Using Russia to Suppress Speech at Home, Part 1

Part 1 | Part 2 [to be published]

By enacting the First Amendment, our American ancestors were acknowledging that the federal government would inevitably attract people who would try to shut down speech that the government disapproved of. After all, if there was no concern that federal officials would try to suppress speech, there would have been no reason to enact the First Amendment.

Recent events confirm the wisdom and foresight of our American ancestors. That’s because the federal government is doing everything it can to shut down critics of the U.S. national-security state, its overseas empire of military bases, and its interventionist foreign policy, especially as it concerns Russia.

The government’s attacks on free speech revolve partly around a registration law that was enacted in 1938, which requires people who operate as agents of a foreign government to register their names, addresses, positions, and activities with the U.S. government. If they fail to do so, the government prosecutes them for “failing to register,” which entails the possibility of a 10-year prison sentence.

Just recently, the feds prosecuted a small political group in Florida named the African People’s Socialist Party and its related “Uhuru” movement. For more than 50 years, the group has been advocating for the rights of blacks, especially with respect to police abuse, reparations, and socialism. Most important, however, the group has long been highly critical of U.S. foreign policy, most recently with the U.S. role in the conflict between Ukraine and Russia. In its prosecution, the government maintained that because the group supposedly received money from Russia to expound views that the group had been making for decades, that made them agents of the Russian government, thus requiring them to register with the federal government.

But the threats don’t stop there. The feds have also threatened critics of U.S. foreign policy who have gotten paid by the Russian government to express their views on RT and other Russian media outlets. The feds allege that such payments convert the critics into agents of the Russian government and, therefore, that the 1938 law requires them to register with the federal government. Those who have failed to do so now face the distinct possibility of facing a federal criminal indictment for failing to register or conspiring to fail to register.

The controversy raises issues not only with respect to free speech but also with respect to freedom in general, as well as the hypocrisy that has long characterized the U.S. national-security establishment and its interventionist foreign policy, especially with respect to Russia.

FDR’s 1938 registration law

In a genuinely free society, people have the right to work for whomever they want and to expound whatever views they want. That necessarily means the right to work for the Russian government or any other foreign government, to expound the views of such governments, and to get paid to do so.

The U.S. government implicitly recognizes that this is an essential aspect of a free society. After all, keep in mind that it’s not against U.S. law to work for the Russian government or to expound the views of the Russian government. It’s only against the law not to register one’s names, positions, and activities with the U.S. government.

But how can such a registration law be reconciled with the principles of a free society? It can’t be. Given that freedom necessarily encompasses the right to work for a foreign government, to expound the views of a foreign government, and to get paid to do so, there is no way that a registration law can be reconciled with the principles of freedom.

It is not a coincidence that our American ancestors lived without a registration law for more than 150 years after the nation was established. That’s because they understood that a registration law was the type of thing that would be found
in totalitarian or authoritarian regimes. Indeed, it should not surprise anyone that Russia itself has the same type of registration law.

FDR’s dictatorial actions

It is also not a coincidence that the U.S. registration law was enacted during the regime of President Franklin D. Roosevelt, a president who engaged in all sorts of totalitarian actions that were contrary to the principles of freedom.

FDR was the president who was responsible for converting America’s economic system to a welfare state, a type of socialist system in which the government taxes one group of people in order to transfer the money to another group of people. FDR accomplished this monumental conversion without even the semblance of a constitutional amendment.

The FDR regime also converted America’s monetary system from a gold-coin/silver-coin standard to a paper-money standard. The regime also nationalized gold coins and made it a felony for Americans to own gold coins, even though gold coins had been the official money of America under the Constitution for more than 100 years. Again, this was all done without even the semblance of a constitutional amendment.

FDR also adopted a managed/regulated/centrally planned economic system, as reflected, for example, by his National Industrial Recovery Act, which cartelized American business and industry. With its Blue Eagle propaganda campaign, Roosevelt’s program was straight out of the fascist economic playbook of Italian dictator Benito Mussolini.

When the U.S. Supreme Court began declaring much of FDR’s socialist and fascist programs unconstitutional, his dictatorial proclivities manifested themselves in his infamous “court-packing” scheme, by which he hoped to pack the Supreme Court with judicial cronies that would give free reign to his statist programs.

