Zealots and fascists have sometimes given anti- Communism a bad name. Both Hitler and Mussolini established tyrannies under the cover of opposing Communism. McCarthyism became a dirty word in the United States during the 1950s. Communism is legal, even if not respectable, in the America of today. Communist parties are bidding for power in Italy and France - and maintaining that they are prepared to accept the ground rules of diplomacy.
Anti-Communist countries such as the Republics of China and Korea are compelled to suppress Communism totally. They have no choice. The Communists of mainland China are attempting to seize Taiwan and destroy the free Chinese government and the Constitution of the Republic of China. The Communists of North Korea are waiting their chance to march south again and force Communism on the 35 million people of the Republic of Korea.
The anti-Communists of China and Korea - and most of the others of the world are adherents of democracy, not of absolutism. They are not fanatics or extremists. They want a free world and political systems of give and take. They differ from democratic adherents of the United States, for example, only in that they are imminently threatened by the Communists, whereas the Americans are not.
Anti-Communists who are constantly under the gun also know something about the Communists that the peoples of North America and Europe may not. They view the experience of China, Korea and Indochina (including Cambodia and Laos as well as Vietnam) as proving that the Communists have a program of world conquest. Whatever the differences between Peiping and Moscow, both seek a Communist world. Communist hegemony comes first. Chinese or Russian Communist hegemony would be decided afterward. The communizing of large areas of Asia is not the only evidence of the Marxist flood. Russia and Eastern Europe are Communist. Cuba is Communist. Chile barely escaped. A number of African nations are either Marxist or seriously threatened.
Some nations and some peoples prefer to hide their heads in the sand. The United States has been negotiating for "normalized" relations with Vietnam and Cuba. Washington has accepted a liaison office of the Chinese Communists in Washington. Americans do not feel threatened now. How would they feel if Europe, Africa and Asia were all-Communist? What would be their reactions if the Communists started picking off the Latin American nations one by one? Those Americans who say it "couldn't happen here" have not given attention to what has happened in so many other places. They forget the German burghers who stood comfortably by as Hitler and the Nazis took over their country.
Anti-Communism is not a pleasant vocation. There isn't any profit in it. Nor is there any great satisfaction in being against what is wrong and what is evil. The world has been full of wrongs and wickedness for a long time. The anti-Communist's rewards must be based on conviction that this is the essential struggle against forces which would destroy all that is worth living for, that would wipe out the individual and his conscience and substitute mindless existence in a colony of human ants.
The anti-Communist is likely to become emotional about this, and in doing so loses some of the support which nominally should be his. Americans and a good many others simply do not believe him. They travel to Communist countries and are easily deceived. Their hosts present a carefully staged drama. They talk to no one who is not of the Communist elite or has been painstakingly brainwashed. They see nothing that they are not supposed to see. And if they do happen to stumble on any small part of the truth, they are given a hundred and one reasons for not revealing it - including that of being denied an opportunity to return. In any event, people of goodwill are conditioned to single out only the best from what they see. People who sincerely believe in freedom become the easiest dupes.
But the anti-Communist cannot give up and wait for the ax to fall, for the genocide to begin. He, too, is dedicated - far more so than the Communists he fights, because his decisions have been made consciously and intelligently. He recognizes that he must fight on, because not to do so will leave the world to a fate that is literally worse than death.
The Republic of China was recently host to the 23rd conference of the Asian Peoples' Anti-Communist League and the 10th conference of the World Anti-Communist League (see "The Way to Freedom" in the Free China Review for May). Members and guests of these organizations presented various views of Communism and the fight against it, many of them deserving of summarization and comment. This article presents some of the thinking and recommendations for action made at these conferences.
The communique issued at the close of the meetings made these points:
- Assurance of human rights depends on the triumph of anti-Communism.
- Peaceful coexistence with the Communists is impossible.
- Free nations are gradually coming to understand that Communist
aggressiveness precludes detente.
- Americans are increasingly aware that the Chinese Communists and the Soviet
Union are archenemies.
- Dissidence in both Red China and the U.S.S.R. presage an explosion that will
destroy the principal seats of Communism.
The 350 delegates and observers from 76 national units and 15 international units pledged APACL and WACL to:
- Pool their resources and strength.
- Support President Jimmy Carter's campaign for worldwide human rights.
- Stress the strategic importance of the Republics of China and Korea.
