School of Darkness

This is the memoir of Bella Dodds. Ms. Dodds was a union organizer and lawyer, who became active active in the Communist Party in New York City between 1920 and 1949. She eventually became a member of the national committee of the Communist Party, where she observed the hypocrisy, hatred and malice that made up Communism. She was expelled in 1949 and returned to the Catholic Church.If the devil's greatest trick has been to make the world believe that he doesn't exist, the Communists are not far behind. Today, Communists are presented as loveable goofballs, who didn't threaten anyone, except where they are presented as being a non-existent bogeyman. If you read Bella's memoirs, you will be amazed at the extent of Communist power and infiltration into, at least, New York politics. Communists had wealth supporters and its own financial agents and operated their own night clubs. They had politicians who were their mouthpieces in state and federal government and in New York they were often able to swing the vote so as to decide who would be elected. Bella casually mentions the murder of a Republican precinct captain who stood in the way of a Communist election victory, and how that murder was never solved.If you read this memoir, you will be disabused of the myths about Communism: Communism was real, it was a was a tightly knit conspiracy, it was corrupt and corrupting and it murdered people and wrecked lives.This memoir works on two levels. On one level it is an insider's account of the Communist Party during its heydays, in the decade before and after the Great Depression. Bella explains how she became involved in Communism. Although she makes the traditional nod toward her desire to help the poor, we actually see how she is influenced by her teachers who presented Communism as synonymous with "progress":."In the days that have gone since we enunciated these statements so confidently I have had many occasions to see that this cataloging of people as either “right” or “left” has led to more confusion in American life than perhaps any other false concept. It sounds so simple and so right. By using this schematic device one puts the communists on the left and then one regards them as advanced liberals -after which it is easy to regard them as the enzyme necessary for progress".And:"More and more I wanted to talk and act only in terms of the future, of a future that would have none of the corruption of the present. It depressed me that people close to me could accommodate themselves to such a present. Only people I did not know, the great mass of unknown human beings, began to awaken in me a poignant sense of kinship. In fact, I began to transfer my personal feelings to this wholly unknown defeated mass. And so it came about that I began to seek my spiritual home among the dispossessed of the earth."One of the interesting features about reading this book is how many of Bella's teachers and fellow communists were women. Although we are led to believe these days that women were kept out of education and tee professions, Bella casually mentions how she went to law school in New York of the late 1920s. She certainly doesn't discuss fighting against glass walls and sexism, albeit, without a doubt women were underrepresented in law and education, but apparently not so much that she was touting herself as either the "first" or the "only."It seems that education was a significant factor in radicalizing young men and women, even in the 1920s:"Nationalism.” I studied closely A. A. Berle and Gardiner Means who wrote of the two hundred corporations that controlled America at the end of World War I. I read widely on imperialism and began to be critical of the role my country was playing. I discovered the John Dewey Society and the Progressive Education Association. I became aware of the popular concept of the social frontier. I also repeated glibly that we had reached the last of our natural frontiers and that the new ones to be sought must be social. There would be, we were told, in the near future a collective society in our world and especially in our country, and in teaching students one must prepare them for that day.As a result of that year’s study of American history and national politics, as well as in the direct experience of my students and myself in local politics, I now began to tear apart before my students many respected public groups - charity, church, and other organizations - that were trying to better conditions in old-fashioned ways."This leads to another great part of this book; it shows how our present is a product of our past. Listen to these excerpts and ask if they do not resemble the culture that has developed in college campuses by the year 2016:Hatred of America:"Again we were to despise our own country as an exploiter of the workers."Opportunistic use of civil liberties:"When a person conditioned by a totalitarian group talks about the right not to incriminate himself, he really means