Crying "peace" while waging war: millions of people around the world are demonstrating against the U.S./UN war on Iraq. Most of them are unaware of the hidden revolutionary agenda of the "peace" leaders. (War & Peace).

"Communism must be built with non-Communist hands," V.I. Lenin is purported to have remarked. To accomplish this goal, Lenin instructed, will require the help of many "useful idiots." Throughout the past century, millions of "useful idiots" swarmed to provide that help through numerous Communist front groups that invariably appealed to noble motives. The "united front" tactic was developed both to camouflage Communist direction and to give the false appearance of popular support for Communist objectives.

The worldwide "peace movement" has been the most wildly successful and durable of the Red united front efforts. This movement was thoroughly exposed over 50 years ago by former top Communist official Louis Budenz, in his 1952 book, The Cry Is Peace. Budenz had been a member of the National Committee of the Communist Party USA (CPUSA) and managing editor of its newspaper, the Daily Worker. In his expose, he gave detailed information on the creation of the Soviet-directed World Peace Council and the ways in which it networked with other "peace" organizations to further world Marxist-Leninist objectives. As Mr. Budenz explained, the real "peace" that the hidden leaders of this movement worked for was the absence of opposition to Communism. And wherever they were successful, he noted, there followed the "peace" of the grave for millions of their victims.

A 1978 report on the World Peace Council (WPC) by the House Intelligence Committee noted that WPC President Romesh Chandra was a Central Committee member of the Communist Party of India and that he was under the control of Soviet handlers Aleksandr Berkov and Igor Belyayev. The report stated further that the WPC was under the direction of the International Department of the Soviet Communist Party Central Committee, which "stands firmly over the KGB for clandestine political activities." Official testimony later showed that the WPC was indeed receiving covert Soviet funding via the KGB, as had been long suspected.

It will come as a surprise to many to learn that this same World Peace Council, launched by the Kremlin in 1950 and funded with many millions of dollars by the Soviet strategists, is still alive and kicking -- even though its Communist creators have, supposedly, evaporated. In fact, the WPC's hand is clearly visible in the worldwide demonstrations of February 15th-16th, as well as many of the major demonstrations against "globalization" and the World Trade Organization and IMF over the past couple years. The WPC and its global Communist Party networks are the only force capable of providing the organization, experience, leadership, manpower, and funding to pull off those kinds of simultaneous massive demonstrations in hundreds of cities worldwide.

Comrade Romesh Chandra still rides herd on the WPC, and many of the same Communist leaders who have served in its ranks for decades continue in place. In 2002, the WPC held an important conference on "Peace, Natural Resources, Sovereignty, and Society" in Communist Cuba.

Over the past several decades, Chandra's WPC lieutenant in the U.S. has been Mike Myerson, head of the U.S. Peace Council and longtime Communist Party (CPUSA) official. Myerson is currently one of the organizers working in New York City with International ANSWER, the leading sponsor of the current U.S. "antiwar" offensive. Born a "red diaper baby" to parents who were veteran Communist fronters, Myerson helped launch the revolution at the University of California's Berkeley campus in the early 1960s. In 1965 he journeyed to Hanoi, where he was made an "honorary nephew" of Ho Chi Minh. Returning to the United States, he helped lead anti-war demonstrations where he was notorious for wearing a Vietcong cap, waving a Vietcong flag, and proudly displaying a ring allegedly made from wreckage of an American plane shot down over North Vietnam.

Dizzying Labyrinth

Just as the Mafia, the drug cartels, and other large, sophisticated criminal enterprises utilize a confusing array of shell companies and front businesses to launder funds and conceal activities, the Communists continue to operate through an ever-shifting myriad of front groups. They know that few observers will have the motivation, patience, and wherewithal to trace their controlling threads that wind through the organizational maze.

Without getting too mired in the details, we will attempt in the space that follows to expose a small part of the enormous fifth column currently marching under the peace banners. First, we will look at a few of the hard-core leftist and Communist individuals and groups that, along with the aforementioned World Peace Council and its American affiliate, the U.S. Peace Council, are key components of the "peace" movement. These names turn up repeatedly in the constantly changing lineup of front organizations. Then we will look at several of the principal coalitions these top revolutionaries have formed to lead the current movement.

