Dupes

by Paul Kengor

  To get there, the Comintern said the American Communist Party should “raise the slogan of ‘Right of Self-determination of the Peoples of Hawaii, up to the Point of Separation.’” Communists were direly needed in Hawaii to advance specific Soviet policy goals, including “the withdrawal of the U.S. armed forces” from the islands. Among the “political slogans” of the “Hawaiian revolutionary movement,” ordered the Comintern, should be an exhortation to join the “struggle against the yoke of American imperialism.”6

  Any student of Soviet history understands the tactic of sloganeering within Communist propaganda. The Communists excelled at boiling down their goals into a sheet of carefully articulated talking points that became the consistent party line at home and around the world. It is remarkable to observe their discipline worldwide in sticking to the script. It was impressive, achieved only because of that religious-like loyalty by the Marxist faithful.

  As to the situation in Hawaii, any student of World War II understands that the U.S. forces cited in these documents were vital to the security of the United States, as the Japanese would make painfully clear at Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941. To the Comintern, however, the presence of U.S. forces in Hawaii represented an obstacle to the Soviets’ expansion of Communism into Asia and throughout the world—an obstacle to, as this Comintern decision-brief put it, the Communists’ “revolutionary tasks in Hawaii.”

  Mingulin and Schneiderman strategized on the need to get Communists onto the islands to agitate against the various positions of the U.S. government and to promote the Soviet line wherever and whenever they could. This goal remains so explosive—so utterly contrary to American interests—that portions of the Comintern archives on this subject have been reclosed. American researchers—specifically, Romerstein—were able to obtain copies of some of this correspondence in Moscow during the brief period when the window was open.

  The briefing document on the February 17, 1935, meeting finishes with this plan of action: “Responsible for Commission: Com. Sherman.” This meant that Comrade Sherman—that is, William Schneiderman—would be in the field gathering recruits.7

  With that, the process was under way. Though the momentum was sidetracked because of World War II, it would pick up in the late 1940s, as the Cold War took flight.

  Enter Frank Marshall Davis

  Among those who suddenly appeared in Hawaii in (apparent) service to the Soviets’ objective was a transplant named Frank Marshall Davis. Davis had served as executive editor, columnist, and member of the board of directors for the Chicago Star, the Communist outlet of Chicago, known to locals as the “Red” Star.8 There he shared the spotlight with a number of notable Reds, including Hollywood's Howard Fast, the illustrious Stalin Peace Prize winner defended by Arthur Miller, and even a rare contributing U.S. senator, Claude “Red” Pepper.9

  Since the founding of the American Communist Party there in 1919, Chicago had remained a hotbed of Marxism. Davis was affiliated with several front groups there: the Abraham Lincoln School, American Youth for Democracy, the Chicago Committee for Spanish Freedom, the Civil Rights Congress, the League of American Writers, and the National Negro Congress.10 While he was quiet about those affiliations, he was unrestrained in his admiration of the USSR, constantly hailing its achievements. For example, Davis, who was black, praised Stalin's alleged racial miracle: of all the nations in the world, he explained in the Star, it was “only the Soviet Union which has abolished racism and color prejudice.”11

  Davis was very active in Chicago, helping local Communist Party cadres with all kinds of causes and campaigns, many of which at first glance seemed nonpolitical. He often participated in initiatives to help various workers’ groups, such as the Citizens’ Committee to Aid Packing-House Workers, where he served as a committee member with Vernon Jarrett. (See page 250).12 Jarrett would become a longtime popular media voice in Chicago, and father-in-law to Valerie Jarrett, who today is a close senior adviser to President Barack Obama.13

  But Davis also got involved in explicitly political issues. He agitated against U.S. involvement in World War II and rejected aiding Britain against Germany—the party line of the American Peace Mobilization. He urged that “Negroes” resist “the wave of war hysteria.” And he helped organize the crucial early American Peace Mobilization conference in Chicago in November 1940, where his name appeared on the letterhead as an endorser.14 (See page 251). Of course, that was all prior to the Nazi invasion of the USSR in June 1941. Consistent with the American Communist movement, he flipped on the war once Hitler invaded the Soviet Union, suddenly morphing from dove to hawk.

