America’s First Openly Marxist Big City Mayor

By: Cliff Kincaid  –  Accuracy in Media

If you think Barack Obama has gotten a free ride from the press, consider the case of Bill de Blasio.

The New York Post revealed at the last minute that the Marxist frontrunner for mayor of New York City visited Communist Russia in 1983. But the paper’s bizarre cover headline, “Back in the USSR,” complete with a hammer-and-sickle, seemed to make a mockery of the discovery.

International communism, which claimed more than 100 million lives, is not a laughing matter, nor just the subject of a 1968 song by the Beatles.

Described by CNN as the “unabashed liberal,” de Blasio is actually to the left of Barack Obama, in the sense that de Blasio didn’t disavow his communist background once it came to light. At least Obama tried to cover up his ties to communist Frank Marshall Davis.

De Blasio had scrubbed the Marxist connections from his campaign website, an omission that momentarily captured the attention of The New York Times. But once these connections and controversies came to light, he embraced his sordid history. He still embraces liberation theology and his work for the communist Sandinistas in Nicaragua.

Nobody believed the purpose of his “honeymoon” to Cuba was actually a honeymoon, but the media didn’t even bother to check into how he made the illegal trip and whether the FBI had developed a file on the candidate.

De Blasio was so open about his Marxism that on Sunday, he campaigned with Harry Belafonte, who during the Cold War sang at a “Concert for Peace” in communist East Germany, where he attacked President Reagan’s anti-communist foreign policy. A long-time supporter of the Castro dictatorship, Belafonte was also an ally of the late Venezuelan Marxist ruler Hugo Chavez.

Trevor Loudon, author of THE ENEMIES WITHIN (Kindle), has commented on de Blasio’s commitment to “democratic socialism” and the significance of his work for David Dinkins, the former New York City mayor who was closely associated with the Democratic Socialists of America. Dinkins was associated with high crime rates and out-of-control spending.

Joe Connor, a Tea Party activist whose father was murdered by the FALN Puerto Rican terrorist group, was also concerned about de Blasio’s work for Hillary Clinton.

He pointed out that during a congressional recess in 1999 when de Blasio was serving as Hillary Clinton’s campaign manager for her New York Senate run, President Clinton, with a powerful push from then Deputy Attorney General Eric Holder, offered executive clemency to 16 FALN terrorists.

Connor says the Clintons and Holder thought that since Congress was on recess, no one was paying attention or would even remember the FALN. They were wrong.

He says, “While the Clintons hid behind executive privilege and never admitted the reason for the offers, our family saw the clemencies for what they were: craven politics. The Clintons were using our father’s life and death for cheap political gain. They thought releasing Puerto Rican terrorists would help secure the Hispanic vote for Hillary Clinton’s run for New York senator.”

At an October 24 news conference in New York City, Connor said, “Bill de Blasio ran Hillary Clinton’s campaign. What did de Blasio know about the clemencies and when did he know it?”

It is a tragedy that the New York media took no interest in getting answers to these questions. One reporter, Jennifer Fermino of the New York Daily News, made Pamela Geller the villain when she threatened to run “Stop Red Bill” advertisements. Geller then asked, “How much is the de Blasio campaign paying her [Fermino] to run interference for them?”

But one can be sure that members of the New York City Police Department have been paying attention and take the warnings about de Blasio seriously. The “thin blue line” is what separates this security risk as mayor from the public. Perhaps they know more about de Blasio then even the public has come to appreciate.

For starters, de Blasio has promised to fire the tough Police Commissioner, Ray Kelly, and he can be expected to follow through on his promise.

But another of de Blasio’s promises to the criminals lobby—to discontinue the stop, question and frisk policy of preventing crime—is in doubt. Just a few days before the election, a federal court overturned a liberal judge’s campaign to gut the effective crime-reducing practice. This means de Blasio may have to go to court on behalf of the anti-police groups that have been funded by one of his biggest benefactors, billionaire hedge fund operator George Soros.

De Blasio can be expected to side with Soros and his “progressive base,” rather than the police.

De Blasio can also do a lot of damage in the area of surveillance of potential Muslim terrorists. He made a campaign promise to a Muslim group that he would stop the practice of sending informants into mosques and Muslim student organizations.

Going further, if he moves to dismantle the NYPD’s counter-terrorism programs, the city and nation could suffer through another 9/11.

Pamela Geller, a New Yorker, comments that the kind of journalism that we saw in the mayoral contest “is not just irresponsible; it endangers us all.”

Cliff Kincaid is the Director of the AIM Center for Investigative Journalism and can be contacted at cliff.kincaid@aim.org. View the complete archives from Cliff Kincaid.