They are Were Who They’ve Been Waiting For

Don’t the emissions and transmissions of the White House sound historically familiar? No, not the heady days of Sputnik and Yuri Gagarin, the ugly days of nascent Communism forced on Germans, knowing full well that in their vanquishment and impoverishment, that no crisis should go to waste. As we approach the day of remembrance for the fall of the Berlin wall 20 years ago, we find the ghost of the methods and philosophies behind that repression rearing their ugly head with the election of the left in America. The baiting and taunting, and then the intimidation seem to have been drawn directly from the retrograde left’s cookbook, only to find another young generation of naïve souls to turn into a movement’s Pinkertons.

The most important paper factories in West Germany are the property of a tiny group of millionaires who brought Hitler to power and used his policies of conquest to enrich themselves. A leading and legally convicted war criminal like Flick could in 1960 gain possession of the largest paper-producing firm in West Germany, the Feldmühle-AG. West Germany's leading newspapers, both in terms of circulation and as mouthpieces of the ruling class, are owned by finance capitalists, or are subject to their advertising dictatorship. During the early stages of capitalism, individual printers owned newspapers, but today a press system has developed that is typical of the larger monopoly system. A small group of oil, steel, and bank lords own the leading South German Adenauer paper, the "Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung" along with numerous local papers that are published by the same firm. The press lord Springer, a money-grubber of the post-war era, not only controls the press system of West Germany's largest city Hamburg, but used it as a base to conquer the rest of the country.

All rehashed by our enlightened “educated” youth today as the media monopoly argument, and the need for all “guilds” to do their part for social justice.

Still, that is only a part of the function of journalism in the German Democratic Republic. Its primary mission is to build the enthusiasm of its readers, listeners and viewers for the noble cause of socialism, and to explain to them the laws of historical development in our day. More than that, as the Politbüro of the ZK of the SED said in its decision on press matters of 29 April 1959, the task is "not only to influence and change thoughts, but simultaneously actions in every area of the socialist transformation. . . Each editorial staff should therefore strive to initiate its own actions in the political economic and cultural spheres."

In reality, then, as now, all they are who they’ve been busting heads for:

One of the most terrifying achievements of the Nazi regime was its relentless capture and corruption of German youth. In Eastern Germany, the Communists have proved themselves as good as the Nazis at that deadly game. Their Freie Deutsche Jugend (Free German Youth) seems like a near-perfect reincarnation of the Hitler Youth. The world might get a good look at the young Communists when they stage their long-heralded "march on Berlin" on Whitsunday (see above). Last week, TIME Correspondent Enno Hobbing cabled this preview of the FDJ:

"Be Prepared." The process of corruption begins early. Nine hundred thousand children between the ages of six and 14 are enrolled

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The temper and tactics of FDJ chieftains was well-expressed by agile, aggressive Robert Bialek, who explained: "We'll take care of our church and political enemies. You sock them in the teeth until they fall. Then they write a letter of protest. You let them get up, read the letter, and then knock them down again."

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Again & again, Communist oldtimers din into young ears: "You are the future of the German people." In response to such accolades, one FDJ member recently told an American: "I'm not much now, but when Germany is all Communist, I might be a mayor. When we control all Europe, I might be a state governor."