The Naked Communist is your eye-opening, easy-to-read, guide to Communism — how it started, why it spread, and what it’s done and is still doing to the world today.
BY THE INTERNATIONAL CHRONICLES
The Naked Communist is a 1958 anti-communist book by American faith-based political theorist W. Cleon Skousen, a former FBI employee. The main subject of the book is an alleged communist plot to overcome and control all of the world’s governments through the implementation of social progressivism and by undermining American foreign policy through the promotion of internationalism and pacifism.
Soon after its quiet release during the height of the Red Scare in 1958, The Naked Communist exploded in popularity, selling almost two million copies to date and finding its way into the libraries of the CIA, the FBI, the White House, and homes all across the United States. From the tragic falls of China, Korea, Russia, and the UN, to the fascinating histories of Alger Hiss, Whittaker Chambers, Elizabeth Bentley, and General MacArthur, The Naked Communist lays out the entire graphic story of communism, its past, present, and future.
After searching unsuccessfully for concise literature on the communist threat, W. Cleon Skousen saw the urgent need for a comprehensive book that could guide the American conversation. So he distilled his FBI experience, decades of research, and more than one hundred communist books and treatises into one clarifying, readable volume that became a touchstone of American values. The text draws a detailed picture of the communist as he sees himself: stripped of propaganda and pretense. Readers gain a unique insight into the inner workings of communism—its appeal, its history, its basic and unchanging concepts, and even its secret timetable of conquest.
What do the Communists want?
“There is little difference between Socialism and Communism. Both control resources without private enterprise. In both, the government has the first and last say on everything.”
– Barack Obama
Those of us who lived through the horrors of the Cold War, ran for cover under our desks when the air raid sirens were tested, and witnessed Cubans on makeshift rafts navigating the Florida Straits escaping to the U.S. can’t fathom why anyone would choose socialism over capitalism?
We were reminded daily of the evils of communism and socialism by parents, teachers, priests, ministers, and rabbis. TV reporters fed us a constant diet of stories about the struggles and hardships behind the Iron Curtain. Every day our newspapers would show graphic images and report on the tragedies and cruelty that those living within the Eastern Bloc suffered at the hands of despotic leaders. We feared this would happen to us if we did not vigilantly defend our liberty.
Marxist Vladimir Lenin knew communism would be a tough sell so he turned to socialism to achieve communism. By convincing the gullible and jaundiced they’d collectively control all economic and social resources, he created a new brand of communism – Leninism. In his “State and Revolution”, he wrote “Socialism is just the lower phase of Communism used to facilitate true Communist purity, which is its highest phase. Karl Marx believed socialism was the easiest road to pure communism.”
In the early 1960s during the height of the Red Scare, political theorist Cleon Skousen released his shocking book, “The Naked Communist.” It became an immediate best-seller around the globe. It was even used as a reference book for the CIA, the FBI, and the White House. It found its way into homes throughout the U.S. and overseas. It was excerpted and translated into seven languages.
Cleon Skousen was an FBI agent and an adviser to presidents and universities about the dangers of Communist infiltration into our institutions. He lectured in every state in North America and over 60 countries. He was a scholar of law and history and specialized in the U.S. Constitution. In his book, he reveals how communists pacifically take control of a nation with progressive engineering.
“Communists possess the fortitude and knowledge to slowly reengineer society.”
– Cleon Skousen
Critics considered Skousen a radical whose theories were extreme since he used analogies and hypotheticals to exemplify how communists and socialists work. Yet this was necessary at a time when few Americans realized how they had infiltrated our nation. He illustrates how they maneuver their way into society through the youth of a nation with socialism, which is the precursor to communism. When society one day realizes “how it is now”, is not “how it was” back then, and how it “will be in the future” there is no turning back because their youth will now consider totalitarianism the status quo.
His insightful rendering unveils the deceptive nature of communism. It contains a quintessence of over a hundred treatises on socialism and communism written by Marx, Lenin, and other socialists. He details how communists and socialists strategically infiltrate an existing political party to achieve their objectives and spread propaganda through spoon-fed information to the media. This was the first time anyone defined how people in capitalist nations are persuaded to choose communism or socialism at the expense of their liberty and freedom.
Skousen shocked America and the rest of the free world, pointing out how easily this is done while few people are aware it is happening to them.
“We must replace individualism with collectivism without society knowing about it.”
– Vladimir Lenin
The book depicts the geopolitical strategy of the Marxist–Leninists’ plans to take control of all governments outside of the Communist Bloc. With the Cold War raging, this book filled an urgent need to explain modern totalitarianism. People learned the tactics communists and socialists use in political parties, unions, and patriotic organizations to gain political and social influence in society. They assume key leadership roles and slowly introduce anti-democratic dogma and leftist ideology.
Skousen claimed history is proof communists and socialists stick to their tried and true basic and successful tactics within set time-tables to reach their goals. He pointed out that they had already invaded mainstream media and were weakening the West with passive acceptance of socialism and communism. A key stratagem is to destroy the family to impair the bonding unity that creates and molds character and morality. This strategy also diminishes interest in Judeo-Christian religions.
