Whenever I see the vehement anti-Russia sentiment that pervades American society, I can’t help but think about Muhammad Ali. After Ali announced that he would not comply with the U.S. government’s draft notice, which almost certainly would have meant that he would have been sent to Vietnam to kill Vietcong, Ali stated, “I ain’t got no quarrel with them Vietcong.”

Oh boy, his refusal to comply with the draft was bad enough, but to announce that he had no quarrel with a group that the U.S. national-security establishment had decreed was an official enemy of the United States only added fuel to the fire. Most important, the fact that this was a black man saying this to his white masters sealed Ali’s fate. Not surprisingly, they went after him with a vengeance, trying not only to destroy his reputation and career but also to have him jailed for the next several years of his life.

But Ali had a good point. The Vietcong had never attacked him, the United States, or the American people. Why should he go thousands of miles away to kill them?

The answer is: Because the Pentagon, the CIA, and the NSA had designated the Vietcong to be official enemies of the United States. Therefore, since they are the ones with the power to do that, American citizens were expected to make the Vietcong their own enemy.

Why were the Vietcong labeled official enemies of the American people? The idea was that the Vietcong were communists. The communists, U.S. officials said, were coming to get us. They were going to conquer the world, just like the Nazis were supposedly going to do. We needed to stop them over there before they got over here. The fact that they were Reds was what made them official enemies of the United States.

This mindset was, of course, the same with respect to Russia, the Soviet Union, Red China, North Korea, North Vietnam, Cuba, East Germany, and all other nations that were headed by communist regimes. Americans with inculcated with the mindset that every one of them — including both the regimes and the people living in those countries — was an official enemy of the United States.

Thus, through the power of indoctrination and propaganda, American came to deeply fear and hate the Russians and other Reds. Americans were certain that the Reds were coming to get them. The Reds were supposedly everywhere — Hollywood, the military, Congress, the mainstream press, the public schools, and, of course, within the American populace. Some right-wingers were even convinced that President Eisenhower was a Red. People were exhorted to constantly be on the lookout for communists. Some people even began looking under their beds for Reds. The title of a famous movie captured the standard mindset of most Americans: “The Russians Are Coming! The Russian’s Are Coming!”

Oh, I almost forgot. The national-security establishment, especially the FBI, was convinced that the U.S. civil-rights movement was a communist front, one designed to prepare the ground for a communist invasion. That was why they targeted Martin Luther King with destruction of reputation and even death. FBI Director (and serial blackmailer) J. Edgar Hoover, the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and CIA officials had no doubts that King was a Red.

Thus, when King came to Ali’s defense and also began publicly opposing the U.S. war in Vietnam, that was too much for the U.S. national-security establishment. No one, and especially not blacks, was supposed to question the national-security establishment’s Cold War racket and its designated official enemies.

The U.S. national-security establishment steadfastly maintained that its war against the Vietcong was in the defense of the “freedom” of the American people. Notice the irony though. Here they were conscripting Ali and other blacks to go kill people who had never attacked the United States. Conscription is not voluntary. Conscription is force. They were seizing Americans and forcing them to travel thousands of miles away to kill or be killed. How in the world can conscription be reconciled with freedom? It can’t be. Conscription is one of the gravest violations of freedom one could ever find.

Imagine: Being forced to kill and die for “freedom.” But few Americans understood the contradiction. They considered being forced to fight, die, and kill for freedom to be normal. U.S. officials and many American citizens, especially right-wingers, condemned Ali, as well as blacks who came to his defense, for their lack of “patriotism.” Again, it was a reflection of the power of government indoctrination and propaganda.

There was another irony with respect to freedom and blacks. While they were being told that they were fighting in Vietnam to protect our “freedom” here at home, the “freedom” for which blacks were fighting included living in a segregated society, a system that was enforced by the state. Of course, blacks weren’t supposed to question that either, which is why the national-security establishment considered the civil-rights movement to be a communist front.

Interestingly, it wasn’t just American blacks who were breaking through and recognizing this entire racket for what it was. There was also President John F. Kennedy who achieved the same breakthrough. That was reflected in his famous Peace Speech at American University in June 1963, in which he challenged and vowed to bring an end to the anti-Russia hatred, fear, and hostility that pervaded the minds of the American people. Some five months later, Kennedy was shot dead on the streets of Dallas. See FFF’s book JFK’s War with the National Security Establishment: Why Kennedy Was Assassinated by Douglas Horne and JFK and the Unspeakable: Why He Died and Why It Matters by James W. Douglass.

And so it has been ever since the JFK assassination that Americans have been expected to maintain an ongoing, never-ending, perpetual hatred, fear, and hostility toward Russia and others that U.S national-security state officials designate as “official enemies,” whether they be terrorists, Muslims, drug dealers, illegal immigrants, Iran, Syria, Cuba, North Korea, or anyone else.

Ironically, exempted from the current list of official enemies is communist Vietnam. To paraphrase Muhammad Ali, we ain’t got no more quarrel with those particular Reds, at least not as of now.

Reprinted with permission from The Future of Freedom Foundation.

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