Introduction

On December 9, 1981, a striking six-page public interest advertisement appeared in the Washington Post and the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, the first two in a series of such publications to appear throughout the West. In the advertisements, the Societies for the Defense of Tradition, Family and Property (TFP) jointly addressed the public of their respective nations in a Message entitled "What Does Self-Managing Socialism Mean for Communism: A Barrier? Or a Bridgehead?" The Message was writ­ten by Prof. Plinio Correa de Oliveira, the founder and president of the Brazilian TFP. It exposes Francois Mitterrand's program of self-managing socialism and its ambitious designs for the West.

The Message was subsequently published in other leading newspapers in 18 countries of the Free World, bringing the total number of papers in which it ap­peared up to 44. To date, it has been published in the following countries: the United States, Argentina, Australia, Bolivia, Brazil, Canada, Chile, Colombia, Ecuador, England, Germany, Italy, Peru, Portugal, Spain, Switzerland, Uruguay and Venezuela.

The scope of the campaign against self-managing socialism was extended when a one page summary of the Message was published in six of South Africa's major newspapers. Later, an advertisement sum­marizing the Message and its world-wide repercus­sions was published in three papers in Germany, two in Ireland, one in Austria, two in Australia, two in New Zealand, one in Costa Rica, and one in the Philippines.

A Far-Reaching Message with Even Farther-Reaching Effects

What have been the effects of this weighty docu­ment since it was first published in December?

The amount of correspondence the TFP centers and bureaus have received is astounding, with thousands of letters and coupons requesting copies of the work to distribute to relatives, friends, libraries and universities. The majority of people expressed enthusiastic support for the campaign, while the very few who showed disagreement sometimes couched it in insulting terms and almost always remained anonymous.

We can say that socialism, recently proud of the promotion it had been receiving abroad and its suc­cesses in many countries, has now taken a discreet and reserved attitude. Something has changed in the politico-ideological scene of the whole West.

What happened in France surprised and confused the optimistic and the naive.

Since French self-managing socialism boasted of being democratic and open-minded in politics, the Message published without the slightest difficulty in the democratic press of the whole West should have encountered no obstacle in the major French newspapers of the center and right. But when the thir­teen TFPs contacted the six largest Parisian dailies they received dry and inexplicable refusals. Of these papers, one of the most important that had signed a contract to publish the document broke it abrupt­ly soon afterwards. The unanimous conduct of these papers is all the more inexplicable since the Message is a very large paid advertisement that no publishing company would normally refuse.

With the publication in France thus prevented, the thirteen TFPs had to content themselves with a mass ­mailing of 300,000 copies of the Message all over the country. This drew a large and enthusiastic response and, according to many observers, played an impor­tant role in enlightening French public opinion. There followed the significant defeat of the socialist-­communist coalition in the recent regional elections.

The refusals to publish the Message gave rise to the Communiqué entitled "France: The Fist Crushes the Rose," also by Prof. Plinio Correa de Oliveira. Published in 23 papers of 11 countries, it de­nounced to world public opinion the presumable in­terference of the French socialist government in the strange and despotic curtailment of the TFPs' freedom of speech.

The Communiqué pointed out that since a socialist government can deprive any company owner of his rights, reduce him to a mere worker, and even expel him from his own company, the newspaper-owner's independence from the government is only an illu­sion. This finding has a far-reaching scope: Except for the promise of freedom, all that is left to the self­-managing regime is its similarity to communism.

Crusade's readers will find the texts of both the Message and the Communiqué published here in their entirety.

This Message has been published in the following newspapers:

United States: The Washington Post, The New York Times, Los Angeles Times and Dallas Morning News;

Canada: The Globe and Mail (Toronto) and La Presse (Montreal);

Germany: Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung;

Italy: Il Tempo (Rome) and Il Giornale Nuovo (Milan);

England: The Observer (London);

Portugal: Comecio do Porto (Oporto) and Diario de Noticias (Lisbon);

Spain: La Vanguardia (Barcelona) and Hoja del Lunes (Madrid, Bilbao, Seville and Valencia);

Switzerland: La Tribune de Geneve;

Australia: The Australian (Sydney);

Brazil: Folha de Sâo Paulo; Ultima Hora (Rio Janeiro), A Tarde (Salvador), Estado de Minas (Belo Horizonte), Jornal do Commercio (Recife), O Estado do Parana (Curitiba), O Popular (Goiania) and Jornal de Santa Catarina (Blumenau);

Argentina: La Nacion (Buenos Aires);

Chile: El Mercurio (Santiago);

Uruguay. El Pais (Montevideo);

Bolivia: El Diario (La Paz) and El Mundo (Santa Cruz);

Ecuador: El Tiempo and El Comercio (Quito) and El Universo (Guayaquil);

Columbia: El Tiempo (Bogota), El Pais (Cali) and El Colombiano (Medellin);

Venezuela: Diario de Caracas, El Universal and El Mundo (Caracas), El Impulso (Barquisimeto) and Panorama (Maracaibo);

Peru: El Comercio (Lima).