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Raising new concerns about another controversial Obama Administration official, testimony has surfaced from Mark Lloyd, the new Associate General Counsel and Chief Diversity Officer of the Federal Communications Commission (FCC), in which he praises Paul Robeson, the communist actor and singer who was an apologist for Soviet dictator and mass murderer Joseph Stalin.

Lloyd, who worked as a broadcast journalist at NBC and CNN, has come under fire from Fox News Channel host Glenn Beck and Seton Motley of the Media Research Center for being openly critical of private media companies in the U.S. and Venezuela, where Lloyd believes that Marxist ruler Hugo Chavez is trying to implement a popular democracy.

At the FCC, Lloyd is in a position to try to influence and control media content by making statements and issuing directives on media "diversity" and fairness.

But 2005 testimony that Lloyd provided to a congressional forum headed by far-left Democratic Rep. John Conyers raises even more questions about his totalitarian mind-set and background.

Declaring that media bias "led to the persecution of Paul Robeson and the promotion of Joe McCarthy," Lloyd tried to convey the impression that Robeson had been unfairly targeted by anti-communist congressional investigations, perhaps by Senator McCarthy himself, and that the media had been part of the process. The Lloyd testimony is available on video (web site)

or in somewhat separate form as a prepared statement. (web site)

While Robeson deserved praise for his artistic talents, there is no excuse at this late date for ignorance about Robeson's real record not only as a secret member of the Communist Party USA but as an apologist for communist tyranny. Lloyd's comments suggest that he would have preferred that the media not make an issue of Robeson's involvement in an international movement that has cost the lives of more than 100 million people.

At a 2008 "media reform" conference sponsored by the George Soros-funded Free Press organization, Lloyd declared that the Marxist revolution in Venezuela under Chavez was "incredible" and "dramatic" but that the "property owners and the folks who were then controlling the media in Venezuela rebelled" against the would-be dictator and supported a coup against him. However, Lloyd said that Chavez wised up and "then started to take the media seriously..."

The implication of these remarks is that Chavez dealt with his opponents in the media by trying to control or silence them, and that Lloyd supports that strategy when dealing with opponents of revolutionary Marxism here in the U.S.

Accuracy in Media, which published the book, The Death of Talk Radio?, has been warning for years that the liberal/left has a plan to silence conservative media voices. Lloyd appears to be the point man in this scheme.

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