Change: None Dare...pp. 79

 When did "vise" become "vice?" As in squeezed like a vice? I noticed that in reading today's section that Allen calls it a "vise" and it just looks wrong, and in this book when something stands out as being wrong it's something. Of course, I could be wrong and am just using the British spelling of it--I've been known to do that for some reason. 

The word comes up because Allen has on page 79, a picture of a vice/vise. With the "middle class" in the center and the two clamps around it. The top clamp (the enemy above) is labeled with the names Rothschild, Rockefeller, and the CFR elite. The bottom is labeled with the SDS, the Black Panthers, the Yippies, the Young Socialist Alliance, and something called "Common Cause." I look at this list and I know immediately that my post is going to be about these groups and Wikipedia is getting a strong visit from me today. We will put these groups aside and deal with the overall criticism leveraged against them--that of Socialism. Now, it's unclear to me--the careful reader--whether Allen means socialism or SOCIALISM. However, I don't think that the difference matters anymore. Allen and a lot of conspiracy theorists do this kind of thing, they introduce a unique definition for a common term, and then slowly drop their definition so that the individual begins associating their definition with the real one. It's actually quite effective. 

The point is that these groups believe they are fighting the establishment but are really working for it. You see, criticizing the Nixon administration can only serve the Nixon administration and its CFR overloads...now what have we been reading for the last few weeks? Never mind, because these groups are criticizing the establishment the wrong way. Allen asks if these groups were really against the establishment then "how long do you think they would be tolerated?"

I don't know, just as long as the writer of this book is being tolerated I suppose. It's one of those, "do you hear it when you say it" kind of things. If Allen thinks that the evidence that the Black Panthers are working for the establishment is that they were allowed to exist, then the same mirror can get pointed right at him. It's like conservatives complaining on Facebook that Facebook is censoring conservatives (just an FYI: the Facebook leak was full of evidence that the company bent over backwards to keep them on).

Allen focuses on the SDS (Students for a Democratic Society) as it was founded by a different group--the League for Industrial Democracy by Upton Sinclair, Clarence Darrow, Jack London, and Walter Lippman. Three of those men, I know to be avowed socialists (but not SOCIALISTS) and founded the SDS as a way of spreading those ideas amongst university students. The group grew for a bit, focusing its energy on civil rights and the Vietnam war. It's interesting that Allen's focus is on this group as evidence for the coming takeover of the United States and not the FBI's infiltration of this group during its COINTELPRO operations. 

His focus also illuminates the further problem with his position: is he pro-Vietnam war or against it? The SDS was against the war, so was were the Black Panthers, the Yippies, and the Young Socialist Alliance. While it would certainly work like a post I'm not going through these groups because I don't have to as Allen has given us zero evidence for his claims other than these groups scare conservatives. 

It's similar to contemporary conservatives being scared of Antifa. Ok fine, how many members are there, who is their leader? The point is not that Antifa is a threat, it's that the group gives them a boogeyman to point at. The Young Socialist Alliance, at its peak, contained less than 1,500 people. The Yippies often ran against the "mainstream" counter culture groups of the 60s. The Black Panthers were probably the most effective of these groups, but their history is so rife with internal strife that being a tool against the middle-class American is a laughable accusation. Yes, all of these groups had a Socialist bent, but in this country, the surest sign of fascism is not that these groups were allowed to exist but it's when they aren't. 

Which is the path Allen wants us to take. We should outlaw groups of people that protest the establishment (but are secretly, according to Allen, working of them) so that we can preserve our freedoms. That's not how that works. Does Allen know this? I'm sure he doesn't care. People like him don't actually care about these kinds of rights which is why he is spending all of this effort trying to smear them as tools of groups he barely understands and families that, no doubt, have no idea who he is. 

"Remember Bakunin's charge that Marx's followers had one foot in the bank and the other in the Socialist movement."

This sentence is presented without any surrounding context. He just says this, and I could back into how Bakunin was so much of a radical that he was kicked out of Marx's organization. I wouldn't take Bakunin's opinion here as worth much, but Allen should be wary because Bakunin isn't his friend either. Bakunin represents the kind of violent anarcho-socialism that Allen is afraid of. 

We will end with the discussion of the Common Cause group. The book is right that a Republican founded the Common Cause (though Allen puts Republican in quotation marks because the term "rino" hadn't been invented yet). The point of the group is also described correctly: to organize the poorest and disenfranchised of us into a voting block that can effect change in the country. They were heavily influential in getting the voting age reduced from 21 to 18, and again they opposed the war in Vietnam. This group still exists today, having missed challenges to electronic voting as well as ethical concerns towards both candidates in the 2016 election. 

Helping the poor is anathema to Allen always. See, he claims that if the Rockefeller Foundation funds groups like Common Cause, it means that they are secretly controlling the group. He never explains how Common Cause getting poor people to vote for policies that will help them will lead to a COMMUNIST/FASCIST takeover of the United States. If we assume that the Rockefeller Foundation is funding this group that doesn't mean anything. It means that it was a tax write off and that is it. I'm sure the Rockefeller Foundation has donated some money to my University at some point, I'm not beholden to their whims and I'll still criticize the hell out of the family for how they generated their wealth in the first place. What we see is how Allen would do things. If he donated money to the poor he expects that they should not only be grateful but also that they are in his personal debt.