Poem of the Day (Dear Leader variety) 1-24-20

Of late, the slavish sycophancy of a certain American con man’s followers has become a national scandal. Please consider the following, the doggerel of the day if you will, written by an American “poet,” and then take the very short quiz beneath it.

Heed not those alien, rabble foes,
That tear and rend our land,
Our land was built by Patriots,
Who by their country stand.

And you, today, are your land’s hope
Its savior whom traitors fear;
In you the glowing flame leaps high
That once stirred Paul Revere.

Now, name the object of this piece of poesy (bonus points for naming its author):

1. Benito Mussolini
2. V.I. Lenin
3. Fidel Castro
4. Francisco Franco
5. Donald Trump
6. Adolf Hitler
7. Nicolas Maduro
8. Josef Stalin

Scroll down to find the answer.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Sorry, but you (probably) missed the Glorious Leader the “poet” was slavering over: the answer is contestant #6, Hitler.

I’m also sorry that you missed out on the bonus points. The “poet” was Hannah Cushman Howe. (I’d never heard of her, either.)

She was a member of the nose-up-the-butt/nose-in-the-air brigade, and the only unequivocal reference I could find to her with a brief search was in the 1912 edition of Social Register of New York.

She was an early member of the “very fine people” so famously referenced by the current occupant of the White House. In her note to the Dear Leader, accompanying the poem, Cushman Howe said, in part, “. . . America’s enemies . . . I saw them. Jews from Russia, Poland, Italy, and Germany too.”

Just goes to show how similar goose-steppers are in all times and places.

Thanks to BoingBoing’s Love Letters to Hitler for the above-quoted “poem.”

 

100 Years Since the Bolsheviks Betrayed the Russian Revolution

A century ago, Vladimir Lenin, Leon Trotsky, and their henchmen — Beria, Stalin, et al. — betrayed the Russian people.

They took power in a coup, proclaiming “all power to the soviets,” the soviets being worker-controlled assemblies in manufacturing, transportation, and distribution — worker control of the economy, in other words.

Once in power, Lenin and the Bolsheviks immediately destroyed the soviets, centralizing control in their hands in Moscow.

They instituted the Cheka, the secret police, which murdered over 100,000 people during Lenin’s brief but brutal rule, which ended in 1924.

Lenin (and Trotsky) paved the way for Stalin, through suppression of the soviets, through suppression of independent trade unions, through suppression of political opposition, through suppression of free speech. To pretend that all was well under Lenin is willful ignorance. He paved the way for Stalin.

And there’s no reason to talk further about Stalin. The horrors he committed are well known and were the logical outcome of the dictatorial, one-man rule he inherited from Lenin.

Those who followed, and those who still follow, Lenin (and Stalin), with their patented b.s. — “trust us, we know what we’re doing; it’s for your own good; it’s historically inevitable” — have done more harm to real social emancipation (controlling one’s daily life) than the forces of reaction could ever have dreamed of.

 

 

Revolutionary Leaders

This anonymously produced graphic originally appeared in the early 1980s in the SRAF Bulletin.

It’s reproduced here from The Heretic’s Handbook of Quotations.