THE FASCISM OF THE LEFT
by Thomas A. Droleskey

January 24, 2002

     "Without any censorship in the West, fashionable 
trends of thought are fastidiously separated from those 
that are not fashionable, and the latter, without ever 
being forbidden, have little chance of finding their way 
into periodicals or books or being heard in colleges. 
Your scholars are free in the legal sense, but they are 
hemmed in by the idols of the prevailing fad. There is no 
open violence as in the East; however, a selection 
dictated by fashion and the need to accommodate mass 
standards frequently prevents the most independent-minded 
persons from contributing to public life and gives rise 
to dangerous herd instincts that block successful 
development. In America, I have received letters from 
highly intelligent persons -- maybe a teacher in a 
faraway small college who could do much for the renewal 
and salvation of his country, but the country cannot hear
him because the media will not provide him with a forum. 
This gives birth to strong mass prejudices, to a 
blindness which is perilous in our dynamic era."

     These words were spoken by Dr. Aleksandr I. 
Solzhenitsyn in a commencement address delivered at 
Harvard University on June 8, 1978. Long before the term 
"politically correct" had been coined, Solzhenitsyn had 
noted that Western society is hardly as "free" as it 
claims to be, that the controlling intellectual and 
cultural elite censor quite carefully the flow of 
information to the average citizen, to say nothing of 
controlling what the average person is supposed to think 
about the frequently doctored information that is fed to 
him in newspapers and on television and radio newscasts. 
The situation is far more blatant now than it was twenty-
four years ago when Solzhenitsyn was scorned by America's 
intellectual elite for daring to assert that Western 
civilization suffered from the same basic disease which 
afflicted Russia in her captivity to the Bolsheviks. 
Those who control this nation's news outlets have a 
vested interest in managing the news in an ideological 
manner so as to prevent anyone or any event which might 
reflect unfavorably on the prevailing cultural orthodoxy 
from being made known to the general public.

     Case-in-point: the twenty-ninth annual March for 
Life, which was held on January 22, 2002, in Washington, 
D.C. March for Life Education and Defense Fund organizers 
indicated to the press that more than 100,000 people 
gathered on the Ellipse before marching up to Capitol 
Hill to demonstrate their commitment to the restoration 
of legal protection for the innocent unborn, as well as 
to ensure the protection of all innocent human life from 
the first moment of fertilization to the time of natural 
death. Hundreds of buses carrying thousands of people 
make their way down to our nation's capital city from 
points north, south, east, and west of the Potomac River. 
Others make their way by air or in their own cars. Scores 
of elected officials address the crowd gathered on the 
Ellipse. The president of the United States even 
addressed the crowd by a telephone hookup with March for 
Life President Nellie Gray.

     This is a major news story, right? No, not in the 
eyes of the fascists who control the American media. More 
than has been the case in recent years (which has seen 
the amount of coverage given to the March for Life 
shrivel to next-to-nothing), the March for Life was 
ignored by virtually ever major media outlet in the 
United States. My wife and I searched in vain while 
driving between lecturing engagements in northern 
California to find even one reference to the March on CBS 
Radio national news on the hour. Not one. I searched the 
web sites of THE NEW YORK TIMES, the NEW YORK POST, 
Associated Press, and Fox News Channel to find out some 
news of what was happening at an event I myself 
participated in annually until my schedule called for me 
to be on the West Coast in the month of January. As I do 
not have access to a television (and could not watch same 
even if I did have such access because of my travel 
schedule), I do not know what coverage was given to the 
March for Life on the broadcast and cable news programs. 
However, there was evidently very little coverage from 
what I have been able to discover.

     Indeed, THE WASHINGTON TIMES, which is owned and 
operated by the cult called the Unification Church of the 
Reverend Sun Myung Moon, even refused to accept a pro-
life advertisement sponsored by the American Life League. 
And although the paper did have an article on the March, 
it ran one photograph which attempted to depict pro-
lifers as "angry" people. It turns out that THE 
WASHINGTON POST ran a much more complete story than the 
supposedly more conservative TIMES, as was pointed out to 
me by several people following the initial draft of this 
article. However, the nation's newspaper of record, THE 
NEW YORK TIMES, itself ran only a photograph in its 
national edition, complete with a caption making it 
appear as though an equal number of people on "both 
sides" of the abortion debate had gathered to mark the 
29th anniversary of the decision of the Supreme Court of 
the United States in Roe v. Wade. That was it. A lone 
photograph with a misleading caption designed to 
misrepresent and underreport the facts of this year's 
March for Life. Although my own search of news stories 
was admittedly cursory, given the exigencies of my 
schedule, the only newspaper I could find which contained 
an actual news story about the March was in the SAN JOSE 
MERCURY NEWS.

