Steinbeck: “Socialism is Just Another Form of Religion and Thus Delusional.”

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On the 112th anniversary of his birth, the left prefers to remember John Steinbeck as the author of Grapes of Wrath, not the patriot and CIA agent.

In 2012, the Central Intelligence Agency released documents indicating that Steinbeck had offered to spy for his country. The author planned a tour of Europe in 1952 and asked the agency if it needed anyone on the ground.

At the time, America and the Soviet Union had locked horns in a global cold war. The US needed smart men and women to gain the upper hand, and Gen. Walter Smith, director of the CIA, apparently was eager to recruit the author.

“If during this [trip to Europe] I can be of any service whatever to yourself or to the Agency you direct, I shall be only too glad,” Steinbeck wrote to Smith in January 1952. “Again – I shall be pleased to be of service. The pace and method of my junket together with my intention of talking with great numbers of people of all classes may offer peculiar advantages.”

While we do not know what the two men discussed in Washington, author Brian Kannard believes that Steinbeck worked for the CIA through the 1950s and ’60s. Mr. Kannard collected his evidence through Freedom of Information Act requests to the agency, as well as conversations with people close to Steinbeck, such as his son Thomas.

It was in his support for the Vietnam War, that Steinbeck most offended the left.

In 1967, Steinbeck traveled to Vietnam to report on the war, and his sympathetic portrait of the U.S. Army prompted the New York Post to denounce him for betraying his liberal past.

To all of this, Steinbeck said simply, “Socialism is just another form of religion, and thus delusional.”

From Vietnam, Steinbeck wrote;

“These newly come harbingers of peace say we don’t belong in Vietnam and can’t win. Well we do belong there and we never wanted to win. But I believe we intend to make sure that Peking doesn’t win either. That’s why we belong there.”

Steinbeck’s letters from Vietnam were not propaganda, despite the left’s accusations, he wrote about the war as it was, but he did it from the perspective of a man who had been an icon of the left, but who nevertheless understood what the stakes were.

“This generation that thinks it’s so hip could be the real lost generation,” Steinbeck said in one of his final interviews. “The proof will be in what they produce and what kind of next generation they produce. We thought we had it bad in the thirties, but I’ve never seen a time when the country was so confused as to where it’s headed.”

“It is historically true that a nation whose people take out more than they put in will collapse and disappear.”

  • GSR

    Wow, I didn’t know this about him. Very interesting.

  • DogmaelJones1

    This is a surprise. I never liked his novels. Perhaps he was a better reporter (and spy). He’s also right: Socialism is first delusional, and minds taken with delusions and earnest wishing eventually turn socialism into a religion.

    • Daniel Greenfield

      I never liked his novels either

      • BS77

        I liked the first film version Of MIce and Men, with Lon Chaney Jr. ….

    • truebearing

      I read “East of Eden” in college and liked it well enough, but that was many years ago. I wasn’t all that fond of much else I read of his work. At least he had the clarity to see through socialism, eventually.

  • truebearing

    Fascinating bit of history — obscured as much as possible by Leftist professors, apparently. I don’t remember any mention of this, though Steinbeck was one of the focuses in at least one of my classes. His leftist perspective was duly, and frequently, noted by one of my professors, however.

    • Daniel Greenfield

      It’s not something they care to focus on for obvious reasons. Easier to stick to the class warfare and forget that mainstream liberals were for the Vietnam War.

  • darnellecheri

    I am always fascinated by the complexity of brilliant, creative intellectual minds. Both of Steinbeck’s sons were fighting in the Vietnam war. He also had family that was murdered in Jaffa in 1858 Ottoman Palestine. I believe he was mentored by Communists, yet came to some other conclusions about Socialism/Communism, maybe by witnessing it himself in the USSR, Eastern Europe, etc. Fascinating indeed.

    • Nabukuduriuzhur

      Nothing kills a love of Communism like seeing the horrible things it does.

      For example, if the Greens/ecos could see the ruin that communism did to the east bloc, china, vietnam, etc., they’d drop it like a hot potato. In 1990, a brown cloud of industrial smoke ran all the way from European Russia to Alaska. (Not surprisingly they called it “The Brown Cloud.) Lead, cadmium, and other metals contaminated thousands of square miles of farmland. In Czechoslovakia, carrots had to be tested for led before kids could eat them. The criminal mismanagement of nuclear reactor design ended up poisoning much of the Ukraine for 20 years. In Silesia, cabbage was contaminated by lead. In china today, it’s a rare stream that doesn’t have industrial waste.

