Was Norm Coleman (Repug senator, Minnesota) ever a communist?

I'm just throwing this out there, I doubt anyone here knows, but I might get lucky. Actually, I've been asking around communist mailing lists, especially the ones who'd know, but no one has answered me yet.

As people may or may not know, Norm Coleman was a Democrat for many years, before he switched to Republican. And of course, after Paul Wellstone (a great, great man) so tragically died, Coleman beat Walter Mondale in the race for senator from Minnesota.

What fewer people know is he was in the Student Mobilization Committee at Hofstra University, a far left anti-war front that existed in the late 1960s and early 1970s. He was a leader of the group at Hofstra actually, a fact I find important. Because what even less people know is the Student Mobilization Committee (SMC) was completely controlled by the Socialist Workers Party (SWP), a communist political party that Leon Trotsky had given his personal blessing to before he was stabbed to death with an ice pick. SMC was as controlled by the SWP as ANSWER is controlled by the communist Party for Socialism and Liberation, and as controlled as the Troops Out Now Coalition or International Action Center is by the communist Workers World Party. Now, if Coleman was some student who showed up for a meeting or two and drifted out, that doesn't mean much - he had some peripheral contact with a communist "front" (front in the old sense of the word, not the bastardized John Birch sense of the word), which many people have, perhaps unknowingly. But he was a *leader*. Here's an old newspaper article on Coleman from a local (to Hofstra U.) paper, I have to look around to find the paper name and date again. Anyhow here it is:


In the early '70s, while Lieutenant George W. Bush was avoiding the
draft with his stealth missions in the Texas Air National Guard,
Coleman led 125 members of Hofstra's Student Mobilization Committee
(SMC) in storming the administration building at Weller Hall. They
began an 11-hour sit-down strike in protest against the IRS, outraged
that 69 percent of federal taxes was being spent on defense. "I was a
devoted non-follower of his," says Coleman's former political science
professor, Herb Rosenbaum. "He was a rebel leader with a lot of social
skills."


This is NOT just a kid who showed up at a meeting or two, this is an SMC leader who "stormed the administration building" and "began a sit-down strike".

Knowing this group or so forth, I feel very strongly that Coleman was a member of the communist, Leon Trotsky-blessed Socialist Workers Party. Unfortunately, only a few old SWPers are on the web, from different parts of the country, and the one I know who is in New York City (which is many miles from Hofstra) doesn't remember him. Although this guy was not in New York all the time in the 1960s and 1970s anyway.

Anyhow, an item of interest, especially to Minnesotans or New Yorkers (or former SWP/SMCers).

If this could be substantiated it would make Al Franken and a whole lot of other Minnesotans day

Norm Coleman is about Norm Coleman - nothing more.

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=160&topic_id=13978

:rofl:

I just googled "Hofstra Student Mobilization Committee" and got this:

http://archives.econ.utah.edu/archives/marxism/2005w27/msg00161.htm
I have been doing research on the Student Mobilization Committee in
order to do a wiki encyclopedia article on it (which I will put on a
non-Wikipedia wiki encyclopedia - perhaps a new one that just sprang
up, Red Wiki - http://www.redapollo.org/wiki , or perhaps another
one).

Anyhow, whilst searching this I ran across this 1999 article in the
Minneapolis/St. Paul Star Tribune discussing Mayor Norm Coleman. Of
course, Norm Coleman went from being St. Paul's mayor to being a US
senator - a Republican US senator.

http://startribune.com/dynamic/story.php?template=print_a&story=45706

"St. Paul Mayor Norm Coleman, who transformed from a 1960s
bullhorn-toting activist to a starched-shirted Republican...grew his
hair down his back as the head of the Student Mobilization Committee
at Hofstra University in New York."

If you read up on the Student Mobilization Committee, it's obvious how it was completely controlled and dominated by the communist Socialist Worker's Party.

