AP Photo/Harry Harris Iva Toguri D’Aquino, one of the women known as “Tokyo Rose” during World War II. On July 4, 1916, Iva Ikuko Toguri was born in Los Angeles — 25 years before she would go to Japan and become known as the infamous Tokyo Rose during World War II.
Roughly one hundred years later, Calla Walsh, 21, has stepped forward as a type of Tehran Rose, cutting propaganda films for one of the most blood-soaked regimes in the world. Walsh appeared at the funeral of Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei and praised him as the “greatest anti-imperialist leader.”
Walsh is not alone. Other young Americans have rallied to the anti-American cause. That includes Jackson Hinkle, who appeared on a stage in Tehran, cheering on a crowd chanting “Down with America.” It also includes Max Blumenthal, 48, the son of Sidney Blumenthal, the columnist who became notorious as the “attack dog” for Bill and Hillary Clinton.
While supporting a regime that denies free speech and other human rights to its citizens, they are protected in the U.S. in voicing unpopular views, including denouncing their own nation. The question is where the line is between that and criminal conduct.
Walsh, Hinkle and Blumenthal fit a pattern not just as young and privileged radicals, often downwardly mobile from their parents’ careers and accomplishments, but also as voices groomed by U.S. media culture for years.
Walsh was born in Cambridge, Massachusetts, to Boston University English professor Chris Walsh and Mary Sullivan Walsh, an instructor with Harvard’s Extension School. She was raised a progressive Brahman. The media fawned over the radical college dropout as an exciting new voice. The New York Times gushed over her, and Teen Vogue published her screed in favor of socialism.
She would work on the campaigns of Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) and Boston Mayor Michelle Wu. (Her work on the campaigns drew gushing reviews in The New York Times and Boston Magazine).
Hinkle was also celebrated by the media after he embraced socialism and then communism. Born in San Clemente, California, he was named one of “The 17 Most Inspirational Kids of 2017” by Reader’s Digest. As with Walsh, he was featured in Teen Vogue as an inspirational young activist. In a Los Angeles Times article, he was described by a source as “the kind of guy who gives you hope about the future … Jackson is fearless and well-informed.” Today, he is a vocal supporter not only of Iran’s regime but also of Vladimir Putin’s Russia and its war against Ukraine.
The scion of the Democratic establishment, Blumenthal attended the exclusive Georgetown Day School in Washington and graduated from the University of Pennsylvania. His connections gave him immediate access to elite publications. He wrote books denouncing Israel and espousing increasingly radicalized values.
He also wrote far-left columns for the Los Angeles Times and the New York Times. Liberal websites, including The Nation, The Daily Beast, and The Huffington Post, featured his work. He is viewed as an apologist for regimes fighting the U.S., often dismissing atrocities committed by countries such as Syria and Russia. (His father, Sidney Blumenthal, sent Hillary Clinton roughly two dozen of his son’s columns. Hillary responded with such praise as “Max strikes again!” and “He’s so good.”)
All three are examples of today’s radical chic in media and higher education, all given platforms as influencers.
And there are thousands like Walsh, Hinkle, and Blumenthal. Indeed, our colleges are cranking out radicalized young people who have a paucity of job prospects but an abundance of rage.
Recently, a Fourth of July event captured this culture in Chicago. The event featured Bill Ayers, a former professor, former fugitive, and one of the founders of the domestic terrorist organization, the Weather Underground.
The other speaker was Princeton’s Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor, a chaired professor in the African-American Studies department and a writer for the New Yorker. Taylor delighted the young audience by saying that they were all part of the “F— the U.S.” crowd and called on others to reject “the idea of loving a nation state, which is what patriotism is.” She repeatedly returned to the theme that borders are “deadly” and “borders kill people,” denouncing all borders as “a tool of death and destruction.”
Walsh’s emergence as a face of Iranian propaganda raises striking parallels to Toguri, who was arrested and convicted of treason after World War II. She was actually just one of several women who participated in the infamous propaganda radio programs for the Japanese military.
The difference is that Toguri, whom President Gerald Ford later pardoned, may have been an unwilling participant in the programs. Unlike Walsh, Toguri was effectively trapped in Japan after the U.S. refused to recognize her citizenship, preventing her from returning home to California.
Toguri was effectively destitute, subjected to cruel treatment by the Japanese. She insisted that she had been coerced into reading anti-American scripts and that even then she refused to attack the United States in her programs.
Walsh was not just a willing participant; she is a raving anti-Semitic ally to the Iranians — and seemingly any country that can do harm to the U.S.
She found ample support in the media as she veered further and further leftward while adopting anti-American views. Enablers at publications like Teen Vogue featured her manifesto: “I’m a 17-year-old socialist. For my generation, a fascist presidential administration, pandemic, economic collapse, and a historic uprising for Black lives have shaped our worldview.”
Following the attack on a synagogue in West Bloomfield Township, Michigan, Walsh asked: “Why should zionists feel safe anywhere“? After the Iranian government massacred tens of thousands of protesters, Walsh defended and helped whitewash the lethal response, instead blaming the U.S. and Israel.
The usual suspects on the American left helped facilitate and fund Walsh’s radicalization. That includes Fergie Chambers, the self-styled millionaire Marxist organizer and heir to the Cox Communications empire. Chambers, a college dropout who has helped finance Walsh’s Unity of Fields organization and at times to pay her legal bills, has said that “the most important thing for the prosperity of humanity is the destruction of the U.S.”
As for her current finances, if she has received funds from Iranian-linked groups, she could face legal jeopardy. Walsh has reportedly been working with Iranian state media that have been put under sanctions by the U.S.
Hinkle and Blumenthal may also face questions regarding any support they have given or received in relation to Iran and other countries. Hinkle, notably, was a high-profile participant as a “pro-Iran influencer” at the funeral of Hezbollah chief Hassan Nasrallah last year. He was also a speaker at a Houthi rally in Yemen, with his speech again followed by chants of “Death to America!” Hezbollah, like Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps and the other violent paramilitaries it supports, has been declared a Foreign Terrorist Organization.
The Tehran Times described Blumenthal as appearing as attending as editor-in-chief of The Grayzone with hundreds of other Western influencers. Again, there is no evidence he received or gave support directly to the Iranian regime. He can maintain that he is a journalist opposed to U.S. imperialism, acting within his rights under the First Amendment.
In our country, it is no easy task to show that someone has crossed a line. It is not a criminal act, after all, to join “F— the U.S.” chants in Chicago or even “Down with America” in Tehran. Also, if you were merely observing or reporting, you are not criminally culpable, even if you are a useful dupe for propagandists. Yet working directly with propaganda units associated with foreign terrorist organizations could lead to charges.
Fortunately for the anti-American influencers, they will be afforded all of the protections regimes like Iran and Russia deny to everyone. In the end, they are less important than what they represent: They are the enfants terribles of the American left, and they are being replicated in the thousands in our educational system.
Jonathan Turley is a law professor and the New York Times best-selling author of “Rage and the Republic: The Unfinished Story of the American Revolution.“
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