The Long Telegram

The Anti-Woke Book Club - June 26, 2023 Vol 3

Photo by Sandra Tan on Unsplash

By

James Pew

The period immediately following the second world war presented a unique problem to the Western world. A problem which seemed to have no acceptable solution: the spread of Soviet Communism. American foreign policy was stuck in a false dichotomy: On the one hand, the Soviets could be met through the initiation of a third world war. Unthinkable. On the other hand, a policy of appeasement and attempts at friendship could be pursued. Considering, among other realities of the Communist world view, that Joseph Stalin was the Soviet Union’s murderous and tyrannical dictator at the time, this was not a realistic alternative. The Americans were in a state of limbo with no suitable path forward. That was until a deeply insightful analysis of a gifted American diplomat struck a chord within the highest levels of American power.

On February 22, 1946 at 9PM a telegram from Moscow marked “Secret” was received by the United States government. Considered by many as the most consequential in the history of telegrams, composed by “The Charge in the Soviet Union” (George Kennan), at roughly 8000 words, it is an engrossing read.

In the opening lines of The Long Telegram, Kennan explains why his message was so lengthy: it “involves questions so intricate, so delicate, so strange to our form of thought, and so important to analysis of our international environment that I cannot compress answers into single brief message without yielding to what I feel would be dangerous degree of over-simplification.”

George Kennan was an influential American diplomat and historian, whose "Long Telegram” and other writings, such as 1947s "The Sources of Soviet Conduct,” provided justification for America's policy of “containment” (The Truman Doctrine) - America’s policy concerning what the Truman administration viewed as Communist expansionism in the early Cold War era. 

Much of what Kennan wrote in 1946 has a familiar and ominous thread of relevance today. In last week's essay for the Anti-Woke Book Club, I covered a speech where James Lindsay explains his hypothesis that Woke is Marxism adapted for the West. Lindsay’s speech is like a “Long Telegram” for today, in that it offers an analysis of consequential importance. The type of understanding, and the methods of discernment employed by Lindsay and Kennan, are vital. And just like Kennan's analysis of the Soviet Union in 1946, Lindsay’s speech offers a foundational understanding of tactics and the subversive nature of Marxist revolution. 

During the cold war, international Communism was directed by Moscow (by the Communist International also known as Comintern). A prescient warning came from Winston Churchill in March of 1946, one month after Kennan’s Long Telegram was delivered to the US STATE Department. Churchill’s words have since become known as the “Iron Curtain speech.” He claimed that “From Stettin in the Baltic, to Trieste in the Adriatic, an iron curtain has descended across the continent.” This warning was a shock to many in America who at the time had little idea of the totalitarian intentions of Stalin’s communist movement. After the fall of the Soviet Union, this subversive movement which began in earnest with the Bolshevik Revolution, still continues all over the world in a myriad of re-adapted and re-interpreted forms, identified in the West, in the most general sense, as Wokeism.

In the quote below, from The Long Telegram, replace the word “Russians” with, “the Woke” :

“The very disrespect of Russians for objective truth--indeed, their disbelief in its existence--leads them to view all stated facts as instruments for furtherance of one ulterior purpose or another. There is good reason to suspect that this Government is actually a conspiracy within a conspiracy.” - George Kennan (1946)

Further, in November of 2022, I published an essay to Woke Watch Canada written by historian Mr. M, called Race Radicalism in America. This essay re-examines the McCarthy era and asks if Marxism really holds any influence over modern American politics: Is America really gradually sliding into communism? 

Mr. M provides a few compelling reasons why a re-examination of Soviet Communism is important for understanding the subversion of modern politics and society. One of his interesting side note’s concerns American Communist researcher John Earl Haynes. Regarding the McCarthy era, Mr. M contrasts the illegitimate witch hunt of McCarthy with the legitimate work of HUAC (House Un-American Activities Committee). HUAC was investigating Communist subversion directed by Comintern in Moscow, which was substantiated years later when Comintern archives were made available to researchers. From the essay:

In 1993, Haynes became the first American scholar to examine the records of the Communist Party USA, housed in the former archive of the Communist International in Moscow, and he is the man responsible for making an agreement with the Russians that lead to the production of copies of the Comintern archives. These copies were then sold to US academic institutions. Haynes’ personal website offers the reading public a topical reference bibliography containing more than 9,000 items. There is probably no better research tool on earth with which to investigate the topic of American communism:

http://www.johnearlhaynes.org/page94.html 

See further: Harvey Klehr, John Earl Haynes, Fridrikh Firsov. 1995.  The Secret World of American Communism.

HUAC’s annual reports have been digitized and are available at:

https://archive.org/details/ReportsOfTheCommitteeOfUn-AmericanActivities

Many documents and newspapers produced by CPUSA have been digitized and are available at:

https://www.marxists.org/history/usa/parties/cpusa/

It is amazing the insidious nature by which essentially Communist ideas have taken root today in the institutions of the West. While it may not be exactly the same as the international Communist movement first directed by Moscow in the wake of the Bolshevik revolution, the modern Woke movement is part of the same lineage of Marxist revolutions. There are many similarities between Marxisim as Marx intended, beginning in his time up to the Bolshevik and other Agrarian Communist revolutions of the first half of the 20th century, to today’s Woke iteration of Cultural Marxism. Further, when one considers how deeply Wokeism has infiltrated Western society, it is reasonable to assume the subversion began a long time ago, like perhaps around 1848 (the year the Communist Manifesto was published), or maybe even 1917 (the year of the Bolshevik revolution). However, thoroughly delineating all of the similarities between Marxism and Wokesim deserves its own essay. 

