Reparations: The Bigger Picture and Solution to Enhancing the Conservative Movement By Mimi Johnson

In the last decade, we have seen a huge movement involving genealogy and ancestry. Scientists are slowly perfecting ways to identify where we all come from around the globe, catapulted specifically by the Mormon Church and their massive database of gathered DNA.  Whether or not you agree with these at home kits or not, they have done tremendous good in reuniting families and giving a new found life to millions of people. 

Many feel that the Mormons are harvesting DNA from unsuspectingly naïve individuals, for nefarious uses, and others feel that they are working directly with the government in a way to garner any and all information on citizens.  The truth of the matter is that your DNA is everywhere, in public, at home, at work, you can’t escape shedding it wherever you inhabit. Your smart phones and computers pose the ultimate risk in having your identity compromised. 

There is an excellent show on PBS, called “Finding your Roots,” hosted by a Harvard Professor named Louis Gates Jr, nicknamed “Skip,” where he brings on various celebrities, most of which are black Americans with a small white American demographic, to trace their ancestries and to discuss the urban legends associated with their patronage.  It is no secret that black Americans cannot trace their lineage as readily and easily as white Americans, but this program can and has eliminated a lot of biased assumptions in the black community. 

Most black families assume that they have Native American blood to explain different hair texture or having a lighter complexion than others, or that their ancestors were raped by their white slave owners, therefore tainting their bloodline, resulting in a multitude of differences in skin color, hair texture, and facial features within the black race. 

In some instances, their assumptions are absolutely true, but Louis Gates Jr. was able to show most black Americans that not only was there not any Native American in their lineage, but that the vast majority of them were also descendants of free men and women, never having been enslaved. 

This revelation shook their being and there was a look of confusion on their faces as he explained, via documents and pictures, who their ancestors were, their occupations, and from where they originated.  They were so indoctrinated into believing that each person of black skin color was a victim, enslaved, tortured, or mistreated by white Europeans and Americans, that even when shown evidence, most were skeptical. 

Dr. Gates is not attempting to “whitewash” anyone’s struggles, but moreover educate masses with the truth, because, after all, it shall set us free.  Misdirected anger and false narratives are a disease in our current society, and I appreciate a program such as his, that shows the truth about our collective history. 

Many assumed that their great grandmothers and beyond were forced to lay with white men, thus creating mulatto children, but in many cases, they were ahead of their time and in loving, interracial relationships.

I must admit that those revelations surprised me as well, for I had always been taught that white southern men in the 18^th-19^th centuries were predators who viewed black women and men only as property.  Many of his guests sat there in disbelief, and even challenged his findings to ensure it was accurate.  It must be exceedingly difficult to accept a new truth, when you have been fed a specific narrative your entire life - it takes some adjustment. 

Conservatives are not thinking outside of the box when it comes to reparations.  My theory is that once people begin delving into their genealogy, there may not be as many reparations to dispense as the democrats claim.  As Dr. Gates has proven, facts matter. 

Legislation could be written including that any American applying for reparations must prove beyond a shadow of a doubt that in fact they are descendants of slaves.  Once people have assessed their lineage, this starts an entirely new dialogue and gives conservatives solid talking points.

 

I am not suggesting that there would not be many people compensated, but the numbers would be drastically lower than initially reported. I think democrats are analogous to hormonally raged teenagers who think their parents are stupid and uncool, so they must embarrass them, defy them, and prove them wrong at all costs.  The best parenting method is to let them make their own mistakes, suffer the consequences, educate, and move forward. Over time, the mistakes turn into wisdom. Conservatives should take a page out of Trump’s book and ask themselves “ at this point, what do we have to lose?”

America’s Marxist Fever

Communist dictators who killed millions

of their innocent citizens

America is burning with repulsive Marxist fever which has reached a scorching level. Like sharks circling mad in bloody waters, the mainstream media, academia, the Democrat Party, and its American supporters are engulfed by Marxist fever and stirred into a daily frenzy devoid of logic and truth, ready to impeach our president and deport anybody who is not a Democrat Socialist.