Thus, FDR’s 1938 registration law was just one of his many antifreedom programs, one that was more consistent with what was going on in fascist Italy and National Socialist Germany than with the traditions of liberty that had long characterized the United States. In fact, it shouldn’t shock anyone that German leader Adolf Hitler sent Roosevelt a letter in the 1930s commending him on his economic policies and pointing out that they were mirroring what Hitler himself was doing in Germany. An excellent book that demonstrates the similarities between the economic programs of FDR, Hitler, and Mussolini is Three New Deals: Reflections on Roosevelt’s America, Mussolini’s Italy, and Hitler’s Germany, 1933–1939 by Wolfgang Schivelbusch.

Suppressing opposition to U.S. involvement in World War II

The ostensible purpose of FDR’s registration law was to protect the American people from Nazi propaganda. The real purpose was to suppress opposition to entry into another war against Germany, which most everyone knew was looming on the horizon. Given the horrific consequences of World War I, FDR knew that the overwhelming sentiment among the American people was opposition to participation in another world war. FDR, on the other hand, was bound and determined to embroil the United States into another European war. To achieve that, he knew he had to suppress antiwar sentiments while, at the same time, figure out a way to provoke either Germany or Japan into attacking the United States so that Congress would have no choice but to issue the constitutionally required declaration of war.

In enacting his 1938 registration law, FDR was essentially saying that the minds of the American people were so weak and malleable that they were subject to being easily molded and manipulated into accepting Nazi propaganda — unless people were made aware that the issuer of such propaganda was a registered agent of the Nazi regime. In that event, the argument went, Americans would be astute enough to reject the Nazi propaganda.

The rationale for dredging up that old 1938 FDR registration law today is essentially the same as it was back them, only that instead of protecting today’s American adults from Nazi propaganda, the aim is to protect them from Russian propaganda. The notion is that unless Americans are protected by a federal registration law, their minds will easily be molded and manipulated by articles, speeches, and books by secret unregistered Russian agents. Presumably, if people know that a purveyor of Russian propaganda is a Russian agent, their minds will be more easily able to resist it.

A republic versus a national-security state

The question naturally arises: Why Russia? Why the obsessive preoccupation with that particular country? The answer to that question necessarily entails an examination of the nature of America’s governmental system and the ramifications of that system on our own way of life here at home, especially with respect to our rights of freedom and privacy.

We have all been born and raised under a national-security-state type of governmental system. Thus, it’s easy to assume that this is the type of governmental system that America has always had. In fact, that’s one of the important principles that is inculcated into the minds of American schoolchildren, especially in public (i.e., government) schools — that since its inception, America has always had the same type of governmental system (and the same type of economic system).

However, such is not the case. For more than 100 years, the American people lived under a type of governmental system known as a limited-government republic, which is the opposite of a national-security state.

Under a limited government republic, which had a relatively small, basic military, the government’s powers were limited to those powers that were enumerated in the Constitution and that were not restricted by the Bill of Rights.

Not so with the national-security state, which wields such omnipotent powers as state-sponsored assassination, torture, indefinite detention, coups, invasions, undeclared wars, wars of aggression, provoking wars between other nations, and the like.

It’s worth mentioning that the conversion to a national-security state, just like the conversion to a welfare state and to a paper-money system, took place without even the semblance of a constitutional amendment.

The Cold War racket

The rational for the conversion, which took place in the late 1940s, was that the Russians and other communists were coming to get us. Since the Soviet Union, which was led by Russia, wielded omnipotent powers, the argument was that we needed to become like them, even if only “temporarily,” to prevent a communist takeover of the United States.

It was a racket from the start — actually the biggest racket in the history of the United States. The Russians were never coming to get us. But the important thing about a national-security state is that it needs official enemies to keep people afraid, agitated, nervous, and tense. In that way, people are more likely to support the ever-growing power and taxpayer-funded largess of the national-security establishment and its ever-growing army of “defense” contractors and others who are feeding, either directly or indirectly, at the public trough. Another factor to consider is the ever-increasing destruction of the rights and liberties of the American people at the hands of their own government. After all, keep in mind that the omnipotent powers of assassination, torture, and indefinite detention apply to Americans as much as they apply to foreigners.

This “Cold War” racket worked beautifully for almost 45 years. The national-security part of the federal government — that is, the Pentagon, the CIA, and the NSA — became the most powerful part of the federal government, exercising without restraint such powers as assassination, torture, terrorism, sabotage, and foreign coups. It also led America into two undeclared wars in Korea and Vietnam, in direct contravention of the declaration-of-war requirement in the U.S. Constitution, where tens of thousands of American men, many of whom had been conscripted against their will, were sacrificed for nothing.

This article was originally published in the December 2024 issue of Future of Freedom.

The post Using Russia to Suppress Speech at Home, Part 1 appeared first on The Future of Freedom Foundation.