Stalin, Mao? Media won't challenge AOC, Bernie

FPI / October 29, 2019

The major media are allowing Sen. Bernie Sanders and Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez to spout socialist ideology without being challenged, Sen. Rand Paul said.

In an interview promoting his new book “The Case Against Socialism” which appeared on C-SPAN’s “After Words” program, the Kentucky Republican said that “nobody in the media seems to care that what AOC is supporting or what Bernie is supporting is Stalin and Mao and Pol Pot, and all these terrible ideas, and they get away with it because they aren’t challenged.”

Show host Rep. Matt Gaetz, Florida Republican, asked Paul about the way in which politicians and media figures “champion Venezuela.”

Paul replied: “Venezuela is just such a disaster. I mean, people literally eating their pets. We tell the story of a young lady who was a teenage girl, and she has a gang, but her gang is to defend the turf of trash. So, there’s certain garbage receptacles and she keeps people out of them because those are her garbage receptacles to look for food. How sad. People killing rats in the street to try to eat them, pigeons, and it just, it really is a sad thing.

“Kind of going back to the world economy thing, we have to understand why the world economy got better, and we have to understand why Venezuela’s deteriorating into, you know, chaos – and that’s, I think, part of what the book is doing – it’s part of also the debate we should be having up here, and we don’t seem to have it in Congress, is that we don’t develop, we aren’t really talking about which economically system is better.”

Later in the interview, Gaetz brings up Sanders’ remark from the 1980’s about breadlines.

“It’s funny, sometimes American journalists talk about how bad a country is, that people are lining up for food. That is a good thing!” Sanders stated. “In other countries people don’t line up for food. The rich get the food and the poor starve to death.”

To this, Paul replied: “Yeah, well, we suggest that he actually go down and see what the lines are like in Venezuela. I don’t think people are too excited about lines.”

During Paul’s appearance on ABC’s “The View” on Oct. 11, guest-host Ana Navarro claimed that Venezuelan socialist dictator Nicolas Maduro is “not a socialist.”

On Navarro’s claim that Maduro is not a socialist, Venezuelan expat Daniel Di Martino told the Daily Wire: “Ana Navarro is wrong to say Maduro isn’t socialist. Nicolás Maduro and his predecessor, Hugo Chavez, nationalized thousands of companies and greatly expanded welfare programs and government employment. It was as a result of these socialist policies that our economy was destroyed and that today 9 out of every 10 Venezuelans live in poverty and more than four million Venezuelans like myself have been forced to leave our homeland. Corrupt and evil people govern many countries around the world, but these countries don’t see the terrible humanitarian crises that socialist countries like Venezuela and Cuba experience.”

Di Martino added: “It is insulting that media personalities continue to try to defend the socialist system that has killed so many people throughout history just to protect the radical Democrats that promote those same policies in America.”

Meanwhile, a new survey from the Victims of Communism found that 70 percent of American millennials said they would vote for a socialist and 1 in 3 said they have a favorable view of communism.

The survey, part of the Victims of Communism’s report “U.S. Attitudes Toward Socialism, Communism, and Collectivism” polled 2,100 people in the United States who are age 16 and older.

Millennials polled also said they consider U.S. President Donald Trump the “biggest threat to world peace,” rating Trump as more dangerous to world peace than Russian President Vladimir Putin, North Korean dictator Kim Jong-Un, or Chinese supreme leader Xi Jinping.

Ten percent of Millennials said Trump is “responsible for more deaths and human rights abuses” than Joseph Stalin or Adolf Hitler.

“The historical amnesia about the dangers of communism and socialism is on full display in this year’s report,” said Marion Smith, executive director of the Victims of Communism Memorial Foundation.

“When we don’t educate our youngest generations about the historical truth of 100 million victims murdered at the hands of communist regimes over the past century, we shouldn’t be surprised at their willingness to embrace Marxist ideas,” Smith added. “We need to redouble our efforts to educate America’s youth about the history of communist regimes and the dangers of socialism today.”



Free Press International