- Oppose and condemn the tyrannical actions and aggressiveness of Red China,
the Soviet Union, North Korea, Vietnam and Cuba.
- Expose the United Nations as a base for pro-Communist conspiracies.
- Invite free world countries to step up their anti-Communist defenses; the
progress made by such countries as Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Thailand, Malaysia
and Indonesia was cited. Send messages of support to the leaders of Brazil,
Argentina, Chile, Uruguay, Paraguay, Nicaragua, El Salvador and Guatemala
to take note of their anti-Communist stands.
- Urge the mass communications media of the free world to be alert to inroads of
Communist united front propaganda and to take a stronger stand for free
world unity, security and peace.
- Commend and support the national liberation movements of peoples within the
Soviet Union, Eastern Europe, Cuba, Vietnam, Khmer and Laos.
The anti-Communist movement, the communique said, is dedicated to "human dignity, individual freedom and national independence."
Dr. Ku Cheng-kang, the honorary chairman of WACL and presiding officer for the two conferences, predicted the gradual decline of the Communists and the strengthening of the free forces in the phase of the world struggle just ahead.
"We can clearly see that Soviet Russia and the Chinese Communists are standing in serious opposition to each other, that the satellite countries of Eastern Europe are freeing themselves from Soviet control and demanding liberalization and that the Russian intellectuals are conducting a strong campaign for freedom.
"The internal power struggle of the Chinese Communists goes on and on interminably. The purge of the 'gang of four' by Hua Kuo-feng after Mao Tse-tung's death has led to extreme internal confusion and the people on the Chinese mainland are rising up to oppose and resist the tyrannical Red regime. A sudden coup may result in the downfall of Chinese Communist tyranny.
"Anti-Communist struggles also are developing in the three Indochinese countries, North Korea and Cuba. All evidence goes to show that Communist forces are disintegrating and weakening."
Dr. Ku called for the strengthening and consolidation of the free world's defenses.
In the Asian and Pacific region, he said, "the free nations must build up a common defense system stretching from Korea and Japan through the Taiwan Straits down to the Philippines, Singapore, Indonesia and Oceania to counter the Soviet Russian and Chinese Communist expansionists in this area as well as the aggressive designs of Pyongyang and Hanoi."
Europe needs to strengthen the North Atlantic Treaty Organization "and frustrate the Red tactics of parliamentary infiltration and 'coalition government.'"
Middle Eastern states, Dr. Ku said, "must strictly prevent Communist infiltration, establish a peaceful order based on justice and reciprocity, make effective use of the area's energy's resources and smash the Communist intrigue of sowing seeds of discord and dissension."
Africa was called upon to block the penetration of Russian, Cuban and Chinese Communist forces, to strengthen the solidarity and organization of free nations, safeguard independence and freedom, and promote an anti-Communist united front.
Latin Americans must be on guard against the expansion of Castro Communism, heighten vigilance against the Communist trade offensive, cooperate economically and politically, and unite in smashing leftist elements sponsored by Moscow and Peiping.
Dr. Ku asked the United States to safeguard itself internally and to formulate a global political strategy that will revitalize the free world and bring the democracies together in meaningful efforts to defend themselves. In the last analysis, Dr. Ku said, the United States must "assume the responsibility for safeguarding world freedom and security."
Turning to the role of WACL, Ku Cheng-kang said it must wage unceasing ideological war to purge bankrupt and outdated Communist thinking. The six decades of the Soviet Russian experience have proved, he said, that class struggle, the dictatorship of the proletariat and dialectical materialism are fallacies which have enslaved the Russian people and endangered others.
WACL also bears the responsibility for undertaking a worldwide campaign to back up President Carter's insistence on human rights for all peoples. The Chinese Communists, Dr. Ku added, are the world's most ruthless, cruel and barbarous suppressors of human rights.
The world anti-Communist organization was called upon to "take advantage of the developing Communist contradictions, bring world public opinion to bear and make the free nations under stand the attempts of the Communists to utilize detente and negotiation as instruments to save themselves from the crisis of disintegration and decline.
"We must, in particular, smash the Chinese Communist united front intrigue to create trouble all over the world by making use of the Third World as their cat's-paw, and call upon the United States to cease 'normalizing relations' with the Chinese Communists, give up the illusion of aligning with the Red Chinese to checkmate Soviet Russia, and safeguard free world security by first stabilizing the Asian situation,"
Calling for a "new era of freedom," Dr. Ku said it should be distinguished by:
- Freedom from threats of aggression and persecution by Communist
otalitarianism.