      If the ecos were forced to live in, say, china, for a month, one wonders how many of them would still push mslaicoS.

    • carpe diem 36

      comes to show that real intelligence comes to the right conclusions when a person is mature.

  • SCREW SOCIALISM

    Socialism is the opium of atheists.

  • HenDanK

    Interesting. Sounds like he had an epiphany a la David Mamet. And like Mamet, his major works were written during his leftist days. I used to like watching “The Grapes of Wrath” with Henry Fonda as a college student, but lately, I’ve come to see it as a pro New Deal piece of propaganda. Still a well made movie.

  • objectivefactsmatter

    Empathy for the disadvantaged should not lead the intelligent person to socialism. It’s just that simple,

    • carpe diem 36

      what if they are not intelligent, which all of them are not???

  • Douglas Mayfield

    Lenin said ‘Tell any lie to gain power.’ Perhaps if you tell lies
    to others often enough, you start believing them yourself.

    • carpe diem 36

      isn’t Obama doing exactly that? he is a master liar and does it with a straight face but only the socialists believe his lies. they are a bigger danger to this country than even the Moslems. and they are infecting the young through indoctrination from a very young age. the parents are so ignorant, they were either indoctrinated at home or at universities. Russia’s failure at Socialism does not make for them a good lesson, they want to make their own failure in this once great Country. they do not deserve this country.

  • Lanna

    Socialism is a religion by itself…it uses the worship of blobal warming, evolution, and other unproven farces, also attacking legitimate religions that worship the one true God…Socialists goals are to destroy God’s people and his creation, they are worshipers of the angel of the abyss…Apollyon which in Greek and Hebrew mean Destroyer.

  • Nabukuduriuzhur

    I wrote a chapter in National Wave of Foolishness called ” 42.4
    Socialism is Not Compatible with Christianity”

    Some of the key points:

    —False gods are Not Compatible with Christianity
    The State becomes “god” in Socialism. It has the power of life and death, and is essentially to be worshipped. In Socialism, the State is all, no matter what branch of Socialism it is, be it the Motherland of Communism or the Fatherland of National Socialism, “One World” (one world government) of InterNational Socialism and Econazism, or some other name or nomenclature.”

    “—Non-Christian Religion is Never Compatible with Christianity
    It’s called “syncretism” to mix one religion with another. God forbids this in the Bible and several times lowered the boom on the Israelites for doing so. If one adopts Socialism, then one is adopting a religion and one can’t be a Christian. Christianity is exclusive— one can’t be half Christian and half some other
    religion.”

    ” —Stealing from Others is Forbidden by both Old and New Testaments. It is a Sin
    Socialism is predicated upon theft, (mugging and privateering), the forcible
    taking from those who have something.”

    “—Sloth is Also Forbidden
    The idea of taking the ability of those who can make a living away and giving it to those who won’t make a living is also forbidden. (Ever notice that it’s usually people who want something for nothing, who are lazy, who want Socialism in the West?)”

    “—Murder is Forbidden to Christians
    Murder is a standard practice in Socialism. Vladimir Ilych Lenin himself said “you don’t make an omlet without cracking a few eggs” in a pathetic attempt to justify mass murder. Stalin did more murder yet with practices like killing enemies, killing non-enemies, wars,and killing off the Kulaks, the farmers who fed the Soviet Union, keeping his nation on the brink of starvation and sometimes in starvation.

    Socialism slew more than a quarter billion during the 20th Century.”

    “—Lying is Forbidden to Christians
    Socialism functions by the lie. Lies told by government, lies told by people,
    and lies people tell to themselves. Socialism cannot survive as a government in an environment in which truth is commonplace. Their subjects in the East Bloc used to joke about their media. The Socialists in our government today, the Democrats— well, how many of them can’t even do a single line of a speech today without having at least one blatant falsehood?”

    “—Oppressing the Poor is Forbidden to Christians
    Socialism normally has two classes: the very rich and the dirt poor. The dirt
    poor have no rights, not even the right to live. Think about that last for a moment.”

    “—Racism and Legally-Enforced Social Classes are Not Compatible with
    Christianity
    Socialism makes certain classes “elite” and beyond the law, such as today’s Federal “protected classes” as they are called under Federal Law.

    “There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither bond nor free, there is
    neither male nor female: for ye are all one in Christ Jesus.”
    —Galatians 3:28 (KJV)””