Hall Gus

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In article <[email protected]> 14 Nov 1999
11:42:50 GMT [email protected] (Fledgist) wrote:

>>The case exposed the fact that at least six of eleven members of the
>>National Secretariat of the American Communist Party were Jewish. Those
>>identified as Jews were:
>>
>>Jacob Sachel, John Gates (real name, Israel Regenstreif), Gilbert Green
>>(real name, Greenberg), Gus Hall (real name, Arvo Mike Halberg), Irving
>>Potash, and Carl Winter. The racial identity of Eugene Dennis (real
>>name, Waldron), Robert Thompson, and John Williamson are unknown.
>>
>
>It has been pointed out here, by Eugene Holman and myself, that Gus Hall (real
>name Arvo Gustavus [Kustaa] Halberg) is not Jewish.
>Fragano Ledgister
>([email protected])

>From my web site http://www.geocities.com/Athens/Cyprus/8815 (page does not exist)

ALLEGED QUOTE
“The Christians are always singing about the blood. Let us give them
enough of it! Let us cut their throats and drag them over the altar!
And let them drown in their own blood! I dream of the day when the
last priest is strangled on the guts of the last preacher.”

Jewish Chairman of the American Communist Party, Gus Hall

(NOTE: SEE BELOW FOR A VARIANT QUOTE)

RESPONSE (1)
The above quote is #165 from the anti-Semitic document
http://abbc.com/quotes/q151-200.htm  (page does not exist) “1000 Quotes by and about Jews”.
It is available in similar form from many sources, but not necessarily
with the same number.

Like many such “quotes”, this one is not properly referenced so it is
difficult to trace its source. However, in this case it is only
necessary to point out that the author of this Jewish-attributed
“quote” is not actually Jewish. Gus Hall was of Finnish descent. His
birth name was Arvo Mike Halberg. (I have another report that his
middle name was “Justa”.)

He says that he “was baptized in the most conservative religious
denomination, the Evangelical Lutheran Church”.
(Source: “After 50 years: Truth triumphs over the lies of
anti-communism” November 29, 1997, “People’s Weekly World”.

An extremely ironical fact in relation to this claim is as follows:

“The CPUSA Secretary for Relations with Foreign Communist Parties was
a FBI agent, reporting regularly to the US government all the secret
things Hall & Co were doing. He was named Morris Childs (ne
Chilovsky) and _was_ Jewish.” Source: Quoted from Usenet message
Message-ID: <[email protected]>, Author: Joseph Major
([email protected]), Date: 27 Sep 1999 08:23:06 -0500

Apparently a lot of Finns became involved in American socialism as the
following quote attests:

“Finnish immigrants were the first in the nation to found a
foreign-language group of the American Socialist Party. Finntown in
Virginia had a three-story brick building known as the Socialist
Opera. By one estimate, a third of the Finns on the Iron Range in 1913
were socialists. In the 1930s, 40 percent of the total membership of
the American communist party nationwide came from one small immigrant
group – the Finns. Gus Hall, the longtime head of the American
Communist party, came from a Finnish farmstead on the Iron Range.”
Source: “Finland Was a Poor Country: Part 2 By Mary Losure and Dan
Olson June 10, 1997 (Minnesota Public radio)
http://news.mpr.org/features/199706/10_losurem_finnpoor/finnpoor2.htm  (page does not exist)

Apart from the fact that Gus Hall does not appear to be Jewish, the
quote itself seems spurious. Why would an American Communist, in a
country with many strongly- religious Christians make such a statement
if he were trying to get support for his cause?

Gus Hall has also stated “Right-wing forces also spread the lie that
Communists are anti-religion. In all my years I have never heard
anyone in our party make an anti-religion remark or speech.” (Source:
November 29, 1997, People’s Weekly World). It is difficult to
reconcile this remark with the one that is attributed to him.

In addition, the last line bears an uncanny resemblance to a
paraphased quote, the original of which is attributed to Jean Meslier
c. 1664-1733 and appears in French in Testament (ed. R. Charles, 1864)
vol. 1, ch. 2. Meslier’s quote starts out (English translation): I
remember, on this matter, the wish made once by an ignorant,
uneducated man…He said…. The man’s wish, expressed next, is often
presented in paraphased form as “Je voudrais…que le dernier des rois
fût étranglé avec les boyaux du dernier prêtre”, “I should like…the
last of the kings to be strangled with the guts of the last priest”.
[source “Oxford Dictionary of Quotations”, 4th revised edition, 1996,
ISBN 0-19-860058-5

David S. Maddison ([email protected])

RESPONSE 2 (A variant of the above quotation.)

STRANGLED-TO-DEATH QUOTE “I dream of the hour when the last
Congressman is strangled to death on the guts of the last preacher-and
since Christians like to sing about the blood, why not give them a
little of it? Slit the throats of their children and drag them over
the mourners’ bench and the pulpit, and allow them to drown in their
own blood, and then see whether they enjoy singing these hymns.”

When Gus Hall, General Secretary of the American Communist Party, was
invited to speak at the University of Oregon in 1962, there was an
outburst of protest in Eugene, where the university is located, and an
outpouring of anti-Hall posters and leaflets featuring the
strangled-to-death statement which Hall was charged with having made
at a Communist convention in 1937 and again at the funeral of
Communist leader Eugene Dennis in 1961. But the New York Times, which
covered the Dennis funeral, mentioned no such bloodcurdling statement
in Hall’s eulogy, and Hall himself, when queried about it by reporters
in Eugene, said the statement was so vile he wouldn’t bother denying
it. The attribution of the inflammatory words to Hall first appeared
in reactionary Kenneth Goff’s Pilgrim Torch in April 1961, but
actually they can be traced back to Jean Meslier (a Catholic who
turned anti-Christian), whose will, published by Voltaire in 1733,
stated: “I should like to see . . . the last king strangled with the
guts of the last priest.” In 1980, evangelist Jerry Falwell’s Moral
Majority used the phony Gus Hall quotation in a multi-media
presentation entitled, “America, You’re Too Young to Die.” Cited: Roy
Paul Nelson, “On Cranberries and Communism,” Christian Century, LXXXIX
(March 21, 1962): 356-59

[Reference: “They Never Said It”, Paul F. Boller Jr. and John George,
New York, Oxford University Press, 1989, ISBN 0-19-605541-1 and ISBN
0-19-506469-0]

Contributed by
David S. Maddison ([email protected])

From: [email protected] (David S. Maddison)
Newsgroups: alt.revisionism
Subject: Re: [ID-L] JEWISH DISPROPORTIONATE INVOLVEMENT IN COMMUNISM Pt.2
Date: Mon, 15 Nov 1999 08:52:36 GMT
Organization: DSM
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