Institute for Policy Studies (IPS) and Transnational Institute (TNI). These companion organizations are particularly noteworthy, since their influence has been so pronounced throughout the Moscow-directed "peace" movement over the past several decades. And, as TNI's website boasts, "TNI remains in the forefront of opposition to George Bush's war." IPS/TNI fellows Richard Barnet, Walden Bello, Saul Landau, John Cavanaugh, Tariq Ali, Boris Kagarlitsky, and Phyllis Bennis seem to be everywhere giving speeches, writing articles, appearing in the media, directing teach-ins, devising talking points, etc. The IPS and TNI are not merely "liberal think tanks," as they are frequently described by the media, but well-funded brain trusts actively involved in subversion at many different levels. They have long been tied into the KGB and other Communist intelligence agencies, as well as numerous terrorist groups. Tariq Ali has been for many years a top member of the executive committee of the Fourth International, the worl dwide Trotskyite terrorist apparatus, of which the Socialist Workers Party is the U.S. affiliate.

Boris Kagarlitsky is especially interesting, since he gives every indication of being one of the main lines of continuity between the peaceniks and the supposedly reformed KGB (now the FSB) via his IPS/TNI conduit. Kagarlitsky, a prolific writer and speaker, is a TNI fellow in Moscow, where he also is director of the Institute for Globalization Studies. Formerly a member of the Soviet Academy of Sciences, he is now a member of the Russian Academy of Sciences, which is pretty much the same organization, with a different name. An unapologetic Communist, Kagarlitsky speaks and writes in favor of nationalizing all property and capital and depositing unlimited power in the hands of the state. With these bona fides it is little wonder that he is so popular among the hard-left cadres leading the bogus "peace" campaign.

National Lawyers Guild (NLG). In 1950, the House Committee on Un-American Activities described the NLG as "the foremost legal bulwark of the Communist Party, its front organizations and controlled unions." The NLG has done nothing over the past five decades to invalidate that description. The NLG has been intimately and openly involved with the Communist Party USA, Fidel Castro, and such terrorist groups as the Weather Underground, the Black Liberation Army, the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, and the Puerto Rican Armed Forces of National Liberation. The NLG and its members pervade the upper levels of the "peace" movement.

The Washington Post noted last year that during an April 20th demonstration in Washington, D.C., organizers instructed newcomers to write the NLG telephone number on their arms. The reason for this, of course, was so that, if arrested, they could notify the Red attorneys and quickly get sprung from jail.

Committees of Correspondence (CofC). Founded a decade ago as a splinter faction of the Communist Party USA, the CofC is led by longtime Reds Angela Davis, Herbert Aptheker, Jack O'Dell, Ossie Davis, Carl Bloice, Noam Chomsky, and Leslie Cagan. The CofC website still proudly features its 1998 tribute to the Gommunist Manifesto, honoring that document's 150th anniversary.

Chinese Progressive Association (CPA). This Beijing-directed mob has been active in many of the "peace" demonstrations, including events in Boston, New York, and San Francisco. The CPA, a splinter group of Maoists who formerly were members of the Communist Workers Party, serves as a kind of strong-arm force for Communist China's diplomats. Calling themselves "Red Guards" and "Boxers," the CPA thugs have physically attacked and beat up peaceful Chinese-American demonstrators protesting Beijing's brutal policies. The CPA cadres fly the Red Chinese flag and have been visibly associated with China's consulate and UN officials in New York City.

Refuse & Resist (R&R). Launched by Abbie Hoffman, William Kunstler, Leonard Weinglass, and a bevy of other hard-core revolutionaries, R&R is a militant Marxist/Maoist group.

Ramsey Clark. A former U.S. attorney general, Mr. Clark has been notorious for decades for supporting America's enemies, from Ho Chi Minh to Fidel Castro to Ayatollah Khomeini to Kim II Sung to Saddam Hussein. He has also supported myriad leftist, Communist, and terrorist causes and individuals.

Leslie Cagan. A militant lesbian and co-chair of the Committees of Correspondence, Cagan attended the Communist World Youth Festival in Sofia, Bulgaria, in 1968 and then trained with Castro's Venceremos Brigades in Cuba. She has been a full-time activist in Communist/left-wing causes for the past 35 years and currently heads the United For Peace coalition.

