For as long as there have been Communists abroad there have been useful idiots here at home. In the ’30s we had Walter Duranty at the NY Times and today we have a 24/7 news network called RT.

Launched as Russia Today in 2005, RT is run out of Moscow with a studio in Washington DC and satellite offices around the world. It’s distribution is still primarily via the web and to a long list of hotels around the world, but it is making inroads to satellite and cable providers around the world by offering it’s product (including a Spanish language version) for free. So for instance, you can now get RT on Time Warner cable in NY or New Jersey. Here’s why this is a matter of concern.

From the outset it was clear that RT was a propaganda effort controlled completely by the Kremlin. The Kremlin put up more than $30 million to get it started and spend double that to pay a staff of over 100 reporters in just its first year of operation. When it launched in 2005, CBS interviewed former Russian Press Minister Mikhail Fedotov, who explained what RT was about:

The Kremlin’s inside advisors believe professional propaganda might form the splendid and shiny image of modern Russia, without Chechen war…without corruption.

RT attracted some negative attention in 2007 for running a weird ad campaign which attempted to humanize Stalin. But the propaganda arm really swung into action in 2008 when Russia invaded East Ossetia. (You may recall John McCain’s statment at the time “Today, we are all Georgians.”) After RT reporter William Dunbar mentioned on air the fact that Russia had bombed Georgia, the rest of his scheduled appearances that day were canceled. He resigned, telling the Guardian “The real news, the real facts of the matter, didn’t conform to what they were trying to report, and therefore, they wouldn’t let me report it.”

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There’s no better proof that, while the Soviet Union may have disappeared, its malevolent ideals still live on, than to observe that neither the word “socialist” nor “Marxist” has fallen into ill-repute, or become an all-purpose insult like “Nazi.” This is partly due to academe’s unrequited lust for the Soviet system, and the continued presence of Soviet-bred sleeper agents — what the Russians called their “illegals” program — within the larger American society. Nearly two decades after the end of the Cold War, we still haven’t fully grasped the extent of the Marxist-Leninist evil — nor how it continues to this day.

Which is why this piece in the indispensable City Journal by Claire Berlinski is today’s must-read:

In the world’s collective consciousness, the word “Nazi” is synonymous with evil. It is widely understood that the Nazis’ ideology—nationalism, anti-Semitism, the autarkic ethnic state, the Führer principle—led directly to the furnaces of Auschwitz. It is not nearly as well understood that Communism led just as inexorably, everywhere on the globe where it was applied, to starvation, torture, and slave-labor camps. Nor is it widely acknowledged that Communism was responsible for the deaths of some 150 million human beings during the twentieth century. The world remains inexplicably indifferent and uncurious about the deadliest ideology in history.

For evidence of this indifference, consider the unread Soviet archives. Pavel Stroilov, a Russian exile in London, has on his computer 50,000 unpublished, untranslated, top-secret Kremlin documents, mostly dating from the close of the Cold War. He stole them in 2003 and fled Russia. Within living memory, they would have been worth millions to the CIA; they surely tell a story about Communism and its collapse that the world needs to know. Yet he can’t get anyone to house them in a reputable library, publish them, or fund their translation. In fact, he can’t get anyone to take much interest in them at all.

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Last week, Andrew Breitbart sat down with David Brody of the Christian Broadcasting Network and articulated his position that the media is the primary adversary to those fighting for traditional American values.

Watch the whole thing: you’re sure to enjoy when Andrew discusses that while the New Media may well save the Republic (and perhaps the world), it has already saved him personally.

The Brody File show airs tonight on the CBN Newschannel.

A full profile of Andrew Breitbart will air on The 700 Club show May 13th.

Some highlights/discussion points below:

“By aiming everything at the media, I’ve pretty much done the one thing they ask you not to do: ‘please accept the premise that we’re fair and let’s move on.’ No, I’m not going to accept that premise.” (more…)