  Though Davis always sought to conceal his Communist affiliations, his writing for the Star was transparently sympathetic to the Bolshevik worldview, to Stalin, to the Soviet Union, and to American Communists. He gushed about his dear friend Paul Robeson, the most famous African-American Marxist, and proud recipient of the Stalin Peace Prize (1952).15 Davis later conceded that it was at the “suggestion” of Robeson that he moved to Hawaii.16

  And so in 1948 Davis just happened to arrive in Hawaii at the same time that leaders of the Communist Party in Hawaii—realizing the limits of national party organs like the Daily Worker and People's Daily World—established a weekly newspaper, the Honolulu Record. We now know (here again, thanks to Romerstein's archival research) that a resolution approving this idea was adopted at the “Territorial convention” of the Communist Party of Hawaii, held at Hauulu and Kuliouou Beach in April 1948. Playing a central role in that confab was the Communist-controlled International Longshoremen's and Warehousemen's Union (ILWU). Jack H. Kawano, a member of the executive board of the Communist Party of Hawaii, later testified: “The Party instructed its members to get the ILWU behind the Honolulu Record, and urge the union to buy subscriptions and ads. Every cell of the Communist Party was instructed to designate someone to handle the ads and subscriptions in the union for both the People's World and the Honolulu Record.”17

  A key player in this, who needs to be mentioned here because of the frequency in which he would appear in Frank Marshall Davis's columns, was Harry Bridges, who ran the ILWU. The U.S. government repeatedly tried to deport Bridges back to his native Australia because of his alleged work for the global Communist movement. He denied being a member of the Communist Party, and got lots of help from friends and accomplices.

  In fact, we now know that Bridges was so high up in CPUSA that he served on the Central Committee of the American Communist Party. Moscow itself approved the appointment: declassified documents in the Comintern archives show that CPUSA in 1938 sent Moscow a list of names of those it wanted on the Central Committee, one of which was identified as “Rossi (Bridges)—CP USA Central Committee member and president of the Longshoremen's and Warehousemen's Union.”18

  The CIO, the great non-Communist trade union, knew about and reported publicly on Bridges's numerous Communist activities, including his secret meetings with party functionaries. The CIO was not bashful about its findings; one report was titled “Communist Domination of Certain Unions.”19 Perhaps not coincidentally, Frank Marshall Davis attacked the CIO in his columns.

  Like CPUSA, Davis railed against the U.S. government's treatment of Harry Bridges, screeching that tyrants were illegally pursuing an innocent man. Bridges, portrayed as a yet another victim of anti-Communist hysteria, became a campaign issue for the Reds, a very useful one that enlisted the support of more than a few dupes.

  Of course, Davis very likely knew the truth about Bridges, in which case he fibbed repeatedly in order to help serve Bridges's masters in Moscow. If he did not know the truth, then he was duped by his own comrades. There is surely no question that Davis's buddy Paul Robeson understood the real story about Bridges. Everyone in political circles in Hawaii knew the powerful ILWU and suspected that it was a Communist instrument.

  Years later, in his autobiography, Davis wrote about Bridges and the circumstances under which he came to Hawaii in 1948. “I had also talked with Paul
Robeson,” wrote Davis, “who the previous year had appeared there [Hawaii] in a series of concerts sponsored by the International Longshoremen's and Warehousemen's Union (ILWU), the most powerful labor organization in the territory. Paul enthusiastically supported our pending trip and told me how much he wanted to return to that delightful place. I also wrote to Harry Bridges, head of the ILWU, whom I had met at Lincoln School. He suggested I get in touch with Koji Ariyoshi, editor of the Honolulu Record, a newspaper that was generally similar to the Chicago Star.”20

  In that single paragraph Davis mentioned: (1) three prominent figures who were secret Communist Party members—Paul Robeson, Harry Bridges, and Koji Ariyoshi, all of whom operated under deceit and denial; (2) the Lincoln School, which was a Communist front that operated under deceit and denial; and (3) the “generally similar” Honolulu Record and Chicago Star, both party and/or party-line publications that operated under deceit and denial.21

