandists of the free political parties, who sepire to affluence, value above all open eminence, and indulge in abstract philosophizing, the advantages held by the Soviet trained activiste are obvious. These meticulously trained and constantly supervised cadres, as dedicated in their way as “professed” Jesuits are in theirs, are the Party’s prime movers. In every country of the world there are s aufficient number, if not for mass action, to at least commandeer the critical machinery of public life in a crisis. In this constant ability to staff a coup fies the extreme danger of the Communist Parties, regardless of size. In Guatemala, the Communists, with only some thousand members, seized power through thoroughly conditioned and accurately directed intermediaries. Of all the people deceived and misled by the Communists, the most grossly Deguiled and misinformed are their own members, who are systematically maneuvered, duped, and intimidated. Once entangled in the Communist web through demagogy or the various myths: the revolution, the Soviet paradise, liberation of the workers or the betterment of labor, the member is held by threats of re ised against defectors, These may be moral reprisals, such as slander or ostracism ; or material, as physical assault or economic boycott. The basic formule is simple: attract by intoxication and hold by fear. Its principal ingredient: surrender of his free will by the member, which Precisely defines the Communist Party as the antithesis of a true political party. The function of political parties in free societies is the education of the electorate through open discussion. The Communists transform these institutions from forums to prisons for ideas. In summary, because of the totalitarian nature of their internal organization, their enormous material resources and their abject submission to the Kremlin, Communist Parties arein no sense political parties in the conventional meaning of the term, but rather forei, subsidiaries of the Soviet or Red Chinese state apparatus. As suc! they forfeit any claim to the rights of free and open expression ‘of opinion; righte which a civilized society ought to guarantee to ite people. II. Inptrect Proraganpa Amore Non-Commounistse’ TECHNICAL ETHODS Propaganda of this type is not aimed at recruiting members for tbe Communist Party, "But rather at the dissemination of views openly or covertly serving Soviet foreign policy, regardless of their compatability with any social doctrine.