the right not to incriminate the communist group of which he is only a nerve end. When he talks of freedom of speech, he means freedom for the communist group to speak as a group through the mouth of the individual who has been selected by the higher intelligence"Repeatedly refashioning historical understanding based on the current political fashion:"Before 1935, for instance, the Party had preached hatred of John L. Lewis as a labor dictator. No stories about him were too vile. He was accused of murder and pillage in his march to power in the Miners Union. Suddenly, in 1936, Lewis became the hero of the Communist Party. Again in 1940, when the Party decided to support Roosevelt against Willkie, and John L. Lewis risked his leadership in the CIO by calling on the unions to vote for Willkie, the Communists screamed invective, and in private meetings Roy Hudson and William Z. Foster, in charge of labor for the Politburo, vilified Lewis. When the Communists shifted their support, Lewis was dropped as president of the CIO and Philip Murray was elected in his place."Group hate:"During my years in the Teachers Union I gradually got used to these bitter expressions of hate. And since hate begets hate, often those under attack also responded with hate. Hearing them, I began to take sides and in the end accepted the Party’s hates as my own."Opposed to the traditional family:"The bourgeois family as a social unit was to be made obsolete."Politically-motivated change of standards:"Before June 1941 it had been an “imperialist war” for the re-division of markets, a war which could have only reactionary results. But when the Soviet Union was attacked, the war was transformed into a “people’s war,” a “war of liberation.”The American Communist Party dropped all its campaigns of opposition. Its pacifist friends were again “Fascist reactionaries” and all its energy was employed in praise of France and England as great democracies. The fight against the Board of Higher Education had to be brought to an end because the Party regarded Mayor LaGuardia as a force in the pro-democratic war camp."Hatred of opponents:"Even more significant was the fact that I had made their hates my hates. This was what established me as a full-fledged Communist. In the long ago I had been unable to hate anyone; I suffered desperately when someone was mistreated; I was regarded as a peacemaker. Now, little by little, I had acquired a whole mass of people to hate: the groups and individuals who fought the Party. How it came about I cannot tell. All I know as I look back to that time is that my mind had responded to Marxist conditioning. For it is a fact, true and terrible, that the Party establishes such authority over its members that it can swing their emotions now for and now against the same person or issue. It claims such sovereignty even over conscience as to dictate when it shall hate."Bella experienced Communist-hate when she was expelled for insufficiently hating the deposed CPUSA president, Earl Browder:"I was dismissed. As I walked down the dingy steps my heart was heavy. The futility of my life overcame me. For twenty years I had worked with this Party, and now at the end I found myself with only a few shabby men and women, inconsequential Party functionaries, drained of all mercy, with no humanity in their eyes, with no good will of the kind that works justice. Had they been armed I know they would have pulled the trigger against me. I thought of the others who had been through this and of those who were still to go through this type of terror. I shivered at the thought of harsh, dehumanized people like these, filled with only the emotion of hate, robots of a system which was heralded as a new world. And I sorrowed for those who would be taken down the long road whose end I saw, now, was a dead end."Individual worth subsumed into group-ideology:"What I had failed to understand was that the security I felt in the Party was that of a group and that affection in that strange communist world is never a personal emotion. You were loved or hated on the basis of group acceptance, and emotions were stirred or dulled by propaganda. That propaganda was made by the powerful people at the top. That is why ordinary Communists get along well with their groups: they think and feel together and work toward a common goal."Deliberate attacks on the Catholic priesthood and history:"I was silent as we drove to Chevy Chase. All the canards against the Catholic Church which I had heard and tolerated, which even by my silence I had approved, were threatening the tiny flame of longing for faith within me. I thought of many things on that ride, of the word “fascist,” used over and over by the communist press in describing the role of the Church in the Spanish Civil War. I also thought of the word “Inquisition” so skillfully used on all occasions. Other terms came to me — reactionary, totalitarian, dogmatic, old-fashioned. For years they had been used to engender