The Washington Post once used to be a paper of record. These days it’s a forum for assorted leftist nonsense.

Take the following claim that somehow appeared in the paper, “Abraham Lincoln: Karl Marx influenced his opposition to slavery.” The headline seems to have been changed to the slightly less ridiculous clickbaity, “You know who was into Karl Marx? No, not AOC. Abraham Lincoln.”

The Washington Post’s evidence for this mostly consists of Lincoln reading a newspaper that spoke approvingly of Marx.

“Marx was also friends with Charles A. Dana, an American socialist fluent in German who was the managing editor of the New York Tribune. In 1852, Dana hired Marx to be the newspaper’s British correspondent.

Over the next decade, Marx wrote nearly 500 articles for the paper. Many of his contributions became unsigned columns appearing on the front page as the publication’s official position. Marx later “borrowed liberally” from his New York Tribune writings for his book “Capital,” according to Nichols.

Like a lot of nascent Republicans, Lincoln was an “avid reader” of the Tribune. It’s nearly guaranteed that, in the 1850s, Lincoln was regularly reading Marx.”

Nearly guaranteed. 

This is the same media that insists on the right to fact check conservatives and ban them from social media. Meanwhile no fact checks of its bizarre nonsense are allowed.

I would point out that Hearst’s papers ran columns by Hitler. That must mean everyone who read Hearst papers was a Nazi. Including FDR.

Anyway, the only actual fact backing up its fake headlines that the Washington Post has is the time that the group Marx was part of wrote to Lincoln and got back a secondhand form letter.

In January 1865, Marx wrote to Lincoln on behalf of the International Workingmen’s Association, a group for socialists, communists, anarchists and trade unions, to “congratulate the American people upon your reelection.”..

A few weeks later, a reply came via Charles Francis Adams — son of former president John Quincy Adams, grandson of former president John Adams and U.S. ambassador to Britain under Lincoln.

He told Marx that Lincoln had received his message, and it was “accepted by him with a sincere and anxious desire that he may be able to prove himself not unworthy of the confidence which has been recently extended to him by his fellow citizens and by so many of the friends of humanity and progress throughout the world.”

Notably, Adams indicated Lincoln considered Marx and company “friends.”

Wow. 

This is like the time that Famous Person X autographed a copy of a book to me as, “Pal.” That must mean we’re pals.

Except that calling people “friends” then didn’t indicate you were actually friends. And the Adams message doesn’t even specifically call the group, “friends”.

It refers in general to congratulations from, “many of the friends of humanity and progress throughout the world.”

Also the actual letter was signed by about two dozen people. Marx’s signature only appears somewhere toward the end. The letter was relayed to the US Ambassador. Who responded with a formulaic response to a foreign organization, indicating friendliness, but no influence.

It really didn’t address the radical rants that filled the letter, and attempted to link the civil war to its own cause.

The Adams reply basically consisted of, Thanks for the good wishes. Also the United States is happy if people like what we’re doing, but we don’t want to intervene in other countries.

That’s basically a response by an ambassador calculated not to annoy any of the European governments, while avoiding giving offense to the deputation.

Was Lincoln aware of any of this? There’s no real evidence of that. He was busy trying to keep America together. I doubt he had much time for dealing with the flood of international messages coming in. Especially from some European leftist group.

To summarize, the Washington Post’s claim that Marx influenced Lincoln is false.

The only proven interaction between the two men consisted of a letter by Marx’s group passed on to the US Ambassador, who responded diplomatically. 

The Post’s claim that, “The two men were friendly and influenced each other” has absolutely no basis in fact.

And there are four pinnochios for the Post which keeps proving that democracy dies in lies and ignorance.