[Wikipedia-l] Honr. B. Carroll Reece, Tennessee

Sat Sep 7 06:25:37 UTC 2002

Fred Bauder wrote:

>A little different dynamic operating here though. The source
>you mention comes from the McCarthy era and seemingly, so does your level
>of understanding. The communist movement did infiltrate labor unions,
>churches, the boy scouts, and probably foundations, and created front
>organizations. However, it does not do to simply buy into McCarthyite
>charges and hysteria and incorporate them into a wiki article.
>
>Information on this topic requires genuine expertise or using information
>from reliable sources. And there are many. Many people became disillusioned
>with the Communist party and many of them wrote memoirs and there is now
>information from the archives of the KGB available. You are going to have
>to get a whole lot better at using this information before you are going to
>be able to work in this area here without causing more heat than light.
>
>What I saw of your work was not well done, (something about communists
>infiltrating the Truman administration). My thought at the time is that you
>know very little about America and are very poorly qualified to try to deal
>with a subtle and difficult area of American history such as this.
>
>Just your phrasing of the topic, "Communists infiltrating America", betrays
>that. American Communism is pretty much a home grown product.
>
>Fred Bauder
>
Some of your comments to Helga may be a little over the top, even if 
they all turn out to be true.  In the last couple days I have seen her 
come on these pages and make an effort to communicate.  That's certainly 
progress from where we were on this two weeks ago, and that merits praise.  

I agree that the story of American anti-communism  is a complex one that 
wont depend on kooky stories about infiltrating boy scouts, or in KGB 
files.  The story of communism in America goes back at least to the post 
civil war reconstruction era.

Ec