fear and hatred in people like me. A thousand fears assailed me. Would he insist that I talk to the FBI? Would he insist that I testify? Would he make me write articles? Would he see me at all? And then before my mind’s eye flashed the cover of a communist pamphlet on which was a communist extending a hand to a Catholic worker. The pamphlet was a reprint of a speech by the French Communist leader Thorez and it flattered the workers by not attacking their religion. It skillfully undermined the hierarchy in the pattern of the usual communist attempt to drive a wedge between the Catholic and his priest."Opportunistic accusations of racism:"Close friends of many, years' standing became deadly enemies overnight. Little cliques, based on the principle of mutual protection and advancement, sprang up everywhere. Some shouted slogans from Jacques Duclos. Some shouted down anyone who suggested logical discussion of problems. The mood, the emotions, were hysterically leftist with the most violent racist talk I ever heard."And:"But the communist leadership heard with delight that Bella Dodd had appeared as "attorney for a landlord." At last they had the excuse for getting me politically, the excuse for which they had been looking. Of course they could have simply expelled me but this would involve discussion of policies. They were looking for an excuse to expel me on charges that would besmirch my character, drive my friends away, and stop discussion instead of starting it. What better than to expel me for the crime of becoming a "hireling of the landlords"? They must have realized that such an argument would scarcely be cogent to outsiders. Even to many of the Party it was weak. They must add something really unforgivable to make me an outcast in the eyes of the simple people of the Party. They did this by spreading the story that in my court appearances I had made remarks against the Puerto Rican tenants, that I had slandered them, and showed myself a racist, almost a fascist. And last of all, a charge of anti-Negro, anti-Semitism, and anti-working class was thrown in for good measure."An attentive reader will appreciate why college campuses have become such a cesspool of political correctness and intimidation of those who step outside of group think through the artifice of faux-moral outrage.Bella also explains how Communists were so effective at infiltration of other organizations, a subject explored in Lewy's  The Cause That Failed: Communism in American Political Life :"This use of fractions made the Communist Party effective in noncommunist groups. They went prepared, organized, trained, and disciplined with a program worked out in detail, and before other groups had a chance to think the Communists were winning advantages. They worked in every convention as an organized bloc. In other organized blocs the Communists had “sleepers,” assigned to protect Communist Party interests. These “sleepers” were active members in noncommunist blocs for the purpose of hamstringing and destroying the power of the opposition."What we also pick up from Bella's book is how Communism filled in a spiritual void in the life of Communists. The Party was their life, their friends, their purpose. Being excommunicated from the Party was a death sentence because it meant that an old life had been lost. Bella describes her life after her expulsion from the Party as "learning to unbecome a Communist." What is also interesting about her memoir is how she counterpoints her Communist life with her non-Communist life; in the latter, people were allowed to be human, and to not hate:"As he and the other men discussed various matters, I realized why these three talked so differently from the little groups I had been with at tables like this in the communist movement. Here there was no hatred and no fear. We talked of books and television and of communism too, and Father Keller referred to the latter as “the last stage of an ugly period.”A final point is this phenomenal image of mercy and conversion: "By what right, I thought, was I seeking the help of someone I had helped revile, even if only by my silence? How dared I come to a representative of that hierarchy? The screeching of the brakes brought me back to reality. We had arrived, and my friend was wishing me luck as I got out of the car. I rang the doorbell and was ushered into a small room. While I waited, the struggle within me began again. Had there been an easy exit I would have run out, but in the midst of my turmoil Monsignor Fulton Sheen walked into the room, his silver cross gleaming, a warm smile in his eyes. He held out his hand as he crossed the room. “Doctor, I’m glad you’ve come,” he said. His voice and his eyes had a welcome which I had not expected, and it caught me unaware."A final nice element of this book is that it puts "flesh on the bones" of the people who lived during this time and on the time itself. I have known of Sheen, but until reading this, I didn't really know him.

