BELLA DODD was a leader of the Communist Party of American (CPUSA) in the 1930’s and 1940’s. Her book, School of Darkness (1954) reveals that Communism was a hoax perpetrated by financiers “to control the common man” and to advance world tyranny. **Editorial note: This book is back in print. Order from Signs and Wonders.
Bella Dodd was born Maria Asunta Isabella Visono in Italy about 1904. A brilliant and dedicated woman, she graduated from Hunter College and NYU Law School. She became head of the New York State Teachers Union and was a member of the CPUSA’s National Council until 1949.
Dodd describes Communism as “a strange secret cult” whose goal is the destruction of Western (i.e. Christian) Civilization. Millions of naïve idealists (“innocents”) are tricked by its talk of helping the poor, but it cares only for power. For example, Dodd found there was no social research at party headquarters. “We are a revolutionary party, not a reform party,” she was told. (163)
Creating “Human Beings that would conform”
THE Communist Party operates by infiltrating and subverting social institutions like the churches, schools, mass media and government. Its aim was “to create new types of human beings who would conform to the blueprint of the world they confidently expected to control.” (162)
For example, Dodd reveals that the CPUSA had 1100 members become Catholic priests in the 1930’s. It also subverted the American education system by taking over the teacher’s unions and learned societites. Only people who accepted the “materialistic, collectivist international class struggle approach” advanced. (98)
Involving women in the war effort fitted the long-range program:
“The party did all it could to induce women to go into industry. Its fashion designers created special styles for them, and its songwriters wrote special songs to spur them…
War-period conditions, they planned, were to become a permanent part of the future educational programme. The bourgeois family as a social unit was to be made obsolete.” (153)
There was to be no family but the party and the state. Dodd helped organize the Congress of American Women, a forerunner of the feminist movement.
“Since it was supposedly a movement for peace, it attracted many women. But it was really only a renewed offensive to control American women…. Like youth and minority groups, they regarded as a reserve force of the revolution because they are more easily moved by emotional appeals.” (194-195)
Subversion of U.S. completed in the 1930’s
WHEN F.D. Roosevelt recognized Russia in 1933, he deliberately turned a blind eye to the CPUSA’S massive programme of espionage and subversion. Liberals denied that this took place and complained about a “witch hunt.” Guess what? The “loony right” was correct.
A new book (The Secret World of American Communism) based on newly opened Kremlin archives, confirms that CPUSA was a puppet of Moscow and the Roosevelt and Truman administrations were practically run by Soviet agents, Alger Hiss, Harry Hopkins and Harry Dexter White to name a few.
The war years saw the CPUSA actually renounce the class struggle and join the so-called “Roosevelt camp of progress” which included “Progressive capitalists.”
“The Communist Party now assumed the responsibility of establishing a rigid discipline over the working class. No employer was more effective or more relentless in checking strikes among the workers, or minimizing complaints… while wages rose a little during those years, they did not compare with the rise in profits and in monopoly control of basic necessities… war production was chiefly in the hands of ten large corporations… the Communists carefully muted such information.”(153)
The war years saw amazing coordination between the Communist Party and America’s financial elite. The elite financed a sophisticated propaganda agency called Russian Institute located on Park Avenue across 68th Street from Rockefeller’s Council on Foreign Relations. Here “famous names like Vanderbilt, Lamont, Whitney and Morgan mingled with those of Communist leaders.” (153)
At Roosevelt’s insistence, Stalin “dissolved” the Comintern in order to make the CPUSA look like an American party. The SPUSA leader Earl Browder achieved national prominence and consulted with senior Roosevelt cabinet ministers.
The joint US-Russian war effort was to be the basis of the new world order. But, in explicably, the policy changed, and Browder instantly became a non-person. Apparently, the financial elite had decided the time wasn’t right for world government. A cold war would be much more lucrative. Dodd was told that in the future, the party would often find itself opposed not only to the government, but also to U.S. workers.
“I now saw that with the best motives and a desire to serve the working people… I and thousands like me, had been led to a betrayal of these very people. …. I had been on the side of those who sought the destruction of my own country.” (229)
Like frightened mice, the CPUSA membership scurried to adopt the new party line. Dodd tried to quit by was told: “No one gets out of the party. You die or you are thrown out.” (197)
The rest of this article will be coming out soon in our Summer 2020 Newsletter. Become a member today to receive this newsletter!