- World coverage and termination of a globe half slave and half free.
- A foundation of justice to prevent the compromising of good and evil and to
deny the confusion of friend with foe.
General Lee Hon-kon, the chairman of the Korean Anti-Communist League, took note that the anti-Communist movement was gaining strength, but also called attention to the growing threat in both Europe and Asia.
Socialists and Communists in France, he said, captured 52 per cent of the vote in the first round of municipal elections. Most of the big cities have been taken over. Turning to Italy, he said "We observe with deep concern the wave of bloody student riots sweeping major cities, organized by the far left around the martyr-figure student leaders from Bologna." He cited Communist trade union gains in Spain, the intervention of Moscow and Havana in Angola, and the Communist encouragement and support of insurgents in Zaire and southern Africa.
Turning to his own country, he expressed hope that the United States would reconsider its decision to withdraw ground forces. He quoted Edwin C. Reischauer, the former U.S. ambassador to Japan, as saying: "Korea all along has been a more dangerous threat to world peace, not just because it is a more militarized country, but because of its strategic location between four of the largest nations in the world - China, the Soviet Union, Japan and the United States - which are deeply involved in the peninsula for historical reasons."
Korea, he said, is a powder keg which could explode at any time, touched off by the madness of a Kim Il Sung "eager to secure a place for himself in the Marxist-Leninist pantheon." He recalled that the premature withdrawal of U.S. forces in 1950 had brought on the tragic and costly Korean War. Japan and other free Asian countries oppose the new withdrawal, he said, adding:
"The withdrawal of U.S. ground troops from Korea without an acceptable alternative plan will affect Asian nations psychologically, not to speak of the Korean people. It will create the impression that Europe is more important to the United States than Asia. The Republic of Korea, the Republic of China and Japan are interdependent in defending the Western Pacific. If the Communists gain the upper hand in this region, Japan will be troubled politically and may not remain pro-American."
Lee Hon-kon, who was one of his country's three four-star generals during the Korean War and subsequently served as ambassador to Great Britain and other countries, insisted that collective security measures are indispensable in the defense of free Asia. "The existence of U.S. forces, especially the ground troops, in Korea is a prime example of the symbolic force of the free world's collective security and therefore a deterrent to war on the Korean peninsula."
Also speaking for Korea was Paik Too Chin, twice premier and chairman of the Yusinjeonguhoe group in the National Assembly. He disagreed with those who assert the world has moved from containment to detente. "Unfortunately," he said, "I have not heard of any instance in which a Communist state has become a free and democratic country. On the other hand, we know of formerly free and democratic countries that have fallen victims to Communism."
Disunity is afflicting NATO, Chairman Paik said, and the free nations are warring against each other on the trade front. He expressed fear that through division, the Communists could eventually overcome the free world. "We must unite," he said. "If we are to continue in possession of our freedoms, we in the free world must unite to assure our collective survival. If not we may perish."
Chinese Communism's attempts to foster world revolution have not ceased since the death of Mao Tse-tung, according a detailed report from Dr. Tsai Wei-ping, director of the Institute of International Relations of National Chengchi University. Peiping "continues to support armed Communist rebellions in Burma, Malaysia, Indonesia and the Philippines," he said. Further clinching evidence is its continuing connections with the pro-Peiping Communist organizations of the world. The belief that Peiping does not constitute a threat to the free world because its military strength is inferior to the Soviet Union's is a grave miscalculation a miscalculation that could have disastrous consequences for the free world."
Despite growing instability and even chaos on the Chinese mainland, Hua Kuo-feng is still following the Mao line and policies in relations with the external world. "The realization of so-called normalization of relations with the United States may become his primary goal," Tsai said.
Commenting on the mainland power struggle, the IIR director called attention to workers' riots in major cities during May, June and July, 1975, and to the Tienanmen incident of April 5,1976. More than 100,000 peasants, workers, cadres and sent-down youths converged on the Peiping square on the pretext of paying tribute to Chou En-lai.
Dr. Tsai said: "They shouted such anti-Mao slogans as 'Gone for good is Chin Shih Huang's feudal society!' and 'The people are no longer wrapped in sheer ignorance.' They tore down Communist flags, burned Marxist-Leninist books, smashed vehicles of Peiping's public security department and manhandled Communist soldiers and policemen sent to restore order. They even occupied a nearby barracks and set it afire.
