54 LOUISE THOMPSON Louise Thompson and her husband, William L. Patterson, have both been openly avowed members of the Communist Party for many years. and both have held high positions in the party. A published list of the "Arrangements committee and sponsors" of the Hyde Park Joint Political Action Conference, a subsidiary of the C. I. O. Political Action Committee, includes the name of Louise Thompson. In 1940, Louise Thompson was elected as one of the vice presidents of the International Workers Order, an auxiliary of the Communist Party, whose president and general secretary are Russian-born William Weiner (real name Welwel Warzower), who was convicted for passport fraud, and German-born Max Bedacht, who was at one time secretary of the Communist Party in the United States. Louise Thompson has been a member of the editorial board of the New Pioneer, the official Communist Party publication for children. She has also been a member of the women's commission of the Communist Party. The official Communist Party magazine, Party Organizer, has published articles by Louise Thompson. Another official Communist Party magazine, Working Woman, also listed Louise Thompson as a contributor; and she was one of the editors of the Communist-front magazine, Woman Today. She was listed as one of the national sponsors of the League of Women Shoppers, an organization which this committee found to be a Communist-controlled front by indisputable documentary evidence obtained from the files of the Communist Party in Philadelphia. Louise Thompson's leadership in political campaigns did not begin with her present membership on the aforementioned set-up of the C. I. O. Political Action Committee. She was a member of the Committee of Professional Groups for Browder and Ford, when those two candidates were running for president and vice president respectively on the Communist Party ticket. She was also a member of the Non-Partisan Committee for the Re-election of Congressman Vito Marcantonio. Louise Thompson, a Negro herself, has been a speaker at the annual gatherings of the National Negro Congress, another notoriously Communist-controlled organization. She was a member of the arrangements committee of the United States Congress Against War, a gathering which Earl Browder reported to Moscow as being openly led by the Communist Party and out of which came the American League for Peace and Democracy. She was active as a member and official of the National Scottsboro Committee of Action. Parenthetically, it may be noted that for many years "action committee" has been a favorite designation of the Communist Party for its fronts. Louise Thompson was also a member of the National Committee for the Defense of Political Prisoners, and its successor organization, the National Committee for People's Rights, both of which were named as subversive by the Attorney General, Mr. Francis Biddle, in his memoranda to the departmental heads of the Federal Government. Finally, we note that she has been a member of the national committee of the International Labor Defense, of which her husband has been vice president. The International Labor Defense has been correctly described as the legal arm of the Communist Party. Louise Thompson and William L. Patterson were married at the Chicago convention where the seditious American Peace Mobilization was launched in September 1940, and she became a member of the national council of the organization. It is clear from the foregoing record that few Negro women have ever attained such prominence in the communist movement in this country as Louise Thompson. She now takes her place in the councils of the C. I. O. Political Action Committee, a move which represents no break in the continuity of her activities on behalf of communism over the past decade. 55 RUTH YOUNG Ruth Young was one of the speakers at the C. I. O. Political Action Committee's New York conference of January 14-15, 1944. She is an official in the C. I. O.'s third largest affiliate, the United Electrical Radio, and Machine Workers of America. This same Ruth Young who is now so prominent and active in Hillman's Political Action Committee was for a long time equally prominent and active in the Young Communist League. In February 1938, Ruth Young signed a public manifesto which read, in part, as follows: The growth of the party depends upon our own effort and will. We pledge to make the slogan, "Build the Party," the center of discussion and action among our members and among the broad masses of our sympathizers. Forward to build a strong and powerful Communist Party! Forward for a strong people's front to defeat fascism and war! The reference to "October" in the foregoing manifesto is the bolshevik revolution of Russia. When Ruth Young was confronted at the 1941 convention of her union with the fact that she signed the foregoing Communist manifesto, she made no denial. On the contrary, her reply was that she was "not aware that it is illegal in the United States for anyone to hold any political or religious belief." In the summer of 1938, Ruth Young was delegate to the Communist World Youth Congress (at Vassar College) from the United Electrical, Radio, and Machine Workers of America. It is now under the mask of patriotism and the C. I. O. Political Action Committee that such Communists as Ruth Young are working for what they have in the past described as "the American October." The 600,000 members of the United Electrical, Radio, and Machine Workers of America (employed in many of the most vital American defense industries) are submitting to an entrenched Communist leadership which includes such notorious Communists as Julius Emspak, James Lustig, James J. Matles, William Sentner, Neil Brant, and Ruth Young. This union is probably the most energetic of all the C. I. O. affiliates in supporting Sidney Hillman's C. I. O. Political Action Committee. 