It is worth noting that Marxism is a “scientific” theory of history. Communists believe that communism is an inevitable future outcome of the natural course of history. This explains their lack of urgency (reluctance to use force in most cases) - they are in no rush to complete a historical process that they believe is destined. And since they thought (still think) that history ends with the establishment of a Communist Utopia, Stalin and other Communist leaders of the 20th century were under no stress to bring about history’s conclusion within a given period of time. Just like the woke movement, it is a long game, a “long march through the institutions.” 

To those academics who argue that Marxism is not Wokeism, that the sharing of a few similarities does not make them the same thing, I agree on the second point. The term Cultural Marxism differentiates Wokeism from Classical Marxism. However, this remains a sticking point in the discourse. There is an anti-Semetic conspiracy theory that the left attributes to Cultural Marxism, and there are those who believe, like I do, that Marxism was adapted to a cultural context, from an economic context. The left revolts against this notion and retorts that Cultural Marxism is too different from Classical Marxism for any equivalence to be drawn. However, in my mind the similarities in doctrine and tactics are too abundant, not least the end goal to engineer a utopian society, but also the fact that so many leading activists and academics (ie. Critical Theorists) constantly credit Marx’s ideas as the inspiration of their own. Many of them march in the streets openly calling for a Communist revolution. This leads many academics and writers to conclude that Karl Marx is the father of it all.

The structure of the Long Telegram

Kennan’s analysis is broken down into five sections:

(1) Basic features of post-war Soviet outlook.

(2) Background of this outlook

(3) Its projection in practical policy on official level.

(4) Its projection on unofficial level.

(5) Practical deductions from standpoint of US policy.

I strongly recommend the reader take in the full 8,000 words for themselves. Beyond being of such historical consequence, it is exceptionally well written. The following offers some commentary on a few sections I chose.

Expanding on several points offering predictions of “What We May Expect by Way of Implementation of Basic Soviet Policies on Unofficial, or Subterranean Plane, i.e. on Plane for Which Soviet Government Accepts no Responsibility,” Kenann’s analysis extends to “ Agencies utilized for promulgation of policies,” and gives a sense of the secretive, subversive and international nature of the Marxist/Communist movement:

“It may be expected that component parts of this far-flung apparatus will be utilized in accordance with their individual suitability, as follows:

To undermine general political and strategic potential of major western powers. Efforts will be made in such countries to disrupt national self confidence, to hamstring measures of national defense, to increase social and industrial unrest, to stimulate all forms of disunity. All persons with grievances, whether economic or racial, will be urged to spelt redress not in mediation and compromise, but in defiant violent struggle for destruction of other elements of society. Here poor will be set against rich, black against white, young against old, newcomers against established residents, etc.”  George Kennan (1946)

In the above quote, notice the foreshadowing of the identity politics of today, which obsesses over mostly made up conflicts between races, sexes and genders. From at least the beginning of the Post World War Two era, Marxist’s engaged in the international Communist Revolution have been penetrating, tampering, disrupting and subverting societies that hold Western values. It is an international movement that is easy to dismiss as an “anti-Semetic conspiracy theory” because Marxism is a conspiracy, and those who practice it are conspiring, knowingly or not, to undermine and obliterate the means of Western cultural production. They dream of a Communist utopia, and they know they cannot achieve it in the West without imposing it subtly and secretly.

The Woke are today’s Marxist Revolutionaries subverting and attacking Western norms and institutions. They have been engaged in a “long march through the institutions” and have installed through undemocratic and illiberal circumvention of Western standards of practice, updated forms of Marxist doctrine dressed up in friendly “inclusive” language that promotes “diversity” and “safe spaces” and “equity” and “sustainability” and “global citizenship”…and “anti-racism.”

Because there is so much continuity, similarity and relevance between the Anti-West Communist Movement of the Cold War Era, and the Anti-West Woke Movement of the 2020s, I feel it is worthwhile to re-examine Cold War politics from a new perspective. Other researchers who have studied and written about Communism will be featured in upcoming essays - figures like G. Edward Griffin who, like James Lindsay, and others who have dared examine the Communist question, was labeled a conspiracy theorist. In light of events that have occurred in the modern Social Justice age, I’ve become increasingly skeptical of use of the term “conspiracy theorist,” especially when used in proximity to those with questions about Communism. 

In 1946, before Kennan’s Long Telegram inspired the Truman Doctrine’s policy of Soviet Communist containment, the American public and administration had little idea of just how different a society the Soviet Union was, as Kennan described, it concerned questions “so strange to our form of thought.” From his observations and analysis came an understanding of the nature of Communist states; essentially, what makes them unable to cooperate with Western states. This understanding that Kennan provided, regarding the incommensurate nature of relations between the world’s two great powers, is what led the Truman Administration to translate Kennan’s recommendations into the policy of containment. The strategy was intended to prevent the spread of global communism, in order for the Russian people to, in time, decide to reject Communism on their own terms. As history has shown, Kennan’s analysis and recommendations proved sound, a hot war was avoided, and the Soviet Union collapsed under mostly peaceful circumstances, on Russian terms. 

Perhaps to avoid violent struggles in the streets of Western democracies, a policy of Woke containment can be employed to stop it from spreading further. Where to begin is a question for another day.

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Thanks for reading. In case you missed last week, here is Volume 2 of the Anti-Woke Book Club - Woke is Marxism adapted for the West. And since the Anti-Woke book club mostly explores the research bibliography of Mr. M and James Pew’s collaborative project, here is a post which indexes all of the essays of the Great Illiberal Subversion essay series.

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