"The crowds dispersed only after the regime had poured tens of thousands of armed militiamen, police and garrison troops to suppress them. The Tienanmen incident was the biggest anti-Communist riot since the inception of the Communist regime on the mainland in 1949. The incident erupted in the most sensitive political center on the mainland, attracted much public support, and was punctuated by the clamorous shouting of anti-Communist slogans reminiscent of the Hungarian uprising in 1956. The Peiping regime admitted later that similar incidents had occurred in more than 100 other cities."
Dr. Han Lih-wu, secretary-general of the APACL and a scholar and diplomat, described both gains and losses in the struggle against Communism. But the basic question, he maintained, is "How to fight Communist subversion and aggression." Communist tactics are multiple and adaptable, he said, and "so must be our countermeasures." This is basically "an ideological battle, a fight over wills as well as a test of strength. We must defeat Communism in the minds of the people; we must expose their tricks and lies; we must have a better understanding of them and ourselves through exchanges of information, publications, lectures and forum discussions; and we must win the support of the masses by extensive use of mass media.
"We must be resolute and determined to win. Finally we must fortify ourselves and fight our enemy everywhere and at all times, always on the basis of strength."
Admiral John S. McCain, ret., former commander in chief of U.S. Forces Pacific, urged free Asia to remain vigilant and keep its powder dry. He said the first line of freedom in the Asian Pacific region is the chain of nations that includes South Korea, Japan, the Republic of China, Philippines, Australia, New Zealand, Indonesia and Malaysia. The United States must maintain the integrity of the Republic of China on Taiwan, he declared, or it will lose the keystone of the whole defense structure. Withdrawal of U.S. ground forces from the Republic of Korea would be a tragic mistake, he added.
Although Soviet military strength is sometimes overrated, Admiral McCain said, the U.S.S.R. is building the largest naval force in the world to support its huge land and air forces. There are now 55 to 60 Soviet ships in the Mediterranean and 20, 30 or even 40 in the Indian Ocean. "It will not be too long," he said, "before you see a Soviet naval task force in international waters off Taiwan." The Russians are also building a large merchant marine and are using their fleet of 4,000 fishing vessels to spy on the military activities of the free world.
Although the Chinese Communists are not yet ready to go to war with the United States, Admiral McCain said, they are attempting to expand their power. He called attention to a road network in Southern China and said it was aimed at Thailand. Red China is afraid of the Republic of China and some of the "best fighters who have ever been seen in history." Peiping is fearful of an attempt to cross the Taiwan Straits, he said, because that would be trying to destroy what they are attempting to gain.
The power of Peiping is limited, he said, by the schism with the Soviet Union.
Richard Cleaver told of increasing Communist infiltration in Australia, especially of the trade unions and mass media. Communist operatives are well-financed, he said. Governmentally, the Australians have taken a position supporting the United States in maintenance of a balance of power in the Indian Ocean. Canberra has also pledged support of ASEAN efforts to contain Communism.
Khir Johari of Malaysia reported on the progress of ASEAN in checking aggression against Thailand and his own country. "Thanks to the cooperation of the new Thai government," he said, "our military partnership has grown into a very effective operational arrangement that we believe will give a fatal blow to the Communist terrorists who are still lurking in the jungles bordering our two countries. In East Malaysia, we have equally excellent arrangements with Indonesia."
"Two important factors in the struggle against Communism," he said, are "clean government that is fully dedicated to the people who have put their trust and faith in us" and the provision of an "alternative ideology."
The alignment of free China, free Korea and Japan can hold back the Communists and keep the peace of Asia, said Prof. Philip M. Chen of Tamkang College of Arts and Sciences. He urged U.S. recognition of this as the surest way to stop the reverses which have afflicted the Asian Pacific region in recent years.
The Republic of China, he said, has set an example of both economic progress and economic stability. "It is needless to stress," he said, "that the sole reason for this success is that we are firmly committed to fighting Communism and we provide no room whatsoever for Communism in this free land. The Republic of China is not only anti-Communist, but fights Communism thoroughly and all the way, not half the way. This is the way to unite all free Asian forces and eliminate Communist tyranny."
Wang Chi-wu, research fellow of the Institute of International Relations in Taipei, suggested Asian technical cooperation can be improved by eliminating overly ambitious and vaguely defined programs. Some U.N. efforts have been of this nature, he said, whereas Asians had done better for themselves with such projects as the Asian Food and Fertilizer Center, the Social and Cultural Development Center and the Asian Vegetable Research and Development Center.
