What's the main difference between Tokyo Rose and today's home-grown anti-America influencers?

Tokyo Rose had an excuse.

Jonathan Turley shines the light on the spoiled American kids who, nurtured by academia and/or the media, have become mouthpieces for the Iranian regime. One of them is Calla Walsh.

According to Turley, Walsh has “stepped forward as a type of Tehran Rose, cutting propaganda films for one of the most blood-soaked regimes in the world. “ At the funeral of Iran’s Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei, Walsh praised the fanatical tyrant as the “greatest anti-imperialist leader.”

Who is Walsh? Turley has the answer:

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.

Turley’s next example is Jackson Hinkle. He appeared on a stage in Tehran, cheering on a crowd chanting “Down with America.”

Who is Hinkle?

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.

[Hinkle] 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!”

Turley’s third example is Max Blumenthal, son of Clinton hatchet man Sidney Blumenthal. Educated at Georgetown Day School and the University of Pennsylvania, Blumenthal hates Israel and contributes to Russian propaganda outlets like RT and Sputnik, as well as Iranian Press TV.

Blumenthal attended Khamenei’s funeral. The Tehran Times was pleased with what he reported:

Writing from Tehran’s Mosalla, Blumenthal called it the largest funeral in history, emphasizing that it is practically impossible to understand what this scene is like, or what it means, unless you are here.

He documented endless crowds pouring in, growing larger and more intense into the night.

Blumenthal witnessed indignant calls for vengeance, displays of sorrow and defiance, protest songs, and marathons of poetry, predicting these days of mourning will amount to one of the most resonant moments in the history of anti-imperialist movements.

Blumenthal argued that if the airstrike was designed by foreign authors to trigger regime change, the reality on the ground proved it had backfired catastrophically.

It’s unclear how many people actually attended the dead Ayatollah’s funeral. The Associated Press estimated the crowds in Tehran to be in the “hundreds of thousands,” while Reuters reported “tens of thousands” in the capital.

If Reuters is right, the number of attendees might roughly equal the number of Iranians slaughtered by the regime during the most recent popular uprising. You didn’t have to be there to understand what that means. Yet, the meaning of the massacre is lost on Blumenthal. He and Walsh blame the U.S. and Israel.

Turley is not wrong to compare Walsh, Hinkle, and Blumenthal to Tokyo Rose (real name Iva Ikuko Toguri). As Turley points out, though, Toguri had an excuse:

Toguri may have been an unwilling participant in the [pro-Japan broadcasts]. 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.

President Ford pardoned Toguri, so there might well have been something to her excuse.

What excuse could Walsh, Hinkle, and Blumenthal offer? They could blame their education. Turley does:

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.

Colleges certainly seem to be cranking out anti-Semites and anti-Americans. Are they really also cranking out Iran regime sympathizers?

Perhaps they are in this sense: If you hate America enough, you might become a fan of its worst enemies.

Turley offers a second explanation — subsidies:

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.”

(Emphasis added)

There you have it. The extreme left’s fundamental goal isn’t free health care for all, or lower food and gas prices, or even Palestine “from the river to the sea.” The extreme left’s fundamental goal is the destruction of America.

No wonder that when radical Islamists in Tehran shout “Death to America,” nepo babies like Chambers and Walsh concur.