Ralph Nader. For more than 40 years, "Citizen Nader" has been at the center of radical, anti-American activity. In one of his many overseas trips to denounce American capitalism, he told an Australian audience in 1972: "What is needed is socialism or communism of one sort or another." Although he postures as a mainstream consumer advocate, Nader has been for decades tightly associated with the Institute for Policy Studies and other revolutionary groups to bring about global socialism or Communism "of one sort or another." A perusal of his Citizen Works website quickly reveals that he openly works with and lists as allies: the Institute for Policy Studies; the anarchist Ruckus Society; the eco-terrorist Earth First!; the Red-laden Greenpeace; and the anarchist People Against Oppression and War. A leading organizer of the anti-corporate, anti-globalization demonstrations, Nader has nevertheless received generous funding from Insider corporations and major foundations, such as the Ford Foundation.

International ANSWER. As we noted in our previous issue ("Recycling Radicalism," March 24, 2003), this group is heavily packed with hard-core Communists from the Workers World Party (WWP). Top WWP Reds in the ANSWER coalition include Brian Becker and Deidre Griswold Stapp. The coalition also lists the WWP as one of its official endorsers, along with the Communist Party USA, the Socialist Party USA, and the National Lawyers Guild. Another of its official endorsers is Charles Barron, the Black Panther and New York City Councilman. Barron describes himself as a "black revolutionary" and said in 2000 he cast a write-in vote for imprisoned cop-killer Mumia Abu Jamal for president of the United States. It is also worth noting that International ANSWER operates out of the New York City headquarters office of Ramsey Clark's International Action Center and that the two organizations are completely intertwined.

Now for a look at some of the main antiwar coalitions:

United For Peace (UFP). As mentioned above, the UFP is directed by hard-core revolutionary Leslie Cagan. Its members include the usual suspects: National Lawyers Guild; Institute for Policy Studies; and U.S. Peace Council. In addition, there is the violent anarchist Ruckus Society and the National Council of Churches (NCC), which has been called the Network of Communist Churches because of its decades-long sordid record of unstinting support for Communist causes and regimes, including Communist dictatorships notorious for persecuting Christians whom the NCC claims to represent!

Winning Without War (WWW). This supposedly mainstream coalition is co-chaired by Robert Edgar of the National Council of Churches. Some of its more well known radical members include the National Organization for Women, the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force, Greenpeace, and Jesse Jackson's Rainbow/PUSH Coalition. It boasts celebrity support from Ed Asner, Mike Farrell, Susan Sarandon, feminist agitator Gloria Steinem, and Marxist "historian" Howard Zinn.

Not In Our Name (NION). The top revolutionary names here include: Marxist historian Howard Zinn; Leslie Cagan (mentioned above); veteran Marxist, Castro apologist, and America basher Noam Chomsky; actor and longtime Communist front activist Ossie Davis; Columbia University's ultra-militant Marxist Edward Said; and aging socialist-feminist icon Gloria Steinem.

Global Exchange (GX). Tied closely to the Institute for Policy Studies, the Ruckus Society, and Fidel Castro, GX is currently a leading promoter of this year's World Summit on Sustainable Development in Havana. The Marxist Institute for Policy Studies (IPS) speakers it promotes include: Noam Chomsky; Phyllis Bennis; Edward Said; Eqbal Ahmad; and Howard Zinn.

New groups and coalitions spring up almost every day. That is part of the united front strategy in creating the image of popular support and the false perception that the movement is far larger than it really is. The important fact to keep in mind is that all of the massive demonstrations are really the work of a relatively small number of full-time professional cadres tied together in a global revolutionary network. With promotional help from celebrities, favorable coverage from the major media, and funding from corporate and foundation sources, and by exploiting volatile, hot-button issues, they have produced some impressive spectacles.

The revolutionaries leading this network are rebuilding the mass protest movement of the 1960s, recruiting new youth cadres. They are following the formula they have honed so well: organize, mobilize, radicalize, and militarize. You can expect that their demonstrations will become more overtly radical, embracing more militant Marxist themes. You can also expect that the demonstrations will escalate in violence. This, in turn, will lead to calls for more police-state measures, thereby destroying more of our constitutional safeguards and pushing us closer to the kind of socialist, totalitarian regimes that the movement leaders so ardently admire.