     It is important to frame this news blackout in its 
proper context. Imagine this scenario: more than 100,000 
American citizens journeyed to Washington to protest the 
treatment of Taliban and al-Qaeda detainees being held at 
the Guantanamo Naval Base in Cuba. Busloads of people 
made their way to Washington for the demonstration. 
Senate Majority Leader Thomas Daschle, concerned about 
this country's human rights image abroad, addressed the 
crowd by telephone hookup from his office in the Capitol, 
as did Senator Patrick Leahy, chairman of the Senate 
Judiciary Committee. The thousands of people who gathered 
on the Ellipse then marched to Capitol Hill to demand 
"humane" treatment for the detainees, caught red-handed 
in their efforts to support terrorism and to kill members 
of the American armed forces. Does anyone believe that 
the national news media would not be covering such a 
story? The cable networks would be providing continuous 
live coverage of the event. Even the broadcast networks 
would devote considerable time to the story, perhaps even 
assigning reporters to travel with the busloads of people 
as they journeyed to Washington, thus documenting the 
"sacrifices" made by these concerned citizens. There 
would be endless coverage on television and radio, to say 
nothing of column space devoted to it in newspapers.

     Not so, obviously, for the March for Life. Ah, some 
sanctimonious apologists of the fascism of the American 
Left will say that the March is not news, that the same 
people gather every year to say the same thing. I 
guarantee you that a gathering of homosexual and lesbian 
activists which took place every year would receive 
complete news coverage. Indeed, the very fact that people 
make sacrifices to travel to Washington to participate in 
the March for Life is itself newsworthy, as it 
demonstrates a degree of commitment to persevere in a 
cause no matter the political and cultural and legal 
obstacles which make such dedication all the more 
noteworthy. Scores of stories could be written about the 
people who bus in from Kansas and Illinois and Wisconsin 
and Texas and Missouri, to say nothing of those who must 
leave around 3:00 a.m. from Massachusetts and Rhode 
Island and New Hampshire to make it to Washington in time 
for the March. Other stories could be written and 
broadcast about the Mass held at the Basilica of the 
National Shrine of the Immaculate Conception the night 
before the March and about the hundreds of people who 
spend all night praying before the Blessed Sacrament, 
exposed solemnly in the Crypt Church of the National 
Shrine. Even the demography of the March, which includes 
thousands of young people, is a source for dozens of 
print and television and radio stories.

     When all is said and done, however, the national 
news media in this nation support abortion. They must 
spin for the abortionists and the feminist organizations 
and the politicians of both major political parties who 
support the destruction of innocent children in their 
mothers wombs. Thus, no effort is going to be made to 
cover completely and objectively a prayerful, peaceful 
gathering of American citizens who take a politically 
incorrect and culturally proscribed position on an issue 
considered closed by those who constitute Americas 
secular magisterium. The very people who deny even the 
possibility of infallibly revealed truths safeguarded by 
the Church Jesus Christ created upon the Rock of Peter, 
the Pope, believe they are infallible and that any 
dissent from their received teaching is not only 
unnewsworthy, it is demonstrative of bigotry and 
ignorance and intolerance.

     There is a word for this hypocrisy: fascism. Those 
who fear the truth do not want to report things as they 
are. They do not want to give anyone an opportunity to 
make the case against what is considered to be our 
prevailing cultural orthodoxy. Our news is managed in 
this country just as much as it is in out-and-out 
dictatorships, except that the news is managed to the 
left here quite voluntarily by people who are on a 
mission to marginalize and demonize anyone and anything 
which does not conform in lockstep with dogmatic leftist 
orthodoxy.

     Those who participate in the March for Life do not 
do so for public consumption. The lion's share of those 
who participate in it are Catholics, men and women who 
offer up their sacrifices and their nearly invisible and 
unreported witness to the Father through the Son in 
Spirit and in Truth. Those who are consecrated to the 
Mother of God, in whose virginal and immaculate womb the 
Second Person of the Blessed Trinity deigned to be 
conceived as a helpless embryo by the Holy Ghost at the 
Annunciation, give the merit they earn as a result of 
their witness to her to be used as she sees fit for the 
honor and glory of God and for the conversion of souls. 
Nevertheless, it is so sad to see such courageous 
witnesses ignored with complete impunity by a news media 
intent on distorting reality in order to advance its own 
perverted ends.

         Copyright 2002 Griffin Internet Syndicate

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Dr. Thomas Droleskey, speaker and lecturer, is a 
professor of political science, the author of CHRIST IN 
THE VOTING BOOTH and THERE IS NO CURE FOR THIS 
CONDITION (www.hopeofstmonica.com), and editor of 
the CHRIST OR CHAOS newsletter.

This column is distributed and archived by Griffin 
Internet Syndicate, http://www.griffnews.com. All rights 
reserved.

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