In fact, due to how strange communist party lines could be, there were only two communist groups in the US in the 1960s who did what may (or may not) be described as effective anti-war work. The Socialist Workers Party did so by creating the Student Mobilization Committee, which lots of former SWPers have said was very effective, and I haven't heard any views contrary to that yet. The SWP was Trotskyist. A Maoist group, "Progressive Labor", began involving itself in Students for a Democratic Society (SDS) in 1966. Whether they were effective or not is unknown, even their detractors credit them some, but SDS fell apart in 1969, the primary reason being SDS was split between PL'ers and anti-PL'ers. Despite all the talk of Moscow being behind the Vietnam war protests, the CPUSA didn't do much anti-war work, only anti-Moscow communists like Maoists and Trotskyists.

Had you use Google's cache to view it
http://64.233.167.104/search?q=cache:yIZOy-nBClQJ:www.longislandpress.com/v01/i18030515/news_07.asp+%22Hofstra+Student+Mobilization+Committee%22&hl=en

he Prodigal Peacenik: Commencement Speaker Returns to Hofstra a Changed Man
By Paul Perillie

(L)November 19, 1970 Hofstra Chronicle Archives (R) Norm Coleman today


HEMPSTEAD—What do a right-wing United States senator and a rabble-rousing college antiwar activist have in common? In the case of Senator Norman Coleman (R-Minnesota) they are one and the same.

Sunday, Coleman returns to his alma mater, Hofstra University, to give this year's commencement speech and receive an honorary degree. Those who remember him from his days as a left-leaning longhair might not recognize the closely cropped conservative at the podium. That's because Coleman has undergone a physical and political metamorphosis that makes Dr. Jekyll's transformation into Mr. Hyde look like a TV talk-show makeover, although Coleman himself doesn't see it that way. "I still believe in fighting for change," the novice Republican senator tells the Long Island Press. "I became a Republican to fulfill the ideals I had as a Democrat."

Coleman's early years were full of everything you would expect of a Brooklyn-born liberal. He tagged along after his grandfather on literature drops for Adlai Stevenson's 1952 presidential bid. He was a roadie for the one-hit-wonder band Ten Years After and joined the groovy masses at Max Yasgur's upstate NY farm for three days in August 1969. In a 1971 Hofstra Chronicle column, Coleman wrote: "I look at the Woodstock Generation versus Hofstra's Young Republicans and I say choose Woodstock."

In the early '70s, while Lieutenant George W. Bush was avoiding the draft with his stealth missions in the Texas Air National Guard, Coleman led 125 members of Hofstra's Student Mobilization Committee (SMC) in storming the administration building at Weller Hall. They began an 11-hour sit-down strike in protest against the IRS, outraged that 69 percent of federal taxes was being spent on defense. "I was a devoted non-follower of his," says Coleman's former political science professor, Herb Rosenbaum. "He was a rebel leader with a lot of social skills."

but he does have a new asshole given to him by George Galloway.

When is this moron up for election?

tome. :cry:

Coleman is as goofy as our governor, Mitch Daniels, except that Coleman has half the IQ that Daniels has.

You have my sincerests condolences!

Are there any potential challengers over the horizon?

n/t

Glad to hear that!

Franken is moving back to Minnesota in January, so I think he is serious about the run. We have many worthy contenders running for Dayton's open seat, so I have faith that we will have a winner against Coleperson. I would vote for a slimy plate of lutefisk before I would allow Coleperson back into office. Unfortunately, Wellstone died a week before the official election, so we are stuck with norm for what seems like an ice age. :cry:

He was too stupid to realize what had happened!

What a dip!

I will gladly contribute money to whoever challenges Coleman!

I would think that Coleman should be vulnerable.

Before Galloway went into the senate building, him and Christopher Hitchens hurled invective at one another. Hitchens said whatever and Galloway called him a "former Trotskyist popinjay". What Galloway probably didn't know is he may have been dealing with two former Trotskyist popinjays that day.

Don't misunderstand me please, i'm not saying that Coleman was a spook - just reminding people that ALL of these groups especially in the 60's were infested by spooks - and often LED by them as cover.

