This is an excellent review of Paul Kengor’s book Dupes: How America’s Adversaries Have Manipulated Progressives for a Century from the folks at What Would the Founders Think?
The goal, from the early days of the Revolution, was to spread
Communism by using influential elites in other nations. The American
effort started in 1919, only months after the establishment of the
Comintern in Moscow. (The Communist International (Comintern) was
centralized under Moscow leadership and had ?uncontested authority?
over the Communist Parties established all over the world.)The author chronicles the progressives ? educators, academics,
journalists and union organizers ? eagerness to come and view the
wonders of Communism. And come they did, by the boatloads. The puppet
masters prepared lists of liberal university professors and college
presidents likely to carry a positive impression back to the states.
Documents in the Comintern archives spell out the strategies used on
these ?arranged? tours.
One of the most important dupes imported to Moscow was the renowned
educator John Dewey. Dewey, during his long tenure at Columbia
University, influenced the training of generations of public school
teachers, and not for the better. Kengor quotes Georgetown University
political theorist George W. Casey who observed, ?We cannot come close
to understanding why our public education system is in such a wretched
state without examining John Dewey?s philosophy.?