The social/racial justice warrior activists are determined to replace the “evil capitalism” they suddenly detest and reject, with “equitable, classless, non-racist, and socially just socialism/communism.” They have no idea what socialism and communism really are but that is of no consequence - they just want their promised “free stuff.”

Community organizers and agitators from the media, Hollywood, academia, Democrat Socialist and Communist Congresspeople, and the Communist Party USA are telling them that in Marxist utopia they will never have to lift another finger to provide for themselves, the government will do it for them. It sounds intoxicating and enticing to useful idiots and low information voters - except that it is one big, fat lie.

Some Americans have always been in love with Bolshevism and Communism, stemming from their ignorance, naivete, and gullibility. Past and present Americans have chosen to visit Cuba and Russia with a large entourage or to move permanently to the former Soviet Union, praising their socialist/communist blissful and superior way of life.

Aside from Democrat presidential candidate Bernie Sanders, who chose to honeymoon in the former Soviet Union and praised its clean metro and cheap concert tickets (government subsidized), many groups of Americans moved to Stalin’s “paradise” after the Russian Revolution. None were as famous as the Finnish Americans.

The New York Times wrote on August 24, 1931 that “6,000 Americans will work in Russia;” Peter Filene wrote about “Americans and the Soviet Experiment, 1917-1933;” and Andrea Graziosi wrote about “Foreign Workers in Soviet Russia, 1920-1940: Their Experience and Their Legacy.”

Who were these idealistic Americans who chose to move to the former Soviet Union despite warnings from our government to stay away from the scourge called Bolshevism?

The first group, according to Susan Jacoby and Yelena Khanga, writing in Soul to soul: A Black Russian American family, was comprised of black Americans, “communists and non-communists, [who] were recruited as agricultural experts to Central Asia to aid in cotton production.”

Another group was comprised of foreigners who were recruited as skilled workers and experts in Ukraine and Ural Mountains (Kharkov, Cheliabinsk, Mangitogorsk, Kuznetsk) to work on large industrial construction projects. John Scott wrote about this experience in his book, Behind the Urals: An American in Russia’s City of Steel.

Jewish Americans migrated to Eastern Siberia to the Jewish Autonomous Region of Birobidzhan created in 1931 by Stalin for them. The area was located just north of Manchuria. Robert Weinberg described its establishment and history in his book, Stalin’s Forgotten Zion: Birobidzhan and the Making of a Soviet Jewish Homeland: An Illustrated History, 1928-1996.

The fourth group, Finnish Americans, encompassed, along with Finnish Canadians, 25 percent of the foreign labor force in Karelia, a region in northwest Russia which bordered Finland. Lawrence and Sylvia Hokkanen described them in Karelia: A Finnish American Couple in Stalin’s Russia.

According to Emily Weidenhamer, writing on December 12, 2005 in geohistory. today, these Americans chose to go to the Soviet Union because of the labor situation in America following the Great Depression. Many were promised employment in the Soviet Union and a better life and success. https://geohistory.today/finnish-americans-ussr-disillusionment/

But the Finnish Americans were already wealthy, they did not leave for economic reasons. They owned “homes, cars, farm equipment, and the like. They paid their own way to the Soviet Union, and they emigrated with entire families.” It is safe to speculate that they were motivated by their political beliefs.

Mark Stodghill quoted Mayme Sevander in “Harsh Lessons in Idealism,” who said, “We were not traitors. It must be understood that we were the children of idealists. Their idealism was worded in communist ideals – that there should be equality for all.” (Duluth News Tribune, Dec. 15, 1996, p. 1E)

Emily Weidenhamer wrote that “The Finnish American community in the United States was often politically radical, heavily influenced by left-wing socialist and communist movements. This trend was rooted, in part, in the Finnish national awakening,” an outlet for the Finnish immigrants who labored in lumber camps and mines under horrible working conditions. The anger that they and other foreign immigrants had to endure such unfair working conditions expressed itself in membership in radical political movements, labor unions, socialism, and communism. (Eugene Van Cleef, The Finn in America, pp. 28-29)

According to Carl Ross, the non-political Finns, conservative members of the Lutheran Church, who disliked the radical movement which tainted all Finns, were alleged to have petitioned the immigration officials to deny Finnish socialists’ entrance to the United States.