Bella Dodd (1904-1969), in this autobiography, records how her desire to help the poor led her to become a member of the Communist Party of America (CPUSA) in the 1930s and 1940s. As a Communist agent, her job was to encourage young radicals to enter Roman Catholic Seminaries (although her work in this area is not mentioned in the book). After her defection from the Communist Party in 1949, she became a vocal anti-communist. (Today, the word Communism is suppressed. Socialism is used instead.)The Communists sought a revolution, not a reformation. They went to the dissatisfied – primarily the labor unions – where they could easily convince the members that they were unjustly underpaid. The Teachers Union was a particularly good target because citizens greatly desire good schools for their children. Paying the teachers more was attractive to both the teachers and the citizens.51% of the way through the book: She didn’t realize at the time (1940’s) how important the teachers were for the communist movement. Those who taught fellow communists were key to the network of people and organizations. The Communist Party fought back against a New York investigation of the Party, using smearing, name-calling, and calumniating. The Party also searched through the background of each investigator, looking for points of attack. The Party advocated for more funds for public-school teachers, painting the opponents as religious and racial bigots. Liberals, trade unions, leftist national groups such as the Democrats, Progressives, and the Republicans joined with the Communists in the pro-teacher effort. Dodd’s deepest loyalty developed because of the Party’s support of the teachers. Her tireless efforts were rewarded by her getting ever-increasing responsibilities in the Communist Party.The order and certitude of the Communist Party offered stability in the time of chaos before WWII, attracting many to the Party. The American Communists followed the directions from the Communist International Party. It changed from anti-war in 1940 to pro-war when the U.S. became allied with the communist U.S.S.R.72%: When Browder, the head of the American Communist Party, sought unity among those of different languages, the Communist International Party turned against Browder. The International did not want unity. It wanted class warfare. It opposed U.S. nationalism. The communists sought to have U.S. citizens despise their own country as an exploiter of the workers. The American Communist Party capitulated. Browder was deposed. Other leaders apologized for drifting away from the Marx-Lenin-Stalin program. Those who did not apologize were expelled from the Party.76%: The communist leaders themselves did not come from the working class. They had gone from school graduation to Party. They sat in “little rooms planning revolutions and conniving for power.” At the Party’s 1945 Emergency Convention, called to put the Party back on the International’s program, “some shouted down anyone who suggested logical discussion of problems.” The Convention reasserted the Party’s “revolutionary task of establishing a Soviet America.”78%: Still following orders from Moscow, in 1945 Dodd organized the Congress of American Women, a combination of wealthy women and Party members, ostensibly as a movement for peace but really to control women. The Party saw women as vulnerable to emotional appeal.79%: Party control was tightened in 1945. Those dissenting from the Party line were expelled or intimidated. After making some suggestions and defending some of the people being expelled, Dodd herself was subjected to much intimidation. When she hinted at quitting, she was told that nobody gets out of the Party. “You die or you are thrown out.” She began to realize that the Party was not the champion of the poor and dispossessed, that its activities were conceived in duplicity and ended in betrayal. For example, the Party decided to foster an independent nation within the U.S. for the Negroes, not for the good of Negroes but to foster strife in the U.S.83%: As did all leaders, Dodd was worried about losing her position in the Party. The Party’s Secret Service in the U.S. tracked everyone. In 1945, the Party identified Dodd’s legal representation of a landlord as her point of defection. Dodd was thereafter shunned by all Party officials.82%: Anticipating that the Communist Party would soon be outlawed, the Party formed the Progressive Party for the 1948 presidential election. Henry Wallace was its hand-picked candidate. Although this new party claimed it was supported by farmers and laborers, only a few left-wing unions supported it. Most members came from either the Communists, women of wealth, or disillusioned middle-class professionals. Wallace was so obviously controlled by the Communists that he received only 2.4% of the votes nationwide.83%: Party growth was aided by major donations from the wealthy. Party