  Such deceit and denial was also standard policy of the Hawaii Communist Party. In 1947, a year before Davis's arrival, Ichiro Izuka, a Hawaii-born Japanese-American ex-Communist, warned his fellow islanders of this “conspiratorial Party, working against the welfare of the people of my native islands.” Izuka emphasized how the party thrived on lies, deception, “hate [as] a weapon,” “libel,” and character assassination.22

  “Yelping Stalinists and Their Dupes”

  Soon after Frank Marshall Davis appeared in Hawaii, members of the local branch of the NAACP grew weary of him. Some NAACP members called him “Comrade Davis” and were irritated at how he “sneaked” into their meetings “with the avowed intent and purpose of converting it into a front for the Stalinist line.”

  Non-Communist liberals like Edward Berman, a local civil-rights activist who supported the Hawaii branch of the NAACP, and Roy Wilkins, of the national branch of the NAACP, understood that the likes of Davis were not their allies. Berman recalled how he was at a meeting when “one Frank Marshall Davis, formerly of Chicago (and formerly editor of the Chicago Communist paper, the Star), suddenly appeared on the scene to propagandize the membership about our ‘racial problems’ in Hawaii. He had just sneaked in here on a boat, and presto, was an ‘expert’ on racial problems in Hawaii.”23

  Berman, a Caucasian, wrote to Wilkins, emphasizing the racial unity and harmony on Hawaii: “There is no segregation here.” He knew right away that Davis and others had come to agitate, to “create a mythical racial problem here.” Such were “their tactics.”24 Indeed, the Communist goal was to create a facade of problems that could be blamed on American imperialism.

  Berman warned Wilkins that the “influx of this element”—meaning “Communists” like Davis who had voyaged from the mainland—had “frightened away … scores of Negro members.” Fearing that the Communists were out to “destroy the local branch of the NAACP,” he said, “Only by a reorganization with a policy that will check this infiltration, can we hope to get former members back into a local NAACP branch.”25 Berman had already seen precisely this sort of Communist infiltration happen to an organization close to his heart, the Hawaiian Association for Civil Unity, and saw it unfolding again with the local branch of the NAACP.

  Berman was deeply troubled by how Stalinists—he included Davis in this group—duped liberals into the Soviet line: “We are going to have to have the authority over here—otherwise you'll have a branch exclusively composed of yelping Stalinists and their dupes—characters who are more concerned about the speedy assassination of Tito [in Yugoslavia] than they are about the advancement of the colored people of these United States.”26

  “Frankly Speaking”

  To advance the revolution, Frank Marshall Davis had more than a temporary podium at the local NAACP; he had a regular platform in the newspaper, and used it to its full extent.

  The first issue of the Honolulu Record appeared on August 5, 1948.27 In what Barack Obama supporters sixty years later would deem a striking coincidence (the few, that is, who knew of Davis), Davis arrived in Hawaii shortly thereafter, in December. He began his weekly “Frankly Speaking” column in May 1949. (See page 256). Just before he left Chicago, he had signed a petition urging Congress to abolish the House Committee on Un-American Activities and defending the Communist Gerhart Eisler, who (under constantly changing aliases) had carried out numerous Comintern missions around the world, including in the United States. (As noted, Eisler would ultimately flee America to become a top Communist official in East Germany.) Now, in Hawaii, Davis would continue to walk the Soviet line—over and over and over.28

  A systematic look at Davis's “Frankly Speaking” columns in 1949 and 1950 reveals the extent to which he followed the Communist Party's talking points.

  Consider his May 12, 1949, oped, “How Our Democracy Looks to Oppressed Peoples.” Handed a regular column, he wasted no time in denouncing the Marshall Plan, in keeping with the Soviet line on the subject. (See page 257). “For a nation that calls itself the champion of democracy, our stupendous stupidity is equalled only by our mountainous ego,” Davis complained. “Our actions at home and abroad are making American democracy synonymous with oppression instead of freedom.”

