A post at Boing Boing today made me almost wet myself. The post links to an anti-communist comic book from the 1960s which is ridiculous in its blatant oversimplification of communism and its scare tactics: it could happen to you!

The first part of the comic book is actually dystopian; it spins a story of your life, Billy and Betty, might be like if the godless communists took over the country. The communists are your enemy! Their beliefs are antithetical to your own! They want to replace everything that you consider good with every that you consider bad! The best part is that children can buy into this stuff (and judging from the kinds of adults that are out there today, they did buy into this stuff). Here's some snippets:

I remember learning in school that communists don't believe in the family. They say they're going to "free" the woman from the home and put her to work.

Today we had all-new teachers at school. They call it Soviet School 32 instead of St. Joseph's. Teacher said there is no God and that communism is all-good and all-powerful!

As with any dystopian work, this comic book gets its efficacy from taking a contemporary problem -- communism and extended it to a logical, if far-fetched, conclusion. It also makes use of the old wives' tale of an international, monolithic communism.

The second part of the comic book is a "history" of communism as it might be written by J. Edgar Hoover, Joseph McCarthy, or Ann Coulter. Marx, Lenin, and Stalin are all depicted as practically good buddies. The story of Marx is intertwined with the story of Lenin, making appear as though the two were contemporaries, when in fact Marx died in 1883, loooong before the Russian Revolution and longer still before Lenin.

In any case, this is a terrific read. Be sure to be on the lookout for similar comics books today, perhaps with the title "These Godless Terrorists" or something like that.