Mayme Sevander’s father is alleged to have said to potential Finnish recruits:

“Karelia… needs strong workers who know how to chop trees and dig ore and build houses and grow food. Isn’t that what we Finns have been doing in the United States for the past thirty years? And wouldn’t it be wonderful to do that same work in a country that needs you, a country where there is no ruling class, no rich industrialists or kings or czars to tell you what to do? Just workers toiling together for the common good?” (Mayme Sevander, They Took My Father, p. 19)

As it turned out, the Finns discovered rather quickly that there were two classes, the proletariat and the communist apparatchiks, there was a ruler, Stalin and the Communist Party’s Politburo, and the common good was not common, it was the good of the Communist Party elites. And the proletariat had to toil hard for equal and paltry wages.

The departing Finns who caught the “Karelian fever” appealed to “comrades” left behind to rally around communists in America:

“We the undersigned, leaving behind this country of capitalistic exploitations, are headed for the Soviet Union where the working class is in power and where it is building a socialistic society. We appeal to you, comrades, who are staying behind, to rally round communist slogans, to work efficiently to overthrow capitalism and create the foundation of a Republic of Labor.”

As many who have experienced communism, we can only imagine what had happened to the foreigners who chose to move to and stay in the Soviet Union. They experienced the human cost of Stalin’s forced collectivization and pogrom against the kulaks, peasants who owned their farm and could hire labor.

Kaarlo Tuomi wrote:

“All the stations were packed with hordes of exiled peasants from the steppes of Russia and Ukraine… They were literally dying of starvation before our eyes; rags hung on one, and the silent entreaty of the children was unbearable as they went back and forth through the train begging for bread… ‘You can’t make an omelet without breaking some eggs,’ Lenin once quipped, and we accepted this grimly. But it was easier to joke about broken eggs than to see broken people and hear their pitiful cries.” (quoted by Widenhamer from Kaarlo Tuomi, pp. 121-122)

The Finns eventually fell victims to Soviet xenophobia and forced Russification, many being tricked into changing their citizenship. A large portion disappeared in gulags and other prisons, never to be seen again. Some were lucky and were able to reclaim their American citizenship and return to the safety of the capitalist U.S.

Anything Finnish was outlawed eventually by the Soviets. Arrests and purges followed in order to force the Finnish group to comply with Stalinism. If both parents were arrested, younger children were placed in orphanages and the “children lost their ethnic identity.”

A study published in Finland in 1934 described that the Finns had been so deceived by the Soviet utopia that “even the most red-hot communists have turned snowy white in their political opinions in a very brief period.”

Michael Gelb wrote in 1993 Karelian Fever: The Finnish Immigrant Community During Stalin’s Purges that “virtually all those who could leave Karelia did.”

After the communist Finns realized what Soviet life was really like, how dreadful and dreary, many returned to the capitalist America. Perhaps more Finns would have gone back but Russian authorities held their Soviet passports and did not allow them to go back to the United States.

Under communism, if one was issued a passport and visa for a specific trip, once they returned, if they were not able or smart enough to defect to the West, they had to surrender the passport to the police. A trip and the visa had to be approved months prior to departure and most of the time the petitions were denied.

The excited Finnish communists who left capitalism in America in order to build socialism in the Soviet Union quickly learned that it was a system based on fear and imprisonment of body, mind, and soul.

Mayme Sevander was unable to suitably describe the deep-seated fear but she admitted that “Russians’ lives have been ruled by fear since the days of Ivan the Terrible. As adopted Russians, we American Finns shared that fear.”

Determined to repeat disastrous Marxist history, today’s American communists and other low information agitators, activists, and voters, who plan to replace capitalism with socialism, are carrying the Bolshevik torch and the same Karelian communist fever from the turn of the 20^th century.