TV Takes Up Soviet Sleeper Cells in the United States: FX’s New Series The Americans
Finally, a word about how the Left sees the series. In The Nation, historian Jon Wiener insists that,
The best thing about The Americans, the new spy show on FX, is that the Soviet spies are not Julius and Ethel Rosenberg. They are a different married couple — Russians, sent by the KGB from Moscow to Washington, DC. The show begins shortly after Reagan takes office.
Wiener asks why there isn’t a drama about American spies in Moscow, and answers his own question: there really were not any, especially during World War II, when Moscow infiltrated our own government and we did nothing to spy against the Soviets. He does not know, evidently, that there were American spies in Russia at the time, but they were Americans who spied for the Soviets and defected to Russia, namely Joel Barr and Alfred Sarant. As Steven Usdin revealed in his excellent book about them, the two used their expertise to set up the Soviet version of Silicon Valley and helped build up the Soviet military establishment.
Wiener also writes that “Ron Radosh, David Horowitz and Co., [evidently we are now a firm] will be unhappy with this show.” He never thought of e-mailing me or picking up the phone before writing those words. As he now knows, I like the program a lot, although dramatically, it does not come near to Homeland or MI-5 in quality. He adds that we will not like it “because the spies in question are not American communists,” and to be snide, also writes that we “are unhappy about so many things.”
Well, there are things to be unhappy about, and much to be pleased with and very happy about. That is the human condition, and will be even if the socialism Wiener believes in were ever to be created. Actually, if that was to be built, there would be a lot to be unhappy about, and even Jon Wiener would quickly learn that. So, maybe in writing the TV series, Mr. Weisberg and his team have socialist Jon Wiener as the perfect audience — a man who hopes the Soviets will triumph in TV land in a way they never did in real life
Thank God it’s only television we’re talking about!
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Cross-posted at PJ Lifestyle
Just when I thought things couldn’t get worse, along you come to point out a new outrage. It’s your calling, and we’re grateful for it. Joe Weisberg’s comments about The Americans series tell one a lot about the zeitgeist. Who’s afraid of socialism? Neither Hollywood or the Progressives, of course: they hunger for it. The rest of us poor schlubs don’t seen to know enough about it to find out. Compared to reality as the Obama administration describes it to us, the Cold War was silly, WWII a folly committed by beings not-so-perfect as we are. If you recommend The Americans series, allow me to recommend Portlandia (IFC, whatever cable network that is), which parodies those places in the U.S. where nothing after 1975 really happened. Very entertaining, and you know its heart in close to some right place by the fact that Roseanne Barr becomes temporary mayor and is run out for suggesting that these Oregonians be normal urbanites. Another recommendation: “How to Be Danish” by Brit Patrick Kingsley, wherein the Danes (although for different reasons) are portrayed as crazy as the Portlanders. Reading it, I couldn’t help wishing that the Danes had had to suffer through Soviet occupation. The Balts, who did, have a much firmer grasp on history and reality than those purportedly happiest people in the world, the Danes. Ron, keep you eye out for the next step in television outrageousness: The Americans with the “c” a star and crescent.
I have only seen the trailers. will not watch show.
Question…who are the sponsors? I will not buy their products.
ta
So it looks as if the Soviets won the hearts and minds of many New Leftists. In the same way, the recent movie LINCOLN may win hearts and minds for a peaceful resolution of all our irreconcilable conflicts. I suggested here that the South and/or the conciliationists of the North triumphed in historical memory of the American Civil War. See http://clarespark.com/2013/02/09/lincoln-the-movie-as-propaganda/.
“Thank God it’s only television we’re talking about”
Yeah meanwhile your fellow wingers are signing petitions to secede. Talk about traitors!
It’s not that we were two competing systems. It’s that we still are.
Except this time it’s not in your face with subs and nuclear weapons. It’s stealthy and using the institutions in the West where the government essentially controls all the variables. And everyone must show up for an extended period of the most malleable time of their life.
http://www.invisibleserfscollar.com/so-now-common-core-rejects-individual-thinking-to-embrace-soviet-psychology-ecology/ is what is coming at us K-12 and higher ed. Preschool is next using the Reggio Emilia template. I actually do know what so many of the educators apparently had been told from the mid-80s on on how to use a different front to fight over gaining the desired control over consciousness. I had to read it from multiple angles in many places while saying “Really?” to accept it was not quite as over as we were led to believe.
And now Ron writes that a TV series wants to help explore the competing systems.
Filtering mindsets. The perception of the day to day. Precisely what is being targeted. Not just Oliver Stone, now it is a TV series with likeable characters.
A comment fully worthy of RR’s post.
SHOULD READ
“the Soviets had lots of sleeper cells of KGB agents living in the United States ready to go when called.”