His penetrating look into the geopolitical future contained 45 communist goals to turn capitalism into a communist-socialist state. One can safely say that 40 of them have been achieved in America under the guise of liberalism. Jimmy Carter handed the Communists the education lever when he created the Department of Education in 1979. Now progressives use public schools to indoctrinate American youth with Common Core teaching materials.
“It is essential that we educate the educator so we control how they educate others.”
– Karl Marx
Under Barack Obama’s extensive government social engineering, (“Obamacare”) federalists control healthcare and support a large underclass of Americans. Parents surrendered their offspring to government-approved pre-K education. This dramatically affected family bonding and moral development in America’s youth. It limited the augmentation of their Judeo-Christian faith education at home and in schools. As a result of this, fewer young Americans attend weekly family church services than at any time in history.
Cleon Skousen wrote, “A communist’s most vital tool is the media.” Socialists invaded the newsrooms during the Cold War to spread acceptance of communism and have moved public opinion to the left since. They skew news on elections to elect leftists and excoriate conservative politicians. They pre-sold Barack Obama (and are doing the same now with Kamala Harris) and facilitated his re-engineering of America’s socio-economic architecture.
They did everything in their power to destroy the presidency of Donald Trump.
Whether Cleon Skousen was an insightful political analyst or psychic clairvoyant, his message was perspicacious. He critiqued the formula communists and socialists use to take control of a nation. It’s daunting to see how many of their goals are etched in the U.S.A. today.
Goal 15 was to “Capture a political party.” We need not look any further than the presidencies of Barack Obama or Joe Biden and the rise of socialism within the Democratic Party today to validate Cleon Skousen’s warnings 65 years ago. He predicted this would happen in America if the people fell asleep at the wheel as guardians of democracy.
Marx told us, “Theory is capable of gripping the masses as soon as it demonstrates ad hominem, and it demonstrates ad hominem as soon as it becomes radical.” This is what the liberal-controlled media has done to our political environment, and we have bought into this without cognition. We’ve taken their bait, hook, line, and sinker. And now they are ready to finish the job next election.
“We cannot expect the Americans to jump from capitalism to communism, but we can feed them small doses of socialism until they awake to find they have true communism.”
– Nikita Khrushchev
The
It was on Jan. 10, 1963, that Congressman Albert S. Herlong. Jr. from Florida read the list of 45 Communist goals for America into the Congressional Record. The purpose of his reading this was to gain insight into liberal elite ideas and strategies for America that sound familiar today. *The list is attributed to Cleon Skousen, researcher and author of “The Naked Communist.”
Here was (is) the list: (1958 version)
1. U.S. should accept coexistence as the only alternative to atomic war.2. U.S. should be willing to capitulate in preference to engaging in atomic war.
These encapsulate the Kennan Doctrine, which advocated for the “containment” of communism. Establishment figures supporting the amoral containment policy at least implicitly worked with the Communists in scaring the wits out of the American people concerning atomic war.
President Ronald Reagan undid the doctrine when he took an aggressive stand against the Evil Empire by backing freedom fighters from around the world that were struggling against the left-wing communist jackboot. As a result, the Soviet Union and its satellites imploded, a considerable and unexpected setback to the international Communist edifice.
3. Develop the illusion that total disarmament by the U.S. would be a demonstration of “moral strength.”
The nuclear freeze advocates supported a freeze on all defensive and offensive tactical nuclear weaponry.
4. Permit free trade between all nations regardless of Communist affiliation and regardless of whether or not items could be used for war.
Today, there are calls to end the embargo on the slave island of Cuba, there were complaints about the embargo against Iraq, and the U.S., not Saddam Hussein, was blamed for the suffering of the Iraqi people. Would they have advocated for free trade with Hitler and his National Socialist regime? Before the Soviets’ mutual peace pact with Germany prior to WWII, yes… after Hitler broke the pact, no.
5. Extend long-term loans to Russia and Soviet satellites.
6. Provide American aid to all nations regardless of Communist domination.
Such aid and trade over decades contributed greatly to the left-wing communist liquidation of over 100 million people worldwide, according to the well-documented “Black Book of Communism.”
This aid and trade marks a shameful chapter in American history. Without the aid and trade, the left-wing international communist behemoth would have imploded on its own rot a lot sooner and umpteen millions would have been saved from poverty, misery, starvation and death.
7. Grant recognition of Red China and admission of Red China to the U.N.
Not only did President Jimmy Carter fulfill this goal but he also betrayed America’s allies in Nicaragua, El Salvador, Iran, Afghanistan, Angola and elsewhere.
8. Set up East and West Germany as separate states in spite of Khrushchev’s promise in 1955 to settle the Germany question by free elections under supervision of the U.N.
9. Prolong the conferences to ban atomic tests because the U.S. had agreed to suspend tests as long as negotiations are in progress.
10. Allow all Soviet satellites individual representation in the U.N.
11. Promote the U.N. as the only hope for mankind. If its charter is rewritten, demand that it be set up as a one-world government with its own independent armed forces.
