The Home Front
BOHN, WILLIAM E.
THE HOME FRONT Communists As Actors By William E. Bohn We have had nine trials of Communists under the Smith Act; the number of defendants has been in the neighborhood of seventy-five. I have...
...James Forest, Chairman of the Communist party of Missouri, made a typical statement to the jury in the St...
...They have no means of checking on social theories...
...They know that American Negroes are rapidly increasing in wealth and influence, but they continue to repeat the lines about how they are oppressed and how much they need Communist help...
...These people whom I have seen at the various trials are not scholars...
...I have followed only four of the trials with any degree of care...
...they are not notable for their talents, virtues or vices...
...Some of them do not believe what they say...
...Nevertheless, they continue to pretend that their activities influence Congress and even the Supreme Court...
...As politicians they have been failures...
...You are trying ideas...
...What's the use...
...they were swept into the Communist wave by the Great Depression...
...The other day, I suggested to one of the boys in our office that we should say something about what is going on in St...
...Others really believe in the parts written out for them...
...A country entirely different from ours had a "revolution...
...They are not remarkable people, these American Communists...
...This capitalist system must break down...
...In the story of his life, there is not a word to indicate that he carried on any studies beyond the high-school level...
...Louis...
...Because this happened in far-off Russia, the Communists jump to the belief that the same thing is bound to happen in America...
...as social prophets they hardly come up to the level of the nearest crystal-gazer...
...There is the story...
...As a result of this sudden overturn, a strange form of organization was forced upon a populous and powerful land...
...The other pillar of this American Communist faith is the U.S.S.R...
...as historians they are not serious contenders...
...It is in the American tradition...
...They swore their allegiance and tied themselves in so tight that they cannot pull themselves free...
...The dwindling size and influence of the Communist party must strain the faith of its members...
...When you watch them and listen to them, they seem like very simple, conscientious and ordinary little folks...
...They are certain that the world will go as their great leaders have foretold...
...All this may seem ridiculous--these faithful little people saying over and over their well-learned lines and meeting the fates allotted to them by the courts...
...few of them have seen the inside of a university...
...Louis case: This is a working-class party...
...I must confess that they put them over with an appearance of conviction...
...And so on and on...
...He sneered: "Ah...
...This belief is grotesque, fantastic, completely without foundation...
...This man Forest made the conventional statement in St...
...Louis: "Marxism-Leninism gave me the key to acquiring understanding as well as a guide to meeting the most urgent problems of the day...
...The first is the theory of Marxism-Leninism...
...He believes in these Marxian theories the way some people believe in witchcraft...
...But men and women are going to jail--or even to the electric chair--because they act upon it...
...And now I am being kept up to date on what is happening to the six who are under indictment in St...
...These people live in a dream world, and in their statements they are acting out parts that fit the world of fantasy and have no relation to reality...
...They often seem like the poor lunatic who imagines himself Napoleon or George Washington...
...The Rosenbergs believed this with such utter devotion that they went to their deaths rather than forswear it...
...Whatever they learn or think, they must play their parts to the end...
...The Detroit trial, with five defendants, was pretty well reported to me by my Michigan friends...
...Then, suddenly, it struck me...
...This hallucination has two supports...
...It is only as actors that they achieve any sort of distinction...
...It represents the poor farmers and Negroes...
...They actually think that, in keeping this tiny, ramshackle Communist party alive, they are providing for the future liberation of farmers and workers and, especially, oppressed Negroes...
...They can look out of the windows in any of their courtrooms and see proof of our prosperity, but they continue to talk about the poor American workers and farmers who need their help...
...No matter when or where these people are tried, they speak the same lines...
...All of these trials are so monotonously alike that you can jump from the record of one to that of another without consciousness of change...
...as economists they do not make the lowest grade...
...Louis...
...I heard the same words at the New York trials...
...I attended the two mass trials in New York...
...It's nothing but the same old story...
...It is a sort of voodooism...
Vol. 37 • April 1954 • No. 15
