When compared to the 1980s, our situation obviously has its differences: the Chinese economy is stronger than that of the then Soviet Union, but the US retains a greater military advantage over China than it did over Russia and its Warsaw Pact satellites. However, a good number of the principles and strategies that Reagan made use of can still be applied to our advantage. His campaign was informed by the years in which he personally faced up to communists in the Hollywood of his day, including sitting up at night with a gun in his hand to protect his family after receiving numerous death threats. The disgust he felt from such incidents motivated the detailed study he undertook of the revolutionaries’ political methods and covert machinations, confirming him in his belief that one had to stand for something, and not only against something.
Reagan had risen from a humble background to become a film star, and he had an abiding belief in freedom, developing a deep resolve to not only protect it, but to see its benefits enjoyed by all those who were not as lucky as he and his fellow Americans. He knew that communism’s bedrock was fear (cancel culture today), and this fed his contempt and bolstered his courage in his confrontation with its adherents and apologists. The firmness he displayed when facing Gorbachev and the coherent strategic vision he had fashioned over many years combined to ensure the collapse of the Soviet Union, freeing millions from its grasp. This courage and vision are needed once more, and with a tweak here, and another there, can help us slay our dragon too.
Because of its value as a culture-defining industry, Hollywood in the 1930s and 40s was the target of the Comintern’s brilliant propaganda maestro, Willi Münzenberg (also the reason for China’s investment there today). Reagan found his leading role in real life fronting the industry’s response to the infiltration of the unions and film organisations’ by committed communists. Kirk Douglas noted in his autobiography that battles raged on the streets, with some confrontations involving thousands, waving knives and swinging clubs: something very similar to the scenes America has witnessed of late in Seattle. Reagan faced down these forces, and on the back of his performance rose in the turbulent 1960s to occupy for two terms the Governor’s Mansion in California.
In the decades before winning the Presidency, Reagan had honed his simple strategy with which to defeat the Soviets. They were in the driving seat when he came to occupy the White House in 1981, with America in decline after defeat in Vietnam and the embarrassing Carter Presidency. Though hobbled by a weak economy, suffering from high inflation and declining confidence he stuck to his plans to destroy the Soviets by outspending them on defence, and curtailing the access they enjoyed to Western technology and loans. Despite advisers and allies balking at his methods and resolution, he pressed on with economic reforms and stuck to his plan to end the Soviet Union, rather than just to contain it. And this was where he differed from his predecessors.
What Reagan understood was that we had to do to them, what they had done to us. He extolled the value of freedom, massively expanding US propaganda radio services and extending their reach deep into the Soviet Union. With news beamed on powerful transmitters in many tongues, Reagan undermined the cohesiveness of the Warsaw Pact alliance, and bolstered the morale of the dissidents.
His spending on new technology and the “Star Wars” missile defence system was designed to break the Soviet economy, and in this he succeeded. His funding of the Afghan forces battling the Soviet invaders, and the supply of ground to air missiles led to Russia’s withdrawal and loss of prestige. When Solidarity in Poland survived because of covert funding from the US, the end for the demoralised and bankrupt totalitarians came swiftly. The public had lost their awe of the system and no longer feared the wavering military. Collapse soon followed.
Reagan’s strategy of offering hope, undermining the regime psychologically from within, supporting its detractors, and forging close alliances with committed anti-communists, led to victory. Reagan succeeded because he set out to do so, not just to live with the regime as his predecessors had. It is this vision of the eradication of the CCP that should now keep our leaders awake at night. How do we liberate over a billion Chinese from fear of the party, and keep the rest of the world free from its cancerous tentacles and operatives?
In recent times, we have seen many prominent Chinese entrepreneurs die, disappear and be denounced. We may not always know who is responsible, but as Arthur Koestler wrote of Willi Münzenberg: he “was murdered in the summer of 1940 under the usual lurid and mysterious circumstances; as usual in such cases, the murderers are unknown and there are only indirect clues, all pointing in one direction like magnetic needles to the pole.” Sound familiar?
We must first adopt Reagan’s uncompromising attitude with regards to the disgraceful CCP. With its tin-pot Dictator-for-Life and his cohort of crooked cronies, we should deal with the CCP for what it is: the unapologetic genocide machine that has murdered millions over the decades, and continues to exist only through the fear it induces.
Our governments should re-orient our industrial policy away from China, demand democratic reforms and beam YouTube and other propaganda materials in local languages deep into China – the Han Chinese subjugate not only Uighurs and Tibetans, but many minorities in their rancid empire. We should make very clear our support for Hong Kong and Taiwan, and press the regime’s leaders with international legal claims at every opportunity, denying family travel and investment rights. And we must invest in our allies in the region, and in new military technologies and tactics with which to negate China’s numbers and stolen-IP enhanced weaponry.
Reagan showed how to win, we just need his courage and focus to see off this hair-dyed criminal crew and its cowardly fifth column slinking around in our midst. Neil Petrie. Ind News.