  This was two years after the announcement of the Marshall Plan, by which point it was universally understood as a gracious gesture by America, vital to the recovery of postwar Europe—which is precisely why the USSR opposed it. Nonetheless, Stalin and Molotov continued to attack the rescue plan, and the foot soldiers in the field were left to argue that it reflected America's imperial, neocolonial ambitions.

  Davis went further, dubbing the American plan a form of slavery and racism. He wrote that since the end of World War II, “I have watched with growing shame for my America as our leaders have used our golden riches to re-enslave the yellow and brown and black peoples of the world.” He pointedly added, “As the colonials see it, the Marshall plan is a device to maintain what they call ‘white imperialism,’ and no manner of slick phrases can convince them otherwise.” He said that this nefarious “oppression of non-white peoples everywhere” was being purchased via Secretary of State George Marshall's “billions of U.S. dollars … to bolster the tottering empires of England, France, Belgium, Holland and the other western exploiters of teeming millions of humans.”

  Davis also echoed the Communists in their assault on Chiang Kai-shek's anti-Communist Kuomintang regime in China; the Communist goal was to bolster Mao Tse-tung and to try to incite a Marxist takeover of the world's most populous nation. He wrote: “With our usual genius for suppressing the common people, we backed the oppressors in China. We poured in a Niagara of cash to the corrupt Kuomintang, thus insuring the enmity of millions of Chinese who thereby faced a harder fight for freedom and the end of feudalism.” These were “crimes” undertaken by the “same bi-partisan coalition” that had “wrecked the civil rights program” in America. The racist bunch included both Democrats, such as Harry Truman and George Marshall, and Republicans, such as Senators Robert Taft and Arthur Vandenberg.

  To Davis, all of this was so utterly unlike that true bastion of freedom: the Soviet Union. In the USSR there was no racism: “Russia continues to point to the fact that discrimination and segregation based on race does not exist there.”

  Next, under a subhead titled “To Whom the Oppressed Look,” Davis pointed to Paul Robeson, the obvious Communist who many liberals mysteriously insisted was not a Communist. Davis upheld Robeson as the symbol of aspiration for the oppressed peoples of the world. He quoted a “YMCA official” named Lawrence C. Burr, who said of a Robeson visit to India: “Well known for his part in the struggle for human freedom and equality through the years, Robeson will perhaps receive the greatest ovation ever accorded an American. In the minds of many Indian leaders, the noted singer symbolizes the aspirations of oppressed peoples in all sections of the world.”29

  Davis finished his piece: “We may as well face it. The oppressed peoples of the world are not looking to our Wall Streeters, our brass hats, our Trumans
or our Vandenbergs for liberation. These leaders had their chance—and muffed it.”

  The Marshall Plan was a dead end for freedom. The hope of the world, Davis proclaimed, lay in the vision of Paul Robeson and the USSR.

  Providing Cover for Dupes

  A week later, Davis was back supporting the propaganda positions of the Communist movement. On May 26, 1949, he wrote a piece expressing his disappointment with the CIO, the great anti-Communist labor union. At the same time, he expressed approval of: (1) Vice President Henry Wallace, the notorious defender of the USSR; (2) the Communist front groups the National Lawyers Guild and the Civil Rights Congress; and (3) Eugene Dennis, national secretary of the Communist Party. Davis also hinted at his struggles with the liberals at the national and local branches of the NAACP.

  This piece was followed by a sarcastic June 2 dispatch titled “How to Become a Communist,” which had dupes as its target audience. He cried that anyone “who wants enough money to eat regularly, have sufficient clothes and a decent roof above his head is a ‘dupe’ who ‘has been tricked by the Communist leadership of the union [Harry Bridges's ILWU].’” Any attacks on Bridges as a Communist, warned Davis, were essentially hate speech—“vicious hate propaganda directed against the ILWU and the working people.” The “loud cry” of “subversive” and “Communist” is “a device used by the haves to block the onward march of the have-nots and maintain the status quo.”