Couldn't Happen Here

It's been one of those lazy Saturdays spent bouncing around the internet while listening to sport and downloading shit music at the request of the little Ps, so don't ask me how I stumbled across this link from an aggregator site as I couldn't tell you.

In 1958, some guy called W Cleon Skousen wrote a book, The Naked Communist, in which he listed the goals of the Soviet Union in attempting to destabilise the USA.

Now, this was around the time that McCarthyism had taken hold over there, so it's debatable whether this was a true account of Soviet intentions or just a nightmare scenario designed to scare the public. Either way, these examples appeared to be worryingly familiar.

17. Get control of the schools. Use them as transmission belts for socialism and current Communist propaganda. Soften the curriculum. Get control of teachers' associations. Put the party line in textbooks.

21. Gain control of key positions in radio, TV, and motion pictures.

28. Eliminate prayer or any phase of religious expression in the schools on the ground that it violates the principle of "separation of church and state."

32. Support any socialist movement to give centralized control over any part of the culture—education, social agencies, welfare programs, mental health clinics, etc.

Interesting, I thought.

Of course, there was no way they would have any chance of hoodwinking advanced nations in the more (classic) liberal times of the 50s. To do that, they would have had to ...

15. Capture one or both of the political parties in [insert country here].

... and there is no way any free democracy would ever allow such a thing to happen today either. Is there?