Asia must give more attention to energy conservation and the development of both conventional and substitute sources of energy, he said. In doing so, the environment must be protected through pollution control.
National resiliency has helped Indonesia defeat Communist ideological attack, said H.M. Joesdi Ghazali of that country. Ideological threats must be countered with ideology, he said.
"The world of today is facing the problem of many countries that claim to be superior and consider themselves always to be right," Ghazali said. "As a matter of fact, they hold power and authority through the suffering of others. They have even been trying to expand their spheres of influence at the expense of other independent and developing countries, claiming they mean to liberate these countries from their oppressors."
National resiliency, he said, implies the principle of self-reliance. Indonesia has come to understand that each country bears the ultimate responsibility for its own peace and security. "This explains why we never cease to encourage our neighboring countries to develop national resiliency in all fields, hoping that eventually this will become regional resiliency."
S.K. Yee called attention to anti-Communist successes in Hongkong with its population of nearly 4.5 million Chinese. He, too, stressed ideological warfare, and pointed to the importance of newspapers, magazines, schools and financial organizations. He said that the anti-Communist struggle is waged in the mass media, through letters to the mainland and in education, culture, business and industry. Despite the overwhelming economic pressure of the Communists, he said, workers and merchants have been persuaded to continue the struggle against them.
Fr. Raymond J. de Jaegher, who spent many years in South Vietnam, said former free Vietnamese army officers and government officials have been sent to re-education camps where beatings, torture and mental harassment are the standard treatment. Half a million refugees who fled south to escape the Communists have been returned north - to labor camps. The toll of dead in Cambodia has reached 1,200,000, he said, and the "whole country is in turmoil without freedom and without human rights."
Praising Jimmy Carter's stand on human rights, the Catholic priest recalled his mainland days under the Communists and said: "Under Communism, the people cannot speak freely, they cannot write freely, they are not allowed to go to church and worship freely and they cannot even travel from Communist-dominated countries into countries of the free world. To support human rights is a positive weapon of the free world. Communist countries are very much hurt by the human rights question."
Dangers of detente were raised by Prof. Kuan Chung of National Chengchi University. The Chinese and Russian Communists have been enabled to expand their aggressive forces and "turn Asia into a cockpit in their fight for supremacy. The United States has tried to use detente to build a new power structure in Asia, but so far this process has accelerated and escalated the Moscow-Peiping rivalry in Asia generally and Southeast Asia particularly."
Asian peace and security depend on the United States and its maintenance of commitments to allies in this region, Prof. Kuan said. "President Carter's initiative in advocating human rights, strategic disarmament and a stable international economy system is encouraging to all of us," he said. "However, we think that the United States should also impress upon Moscow and Peiping that the world is not their revolutionary playground. If the United States is to continue to carry out a policy of negotiation, detente, peaceful coexistence (or whatever one chooses to call it) with Moscow and Peiping, she must insist that these two regimes desist from supporting military adventures by their client regimes against neighbors and from supplying aid to insurgent groups in non-Communist states."
Professor Wei Wu of National Taiwan University called attention to growing economic cooperation, especially among the ASEAN countries. He suggested that heavy reliance on more economically advanced countries constitutes a difficult problem.
"As the Asian developing countries are less developed in economic growth," he said, "there are few competitive products and substitutes for imports available in the domestic market. Consequently, imports from the economically advanced market have played a key role in many industries of our countries and many industries remain in the assembling phase.
"Under such conditions, the hard-earned foreign exchange goes mostly into the pockets of traders. Our Asian developing countries are in an extremely unfavorable position to trade with the advanced countries. To improve this condition, the best countermeasures are to improve the trade balance, adjust the economic structure, alter the manner of trading and speed the development of heavy and chemical industries to produce import substitutes for various light industries and to supply the raw materials, machines and equipment for economic construction."
Archduke Otto von Habsburg gave an extended report on the European political situation. The free world, he said, would understand Communism and detente better if it had heeded the speech of Leonid Brezhnev to the 25th Congress of the Communist party of the Soviet Union in February 1976. He said that detente is a notion which may exist between state and state but that the Communists would never accept "capitalist oppression and exploitation" nor what the West calls "liberal democracy."
