Is It Just a Coincidence That Earth Day Falls on Lenin’s Birthday?

Lenin’s birthday was April 22, 1870, and the first Earth Day was celebrated on April 22, 1970.  Was it just a coincidence that that Earth Day was first celebrated on the 100th Anniversary of the birthday of communist mass murderer Vladimir Lenin?  The late Gary Allen didn’t think so.  Here is an excerpt from his article on the subject “Ecology” published in the May 1970 issue of American Opinion:

Nobody is willing to admit who selected the date of April twenty-second for the “Earth Day” teach-ins. That is, after all, the one -hundredth anniversary of Lenin’s birth. A coincidence you think?  The student activists just picked a convenient weekend?  Hardly. April twenty-second falls on a Wednesday. For months the radical and Communist Press has been detailing plans to celebrate Lenin’s centennial birthday with worldwide demonstrations. April twenty second is as familiar a date to these people as Washington’s Birthday is to real Americans. The selection of this date as “Earth Day” provides an excellent indication of who is running the campus ecology movement. I telephoned the Teach-In’s national coordinator, Denis Hayes, to ask him how April twenty-second happened to be selected for the ecology festivities. Mr. Hayes, late of Harvard ‘s Graduate School of Government, had obviously memorized his answer: “It also happens to be William Shakespeare’s birthday, Queen Elizabeth’s birthday, Maryanna Kaufman’s birthday and her Aunt Ann’s birthday, but I am sure that none of those entered into Gaylord Nelson’s thoughts when he and the steering committee or whoever it was chose that date.  Mr. Hayes should avoid lying about matters so easily checked. The date settled upon as the national day of William Shakespeare is April 23 , 1564 ; Queen Elizabeth was born on April 21, 1926. Which leads one to suspect that even Hayes’ friends Maryanna Kaufman and her aunt (if they exist) might well have been born on some Friday the thirteenth for all he knows. What else do you suppose Mr. Hayes lies about?

Sponsors of Earth Day have already prepared a 367 -page manifesto, published by Ballentine, called The Environmental Handbook. The sponsoring steering committee, according to Hayes, includes Gaylord Nelson, Far Left Republican Pete McCloskey of California, Sidney Howe of the Conservation Foundation, Paul Ehrlich of Stanford, Harold Jordoff of the University of Wisconsin, and three students. The Environmental Handbook is totally Marxist in orientation and contains excerpts from the writings of all the key environment radicals. According to columnist Paul Scott, Earth Day already has the backing of Walter Reuther’s United Auto Workers and “several of the big tax -free liberal foundations. ” This ecology business has a particular attraction for hippies, who live in filth but claim to love the beauties of nature. According to Professor Paul Ehrlich, a good deal of the success of the ecology revolution is to be attributed to the “much despised ‘hippie’ movement … a movement wrapped up in Zen Buddhism, physical love and a disdain for material wealth. It is small wonder that our society is horrified at hippies’ behavior – it goes against our most cherished religious and ethical ideas.”  A link to the entire article:   https://s3.amazonaws.com/camppictures/CampArchive/Domestic/Ecology.pdf