'Forward!' with Obama, Axelrod, Jarret and Frank Marshall Davis

[Geee]

American Thinker:

There has been some interesting commentary in the conservative media regarding the new Obama campaign slogan for 2012: "Forward!" The slogan debuted on April 30 -- May Day eve -- in a seven-minute video by the Obama campaign, with the "O" in "Forward!" familiarly styled upon the Obama logo.

Conservatives have noted the communist/socialist roots of the slogan. It began with an article in the Washington Times by Victor Morton, titled, "New Obama slogan has long ties to Marxism, socialism." The article noted that "Forward!" has a "long and rich association" with Marxism: "Many Communist and radical publications and entities throughout the 19th and 20th centuries had the name 'Forward!' or its foreign cognates." The article noted that even Wikipedia "has an entire section called 'Forward (generic name of socialist publications).'"

The Washington Times piece was posted by Drudge, which crafted some choice artwork portraying Obama in Lenin-like imagery. From there, it went viral, with others investigating. Jeffrey Lord in American Spectator noted Mao's infamous call for his Great Leap Forward.

Being that this is my area of research, I naturally paused to consider this bizarre spectacle. I contacted Ion Mihai Pacepa, a goldmine of information on this sort of thing. Pacepa, now in his 80s, was the highest-ranking intelligence official to defect the Soviet bloc. He had been the right-hand man to Romanian dictator Nicolai Ceausescu. When he defected in 1978, Pacepa's positions included being head of Romania's so-called "Presidential House," which was equivalent to being White House chief of staff and director of the CIA, FBI, and Department of Homeland Security. Pacepa knows the communist world better than just about anyone on the planet. Here's what he told me about the "Forward!" slogan:

Forward," rooted in Lenin's book Two Steps Backwards, One Step Forward, was frequently used by most leaders of the Soviet bloc I met. "Forward Comrades" was one of Ceausecu's favorite slogans. In 1972, when I had my last meeting with Fidel, he also used it many times. Raul did too.... Look also into Vorwärts (German for Forward), which was the newspaper of the Social Democratic Party of Germany.