Cleon Skousen was an FBI special agent until 1951. He then taught at BYU and became Salt Lake City’s police chief in 1956. His classic book The Naked Communist included a 45 point summary of their subversive agenda in the USA. Many sources date this list to 1963, when it was read into the Congressional record. However, the book’s first copyright date was 1958, well before the mid-1960s when these changes took the public by surprise.

Communist goals of 1958

Items 1-14 concerned enhancing the position of the USSR and other Communist nations. Here’s the domestic agenda:

15. Capture one or both of the political parties in the United States.

16. Use technical decisions of the courts to weaken basic American institutions by claiming their activities violate civil rights.

17. Get control of the schools. Use them as transmission belts for socialism and current Communist propaganda. Soften the curriculum. Get control of teachers’ associations. Put the party line in textbooks.

18. Gain control of all student newspapers.

19. Use student riots to foment public protests against programs or organizations which are under Communist attack.

20. Infiltrate the press. Get control of book-review assignments, editorial writing, policy-making positions.

21. Gain control of key positions in radio, TV, and motion pictures.

22. Continue discrediting American culture by degrading all forms of artistic expression. An American Communist cell was told to “eliminate all good sculpture from parks and buildings, substitute shapeless, awkward and meaningless forms.”

23. Control art critics and directors of art museums. “Our plan is to promote ugliness, repulsive, meaningless art.”

24. Eliminate all laws governing obscenity by calling them “censorship” and a violation of free speech and free press.

25. Break down cultural standards of morality by promoting pornography and obscenity in books, magazines, motion pictures, radio, and TV.

26. Present homosexuality, degeneracy and promiscuity as “normal, natural, healthy.”

27. Infiltrate the churches and replace revealed religion with “social” religion. Discredit the Bible and emphasize the need for intellectual maturity which does not need a “religious crutch.”

28. Eliminate prayer or any phase of religious expression in the schools on the ground that it violates the principle of “separation of church and state.”

29. Discredit the American Constitution by calling it inadequate, old-fashioned, out of step with modern needs, a hindrance to cooperation between nations on a worldwide basis.

30. Discredit the American Founding Fathers. Present them as selfish aristocrats who had no concern for the “common man.”

31. Belittle all forms of American culture and discourage the teaching of American history on the ground that it was only a minor part of the “big picture.” Give more emphasis to Russian history since the Communists took over.

32. Support any socialist movement to give centralized control over any part of the culture–education, social agencies, welfare programs, mental health clinics, etc.

33. Eliminate all laws or procedures which interfere with the operation of the Communist apparatus.

34. Eliminate the House Committee on Un-American Activities.

35. Discredit and eventually dismantle the FBI.

36. Infiltrate and gain control of more unions.

37. Infiltrate and gain control of big business.

38. Transfer some of the powers of arrest from the police to social agencies. Treat all behavioral problems as psychiatric disorders which no one but psychiatrists can understand [or treat].

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39. Dominate the psychiatric profession and use mental health laws as a means of gaining coercive control over those who oppose Communist goals.

40. Discredit the family as an institution. Encourage promiscuity and easy divorce.

41. Emphasize the need to raise children away from the negative influence of parents. Attribute prejudices, mental blocks and retarding of children to suppressive influence of parents.

42. Create the impression that violence and insurrection are legitimate aspects of the American tradition; that students and special-interest groups should rise up and use “united force” to solve economic, political or social problems.

43. Overthrow all colonial governments before native populations are ready for self-government.

44. Internationalize the Panama Canal.

45. Repeal the Connally reservation so the United States cannot prevent the World Court from seizing jurisdiction [over domestic problems. Give the World Court jurisdiction] over nations and individuals alike.

Does any of this sound familiar?

Along with elements of the traditional subversion script, this shows clear influences of suicidalism and cultural Marxism, though missing a few notable agendas. Back in 1958, surely these predictions must’ve seemed merely like “McCarthyism“. Skousen got much criticism for his views. Clearly he wasn’t just blowing smoke, though; most items were partially or completely fulfilled. Did this really “just happen” all by itself, with the heat suddenly turning way up during the mid-1960s? Like Cassandra of Troy, he was a prophet ignored until it was too late.

The two parties didn’t become Communist, of course. However, the Democratic Party—formerly the working man’s party—was co-opted by cultural Marxism, and the Republicans became a controlled opposition. The educational system got pozzed out. So was the media, and I doubt it took much convincing to get them on board.

American culture—literature, art, history books, and religion—became remarkably different from that of times past; which would’ve been hardly recognizable to our forebears. Lawyerly activism got agendas 16 and 28 fulfilled with judicial scrupulosity, and assisted with some others. Recently the GLBT crowd got everything they wanted, though likely they’re thinking of new demands. Feminism burnt our social environment to cinders.

As for items not fulfilled, number 38 is quite alarming; it would’ve abrogated all semblance of due process and sent us straight to Kafka-land. Social agencies have tight integration with police, but quite fortunately don’t have direct powers of arrest. Item 45 would’ve been very ominous too. Some still think it would be wonderful to surrender our sovereignty to the corrupt UN, our wannabe world government.

Was all this accomplished by Soviet agents and Communist subversives? No, they had plenty of “useful idiots” to help do their work for them. All it took was the “long march through the institutions” to get into influential positions, put the ideas into the public sphere, and convince others that all this was “social justice”. As Yuri Bezmenov put it:

…the demoralization now reaches such areas where previously not even comrade Andropov and all his experts would even dream of such a tremendous success. Most of it is done by Americans to Americans thanks to lack of moral standards.

What the future holds

Class-based Marxism-Leninism is a spent force. The few remaining Communist nations are hanging by a thread. Thus, the foreign policy points from items 1-14 (omitted for length) have little emphasis now. Unfortunately, today’s progressives still push “Communism Lite”.

There’s been little effort (yet) to roll back domestic measures, although the USSR—their reason for existence—ended in 1991. In fact, unless you’ve been living under a rock, you’ll notice that many still are promoted quite actively. This wouldn’t have surprised Skousen very much. Powerful groups still find progressive ideology useful to control the public. As a biographical summary noted:

Skousen’s further studies eventually led him to conclude–like fellow anticommunist Robert Welch–that the communists were not the principals in the conspiracy to destroy America; they were merely the most visible arm of a much larger conspiracy. This conspiracy was run by a group of super-rich investment bankers from around the world who manipulated political agendas and public opinion to suit their own ends. Proof of the elites’ influence and their power structure was found in a book by Dr. Carroll Quigley, a professor of history at the Foreign Service School of Georgetown University, called Tragedy and Hope. Quigley was a member of the elitist Council on Foreign Relations. He had many personal connections with the super-rich and could trace their financial dealings in detail.

Those who declared victory with the USSR’s collapse did so prematurely, since tricky globalist billionaire clubs are promoting much of the same these days, enforcing cultural Marxism through the media and other institutions. The more things change, the more they stay the same.

Read More: Soviet Defector Yuri Bezmenov Accurately Predicted How America Would Decline