There are still American intellectuals, and elected members of Congress, who dream of an eventual one world government and who view the U.N., founded by communists such as Alger Hiss, the first secretary-general, as the instrument to bring this about. World government was also the dream of Adolf Hitler and J.V. Stalin. World government was the dream of Osama bin Laden and the 9/11 hijackers. Add Klaus Schwab to the list now.
12. Resist any attempt to outlaw the Communist Party.
13. Do away with loyalty oaths.
14. Continue giving Russia access to the U.S. Patent Office.
While the idea of banning any political party runs contrary to notions of American freedom and liberty, notions that are the exact opposite of those held by the left-wing communists themselves, nevertheless these goals sought to undermine the constitutional obligation of Congress to investigate subversion.
15. Capture one or both of the political parties in the U.S.
In his book “Reagan’s War,” Peter Schweizer demonstrates the astonishing degree to which communists and communist sympathizers have penetrated the American Democratic Party.
16. Use technical decisions of the courts to weaken basic American institutions, by claiming their activities violate civil rights.
This strategy goes back to the founding of the American Civil Liberties Union by Fabian Socialists Roger Baldwin and John Dewey and Communists William Z. Foster and Elizabeth Gurley Flynn among others.
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.
18. Gain control of all student newspapers.
19. Use student riots to foment public protests against programs or organizations that are under Communist attack.
The success of these goals, from a communist perspective, is obvious. Is there any doubt this is so?
20. Infiltrate the press. Get control of book review assignments, editorial writing, policy-making positions.
21. Gain control of key positions in the Media, Radio, and Motion Pictures.
22. Continue discrediting Western culture by degrading all form of artistic expression. Communist cells are told to “eliminate all traditional sculpture from parks and buildings,” substituting shapeless, awkward and meaningless forms.
23. Control art critics and directors of art museums.
24.Eliminate all laws governing obscenity by calling them “censorship” and a violation of free speech and free press.
25. Break down cultural standards of morality by promoting pornography and obscenity in Books, Magazines, Motion Pictures, Radio, and Television.
26. Present homosexuality, degeneracy, and promiscuity as “normal, natural and healthy.”
This is the Gramscian agenda of the “long march through the institutions” spelled out explicitly: gradual takeover of the “means of communication” and then using those vehicles to debauch the culture and weaken the will of the individual to resist.
Today those few who still have the courage to advocate public morality are denounced and viciously attacked.
27. Infiltrate the churches and replace revealed religion with “social” religion. Discredit the Bible and emphasize the need for intellectual maturity, which does not need a “religious crutch.”
This has been largely accomplished through the communist infiltration of the National Council of Churches, Conservative and Reform Judaism, and the Catholic seminaries throughout the West.
28. Eliminate prayer or any phase of religious expression in the schools on the grounds that it violates the principle of “separation of church and state”.
Replacing belief in the creator with belief in the earthly man-controlled State is the ultimate objective.
29. Discredit the American Constitution by calling it inadequate, old fashioned, out of step with modern needs, a hindrance to cooperation between nations on a worldwide basis.
Replace a nation of “laws, not men” with royal decree emanating from appointed judges and executive orders. Replace elected officials with bureaucrats.
30. Discredit the American Founding Fathers. Present them as selfish, racist, exploitative aristocrats who had no concern for the “common man.”
31. Belittle all forms of Western culture and discourage the teaching of Western history on the ground that it was only a minor part of “the big picture.” Give more emphasis to an “alternative” history since the Communists took over the education field.
Obliterating the West’s past, with its antecedents in principles of freedom, liberty and private ownership is a major goal of the Communists then and now.
32. Support any Socialist movement to give centralized control over any part of the culture – education, social agencies, welfare programs, mental health clinics, etc.
Public ownership of the bureaucracy and means of production is the core principle of totalitarianism.
33. Eliminate all laws or procedures which interfere with the operation of the Communist apparatus.
34. Eliminate the House Committee on Un-American Activities.
35. Discredit and eventually dismantle the FBI.
36. Infiltrate and gain control of all the unions.
37. Infiltrate and gain control of big business.
38. Transfer some of the powers of arrest from the police to social agencies. Treat all behavioral problems as psychiatric disorders which no one but psychiatrists can understand or treat.
39. Dominate the psychiatric profession and use mental health laws as a means of gaining coercive control over those who oppose communist goals.
Psychiatry remains a bulwark of the communist agenda of fostering self-criticism and docility.
40. Discredit the family as an institution. Encourage promiscuity and easy divorce. The sovereign family is the single most powerful obstacle to authoritarian control.
41. Emphasize the need to raise children away from the negative influence of parents. Attribute prejudices, mental blocks and retarding of children to suppressive influence of parents.
42. Create the impression that violence and insurrection are legitimate aspects of the Western tradition; that students and special interest groups should rise up and make a “united force” to solve economic, political or social problems. This promotes the dialectical fostering of group consciousness and conflict, which furthers the interests of authoritarianism.
43. Overthrow all colonial governments before native populations are ready for self-government.
44. Internationalize the Panama Canal.
45. Give the World Court jurisdiction over domestic problems. Give the World Court jurisdiction over nations and individuals alike.
This would mark a complete subversion of America’s Constitution and an end to representative sovereign government – and Western Civilization – as we know it, which is the whole idea.