Nearly two decades later, as Republicans, Democrats and Independents gear up for this fall’s mid-term elections, the special interest group—indirectly funded by union members’ dues—has launched a “get out the vote” page with a symbol that is eerily reminscent of the Soviet-era hammer and sickle.

Earlier this month, the AFL-CIO launched a website entitled MyVotMyRight.org which, when clicked on, takes union members to a page on the the AFL-CIO’s website.

Once there, union members are told that My Vote, My Right is the “AFL-CIO’s voter protection and education program” and a “non-partisan” effort.

However, as visitors look at the logo in the upper right of the page, they may be surprised to see a symbol that, while one could argue is ‘merely’ a check mark wrapped in a blue hand, appears strikingly similar to the symbol of the former Soviet union—except, instead of the yellow hammer and sickle on a red background, a red hammer is wrapped by a blue hand and the star has the Obama campaign symbol within it.

Below are screenshots of the page:

Founded in 1886, despite extreme pressure from within the union movement from European immigrants who had embraced Marxism, the first president of American Federation of Labor, Samuel Gompers, was staunchly against the tenets of socialism, famously stating:

I want to tell you, Socialists, that I have studied your philosophy; read your works upon economics, and not the meanest of them; studied your standard works, both in English and German—have not only read, but studied them. I have heard your orators and watched the work of your movement the world over. I have kept close watch upon your doctrines for thirty years; have been closely associated with many of you, and know what you think and what you propose. I know, too, what you have up your sleeve. And I want to say that I am entirely at variance with your philosophy. I declare to you, I am not only at variance with your doctrines, but with your philosophy. Economically, you are unsound; socially, you are wrong; industrially, you are an impossibility.

Today’s union leaders, it appears, no longer embrace Gompers’ aversion to socialism. In fact, many of them fully embrace it.

Whether or not the AFL-CIO’s symbol on its voting rights page was designed to intentionally resemble the Soviet symbol is unknown. However, given the close ties between unions and Marxist groups these days and with many of today’s union members too young to remember an enemy from a bygone era, the symbolism will likely escape most of them.

Related:

• Trumka’s Leftism
• They’re Out of the Closet Now: Big Labor = Big Socialism

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“Truth isn’t mean. It’s truth.”
Andrew Breitbart (1969-2012)

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