I Am Spurious (Red)

...By specious arguments cause the breakdown of the old moral virtues: honesty, sobriety, continence, faith in the pledged word, ruggedness...

...Brautigam's source for this document," the FBI director said...

...These are among hundreds of newspapers—dailies, weeklies, shopping guides, church bulletins, PTA newsletters—that have, in the past year or two, treated their more gullible readers to one version or another of the curious document known as the "Communist Rules for Revolution...

...Always preach true democracy, but seize power as fast and ruthlessly as possible...

...One problem is that the Florida State Attorney General's Office knows nothing about the "Rules...

...One of the documents found in it contained a specific outline of 'Rules for Bringing About a Revolution.'" Pretty strong stuff so far, don't you agree...

...Among the dozen rowdy, singing 'Tommies' apparently headed for a gay evening were two representatives of the Allied military intelligence...

...Responding to the Senator's request, the Legislative Reference Service of the Library of Congress reported, "Despite concerted efforts involving telephone queries and correspondence between ourselves and a number of persons responsible for publishing the 'Rules,' we have been unable to verify or disprove the authenticity...

...It does know about Mr...

...Divide the people into hostile groups by constantly harping on controversial matters of no importance...

...Brautigam, though, and points out that he was state attorney for Dade County from 1952 to 1956...

...Senator Lee Metcalf, Montana Democrat, has taken a special interest in "the spurious nature of this document," and recently mounted an earnest effort to track down its origins...

...She thought it was the issue of either February or March of 1968...

...Get them away from religion...

...The FBI, he reported, did indeed have a copy of the document in its files...

...Edgar Hoover himself...

...It has not been possible to definitely ascertain Mr...

...By encouraging government extravagance, destroy its credit, produce fear of inflation with rising prices and general discontent...

...On a dark night in May, 1919," the story begins, "two lorries rumbled across a bridge and on into the town of Dusseldorf...

...Get control of all means of publicity and thereby: "1...

...The John Birch Society, in the March, 1969, issue of its learned journal, American Opinion, printed an article entitled "Sex Study: Problems, Propaganda, and Pornography," which included this illuminating passage: "As far back as May of 1919, Allied forces in Dusseldorf, Germany, first captured a Communist document entitled 'Rules for Revolution.' Number one on that list was 'Corrupt the young, get them away from religion...

...Get them interested in sex...

...his current successor, Richard E. Ger-stein, advises that Mr...

...Make them superficial, destroy their ruggedness...

...I have written to these people but received no answer...

...Pretending to be drunk, they brushed past the sentries and arrested the ringleaders—a group of thirteen men and women seated at a long table...

...Corrupt the young...

...The late Mr...

...Get them interested in sex...

...Hoover was just citing "specious arguments" in accord with Rule B7...

...The remarkable prescience displayed by the Dusseldorf revolutionaries in focusing on such issues as sex education, firearms registration, and criticism of the people's "natural leaders" has won an appreciative audience for the "Rules" among organizations that happen, just by coincidence, to be concerned about these very issues...

...Fiendishly clever, these Communists...

...Foment unnecessary strikes in vital industries, encourage civil disorders and foster a lenient and soft attitude on the part of government toward such disorders...

...These men had traced a wave of indiscipline, mutiny, and murder among the troops to the local headquarters of a revolutionary organization established in the town...

...Brautigam is sometimes, cited by those who circulate the "Rules," but most of the newspapers that have printed the document aren't bothered about such small matters as authentication...

...The woman said she had cut it out of a Knights of Columbus bulletin, the Winona Courier...

...When the editor of the Waterville Advance—whose version was, in turn, picked up by several other newspapers—was asked how he obtained the text, he replied: "The article in question was turned into this office by one of our subscribers...

...This is the version of the "Rules" distributed by Western Voice Publishers, a public-spirited concern in Engle-wood, Colorado, that specializes in exciting tracts unveiling papist plots, Jewish conspiracies, and black intrigues...

...It is possible, too, that we are complying with Rule B2 by "harping on controversial matters of no importance...

...Such groups as the Association to Preserve Our Right to Keep and Bear Arms, Inc., and the Network of Patriotic Letter Writers have been busy disseminating copies of the "Rules...

...Brautigam would' seem to be an excellent source for authenticating the Dusseldorf "Rules...

...It came, alas, not from a safe in Dussel-dorf but from the late state attorney for Dade County, Florida...

...Here, straight from the mutinous, murderous rathskellers of old Dusseldorf, are the "Rules," as they appear in their most widely published form: "A...

...Significantly, our files reflect no other information regarding these 'Rules,' and, therefore, we can logically speculate that the document is spurious...

...Get people's minds off their government by focusing their attention on athletics, sexy books and plays and other trivialities...

...In the course of the raid the Allied officers emptied the contents of the safe...

...It is possible, of course, that Mr...

...In Montgomery County, Maryland, the chairman of an organization called Movement to Restore Decency (MO-TOREDE) cites the "Rules" as evidence that sex education in the public schools is part of a fifty-year-old Bolshevik plot...

...Destroy the people's faith in their natural leaders by holding the latter up to contempt, ridicule, and obloquy...

...EDGAR HILL is the pseudonym of a well-known Washington correspondent...

...Make them superficial, destroy their ruggedness.' Again, in the early 1950's, Florida State Attorney George A. Brautigam confirmed that 'the above "Rules for Revolution" were secured by the State Attorney's Office from a known member of the Communist Party, who acknowledged it to be still a part of the Communist program for overthrowing our Government.'" Were it not for a few small technical details, Mr...

...Cause the registration of all firearms on some pretext, with a view to confiscating them and leaving the population helpless...

...Last spring, a question about the "Rules" was put to the nation's ultimate authority on Communist conspiracies—J...

...The editors of the Waterville (Minnesota) Advance and of the Portsmouth (Virginia) Public Schools and of the Seattle (Washington) Masonic Tribune and of the El Paso (Texas) Times and of the Washburn Review, the student newspaper of Washburn University in Topeka, Kansas, all agree...

...Brautigam "passed away a number of years ago and we have no information" regarding the "Rules...