power increased as members moved into important positions in both the Democrat and Republican parties.90%: Dodd began to see that the Communist Party engages in group-think. If you did not think as the group did, as dictated from the leaders, you were expelled . Dodd was officially expelled from the Party in 1949, losing all of her friends and the groups by which she had identified herself (89%). The expulsion announcement was carried by the Associated Press. With expulsion came hate mail and telephone calls as well as loss of clients and loss of referrals.92%: Although Dodd had stopped thinking about God long ago, the chance meeting of a Catholic couple from the distant past rekindled her interest. A chance attendance at Christmas Mass intensified this interest. The chance reading of Fr. Keller’s You Can Change the World inspired her (95%). Eventually, she took instructions from a famous Catholic priest and, in 1952, became Catholic, conditionally Baptized.Dodd recounts what she learned from her years of experience:1. People are loved or hated on the basis of group acceptance. (89%)2. Emotions are stirred or dulled by propaganda. (89%)3. Leaving group-thinking was difficult. (90%)4. The Party purges all literature from member’s homes except Party literature. (91%)5. The Communists fostered revolution, not reform.6. The Communists wanted class warfare, dividing the nation into self-interest groups.7. The Communist Party is not the poor-man’s party but a monolithic organization designed to control the common man. (91%)8. The Communist Party will use whatever means necessary to achieve its ends, including the use of weapons. (91%)9. Wealthy people will cooperate with the Communists if the cooperation increases their wealth.10. Communists do not attack Catholicism but undermine the hierarchy. (93%)11. Communists use the human desire to do good. (93%)12. Communists call for the “brotherhood of man” but do not see God as the Father (93%)13. The hope that the revolution and the destruction of lives would lead to a better world was fatally wrong.14. There can be no social regeneration without a personal regeneration, per Fr. Keller. (96%)15. The City of God is infinitely more life-giving than the defiant The City of Man (by Pierre Manent) (96%)16. Communism considers useless the art of reasoned thinking, as found, for example, in St. Thomas Aquinas. (97%)17. Communism considers useless history and fact and logic. (97%)18. Education will solve no problems if it does not include training of the will as well as the mind and if it is not based on a sound philosophy. (98%)19. Man’s condition cannot be improved by forcing him into the mold of materialism and despiritualizing him by catering only to that part of him which is of this earth. (98%)20. Man alone cannot create a heaven on earth. (98%)21. Communism cannot be fought in a negative manner. Its false doctrine must be fought with Truth. (98%)22. Social and civic harmony have existed in the U.S. for years. Class warfare is contrived. (98%)23. Soldiers returned from WWII and the Korean War determined to make their homes a citadel of moral values. (99%)24. Training of the mind is of little value to man himself or to society unless it is placed in the framework of eternal truths. The material and the spiritual must be united.25. Selfless love is needed. Men schooled in darkness are doomed to defeat.I can’t help but wonder what motivates the Communist leaders. It seems to be an overwhelming desire for power – and perhaps the luxurious lifestyle that power enables. Maybe the motivation is the fun of causing chaos.The way Dodd tells her story enables the reader to see how people can be led into evil organizations.

I wanted to buy some copies of this book to give to friends - but the price of the book, previously sold by an "out of print" vendor, had risen to ridiculous levels. Obviously, some people did not want this story to get out.The author was an immigrant, marginal Catholic, who early in the 20th Century, along with many women, was able to attend college for free. She became a professor, then a lawyer. Disappointed in Catholic Social Justice, she joined the American Communist Party and rose rapidly in the organization. However, when she dissented from some of the actions of leadership, she quickly became "persona non grata" - and afraid.She returned to the Catholic Church, told her story to a Senate subcommittee, wrote of her knowledge of the Party, then died at a young age.In the book, she explains how she got party members placed in the SECOND highest positions of many corporate and government offices. In addition, she facilitated infiltration of the Catholic Church with renegade priests.She speaks too, of collusion with the UN, of the formation of the NEA, of the close collaboration between left and right wing socialists, of using unjustly treated groups to gain sympathy for the cause of the Party.

