The view that the disinformation campaign of the imperialist powers
and the U.S. imperialists in particular was directed merely at the
former Soviet Union belies its true nature. This false picture of
disinformation as a phenomenon that was targeted strictly against the
"socialist motherland" was later embellished by the former Soviet Union
itself. As it abandoned socialism at home and sought out its own position
as an imperialist power, it joined in the ideological offensive against
the people by distorting the objective laws of social development and
turning communism and social progress into a matter of whether or not a
country aligned itself with the United States or the Soviet Union.
In the bipolar division of the world, everything was subordinated
to this scheme.
Together the two superpowers, U.S. imperialism and Soviet
social-imperialism, waged a "war of ideas" tightly woven into a
solid distortion of capitalism, socialism and communism and the
objective laws of social development. The United States, in the
late forties, had launched the big lie of "communist expansionism,"
the "domino effect," and "communist infiltration" wherever the
people were struggling for liberation. The Soviet Union later
presented the theory of "limited sovereignty" to round the picture
out. Together they negated the objective conditions which drive
both the crisis of capitalism and the struggle of the people for
national and social liberation.
The imperialists, including the Soviet social-imperialists,
who joined the disinformation campaign against communism as they
sought to expand their market and sphere of influence in the world,
turned communism into a matter of some moralistic and hidebound
dogma and a groundless aspiration.
It was not the existence of the former Soviet Union which
posed a danger to the capitalist system and its rulers, but the
objective conditions of capitalist exploitation. These were and are
the conditions which propel the people to seek an alternative. This
has been borne out by the facts of life as the struggle has become
even deeper with the collapse of the pseudo-socialism of the former
Soviet Union. The content of the ideological offensive of the U.S.
imperialists remains the same, albeit more difficult, as the
bi-polar division of the world has ended. The "future" has now been
taken by the "free, democratic societies, which provide the
greatest all-around benefits to their members," according to
international finance capital. This has become the main content of
their disinformation campain and ideological offensive.
Shawgi Tell
University at Buffalo
Graduate School of Education
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