The West has been warned, Dr. Von Hapsburg said. "We simply prefer to believe what we want; we all too often do not take seriously what the Communists tell us."
Time is nevertheless on the side of the free world and "Marxism is struggling against the clock. The great trend of events is on our side. Recently one of the most knowledgeable political experts of the European continent told me, on the basis of a long-range analysis, that for us the next ten years would be crucial. After that, the destructive forces within the Marxist realm will begin to be felt. Our problem, he said, was to last till then. And, I submit to you, this is really what we ought to do.
"We need first of all to have patience. We must have a clear vision of things, and we must not indulge, as we have done hitherto, in wishful thinking. Only a hard-headed ice-cold analysis of the true situation in the world will permit us to gain the whole world." Has the United States been too generous in applying detente unilaterally? Dr. Von Hapsburg said: "Of course, we profoundly admire the generosity of the United States from which we, ourselves, have benefited a great deal. Nevertheless, may we respectfully ask those in responsible positions in Washington: do they really believe that, if our free market economy was so bad that our fields would not yield and our crops would rot, and if Marxism was so productive that it could feed the whole world, would the Communists so willingly sell us wheat with no strings attached - as the United States has done in saving the Soviet Union from starvation?"
Power bids by Western European Communist parties are dangerous in the view of Dr. Von Hapsburg. If the parties of Italy, France and Spain want to prove their allegiance to democracy, let them divorce themselves from the financial support of the Soviet Union.
Anti-Communism is not enough, he said. Those fighting the totalitarians must also have their own ideology and must stand for something. "We should not, I think, hesitate to say that we want a world in which everybody will be free to travel and to speak at will. That we want a world in which people will no longer need to be frightened of the totalitarian threat. That we want a world in which there will be peace, because the political systems of all nations will be such that they no longer will feel the need to ann. That we want a world no longer threatened by hegemonialism and imperialism such as the one which started on humanity's tragic day when Lenin and his companions seized power with the deliberate goal to rule the earth and to enslave all the nations. That we want, in a word, Man to be respected as he was created by God and endowed by Him with inalienable rights."
TakeShi Furtua told of the anti-Communist situation in Japan. The International Federation for Victory Over Communism, he said, has given special attention to the infiltration of Japanese youth ranks by the Communists. Although the Communists were overwhelmingly defeated in the election of December, 1976, the ruling Liberal Democratic party also suffered setbacks and has been barely able to maintain a majority in the House of Representatives of the Diet. "The possibility is growing that the LDP may lose its majority in the House of Councilors in the next election scheduled for July this year.
"While it is also true that the Japanese Communist party is supported by less than 10 per cent of the Japanese people, there is a tendency for the people of Japan to become more materialistic and self-centered as well as less religious and anti-Communist. As a result, Japan is becoming more vulnerable to the infiltration and aggression of such nearby Communist countries as the Soviet Union, Red China and North Korea."
Several speakers commented extensively on the role of the mass media in advancing the Communist cause. U.S. Representative Robert Dornan said that while the majority of the American people are democratic and anti-Communist, the mass media refuse to mention anti-Communism and consider it a "dirty word." Dornan ran for office as an anti-Communist and was accused of extremism. But other young Americans tend to be of his view, he said, despite the flexible tactics adopted by the Communists to deceive free peoples.
Expert counsel came from Robert M. Bartell, an American publisher and broadcaster who has been opposing Communism.
"It has been my pleasure to have been called a radical, rightwing extremist by the mass media in the United States, because my paper and my radio programs insist on telling the truth. We have a so-called 'free press' in America - but I can tell you from personal experience it is a 'controlled' press. Very tightly controlled. I can tell you by whom and why.
"We are gathered here to combat the insidious force of Communism. I wholeheartedly agree that Communism is the principal enemy of every free nation in the world. However, no one can tell me that the Communists are directly responsible for the Republic of China getting the bad press it does in the United States. No one can tell me that the Communists are directly responsible for my Congress, both the House of Representatives and the Senate, advocating first a two-China policy, and perhaps eventually, a one-China policy, and secondly advocating the desertion of the Korean people through the withdrawal of the American forces from South Korea."
Bartell said he had been in radio and television for more than 30 years and "am no stranger to propaganda and the dissemination of news." He also said he had served the anti-Communism movement in the United States "on a professional basis, so I am no stranger to Communism."
