Background:
In 1921, Walter Duranty -a New York Times reporter – moved to the Soviet Union.
While there he “documented” the glorious Soviet revolution, sending back propaganda pieces to dupe the idiotic American proles who were stupid enough to trust him.
His propaganda pieces painted glowing pictures of what life was like under a brutal progressive dictatorship, and implicitly called for the United States government to behave more like the Soviet government.
He did this for 12 years.
Among his many egregious crimes was lying about the deliberately engineered mass starvation (one Holocaust among many under the progressives; this one killed six million people: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holodomor).
In 1932 the Pulitzer committee rewarded Duranty with an award for his work.
At the time, the evidence was ample that the deliberate murder of an entire nation’s worth of individuals was underway, but some still tried to obfuscate it.
Sixty years later, with the collapse of the Soviet Union, there was no ignoring the crime, and no ignoring Duranty’s complicity.
In Nov 21, 2003 the Pulitzer committee bowed to pressure and investigated Duranty’s award. After six months of hard thinking they decided:
In its review of the 13 articles, the Board determined that Mr. Duranty’s 1931 work, measured by today’s standards for foreign reporting, falls seriously short. In that regard, the Board’s view is similar to that of The New York Times itself and of some scholars who have examined his 1931 reports. However, the board concluded that there was not clear and convincing evidence of deliberate deception, the relevant standard in this case. Revoking a prize 71 years after it was awarded under different circumstances, when all principals are dead and unable to respond, would be a momentous step and therefore would have to rise to that threshold.
I note that “all are dead” 71 years later…but most were dead even as Duranty wrote. Those who were not dead were starving, or killing and eating their beloved dogs and cats…or killing and eating their own children… in order to survive.
…and Duranty covered that up, because the goal (of enslaving the world’s entire population under a progressive dictatorship) was just.
Remember and remember well: this is the horror that the West fought against in the Cold War, and this is the horror that the original Velvet Revolution rebelled against.
