By: Cliff Kincaid
Accuracy in Media

Democrats say they have dirt on Newt Gingrich, but he has the dirt on them. He has accurately described the socialist infiltration of America: “The Left has thoroughly infiltrated nearly every cultural commanding height of our civilization. That is, they hold power, influence and control of academia, the elite news media, Hollywood, union leaders, trial lawyers, the courts, the Congress, and the bureaucracy at all levels of government. They are radically redefining our very culture by deciding what is news, what is entertainment, what our children learn in school, and what kind of government we should have.”

When Gingrich made this charge, the left-wing scandal sheet Politico reacted with alarm, as if Gingrich had crossed the line of respectable discourse. But the publication was not able to rebut his assertion.

Confirmation of Gingrich’s statement, which came in an article about his book, To Save America: Stopping Obama’s Secular-Socialist Machine, has come from an unlikely source—John Nichols, a writer for The Nation magazine. Speaking to the recent Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) conference, Nichols said that the progressive movement is on the move, citing Big Labor’s organizing efforts in several states, and indicated that the 2012 elections will continue this process of revolutionary change.

According to the Nichols book, The “S” Word, America’s socialist legacy included founding father Thomas Paine. The “S” stands for socialism, “an American tradition,” Nichols claims. And this, he said, is America’s future.

But not so fast. Professor Harvey J. Kaye, the Ben & Joyce Rosenberg Professor of Democracy and Justice Studies at the University of Wisconsin-Green Bay, wrote the book Thomas Paine: Firebrand of the Revolution, which is popular with the so-called “progressives.” He says that while Paine had some radical ideas about poverty and government assistance, “He was not a socialist; he did not contest the right of the propertied to their property.”

Indeed, in his Rights of Man, Paine recognized the inalienable rights to property, liberty, security, and resistance to oppression. Private property, which communists want to abolish, was the cornerstone of the American system. America’s founding was a repudiation of socialist ideas.

While Nichols is wrong about the socialism of Tom Paine, his point about the march of socialism in the U.S. is not something that can be so easily dismissed. Nichols’ book, as well as another controversial book, Lincoln’s Marxists, describes the determined activities of socialists in America in the 1800s. They have always looked for an opening to advance their un-American ideas on American soil. Over the last three years, Obama has been their vehicle in the White House.

The problem for Nichols is that, despite his own openness about wanting to be part of Obama’s socialist transformation of America, the effort has used deceptive practices and tactics and associates with sworn enemies of the United States. Nichols says he owes a debt to his late friend, Howard Zinn, a “historian” who concealed his involvement in the Moscow-funded Communist Party until his FBI file confirmed his secret life. The revelations have not caused “progressives” like Nichols to have any second thoughts about their admiration for Zinn.

The socialist-communist alliance, which backed Obama from the start of his political career in Chicago, has been making strides. “Polls tell us that democratic socialism is more popular today that at any time in recent American history,” Nichols says. He cites polls that 20-25 percent of Americans view socialism positively, with the number at 43 percent among those ages 18-29. The polls also find that Americans are increasingly critical of the capitalist system that made America the envy and target of the rest of the world.

Yahoo News noted that pollster Frank Luntz is advising Republicans on how to respond to the coverage generated by the Occupy Wall Street movement and that he is “frightened to death” because “They’re having an impact on what the American people think of capitalism.”

Luntz is referring to the sympathetic coverage of the movement, standing in sharp contrast to the media’s demonization of the Tea Party.

Luntz is telling Republican politicians not to even talk about capitalism being a superior economic and political system. “I’m trying to get that word removed and we’re replacing it with either ‘economic freedom’ or ‘free market,’” Luntz said. “The public . . . still prefers capitalism to socialism, but they think capitalism is immoral.”

This state of affairs requires a media that will tell the truth about how socialists, who are increasingly out of the closet these days and supported by billionaire George Soros, are distorting America’s founding and transforming the United States into something it was never intended to be. It is the struggle that will decide the future of America.

The Gingrich book, To Save America, addresses the subversive role being played by George Soros and other rich liberal billionaires such as Herb and Marion Sandler, who have funded such left-wing media operations as ProPublica. This is the group that just announced a “cooperative newsgathering and reporting arrangement” with NBC owned television stations around the U.S. ProPublica’s “partners” already include such outlets as ABC News, The Baltimore Sun, The Boston Globe, CBS News, CNN, The Huffington Post and public broadcasting’s Frontline.

For his part, John Nichols gives credit in his book to the support given to him by MSNBC, Al-Jazeera, Wisconsin Public Radio, and MSNBC host Chris Hayes, among others.

If the liberal media will not tell the truth, and if the conservative media do not have the ability to make the case for capitalism and freedom, politicians such as Newt Gingrich may have to do so in the context of a presidential campaign. His challenge will be to survive the personal attacks from the machine that he attacks.

Cliff Kincaid is the Director of the AIM Center for Investigative Journalism, and can be contacted at [email protected].