Today's Featured Article:
New Obama slogan has long ties to Marxism, socialism
Today's Cowboy Headlines:
Headlines you might have missed:
The Obama campaign apparently didn't look
backwards into history when selecting its new campaign slogan, "Forward"
— a word with a long and rich association with European Marxism.
Many
Communist and radical publications and entities throughout the 19th and
20th centuries had the name "Forward!" or its foreign cognates.
Wikipedia has an entire section called "Forward (generic name of
socialist publications)."
"The name Forward carries a special
meaning in socialist political terminology. It has been frequently used
as a name for socialist, communist and other left-wing newspapers and
publications," the online encyclopedia explains.
The slogan
"Forward!" reflected the conviction of European Marxists and radicals
that their movements reflected the march of history, which would move
forward past capitalism and into socialism and communism.
The
Obama campaign released its new campaign slogan Monday in a 7-minute
video. The title card has simply the word "Forward" with the "O" having
the familiar Obama logo from 2008. It will be played at rallies this
weekend that mark the Obama re-election campaign's official beginning.
There
have been at least two radical-left publications named "Vorwaerts" (the
German word for "Forward"). One was the daily newspaper of the Social
Democratic Party of Germany whose writers included Friedrich Engels and
Leon Trotsky. It still publishes as the organ of Germany's SDP, though
that party has changed considerably since World War II. Another was the
1844 biweekly reader of the Communist League. Karl Marx, Engels and
Mikhail Bakunin are among the names associated with that publication.
East Germany named its Army soccer club ASK Vorwaerts Berlin (later FC Vorwaerts Frankfort).
Vladimir
Lenin founded the publication "Vpered" (the Russian word for "forward")
in 1905. Soviet propaganda film-maker Dziga Vertov made a documentary
whose title is sometimes translated as "Forward, Soviet" (though also
and more literally as "Stride, Soviet").
Conservative critics of
the Obama administration have noted numerous ties to radicalism and
socialists throughout Mr. Obama's history, from his first political
campaign being launched from the living room of two former Weather
Underground members, to appointing as green jobs czar Van Jones, a
self-described communist.