183 56 COMMUNIST-FRONT ORGANIZATIONS The Communist-front organization is comparatively a new phenomenon in American life. Because of this and because of the deceptiveness and unprecedented character of the tactics employed, most Americans are slow to recognize these front organizations for what they are, instruments of the Communist Party. These Communistfront organizations are characterized by their common origin, the rigid conformity of these organizations to the Communist pattern, their interlocking personnel, and their methods generally used to deceive the American public. Being part of a conspiratorial movement, their very essence is deception. During the first few years of the Communist International, immediately following the stimulus of the Russian Revolution, its international appeal was stridently revolutionary. As world economic conditions improved following the First World War, the international revolutionary movement began to wane. The Hungarian and German Communist revolutions failed and the Communist International began to lose strength. Hence it was deemed necessary to moderate the earlier revolutionary appeal, to adopt middle-of-the-road slogans, and to build so-called united front organizations, as bridge and supporting organizations in the interest of the international Communist movement. One of the leading organizers of these "innocent" organizations on an international scale was Willi Munzenberg, a prominent German Communist, whose organizing ability won him the sobriquet of the "Henry Ford of the Communist International." Munzenberg was engagingly frank in describing the real purpose of these organizations: 1. To arouse the interest of those millions of apathetic and indifferent workers * * * who simply have no ear for Communist propaganda. These people we wish to attract and arouse through new channels, by means of new ways. 2. Our sympathetic organizations should constitute bridges for the nonparty workers * * * who have not yet mustered the courage to take the final step and join the Communist Party, but who are nevertheless in sympathy with the Communist movement and are prepared to follow us part of the way. 3. By means of the mass organizations we wish to extend the Communist sphere of influence in itself. 4. The organizational linking up of the elements in sympathy with the Soviet Union and with the Communists. * * * 5. We must build up our own organizations in order to counteract the increasing efforts of the bourgeois and social-democratic parties in this respect, and 6. Through these sympathetic and mass organizations we should train the cadres of militants and officials of the Communist Party possessing organizational experience. (Speech before the Sixth Congress of the Communist International in Moscow, July 20, 1928. International Press Correspondence, vol. 8, No. 42, Aug. 1, 1928, pp. 751, 752.) In his Problems of Leninism, a standard textbook and guide for Communists throughout the world, Joseph Stalin emphasized the need of these front or mass organizations which he called "transmission belts": The proletariat needs these belts, these levers, and this guiding force [the Communist Party-Ed.], * * * Lastly we come to the Party of the Proletariat, the proletarian vanguard. Its strength lies in the fact that it attracts to its ranks the best elements of all the mass organizations of the proletariat, without exception, and to guide their activities toward a single end, that of the liberation of the proletariat. Stalin quoted Lenin in support of his argument: The dictatorship [of the proletariat] cannot be effectively realized without "belts" to transmit power from the vanguard [the Communist Party-Ed.] to the mass of the advanced class, and from this to the mass of those who labor (pp. 29, 30). We cite the instructions of Otto Kuusinen, secretary of the Communist International, in his report at the Sixth Plenum (plenary session) of the executive committee of the Communist International: The first part of our task is to build up, not only Communist organizations, but other organizations as well, above all mass organizations, sympathizing with our aims, and able to aid us for special purposes. * * * We must create a whole solar system of organizations and smaller committees around the Communist Party, so to speak, smaller organizations working actually under the influence of our Party. [Quotations taken from the Communist, May 1931, pp. 409-423.] The rise of Adolf Hitler to power created a new threat to the Soviet Union and to the international Communist movement. Hence the Seventh Congress of the Communist International, in 1935, gave an added impetus to the creation of front organizations under Communist initiative and leadership, the chief purpose of which was to protect and serve the Communist Party and the Soviet Union. The ability of the Communists to ensnare large numbers and influential individuals, to serve as decoys in operating these fronts, reached its high point following the Seventh Congress in 1935. The methods employed by the Communists in establishing and operating these front organizations, methods demonstrated by the various organizations herein cited, have been well summarized by a former high official of the Communist Party of the United States: A front organization is organized by the Communist Party in the following fashion: First, a number of sympathizers who are close to the party and whom the party knows can be depended upon to carry out party orders, are gotten together and formed into a nucelus which issues a call for the organization of a particular front organization which the party wants to establish. And generally after that is done a program is drawn up by the party, which this provisional committee adopts, Then, on the basis of this provisional program, all kinds of individuals are canvassed to become sponsors of the organization, which is to be launched in the very near future. A provisional secretary is appointed before the organization is launched and in every instance in our day the secretary who was appointed was a member of the Communist Party. * And as president of the organization we would put up some prominent public figure who was willing to accept the presidency of the organization, generally making sure that, if that public figure was one who would not go along with the communists, he was of such a type that he would be too busy to pay attention to the affairs of the organization. * * * * * On the committee that would be drawn together, a sufficient number of communists and Communist Party sympathizers, who would carry out party orders, was included, and out of this number a small executive committee was organized * * * which carried on the affairs of the organization, so-called, and this small executive committee, with the secretary, really ran the organization. And this small committee and the secretary are the instruments of the Communist Party, with the result that when manifestos or decisions on campaigns are made, those campaigns are ordered by the Communist Party (hearings of the Special Committee on Un-American Activities, vol. 7, pp. 4716, 4717, 4718). |