The information gathered by the anti-Communism movement is not, he said, "being made available to the majority of the American people." It is being gathered and it is being distributed. But it is not reaching most of the American people. He cited the example of the APACL-WACL conferences and asked how much coverage these were receiving from UPI, AP, the New York Times News Service and the Washington Post News Service.
The simple truth, he continued, is that there is no market for anti-Communist stories in the United States. "Anti-Communism is a dead issue for the mass media." Explaining why, he said that the Communist party is legal in the United States and that anti-Communism is not in the "best interests" of the existing power structure. The foreign policy is based on detente or coexistence, he said, and is intended to further the process of doing business with the Communists.
"If it is the power structure of America which is sympathetic to Communist nations, then we must fight the power structure. How do we fight them?" he asked. "Well you don't invite the controlled press to press conferences which they won't attend; you don't ask them to cover a conference which they will ignore in any event. If they are interested, they'll know about it and they'll be there. So what's the alternative?
"There are some 4,000 weekly newspapers in the United States, some 700 of which, from owner to owner, are sympathetic with our cause. These papers reach millions of Americans, which is not to say they can compete with daily propaganda blasts by television, radio and the major dailies, but - if enough people see the truth being written and published, and compare it with what they see and read in the mass media, you will build an innate distrust and dissatisfaction and that will grow until it explodes in indignation and wrath."
Besides the weekly newspapers, the United States has, Bartell said, at least 1,000 of 4,500 radio stations that "lean toward truth, God and nation. Again, you can't compete with the news provided by the networks, but if you provide the truth and it is put on the air, and is subsequently ignored, distorted or omitted by the networks, you force people to wonder and ask 'why' and thus accomplish your purpose." Bartell said his organization had started in 1974 with a program on 17 paid stations. "Today it is on about 300 stations reaching about 300 million people a day, five days a week. We now pay for about 16 per cent of these programs. The rest are 'public service' programs or are locally sponsored and paid for. Which to me, at least, means the American people do want to know the truth."
Dr. Ku Cheng-kang reports on the accomplishments of the world and Asian anti-Communist conferences. (File photo)
He also spoke of Spotlight, a newspaper started about a year and a half ago which now has a paid circulation of 145,000 and weekly readership of more than 250,000 throughout the United States. His weekly column appears in 450 weekly newspapers. "I know," he said, "that in America there is no shortage of anti-Communist news, but only a drought in the release of anti-Communist news." He said anti-Communists can work together to find a better way to tell and sell their side of the story.
Lee Shih-feng also expressed objection to the power of American television. A foreign cameraman might photograph the seamy side of New York, he said, but it wouldn't mean much of anything. New Yorkers could laugh it off and appear as witnesses for the defense. But when a U.S. TV cameraman visits a backward country and creates a misleading impression, there is no recourse for the people of that country. The impression given to the American people will be a lasting one.
Of Taiwan television, Lee remarked that it is far from perfect but has not descended into pornography and some other abuses. Under the Radio and Television Law, frequencies used for radio and TV broadcasts are owned by the people. He quoted the late President Chiang Kai-shek's view that: "The emphasis of newspapers of yesterday was on politics; from now on the emphasis should be on economics and production. The old sources of news were government offices and organizations, but now they should be rural communities, factories and so on."
More than 50,000 persons attended a Taipei Stadium rally to conclude the APACL and WACL conferences. Speaking for the United States, Dr. Lev E. Dobriansky, chairman of the Captive Nations Committee of his country, said the majority of the American people stand squarely on the side of the anti-Communist movement. Dr. Ku Cheng-kang, the chairman, said the gathering symbolized the unity of anti-Communist forces all over the world.
Next year's conferences will be held separately: that of APACL in Bangkok and that of WACL in Washington. These meetings will indicate whether anti-Communism came of age at the Taipei meetings. Those who traveled to the Republic of China to represent their people or organizational units included many new faces that had not been associated with anti-Communism before. Many of those attending had new and positive ideas to offer. The occasion was not one for the venting of anti-Communist hatred.
Taipei conferees showed that anti-Communism has outgrown the Communist level of name-calling. Addresses and discussion were at realistic levels of analyzing the situation and determining what could be done. If the free world mass media ignored the conferences, that was their loss. The anti-Communist movement is giving evidence of readiness to make news with action. That was the intention of Presidents Chiang Kai-shek and Syngman Rhee when they brought the Asian Peoples' Anti-Communist League into existence at Chinhae, South Korea, in June of 1954.