I had heard of Bella Dodd for years and as a Roman Catholic, I knew of her for one thing, how she alone had organised over 1.100 communist young men to enter the Roman Catholic Priesthood in the United States and as a Roman Catholic I should read her book, School of Darkness. I had been trying to get the book for years but it was out of print and the second hand prices were and still are unjustifiable, so seeing it was in print again I bought it. Since the book and her influence over the 1,100 men are always linked, I was disappointed it's not mentioned at all in the book. My question which of course will not be answered, is why did Bella Dodd leave this out of her book?The book is written well, the words flow with ease keeping one compelled to continue, it's an autobiography of sorts, not fully going into her life, but more of a record of how she got involved willingly with an ideology that blinded her for years, until she saw into the hypocrisy and evil of it. Bella Dodd was born in 1905 in Italy, her Mother had returned to her native country to sort out a problem with her property, while there she gave birth to her youngest child and daughter, Bella. Bella's Mother had been widowed young, her second husband wanted to emigrate to America as did her older children and so, she agreed, but didn't want her land sold in Italy. Soon after Bella's birth, her Mother left her with strangers and she returned to America. This is not fully explained, as why her Mother did this, with the explanation given as there was not enough money to bring her home. It does not make sense in my humble opinion.The couple or foster parents who reared Bella until she was five, were good and kind, Bella speaks of them fondly and they obviously loved each other. Bella had been born into the Roman Catholic faith and so for the first five years of her life this couple were also responsible for her instruction in the faith, something that Bella didn't remember much of, with the exception of her Confirmation and her foster Father's devotion to Saint Anthony. One day in 1910 Bella's Mother arrived to take her home. This did pull at my heart strings, a five year old little girl, being taken from the only parents she knew, who had to make a train journey on her own to meet up with her biological Mother and then to arrive in a new country while meeting her biological Father and siblings for the first time. Bella took it in her stride and within a year or so was fluent in english and proved a very good student in school. She covers the accident that caused the amputation of her foot which in an indirect way led to her thought process which in turn would lead to her communistic views. The house that her family had moved into had been owned by protestants and the library of protestant books were still in the home when Bella was recuperating and with nothing to do she read many of these books including books on Marxism. During this time her parents stopped practising their faith.Bella had decided to become a teacher and so went to college for this purpose, it was at this point of her life that her fate was sealed or so it seemed. One female, feminist, Marxist professor pushed her agenda upon her students and Bella believed it all and Bella herself would in turn do the same to her students. In my opinion college should be banned, it's within these so called institutes of education that so many young people are formed in the ways of the far left. I've been listening to the same stories for years, how pro life young woman entered college in the 1960's and '70's and when leaving were fully fledged feminists who lobbied for abortion; some becoming doctors with the sole purpose of being abortionists. Bella's next venture was joining the teacher's union, here with like minded comrades they set about changing the education system and so thanks to them we have the modernist, marxist education system of today "All for the good!" This part of her life is where she gets fully involved with communists and the party. The majority of the book is about this and the growth of communism and she covers it in stark detail. She covers her ego trip as the high up communists pushed her to do their bidding and she did so willingly. One part of her life I wish she had elaborated on more was her trip to Europe just before the outbreak of world war II. I found this most interesting; while in Germany she speaks of Nazism and how the German people behaved, it frightened her as did the change of Italy under fascism, yet to my amazement she failed to see the comparisons both have to communism. Her hours of work for the party were twenty four seven, anything less was frowned upon, all she thought about , talked about and lived was communism, exhausting to say the least. She believed she had hundreds of friends until she saw an incident that made her question it all, a friend of her's provoked something not with the party line and he was thrown to the wolves. This was her wake up moment, thank God.Bella stopped attending party meetings and during this time she realised just how brain washed she was, she couldn't think straight or even relax. Her marriage was over , her parents dead and she was alone. Eventually the party kicked her out and she had nothing and no one. During this very low moment in her life she met an old and real friend , he saw the toll on her and asked would she like to talk to a priest, she immediately said yes, she writes she couldn't understand at how quickly she answered that question. That Priest was Bishop Fulton J. Sheen, they talked and he promised her he would instruct her in the Roman Catholic Faith. Soon after meeting him, she wrote that during this time it was Christmas and she felt so alone that while on a bus she missed her stop , she eventually gets off the bus and ended up in a Roman Catholic Church in time for midnight mass , she knew she was home and that she belonged there. Fulton Sheen did instruct her in the faith himself and Bella Dodd indeed returned to the one true faith.

Eye opening book into how communists work. Nihilists.

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This should be a mandatory read in schools.