Wake Up and Smell the Culture is a collection of Ms. West’s essays covering everything from the rise and history of “America First,” to how Soviet Communist dictator Joseph Stalin created the Washington, DC Swamp that plagues us today, to the role of popular culture in the slow and painful death of western civilization, to the assault on Donald Trump from the Right.
Ms. West has long been known for her meticulous scholarship in uncovering hidden facts that cast light on the who and why of the collapse of many of our country’s most important institutions.
Taken individually the essays are thought proving and interesting, brought together they offer a compelling indictment of the duplicity of the self-appointed elite of our establishment media and political institutions.
In the eponymous essay, “Wake Up and Smell the Culture,” Ms. West takes us on a dark tour of the depravity of senior members of the Clinton-Obama coterie of political operators, elected officials and hypersexualized “artists” and pop culture figures to explain that “Pizzagate” was not a conspiracy theory but the tip of a never examined iceberg.
That investigative essay alone is worth the price of the book, but there’s a lot more.
Two (perhaps idiosyncratically on my part) favorites in the collection explain why “nothing ever happens” with the big investigations and highly charged revelations of wrongdoing by our political class and the origins of the globalist Deep State and the insurrection against President Donald Trump.
In “When Grand Juries are Not So Grand” West takes on a grand historical tour to demonstrate that in Washington, DC the grand jury process is manipulated to ensure that those whose indictment would be embarrassing to the political establishment (particularly the Democrat political establishment) to ensure that the juries “no bill” the wrongdoers, and then how that “no bill” is used to stifle any congressional inquiry that might disclose the facts in a public forum, such as a congressional hearing.
Here's how it worked in the infamous Elizabeth Bentley case, where a Soviet defector named 40 federal government officials, bureaucrats and others connected to the FDR and Truman administrations:
The most stunning thing about the Bentley grand jury witness list, however, is that no on on it, not even the later-notorious [Alger] Hiss or [Henry Dexter] White, was indicted for anything.
Why were there no indictments? The reason is quite simple. The government failed to call a witness who could corroborate any of Bentley’s grave charges, even though such a witness was already well known to the government. That witness was Whittaker Chambers. His testimony about Hiss and White alone would have been crucial to clinch the federal case.
Why were there no indictments? The reason is quite simple. The government failed to call a witness who could corroborate any of Bentley’s grave charges, even though such a witness was already well known to the government. That witness was Whittaker Chambers. His testimony about Hiss and White alone would have been crucial to clinch the federal case.
Why? The record culled by Ms. West from Stalin’s Secret Agents (by M. Stanton Evans and Herbert Romerstein) indicates that the Department of Justice did not want indictments, and without indictments investigations by the House Un-American Activities Committee would come to naught.
In short, not calling Whittaker Chambers to testify before the Bentley grand jury was a twofer in the cover-up of the Soviet penetration of the FDR and Truman administrations.
And the quashing of the Bentley investigation provided a great model for the manipulation of the investigation of the Biden crime syndicate, to name just one current example.
Another favorite is Ms. West’s 2022 essay on “Why There Must be No Surprises,” wherein she traces the development of the Deep State and globalism back to the machinations of the Stalinist Soviet Union and its manifesto in William Z. Foster’s 1932 book Toward Soviet America.
In a tour de force analysis of the history of the Communist penetration of the American government and cultural institutions Ms. West brings it all home to today and the insurrection against Donald Trump:
If these events of 30 years ago feel remote today, it’s worth noting that some of the principal names in the news today were themselves running around Moscow in this same era [Soviet dissident hero Vladimir] Bukovsky is referencing.
In the last years of the Soviet Union, for example, we see Fiona Hill, recently a leading anti-Trump impeachment witness, whose associate Igor Danchenko, the lowest-hanging fruit of the Trump-Russia hoax, would be found innocent by a Washington, DC jury (surprise, surprise) of lying to the poor, allegedly aggrieved FBI.
In the late 1980s, young Fiona was in Moscow, finishing her studies at the Maurice Thorez Language Institute; the Institute’s namesake, Maurice Thorez, was an especially devoted Stalinist. Hill may have just missed the 1989 arrival in Moscow of Nellie Ohr, recently of Fusion GPS and “Steele dossier” infamy, who went to the USSR to study the glories of forced collectivization (of Ukraine Terror Famine infamy).
A couple of years later, Ohr’s eventual “Steele dossier” colleague, Christopher Steele, would himself arrive in Moscow on his first assignment for British intelligence, fresh from his openly socialist days at Cambridge.
David Kramer, another alumnus of the “Steele dossier” plot against Donald Trump – and, what do you know, also the John McCain Institute – also pops up in Moscow in this same era.
In the last years of the Soviet Union, for example, we see Fiona Hill, recently a leading anti-Trump impeachment witness, whose associate Igor Danchenko, the lowest-hanging fruit of the Trump-Russia hoax, would be found innocent by a Washington, DC jury (surprise, surprise) of lying to the poor, allegedly aggrieved FBI.
In the late 1980s, young Fiona was in Moscow, finishing her studies at the Maurice Thorez Language Institute; the Institute’s namesake, Maurice Thorez, was an especially devoted Stalinist. Hill may have just missed the 1989 arrival in Moscow of Nellie Ohr, recently of Fusion GPS and “Steele dossier” infamy, who went to the USSR to study the glories of forced collectivization (of Ukraine Terror Famine infamy).
A couple of years later, Ohr’s eventual “Steele dossier” colleague, Christopher Steele, would himself arrive in Moscow on his first assignment for British intelligence, fresh from his openly socialist days at Cambridge.
David Kramer, another alumnus of the “Steele dossier” plot against Donald Trump – and, what do you know, also the John McCain Institute – also pops up in Moscow in this same era.
The Moscow connection between all of these anti-Trump players Diana West documented in her book The Red Thread and in her essay “Why There Must Be No Surprises” gives us some interesting, and hitherto unplumbed background on the “who and what” of the insurrection against Donald Trump.
In light of newly declassified information sensationally disclosed by Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard, far from favoring Donald Trump’s election the Russians were assessed to be indifferent to who won the 2016 election. Their goal was to sow chaos and undermine American political institutions, a goal, thanks to the actions of a long list of Marxists and Communist-adjacent operatives, such as Hill, Ohr, Steele, Kramer, Brennan, Clapper, Comey and Obama they achieved in spectacular fashion.
Pick up a copy of Wake Up and Smell the Culture today, it explains everything.
- Diana West
- Wake Up and Smell the Culture
- Conservative books
- American Betrayal
- Death of the Grown-up
- Communist threat
- Donald Trump candidacy
- Cultural rot
- Clinton/Obama political operators
- Deep State
- Grand jury process
- Elizabeth Bentley case
- Whittaker Chambers
- Biden crime syndicate
- Stalin's Secret Agents
- Communist penetration
- Nellie Ohr
- Steele dossier
