The Hearst
publishing empire stood
squarely behind the China Lobby and pushed anti-communist propaganda,
supporting the annihilation
doctrine as
American policy. This included anointing 'America's Pastor'
Billy Graham as the anti-communist
crusader: Hearst publications made him an instant national celebrity.
As
the Cold War got into gear almost every American individual and
Congressperson that read newspapers and magazines were fed a growing
frenzy of propaganda that didn't stop until well into the 1980's. To
take a soft stand on communism was political suicide.
The first casualty in the assault on American democracy was a free, unbiased press.
During
this period, the 1940s-1960s, the first neo-conservatives added to
the political fire. Leo Strauss, a staunch nationalist in the
Hapsburg tradition and former communist Seymour
Martin Lipset (the
father of American Exceptionalism), were among the first few
political and social scientists pushing nationalism into the
political arena and public consciousness. The fight for freedom and
democracy that they supported in China was in reality the struggle of
ultra-nationalism vs communism. Chiang Kai-shek retained power in
Taiwan for a while and formed an ultra-nationalist government. Taiwan
didn't start to move toward democracy until the late 1990's.
Luce's
assistant, former communist Marvin Liebman, organized the Committee
of One Million. It gathered one million signatures to bar
Communist China from entry into the UN. The petition was brought to
president Eisenhower, who reversed course and made the case for
exclusion at the UN. The US government only recognized the Peoples
Republic of China in 1979.
Stetsko,
the Anti-American
Luce was a die-hard nationalist, anti-communist, Nazi. One of his assistant Marvin Liebman's most intimate contacts in the anti-communist world was Yaroslav Stetsko. The China Lobby and the Committee of One Million were only a few of the projects they worked on together. Another group they founded was the World Anti-Communist League (WACL) along with Chiang Kai-shek supporters. These later worked with the ABN and WACL until the Ukrainian emigres' Ukraine emerged from the collapse of the Soviet Union.
From
its start the China Lobby was protected
by Joe McCarthy.
Any person that disagreed faced his wrath, was labeled a communist
and investigated. This provided the nationalists from the US and
abroad with enough cover to do whatever they wanted.
Henry Luce was instrumental to the successes of the China Lobby, which included changing US policy from the containment doctrine to the doctrine of annihilation. Because he was in control of such an iconic part of the US media, he almost single handedly changed the social fabric of America. Influential politicians that signed on were former president Herbert Hoover, Richard M. Nixon + over 80 senators and congressmen.
Most
of the support came from Americans who stood against the spread of
communism. There was no other agenda. In the words of governor Thomas
Dewey "If China falls [to communism], we may reasonably
assume that all Asia is gone and Western Europe and the America's
will stand alone--very much alone in a hostile world."
The
propaganda machine engulfed American media. Congressmen took the
China Lobby's word for granted that Chiang Kai-shek was democratic as
well as anti-communist. Even when they could not hide Taiwan's open nazism, the China Lobby clouded the air: "Whatever may have been
the acts of commission and omission attributable to the Nationalist
Government in the past, it is a cardinal fact today that China is
strenuously fighting the Communist aggression, which is aided and
abetted by an oligarchy of international communism abroad and by
Communists throughout the World."- "Text
of Koo's Statement on China," NYT, 8 Aug. 1949.
Chiang Ki-shek ruled as a life-time president. His dictatorship was marked with continual repression and war preparations to invade mainland China. Taiwan is still not democratic and the government's nationalism is evident even today.
With
the loss of China to communism, the China Lobby stormed through
Congress at the start of the Korean war to make sure it didn't happen
again. This full court press resulted
in US involvement in the Korean war.
The Korean
War
After WWII, Korea was supposed to be partitioned, the Communists in the north and the ultra-nationalists in the south. In the south the appointed and subsequently elected ultra-nationalist Syngman Rhee wasted no time consolidating power by destroying anyone who opposed him. In the first few months, over 14,000 murders took were committed by his government. Both sides, including the North's Kim ll Sung, wanted to unite the peninsula under one government. North Korea attacked South Korea with overwhelming force.
The
Luce-Hearst-Liebman-Stetsko China
Lobby wasted
no time ratcheting up the propaganda and political pressure in
Congress and on the President to act. America could not let
"democratic" South Korea fall to communism as it had done to
Chiang's China. Christian America went to war against the satanic
Godless communists, or at least that was how it was sold.
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