The CIA in the sixties established a secret domestic spy operation and the office was literally in the basement of CIA headquarters. Now this is kind of common knowledge these days, since this secret was let out of the bag by a number of former operatives in a plethora of books over the years.

But the thing is, people seem to keep forgetting about this factoid.

to me, Coleman excudes contempt for Socialisim, i get no sense of sympathetic tendacies.

but if he was a communist, should we care?

The SWP actually sued the government and learned a lot about COINTELPRO infiltration. During some years, over 10%, sometimes 11% of SWP'ers or members of the SWP's youth group were reporting to the government. That's one out of every nine or ten people there. They found this out by suing the government and winning.

Okay, so maybe Coleman was a student Leftie. People change.

How is that supposed to make a difference now?

Besides, I don't particularly appreciate the old red-baiting tactic of implying that everyone who was active within radical group X, which may or may not have been "controlled" by Socialist group Y, is ipso facto a former Communist.

This is the kind of stuff I'd expect to see at that Other Site on the other end of the dial.:eyes:

You don't find this interesting, that Coleman may have been a communist? This fascinates me. I have actually been to Socialist Workers Party's bookstore in Manhattan twice and talked to the communists there. I don't know, I just need to know, for myself, if Coleman was ever a member of the SWP.

Actually, here's a real answer, a real *political* answer. How does someone go from being a communist to being a Republican? National Review started out with a number of former communists. Now, in communist ideology, in fact, in most ideologies, the idea is that people turn from being communists to being conservative because either:

1) (This is more communist than general) They were "bourgeois" to begin with or
2) What they were taught was wrong. The "party line" was wrong. I think everyone would agree with this, even conservatives.

Often it's a mix of the two, the bourgeois person and the bourgeois pseudo-radical ideology. Which is a Marxist concept.

Did he actually belong to SWP? CPUSA? Communist Labor Party? Comintern? Shining Path? Or, any bonafide communist group?

If not, or unless you have proof he was ever a self-described "communist", I suggest you stop calling him a communist.

This is not in any way an endorsement of Norm Coleman or ANY party he may or may not have been a member of, particularly the conspiratorial world-dominance designing, unAmerican totalitarian group he belongs to today.

The SMC was completely controlled and dominated by the SWP. Thus, the leaders of the SMC were virtually all SWP'ers, in fact I don't know any SMC leaders who weren't in SWP, although I don't claim to know everything about SMC.

It's sort of like Bush's cabinet. They don't have to be Republican, but chances are, they are all Republican. Sometimes presidents mix it up and there's one person from the other party - a liberal Republican or a conservative Democrat.

If the question wasn't about Coleman, but was "Would it be highly likely that an SMC leader who led a sit-down strike at a university would be in the SWP?" the answer would be an unqualified YES. But it seems difficult to learn about this, even from (mostly former) SWPers.

He may never have been a member of the SWP, although it's possible he was a member of the Young Socialist Alliance, the SWP's youth group. Or he may have been a non-member sympathizing with the YSA. There were always people sympathetic to the SWP/YSA who never actually joined because of the "security policy" which would force them to quit smoking pot.

an opportunist. He has no actual beliefs.

All the leftie organizations were infiltrated -- Cointelpro, wasn't it?

But what the heck. The RW has no problem casting aspersions. What's good for the goose. . . ?

They've since gone to the Dark Side. SWP is Socialist, not Communist.
"Unfortunately, only a few old SWPers are on the web, from different parts of the country, and the one I know who is in New York City (which is many miles from Hofstra) doesn't remember him. Although this guy was not in New York all the time in the 1960s and 1970s anyway."

Sounds like one of those "friend of a friend true stories" I get in E-mails all the time.
:popcorn::popcorn::popcorn::popcorn:

Sorry, I was a bit unclear about what this fellow from New York actually said. What he said was he did not remember Coleman, so he didn't help confirm anything.

They did an about face after Stalin's crimes were exposed or, in some cases, after the Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia.

It's typical black and white thinking: "I can't be this anymore, so I have to be its polar opposite."

Then:





Now: