Tag Archive for: Communism

A Child’s-Eye View of Communism’s Absurdities

Candid childhood memories of life behind the Iron Curtain


It is a truism to say that children have a grasp of reality different from adults; a clearer and more honest grasp that in most cases they lose with maturity. Rare is the man or woman who retains that innocent capacity to see through grown-up hypocrisy and pretence, presented to us so vividly in Hans Andersen’s memorable fairy-tale, The Emperor’s New Clothes.

In this humorous memoir of growing up in a city (unidentified) of 40,000 in the southern Urals of the Soviet Union in the 1970s-1980s, Fr Alexander Krylov, of Russian-German origin, manages to retain the undeceived eyes of childhood as he relates the absurdities and contradictions of life under Communism.

God and family

So many memoirs of living under the Soviet regime are, understandably, riven with bitterness and anger; the suffering has been too great to forget. The young Krylov, an only child, was protected from this by the love and faith of his family: his Catholic mother and grandmother and his Orthodox father.

The latter died when he was aged seven; showing unusual understanding for his age, Krylov realised that he was now “the one man in the family.” A certain independence of outlook seems to have characterised him from the start — probably because, despite the constant atheist propaganda impressed on him at school and in the wider society, “God’s presence in everyday life was… self-evident for our family.”

Much of this was owing to his grandmother’s influence for, as the family breadwinner, his mother had to work long hours outside the home. This grandmother, who had grown up in a German-speaking colony in Russia, resembled a traditional Russian “babushka” in her fortitude, her generosity and her strong faith that years of living in Leonid Brezhnev’s decrepit Soviet society could not erase.

In this world, all its citizens were officially atheist yet, as Krylov relates, everyone in his neighbourhood “knew” who the believers were and what religion they followed. His grandmother “saw an ally in every human being who was seeking God — Jews, Orthodox and Muslims” because — especially in death — “common prayer was much more important than any disagreement.”

There were no churches in his city and he only saw the inside of an Orthodox church (in western Ukraine) before starting school, aged six. Overwhelmed by its icons, candles and awe-inspiring atmosphere, Krylov told his mother, “Let’s stay here forever.” Undeterred, his grandmother erected a homemade altar in their small apartment, with its holy pictures, holy water, hymns and secret celebrations of the great Christian feasts. A candle would be lit in the window at Christmas; it was “somehow implicitly clear that God does not abandon human beings as long as a light is burning in at least one window on Christmas Eve and at least one person is waiting for the Christ-child.”

Economic woes

The author takes a gentle swipe at western society, obsessed with dietary fashions, when he explains, in a chapter titled “Healthy Diet”, why Soviet citizens had no choice but a healthy diet. Trying to survive in a corrupt and inefficient command economy, almost all families had an allotment with fruit trees and vegetables, to compensate for what they could not buy in the shops: everything possible was pickled, canned, stored or preserved. For some reason chickens were plentiful:

“Thanks to the poor work of the chemical industry, they were raised with no additives and usually looked as though they had walked by themselves from the chicken factory to the grocery store.”

I laughed aloud as I read this and other reminiscences, narrated in the candid way of a man who has not lost the artless gaze of a child. (After a distinguished academic career in Moscow, Fr Krylov decided to become a priest aged 42, on Easter Monday 2011 and was ordained in 2016.)

Another anecdote describes how he briefly worked in a grocery store where the shelves were often lacking common items buyers craved. Organising the shop’s store room, he noticed many such items, piled them on a trolley and wheeled it through into the shop, to the delighted surprise of the customers. The teenage boy could not understand why the manageress looked so discomfited and why his employment was suddenly curtailed.

Inner life

Just as the late Russian poet, Irina Ratushinskaya, who spent four years in the Gulag for writing “subversive” poetry, commented she was told so often as a child “there is no God”, that she began to believe in Him, Krylov reflects: “The prohibition against owning a Bible in the Soviet Union could only confirm its importance.”

In a telling incident in his teens, he describes a classroom meeting where these young Soviet citizens planned “to put socialist democracy into action.” This meant denouncing a fellow student who would not obey the rules. Krylov, who had befriended him, defended him in front of his classmates. They then turned on him, aware that he too was somehow “different.” The author comments, “Although I was always present, I lived my own life”. This hidden, inner life, which they sensed though it was never made explicit, presented an existential threat to his fellow student ideologues.

Inevitably, Lenin’s image was everywhere. Joining the Communist youth group, the Young Pioneers, one wore a red neckerchief and star. “Depicted on this star were the head of Lenin and three tongues of fire. I shared with no one my impression that this star depicted the head of Lenin burning in hell.” This was the response of a child whose private faith, never mentioned in class, helped to protect him against the atheism he was forced to listen to in public.

Finally, aged 15, overhearing the jocular remark of a friend’s father that vodka was “opium for the people”, Krylov comments: “Suddenly my eyes were opened: [I realised that] Communism had simply become a new religion.”

If the Emperor in this case was not exactly naked, nonetheless the short, discrete chapters of this kindly memoir remind readers that his clothes were uncomfortable, unsuitable, ill-fitting and threadbare.

This review has been republished with the author’s permission from The Conservative Woman.

AUTHOR

Francis Phillips

More by Francis Phillips

EDITORS NOTE: This MercatorNet column is republished with permission. ©All rights reserved.

Marxists Spoke! Sadly, We Listened.

Marxists spoke: Never talk about politics and religion.  Don’t trust your parents. Be the silent majority.  Sadly, we listened.


A newly released report from Steve Moore, states that there is no one, NOT ONE, ZERO person in the OBiden regime that knows anything about business. think about this: These people are pushing their untried, untested, complete failure policies on We the People because they don’t care about people or results. They only care about power.

It seems as though our SCOTUS believes in the US Constitution. We won great decisions in the Supreme Court but got screwed by the Gutless Outrageous Prostitutes = GOP. (Thank you Sally Baptiste for that great new name for the GOP.)   Are you still going to vote for the same traitors again? Chaney is out begging democrats to vote for her. I hope that even Wyoming Democrats are not that stupid.

To understand what’s going on today we really have to go back and look at the 60s-70s. Most Americans pushing abortion are Boomers from that era. The boomers, myself included were the hippies, the flower children, the rock n  rollers, anti-G-d, Anti-family and Anti-America.  Morality was tossed out the window when G-d was removed from public buildings, due to 1person complaining in Engel v. Vitale . Then we accepted perversion, drugs, liquor,  sex as the new lifestyle. We would do anything our parents didn’t do. We hated the establishment.

In the 60s-70s we were so despondent and in such despair at seeing our great American heroes being assassinated in front of our very eyes. We strongly believed that the assassinations were part of a government coup. Of course we were told we were conspiracy nuts. HA! John F Kennedy, Martin Luther King JR, Robert Kennedy, our hope for a bright future was slowly fading.  We were forced into a war by draft in Vietnam that no one wanted. We were forced to fight a war in Vietnam against communism while promoting communism at home in school. How sick was that?  We were taught to lay our hatred on the heroes that were forced to fight. While those who avoided the draft became teachers in this new education called Social Studies/sustainability aka communism.

And so like all other peoples of the world when we were abused we responded. We were angry .We demonstrated, we marched and we rioted. We destroyed statues, burned buildings and listened to the emotional news about the war even though we knew they were lying.

We were taught to divert our attention into sex and drugs which we learned in school through a variety of “new” SEX Ed courses and we learned fast. After all we learned in school so it had to be OK. We had multiple outlets to express our new found “free love” like Studio 54, Plato’s Retreat and Playboy Club.  We often took out our hostility in our music and art. Bill Ayers (Obama’s mentor and leader of the Weather Underground responsible for multiple bombings of federal buildings, now a professor) asked John Lennon to write a song for the revolution. John wrote “Revolution”. Bill was pissed. (Read the lyrics)

We took massive quantities of drugs and had Love Ins with sex, drugs and  lots of liquor hooking up at any time with anyone. Nothing has changed. Those teens, grew up and are now running America using their never tried utopian/Marxist theories that they write when under the influence of something. If they wanted the drug war over, they would end it instead of participating in it. These insane illogical theories don’t work, can’t work, will never work. They are instead designed to take forever and be way over budget.  If their programs worked, they couldn’t bleed us dry.

What did we learn? Well my group of teenagers were told never talk about politics and religion.  Don’t trust your parents after all anyone over 30 doesn’t know what is going on. Be the silent majority.  Never talk about the war. We were told the government knows best.  We grew up to being so anti-establishment that it didn’t matter what the establishment did or said we figured they were just lying. The GOP and DNC are filled with these globalists who vow to take down America’s greatness and steal everything they can’t get legally. . Check out the “GOP-Gutless Outrageous Prostitutes”  who just voted to take away the only protection we have with our guns while they bring terrorists into America. They hate Americans. They want us to suffer so we will be happy with their government crumbs. We will do more for less while they take everything and we will be happy with drugs and video games. Yuval Noah Harari from World Economic Forum describes their intent:

War makes their problem of too many useless eaters, easy to dispose of. These globalists will protect the border of Ukraine and provide Ukraine guns while disarming Americans. All they want is for us to DIE (Diversity, Inclusion, Equity) so they can steal our property and keep power.

Where did we turn to vent our frustration and agree to transform America? Our educators took care of that. In 1989, Shirley Mc Cune from the McRel Foundation told the Governors Association:

We will change education from fact based to value based (on emotion) learning.

(Emotional people are easier to control using emotional triggers.)

We will stop focusing on the individual, and focus on the collective (we can conform everyone to the group mentality.)

We will train for work, not educate for life. (We need workers not thinkers or experts).

Communists learned that uneducated people are easier to control.

While all eyes looked at colleges, they infiltrated K-12 while convincing the family to “keep up with the Jones” by overspending so both mom and dad had to work ensuring the breakup of the family. The evolution of the family went from Father Knows Best to All in the Family to Married with Children showing how dysfunctional families are really the norm.

Today we suffer the results of those teachings as our government officials and experts are only capable of reading their talking points. I am just following directions, you will hear as their excuse for their third world actions of government against the people. Our police, after being emasculated (the goal of the feminist movement), will stand and watch as children are being slaughtered because they are just following directions.  The hell with the Americans.  They are just useless eaters. Less people is better they have been taught. According to Stalin, “Less people, less problems.”

We turned to a new type of government called socialism. It sounded so social, fun and inviting. It sounded so nice. All people will look after each other. Everyone would share. It will be wonderful. Everyone will all have the same stuff. And so the confused children turned to the communists who were so ready to open their arms for their new flock. The commies changed all the words and definitions to reflect Peace and Love. We followed Saul Alinsky’s Rules for Radicals and they offered the people exactly what Khrushchev said. I will feed you little bits of socialism and one day you will be a communist.

Now we have America’s new normal. How does that work?

Kevin Sorbo on  Twitter:

“Can I drive your car? No, you’re 5

Can I have a beer?  No, you’re 5

Can I have a cigarette? No, you’re 5

Can I have a gun? No, you’re 5

Can I take hormones and change my gender? Of Course, you know what’s best.”


My conversation (Italics) with a Greenie:   

Greenie: I am getting an EV. I will save tons of money on fossil fuel since it will soon be outlawed. I can depend on clean green energy from wind or sun. No dirty fuel for me.

That is great but what do you do if there is no wind or sun. 

It won’t matter because I will plug my car in the wall socket.

Where does the electricity in the socket come from?

It comes from the wires.

Where does the electricity in the wires come from?

It comes from the power company.

Where does the electricity in the power company come from? From the grid.  Where does the electricity from the grid come from? 

DUH! OOPS Ok Where?

Fossil fuel.


NO FOSSIL FUEL = NO ELECTRICITY.

We are assisting in our own failure.

CO2 is necessary to produce food not climate change.

America is having a food shortage crisis. CO2 helps plants aka food to grow.

CO2 is about .03% of the atmosphere and is a result of warming, NOT the cause.

Joe said he doesn’t know why or what to do about the food shortages but Joe has a plan. He increased ethanol aka corn aka soy in gas which burns our food for fuel resulting in less food at a higher cost for Americans and more expensive gas.

“Growing ethanol not food wastes: 5Billion tons of N Fertilizer; 68 Trillion BTU of natural gas; 57000sq MILES (not acres) of farmland.” Dr. Sarah Taber.

Joe has opened border for illegals to eat our food giving Americans less food; higher cost.

Then Joe wrote an EO forcing new furnaces to eliminate CO2. No CO2 = No Food.  Since over 20 processing plants were attacked, Joe signed an EO to give $1Billion to farmers to build new plants. Only the EPA regulations make it cost prohibitive.  Is it Joe’s intent to starve Americans so he can trade food for guns?

American government schools teach their students to be mediocre.  Multiple educators, myself included know that Common Core insures America’s children will be 2 years below average. Now we are surprised that they are.

Based on their IQ test results, the woman from the U.S. scored 16 points lower than that of her sibling in Korea.

This is a recent article regarding the low numbers of 3rd Graders who can read at proficiency level of 4 or 5 on the scale of 1-5

These programs DON’T WORK!

We just had LGBTQ month. Where is the Hetero Month? Or the Cisgender Month.  After all we are the majority and in a “Democracy” the majority wins. So why are we not recognized?  These labels are just used to divide the people. Really who cares what anyone does in their bedroom?

My question is: Can you do the job?

It is obvious in this failed regime the answer is No, but not to worry their departments met their DIE quota.

Now the big question:  Is America worth saving? What will you do about it?

©Karen Schoen. All rights reserved.

RELATED ARTICLE: San Francisco School Returns to Merit-Based Admissions

Prominent Pro-Abortion Group Appears To Be Front For Radical Revolutionary Communists

A prominent pro-abortion activist group downplaying its association with the Revolutionary Communist Party (RCP) shares significant infrastructure and leadership with the radical outfit’s other offshoot groups, a Daily Caller analysis has found.

Although RiseUp4AbortionRights seems like most other pro-abortion groups at first glance, other pro-abortion activists released a statement in late June asserting that RiseUp is a front for a “pyramid scheme” and cult of personality. The Daily Caller’s examination of the organization’s leaders, online presence, and fundraising platforms lend credence to the claim that RiseUp is an offshoot front group for the RCP.

“Support for communism in the U.S. is incredibly low, so one way for these individuals to jump-start is to ride the coattails of something that has much more acceptability” in mainstream discussion of current political events, Brian Levin, director of the Center for the Study of Hate and Extremism, told the Daily Caller.

RiseUp shares leadership with the RCP and several of its related organizations. Sunsara Taylor is a prominent RCP spokeswoman and a co-founder of RiseUp. Taylor founded RiseUp in January 2022 to protest for “abortion on demand and without apology.” An earlier pro-abortion group Taylor founded, Stop Patriarchy, used the same slogan and also attracted scrutiny from other pro-abortion activist organizations, the Austin Chronicle reported in 2014. Stop Patriarchy has not posted any new tweets to its Twitter feed since 2020, but the organization’s website features more recent footage of an interview in which Taylor discusses the consequences of the Dobbs decision.

Taylor also founded The World Can’t Wait, Inc., (TWCW) alongside another RCP devotee in 2006 to oppose the Bush administration, particularly its policies in the Middle East.

Taylor went on to co-found another organization, Refuse Fascism, in 2016 to resist the incoming Trump administration. At the time, the RCP took credit for helping create Refuse Fascism on its website. The “what you can do now” quick links section at the bottom of the RCP website still links directly to the Refuse Fascism homepage.

Another leading RiseUp activist, Sam Goldman, is a prominent spokeswoman for Refuse Fascism. In a Jan. 2022 episode of the Refuse Fascism podcast featured on the organization’s website, Goldman stated that she has “been busy helping launch RiseUp4AbortionRights.”

The RCP website promotes digital content from RiseUp and Refuse Fascism. Similarly, Refuse Fascism’s website features digital content from RiseUp and the RCP. All three organizations generally promote each others’ digital content on their websites without making clear the nature of their association.

On its main fundraising portal, RiseUp states that it is sharing certain “tools” with Refuse Fascism until RiseUp “establishes infrastructure” for fundraising of its own. RiseUp’s PayPal fundraising account also includes the name of TWCW. Refuse Fascism and TWCW share a New York City mailing address.

RiseUp’s website claims that the group spends donated funds on protest materials and logistics. Amid accusations of financial impropriety from other pro-abortion groups, RiseUp released a statement promising that it “has never used any funds it has raised for any purposes other than exactly what the funds were raised for.”

The RiseUp statement derided criticism of Taylor and Avakian as “scurrilous and false.” The RCP added that the accusations from other pro-abortion groups “smack strongly of the tactics of the right wing fascist forces in this country and the political police (the FBI, etc.) who create pretexts to go after revolutionary groups” in its own statement. The RCP flatly denied ever having used RiseUp funds in any capacity in its statement.

Taylor refused to say if RiseUp would submit to an independent audit of its financial dealings in order to clear up the accusations, and referred the Daily Caller to previous statements on the matter. Neither RiseUp nor the RCP disclosed documentation in response statements to definitively disprove the allegations of impropriety.

VIEW THEIR INSTAGRAM PAGE HERE

The RCP centers on Avakian’s revolutionary ideology, which RCP materials refer to as “new communism.” Critics, including those who signed the June statement against RiseUp, have claimed that the RCP is a Maoist group that elevates Avakian and his teachings as messianic. The late June statement from pro-abortion groups opposed to RiseUp asserted that the RCP established RiseUp as a front to divert funds and people towards the growth of its ideology rather than earnestly supporting the pro-abortion cause.

“There will be individuals who use this division and deep and wide disappointment with the Dobbs decision to not only stake claim with regard to abortion rights, but also to make their overall failed political worldview an attractive option” to naive demonstrators, Levin said.

RiseUp has become one of the most visible pro-abortion groups in the United States. Democratic New York Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez joined RiseUp demonstrators in protest the day of the release of Dobbs. Taylor held a megaphone to Ocasio-Cortez’s face while the congresswoman led chants calling the Supreme Court illegitimate. Several protesters, including Taylor, have been spotted and photographed wearing RCP merchandise at RiseUp demonstrations.

The group has appeared at many demonstrations across the country since its inception, and has received attention from the press and celebrities. Hillary Clinton promoted a RiseUp protest on Twitter in early May. Hollywood social justice warriors Mark Ruffalo and Rosanna Arquette have publicly supported RiseUp, according to its website. MSNBC even broadcast an interview with two young RiseUp activists.

RiseUp protesters deploy unique tactics, including smearing red paint over their private parts. They also paint green handprints over the chests of protesters wearing white. Doing so represents “a facsimile of what would happen to actual living women, hemorrhaging to death from unsafe abortions,” one RiseUp activist explained to the Daily Caller at a recent protest in front of the Supreme Court.

“These are opportunists who are trying to take advantage of people of good will who have deeply held, sincere beliefs with regard to the right to abortion,” Levin concluded.

None of the signatories of the statement in opposition to RCP that were contacted returned the Daily Caller’s request for comment.

AUTHOR

NICHOLAS POPE

Contributor.

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EDITORS NOTE: This Daily Caller column is republished with permission. ©All rights reserved.

New Museum Bears Witness to Communism’s Horrors, Honors Its Victims

In total, more than 100 million have been killed under communist regimes in the past 100 years.


In the heart of Washington, D.C., behind the doors of a building not unlike the others with which it shares a block, lies a most visceral testament to the horrors of communism—a political ideology still all too dominant in the world today.

The new museum, from the Victims of Communism Memorial Foundation, has been in the works for many years. It opened to the public on Monday.

Entering it is like walking into a vault. Or possibly a tomb. Passing by a wall with large, embossed words reading, “REMEMBERING the victims of Communism,” the space quickly darkens and narrows.

Pictures and small video screens containing images of regimes and victims alike emblazon it, evoking a somber tone. Beyond those images, on a larger screen, a six-minute film lays out the rise of Vladimir Lenin and the Soviet Union as a communist power.

The room then funnels visitors into the world of the gulag. Here, there are artifacts from the notorious Soviet prison camps, physical remnants of the millions of Russians who passed through them. In one case sits a teddy bear and next to it a “valenki”—a felt boot that shod gulag prisoners.

There’s also a replica of “black bread,” an oblong, charcoal-colored loaf that gulag prisoners relied on for sustenance. Small measurements show how much of a loaf would be doled out as rations to each prisoner, depending on their docility or misbehavior.

From 1934 to 1947, an estimated 10 million were sent to the camps. Another estimate puts fatalities between 1.2 million and 1.7 million from 1918 to 1956.

An informational panel explains how Josef Stalin, the longest reigning leader of the Soviet Union, intentionally used a famine to starve more than 3 million Ukrainians in 1932 and 1933. Some estimate the death toll reached 7 million.

In total, the museum estimates, more than 100 million have been killed under communist regimes in the past 100 years.

On one wall runs a film, a slideshow of simple, hand-drawn images depicting the hardship of life in gulags, prisons, and work camps from communist regimes around the world. The images were etched by the survivors. Testimonies of what other survivors witnessed while imprisoned are read aloud as the images scroll.

“Every case where [communism] has been tried, it leads to mass atrocities,” Ambassador Andrew Bremberg, the president and CEO of the Victims of Communism Memorial Foundation, told me. “Truly, the worst examples of human suffering in history in terms of the most brutal, mass-murdering regimes.”

A broader scope of the suffering is played out in the museum’s largest space. There, a film animates the history of communism’s spread across the globe, detailing which nations fell to it. In one corner, the number of fatalities under communism, as well as those subjugated by it, rolls ever upward.

Informational panels throughout the museum detail specific atrocities, such as Pol Pot’s genocide of the Cambodian people, which wiped out 25% of the population of the Southeast Asian nation, and Mao Zedong’s failure in collectivizing China’s agriculture, resulting in a famine that killed anywhere from 20 million to 43 million people.

Juxtaposed to those are stories—written out and accompanied by photographs—of resistance to communism, ranging from peaceful demonstrations to armed uprisings: the Hungarian Revolution of 1956, the Prague Spring of 1968, and the Tiananmen Square massacre of 1989 in Beijing, to name a few.

Bremberg said that the former two examples, while lesser known, are of equal importance to Tiananmen Square.

He also cited a statistic woven throughout the museum: 1.5 billion. That’s the estimated number of people still living under communism. The largest communist nation today is China, accounting for the vast majority of that number.

The Chinese Communist Party, which rules over the country, has subjugated more than 1 million Uyghur Muslims, an ethnic minority, to reeducation camps, forced sterilization and abortions, forced labor, and surveillance. It’s genocide on an industrial scale.

Last year, the Victims of Communism Memorial Foundation received a series of leaked internal documents belonging to the Chinese Communist Party. The findings offer damning evidence of its coordinated efforts against the Uyghurs. You can learn more about them here.

Several nations formerly under communist control, such as Poland, also have museums recounting their own stories of existence under communism. None, however, offer a singular snapshot of its global impact like the new one in Washington.

“There’s nothing like this in the world,” Bremberg said. “It’s extremely important to have this in our nation’s capital. We have millions of tourists, particularly school groups, that come through that really need to learn this, because communism is a horrible evil.”

Although research has shown that up to 1 in 3 millennials view communism favorably, Bremberg thinks it’s the failure to explain the legacy of the ideology—certainly not life under such an ideology—that has given it such an appeal.

“What we’re really trying to do is put the face of the victims of communism forward as a way of educating people,” Bremberg said. “You can draw a pretty obvious conclusion that this is a horrible system of government.”

“[It’s] the scourge of the 20th century, and unfortunately still with us in the 21st century,” he added. “If we want to prevent that from costing untold lives in the future, people need to learn about the crimes of communism … through the experience of its victims.”

Adjacent to the museum’s exit stands a wall visitors pass by before leaving. It’s covered in a patchwork of portraits—the faces of those who have fought back against communism.

Amid the portraits, there are two simple words: “Remember us.”

This piece was republished with permission from the Daily Signal.

AUTHOR

Philip Reynolds

Philip Reynolds is a digital specialist at The Heritage Foundation.

EDITORS NOTE: This FEE column is republished with permission. ©All rights reserved.

Why Do People Become Communists, and Why Do They Stick With It?

So if there is no rational case for communism as such, why do people go for this stuff?


For as long as I can remember, I’ve puzzled about why people become communists. I have no doubt about why someone would stop being one. After all, we have a century of evidence of the murder, famine, and general destruction caused by the idea. Ignoring all this takes a special kind of willful blindness to reality.

Even the theory of communism itself is a complete mess. There is really no such thing as common ownership of goods that are obviously scarce in the real world. There must be some solution to the problem of scarcity beyond just wishing reality away. Perhaps ownership and trade? Slogans and dreams are hardly a suitable substitute for a workable program.

But how communism would work in practice is not something they want to talk about. They just imagined that some magical Hegelian shift would take place in the course of history that would work it all out.

So if there is no rational case for communism as such, why do people go for this stuff?

The Red Century

The New York Times has been exploring that issue in a series of remarkable reflections that they have labelled Red Century. I can’t get enough, even the ones that are written by people who are—how shall I say?—suspiciously sympathetic to communism as a cause.

The most recent installment is written by Vivian Gornick. She reflects on how her childhood world was dominated by communists.

The sociology of the progressive world was complex. At its center were full-time organizers for the Communist Party, at the periphery left-wing sympathizers, and at various points in between everything from rank-and-file party card holders to respected fellow travelers….

When these people sat down to talk, Politics sat down with them, Ideas sat down with them; above all, History sat down with them. They spoke and thought within a context that lifted them out of the nameless, faceless obscurity into which they had been born, and gave them the conviction that they had rights as well as obligations. They were not simply the disinherited of the earth, they were proletarians with a founding myth of their own (the Russian Revolution) and a civilizing worldview (Marxism).

While it is true that thousands of people joined the Communist Party in those years because they were members of the hardscrabble working class (garment district Jews, West Virginia miners, California fruit pickers), it was even truer that many more thousands in the educated middle class (teachers, scientists, writers) joined because for them, too, the party was possessed of a moral authority that lent shape and substance, through its passion for structure and the eloquence of its rhetoric, to an urgent sense of social injustice….

The Marxist vision of world solidarity as translated by the Communist Party induced in the most ordinary of men and women a sense of one’s own humanity that ran deep, made life feel large; large and clarified. It was to this clarity of inner being that so many became not only attached, but addicted. No reward of life, no love nor fame nor wealth, could compete with the experience. It was this all-in-allness of world and self that, all too often, made of the Communists true believers who could not face up to the police state corruption at the heart of their faith.

Sounds fascinating, if bonkers (Marxism is hardly a “civilizing worldview”). It sounds less like an intellectual salon of ideas and more like a religious delusion. Those too can be well intentioned. The key here is a dogmatic ideology, which serves as a kind of substitute for religion. It has a vision of hell (workers and peasants exploited by private-capital wielding capitalist elite), a vision of heaven (a world of universal and equal prosperity and peace), and a means of getting from one to the other (revolution from below, as led by the vanguard of the proletariat).

Once you accept such an ideology, anything intellectual becomes possible. Nothing can shake you from it. Okay, that’s not entirely true. One thing can shake you of it: when the leader of the cult repudiates the thing you believe in most strongly.

Khrushchev’s Heresy

She was 20 years old in 1956, when Nikita Khrushchev spoke to the Soviet Communist Party about the crimes of Stalin. Apparently the unrelenting reports of famine, persecution, and mass death, from the early years of Bolshevik rule – and even the revelation of the Hitler-Stalin pact – would have demoralized them earlier. But no:

The 20th Congress report brought with it political devastation for the organized left around the world. Within weeks of its publication, 30,000 people in this country quit the party, and within the year it was as it had been in its 1919 beginnings: a small sect on the American political map.

Amazing.

The Early Reds

And speaking of this small 1919 sect, I’m reminded of one of my favorite movies: Reds (1981). I could watch it another 20 times. It explores the lives of the American communists of the turn of the 20th century, their loves, longings, and aspirations. The focus is on fiery but deluded Jack Reed, but it includes portraits of a passionate Louise Bryant, the gentile Max Eastman, an edgy Eugene O’Neill, and the ever inspiring Emma Goldman.

These people weren’t the Progressives of the mainstream that history credits with having so much influence over policy in those days. These were the real deal: the Communists that were the source of national frenzy during the Red Scare of the 1920s.

The movie portrays them not as monsters but idealists. They were all very talented, artistic, mostly privileged in upbringing, and what drew them to communism was not bloodlust for genocide but some very high ideals.

They felt a passion for justice. They wanted to end war. They opposed exploitation. They longed for universal freedom and maximum civil liberty. They despised the entrenched hierarchies of the old order and hoped for a new society in which everyone had an equal chance.

All of that sounds reasonable until you get to the details. The communists had a curious understanding of each of these concepts. Freedom meant freedom from material want. Justice meant a planned distribution of goods. The end of war meant a new form of war against the capitalists who they believed created war. The hierarchies they wanted to be abolished were not just state-privileged nobles but also the meritocratic elites of industrial capitalism, and even small land owners, no matter how small the plot.

Why be a communist rather than just a solid liberal of the old school? In the way the movie portrays it, the problem was not so much in their goals but in their mistaken means. They hated the state as it existed but imagined that a new “dictatorship of the proletariat” could become a transition mechanism to usher in their classless society. That led them to cheer on the Bolshevik Revolution in its early stages, and work for the same thing to happen in the United States.

The Dream Dies

Watching their one-by-one demoralization is painful. Goldman sees the betrayal immediately. Reed becomes an apologist for genocide. Bryant forgets pretending to be political and believing in free love, marries Reed, and tends to his medical needs before his death. O’Neill just becomes a full-time cynic (and drunk). It took Max Eastman longer to lose the faith but he eventually became an anti-socialist and wrote for FEE.

The initial demoralization of the early American communists came in the 1920s. They came to realize that all the warning against this wicked ideology – having been written about for many centuries prior, even back to the ancient world – were true.

Eastman, for example, realized that he was seeking to liberate people by taking from them the three things people love most in life: their families, their religion, and their property. Instead of creating a new heaven on earth, they had become apologists for a killing machine.

Stunned and embarrassed, they moved on with life.

But the history didn’t end there. There were still more recruits being added to the ranks, generations of them. The same thing happened after 1989. Some people lost the faith, others decided that socialism needs yet another chance to strut its stuff.

It’s still going on today.

As for the Communist Party in America, most left-Progressives of the Antifa school regard the Party as an embarrassing sellout, wholly owned by the capitalist elite. And when we see their spokesmen appear on television every four years, they sound not unlike pundits we see on TV every night.

It would be nice if any article written about communism were purely retrospective. That, sadly, is not the case. There seem to be new brands of Marxian thought codified every few years, and still more versions of its Hegelian roots that take on ever more complex ideological iterations (the alt-right is an example).

Why do people become communists? Because human beings are capable of believing in all sorts of illusions, and we are capable of working long and hard to turn them into nightmares. Once we’ve invested the time and energy into something, however destructive, it can take a very long time to wake us up. It’s hard to think of a grander example of the sunk-cost fallacy.

AUTHOR

Jeffrey A. Tucker

Jeffrey Tucker is a former Director of Content for the Foundation for Economic Education.

EDITORS NOTE: This FEE column is republished with permission. ©All rights reserved.

Rittenhouse Protesters Chant For Communist Revolution

“The goal of socialism is communism.” – Vladimir Lenin


Protesters in opposition of the Kyle Rittenhouse verdict chanted for a “communist revolution” on the streets of Chicago Saturday.

Political activist and Baptist pastor Rev. Jesse Jackson and the Rainbow PUSH coalition led the march throughout the city with calls for the Department of Justice to investigate the verdict, according to CBS Chicago.

Footage captured a crowd of people marching the streets with a signs that called Rittenhouse a “white supremacist” and demanded to end the “fascist USA.” The crowd chanted in support of a communist revolution.

“The only solution is communist revolution,” the crowd is heard chanting.

“That’s right, we need communism. That’s what we need. We need that! We need that, sister, we need that very much,” a female demonstrator said.

The protest began around 2 p.m. at the Federal Plaza located on 219 S. Dearborn with hundreds of participants marching to Madison Avenue, then to North State Street and West Randolph, according to the outlet. Jackson called the Rittenhouse verdict “a major blow against justice and open season by the violence of the right-wing military.”

“I’m still very, very disappointed. Just a travesty of justice,” protester Alicia Senior-Saywell said, according to WGN 9. “The illegal gun in possession, the Kenosha police basically deputizing him. All of it is based in racism.”

Rittenhouse was acquitted of five felony charges brought against him on Friday over the fatal shootings of Joseph Rosenbaum and Anthony Huber at a riot on Aug. 25, 2020, in Kenosha, Wisconsin. The then-17-year-old was also charged for the shooting-related injury of Gaige Grosskreutz.

Witnesses testified that Rosenbaum “lunged” towards Rittenhouse in an attempt to grab his AR-15 style rifle, while Huber repeatedly hit him in the head with a skateboard.

Protests erupted in major U.S. cities in opposition to the verdict. In Brooklyn, New York, protesters could be heard changing “every city, every town, burn your precinct to the ground!” Protesters also gathered in front of the Kenosha County Courthouse, where the trial presided.

Police in Portland, Oregon, declared the Friday night demonstrations “riots” after the rioters destroyed the Multnomah County Justice Center’s front gate and threw objects at law enforcement, Fox News reported.

“Due to violent, destructive behavior by a significant part of the crowd, the gathering in downtown Portland is a RIOT. All participants are instructed to proceed away to the WEST,” the Portland Police Bureau announced, according to the outlet.

President Joe Biden suggested that Rittenhouse was a “white supremacist” in a Sept. 20, 2020 video ridiculing former President Donald Trump for “refusing to disavow white supremacists.”

COLUMN BY

NICOLE SILVERIO

Contributor.

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The Vortex — Directly Over the Target — Bombs away!

TRANSCRIPT

Church Militant (a 501(c)4 corporation) is responsible for the content of this commentary.

The old expression “the enemy only fires back when you are directly over the target” would mean that the Marxists in the Church — especially in the hierarchy — are getting bombed right now. These crooks have decided to give fake-Catholic Biden a pass on his evil and the wickedness of the entire Democratic establishment, and the real Catholics are ticked off and letting them know.

In truth, there’s no doubt some of the bishops are actually scared — terrified — of ticking off the Harris-Biden ticket, and yes, we all know: That is the actual order of the ticket. Even Biden says it. And so did Harris. The bishops are scared because the ground is shifting considerably as Catholics begin to wake up. Within the ranks of bishops, the word is going out that the rebellion against their tyranny must be put down.

This explains the massing of forces of Marxist Catholics to throw down for Biden. The so-called Catholics for Biden initiative is a rogues’ gallery of phony Catholics like Carolyn Woo. Woo used to head up the leftist-posing-as-Catholic “Catholic Relief Services” (CRS).

We caught up with her a few years ago after she gave a brainwashing session at an Ohio parish, duping ignorant laity. For some reason, she didn’t want to answer our questions, and her handlers tried (unsuccessfully) to sneak her out a side door.

CRS, a favorite of the U.S. hierarchy, takes gobs of your tax dollars and spends them on projects around the world, partnering with abortion providers and contraceptive providers in Third World countries, pretending it’s all about poverty.

Well, it sort of is. Their philosophy is to eliminate poverty by eliminating the poor. So it really is altogether fitting that such a woman would sit on the board of Catholics for Biden. But she’s just one of many in the Marxist Catholic establishment throwing their weight around, lying about Biden being acceptable to Catholics. He’s not.

A couple evenings ago, Newark cardinal Joesph Tobin came out swinging for Biden. And just a recap as some of His Eminence’s highlights, he got caught tweeting out the now famous, “Nighty nite baby. I love you” tweet to his general account by accident, later claiming it referred to his sister.

Remember, Tobin owes his appointment to Newark to homosexual molester Theodore McCarrick, as testified to by Abp. Viganò. And then there was the revolting case of a known gay Italian model who was living in his residence — paid for by collection-plate money — who bolted back to Italy as soon as Church Militant and others exposed it.

When questioned about why he was living with Cdl. Tobin, the official response was he was a foreign student studying English at Seton Hall. When questioned about why he couldn’t live with the thousands of other students on campus, no response.

This man came out with his thinly veiled support for Biden — another supporter of sodomy-as-marriage — on a Zoom conference hosted by Boston College. Birds of a feather really do flock together, don’t they?

Trump really is remarkable. In less than four years, he has managed to get every one of these snakes to slither out from under their rocks and completely reveal themselves. It’s very important to know who the enemy is. Thank you, Mr. President.

The forming of all these phony Catholic groups, the actions of Marxist bishops trying to suppress good priests — all of this is attributable directly to Trump. Although mischaracterized, even the student paper at homosexuality loving Jesuit Fordham University in New York admits this in a recent op-ed entitled, “Trump Creates a Schism in the Catholic Church.”

That’s a real knee-slapper. Trump did not create the schism in the Church (which is very real) any more than Church Militant caused the division in the Church that bishops love to accuse us of. Both Trump and Church Militant have only brought to light the existing formerly-in-the-shadows reality. Good working with you, Mr. President. Thanks for the help. Let us know if we can help you.

Still, the media cannot keep their paws out of this story. A headline from just the day before last from a Minnesota outlet reads, “Two Renegade Priests: One Calls COVID Sham, One Says Dems Face Hell.” Notice how they can’t resist labeling them “renegade” for calling out the truth?

Imagine how life would be under that Harris-Biden administration for actual Catholics. We were all sitting around talking here in the studios a short while ago, and I was saying, “I’ve been doing this kind of work all my life, and I have never seen this level of engagement by the Catholic apostate, heretic, Marxist, dissident crowd.”

They are losing control of the narrative. And what’s more, they know it. However, their narrative has always been built on lies. And truth — that pesky little thing — it always finds a way of coming out. And, moreover, once it gets out, look out. It changes everything.

The Tobins, Martins and Woos of the world, along with all their other evil allies, have brought about the almost-complete destruction of the Church through a series of lies and lies built on lies. And now, truth is coming out, and they have become desperate. And it is looking more and more like the truth is busting out everywhere and being reflected all over the political world.

Trump rallies are, once again, the hottest ticket in town with thousands showing up. The Marxist media continues to lie, almost to the point of hysterical. In a Twitter side-by-side posting, you see on the right a picture from Latino voters at a Trump event. The other side shows that CBS grabbed the picture and captioned it as Biden appealing to Latino voters while campaigning in Florida.

The actual picture — before CBS cropped it — showed loads of Trump people in the crowd. Who knew so many MAGA people showed up at Biden rallies? If it weren’t so evil, you’d be rolling in the aisles. But when evil is pushing back this hard — and the Marxists in the Church are linked arm in arm with them — you just know that you are right over the target.

A month ago, the Marxist polls were showing a virtual blowout for Harris-Biden. Then, right after the conventions, their lies had to start being rolled back because Judgment Day, Nov. 3, will expose all. So after being told for months that Biden was going to crush Trump — after racism, COVID, injustice, climate, impeachment, economy, you name it — all of a sudden, the Marxist media had to start saying the polls were tightening (especially in battleground states).

Amazing how Trump came storming back out of nowhere to draw to a tie all over the map. That, of course, is if he really was ever that far behind. And then came the bombshell (and what has created ulcers at Marxist headquarters at the Democratic People’s Party).

A new poll came out from the outfit that has proved the most reliable (and the one that really can’t be ignored), Rasmussen. For the first time ever, Trump pulled into the lead over Biden after trailing Biden by five two weeks earlier.

Yes, this is a gigantic clash of the ages. Every last weapon is being pulled out by both sides, but the biggest weapon, truth, is only held by one side.

You just have to pick it up and actually use it.

EDITORS NOTE: This Church Militant video is republished with permission. ©All rights reserved.

Trump’s ban on Critical Race Theory, explained

Does Critical Race Theory promote racial harmony or does it “sow division” as the Trump administration claims? And what is its relation, if any, to Marxism?


With the November election just around the corner, it’s only to be expected that President Trump would seek to rally conservative voters and drive his supporters to the polls. So, when his administration, on September 4, instructed the federal government to eliminate all training in “Critical Race Theory,” some thought it was just a red-meat stunt to excite the Republican base. Others saw it as an act of right-wing censorship and an obstruction of racial progress.

In truth, there’s much more to this development than mere politicization and censorship.

Here’s a breakdown of what the administration is doing and why it’s a welcome move.

The executive memo

“It has come to the President’s attention that Executive Branch agencies have spent millions of taxpayer dollars to date ‘training’ government workers to believe divisive, anti-American propaganda,” Office of Management and Budget Director Russ Vought wrote in the executive memorandum.

“Employees across the Executive Branch have been required to attend trainings where they are told that ‘virtually all White people contribute to racism’ or where they are required to say that they ‘benefit from racism,’” Vought explained. “According to press reports, in some cases these training [sic] have further claimed that there is racism embedded in the belief that America is the land of opportunity or the belief that the most qualified person should receive a job.”

The order instructed federal agencies to identify and eliminate any contracts or spending that train employees in “critical race theory,” “white privilege,” “or any other training or propaganda effort that teaches or suggests either that the United States is an inherently racist or evil country or that any race or ethnicity is inherently racist or evil.”

The exposé

How did it “come to the President’s attention,” and what press reports is Vought referring to?

Well, President Trump is known to watch Tucker Carlson’s show on Fox News. And days before the memo was issued, Carlson had on journalist Christopher Rufo to discuss his multiple reports uncovering the extent to which Critical Race Theory (CRT) was being used in federal training programs.

“For example, Rufo claimed, the Treasury Department recently hired a diversity trainer who said the U.S. was a fundamentally White supremacist country,” wrote Sam Dorman for the Fox News web site, “and that White people upheld the system of racism in the nation. In another case, which Rufo discussed with Carlson last month, Sandia National Laboratories, which designs nuclear weapons, sent its white male executives to a mandatory training in which they, according to Rufo, wrote letters apologizing to women and people of color.”

Rufo challenged President Trump to use his executive authority to extirpate CRT from the federal government.

The debate

CNN’s Brian Stelter (as well as Rufo himself) traced Trump’s decision directly to the independent investigative journalist’s self-proclaimed “one-man war” on CRT, of which the recent Carlson appearance was only the latest salvo.

Selter characterized Trump’s move as a reactionary attack on the current national “reckoning” on race. He cited the Washington Post’s claim that, “racial and diversity awareness trainings are essential steps in helping rectify the pervasive racial inequities in American society, including those perpetuated by the federal government.”

So which is it? Is CRT “divisive” and “toxic” or is it “rectifying” and “anti-racist”?

Intellectual ancestry

To answer that, it would help to trace CRT to its roots. Critical Race Theory is a branch of Critical Theory, which began as an academic movement in the 1930s. Critical Theory emphasizes the “critique of society and culture in order to reveal and challenge power structures,” as Wikipedia states. Critical Race Theory does the same, with a focus on racial power structures, especially white supremacy and the oppression of people of color.

The “power structure” prism stems largely from Critical Theory’s own roots in Marxism—Critical Theory was developed by members of the Marxist “Frankfurt School.” Traditional Marxism emphasized economic power structures, especially the supremacy of capital over labor under capitalism. Marxism interpreted most of human history as a zero-sum class war for economic power.

“According to the Marxian view,” wrote the economist Ludwig von Mises, “human society is organized into classes whose interests stand in irreconcilable opposition.”

Mises called this view a “conflict doctrine,” which opposed the “harmony doctrine” of classical liberalism. According to the classical liberals, in a free market economy, capitalists and workers were natural allies, not enemies. Indeed, in a free society all rights-respecting individuals were natural allies.

A bitter inheritance

Critical Race Theory arose as a distinct movement in law schools in the late 1980s. CRT inherited many of its premises and perspectives from its Marxist ancestry.

The pre-CRT Civil Rights Movement had emphasized equal rights and treating people as individuals, as opposed to as members of a racial collective. “I look to a day when people will not be judged by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character,” Martin Luther King famously said.

In contrast, CRT dwells on inequalities of outcome, which it generally attributes to racial power structures. And, as we’ve seen from the government training curricula, modern CRT forthrightly judges white people by the color of their skin, prejudging them as racist by virtue of their race. This race-based “pre-trial guilty verdict” of racism is itself, by definition, racist.

The classical liberal “harmony doctrine” was deeply influential in the movements to abolish all forms of inequality under the law: from feudal serfdom, to race-based slavery, to Jim Crow.

But, with the rise of Critical Race Theory, the cause of racial justice became more influenced by the fixations on conflict, discord, and domination that CRT inherited from Marxism.

Social life was predominantly cast as a zero-sum struggle between collectives: capital vs. labor for Marxism, whites vs. people of color for CRT.

A huge portion of society’s ills were attributed to one particular collective’s diabolical domination: capitalist hegemony for Marxism, white supremacy for CRT.

Just as Marxism demonized capitalists, CRT vilifies white people. Both try to foment resentment, envy, and a victimhood complex among the oppressed class it claims to champion.

Traditional Marxists claimed that all capitalists benefit from the zero-sum exploitation of workers. Similarly, CRT “diversity trainers” require white trainees to admit that they “benefit from racism.”

Traditional Marxists insisted that bourgeois thoughts were inescapably conditioned by “class interest.” In the same way, CRT trainers push the notion that “virtually all White people contribute to racism” as a result of their whiteness.

Given the above, it should be no wonder that CRT has been criticized as “racist” and “divisive.”

Reckoning or retrogression?

Supporters of CRT cast it as a force for good in today’s “rectifying reckoning” over race.

But CRT’s neo-Marxist orientation only damages race relations and harms the interests of those it claims to serve.

In practice, the class war rhetoric of Marxism was divisive and toxic for economic relations. And, far from advancing the interests of the working classes, it led to mass poverty and devastating famines, not to mention staggering inequality between the elites and the masses.

Today, the CRT-informed philosophy, rhetoric, and strategy of the Black Lives Matter organization (whose leadership professed to be “trained Marxists”) is leading to mass riots, looting, vandalism, and assault. The divisive violence has arrested progress for the cause of police reform, destroyed countless black-owned small businesses, and economically devastated many black communities.

Those who truly wish to see racial harmony should dump the neo-Marxists and learn more about classical liberalism. (FEE.org is the perfect place to start.)

So much for CRT being a force for good. Of course, even horrible ideas are protected by the First Amendment. The government should never use force to suppress people from expressing ideas, speech, or theories it dislikes.

Critics insist that President Trump is engaged in this kind of censorship by targeting CRT.

Not so.

No one is banning White Fragility, the blockbuster CRT manifesto. No one is locking up those who preach CRT or ordering mentions of it stripped from the internet.

The memo simply says that taxpayer dollars will no longer be spent promulgating this theory to federal government employees. As heads of the executive branch, presidents have wide latitude to make the rules for federal agencies under their control. Deciding how money is spent certainly falls under their proper discretion—and it is always done with political preferences in mind, one way or the other.

It is not censorship for Trump to eliminate funding for CRT, anymore than it was “censorship” for the Obama administration to choose to tie federal contracts to a business’s embrace of LGBT rights.

Elections have consequences, one of the most obvious being that the president gets to run the executive branch. If we don’t want the president’s political preferences to be so significant in training programs, then we should simply reduce the size of government and the number of bureaucrats.

In the meantime, stripping the federal government of the divisive, toxic, and neo-Marxist ideology of Critical Race Theory is a positive development for the sake of racial justice and harmony.

This article was originally published on FEE.org. Read the original article.

COLUMN BY

Dan Sanchez

Dan Sanchez is the Director of Content at the Foundation for Economic Education (FEE) and the editor-in-chief of FEE.org. He co-hosts the weekly web show FEEcast, serving as the resident “explainer.” … 

Tyler Brandt

Tyler Brandt is a Senior Associate Editor at FEE. He is a graduate of UW-Madison with a B.A. in Political Science. In college, Tyler was a FEE Campus Ambassador, President of his campus YAL chapter, and… 

Brad Polumbo

Brad Polumbo (@Brad_Polumbo) is a libertarian-conservative journalist and the Eugene S. Thorpe Writing Fellow at the Foundation for Economic Education. He was previously a Media and Journalism Fellow at… 

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EDITORS NOTE: This MercatorNet column is republished with permission. ©All rights reserved.

VIDEO: The Vortex — A Great Realignment. And it’s a good thing.

TRANSCRIPT

As you know, Church Militant is always helping you understand the connections between the culture and the Church, the crossover between both worlds. Those two worlds parallel each other in many ways — they’re practically mirrors. And, theologically, it makes sense. As Bp. Sheen used to say, the world is the theater of redemption: It’s where the great spiritual war rages.

So as we look out on all of this, we see something happening in each arena. There is a great realignment occurring, in the Church and in the culture. In many ways, the old labels, which used to categorize things neatly, no longer apply. Consider, for example, “conservative” and “liberal.” There’s so much confusion over those classifications — especially liberal — that no one really knows what they mean.

The old labels are so ineffective at describing the new realities that, oftentimes, you find adjectives popping up in front of them which pretty much redefine them. So the old word is used, but there is a totally different meaning behind the word.

For example, there aren’t just plain old Republicans anymore. But now there are actual Republicans and then there are RINO Republicans — Republicans in name only. Notice, to bring up the point of the crossover between culture and State, we also no longer have just Catholics, but “CINOs”: Catholics in name only.

And, of course, we have not just Catholics but “cafeteria Catholics.” All these adjectives are now necessary because the terms no longer mean what they used to mean. All of this redefining is going on because there is, underneath it all, a massive realignment going on — in the culture and the Church.

In the political world, Donald Trump has become the symbol of all that, not to mention also a precipitating cause. Tens of millions of Americans were beginning to sense a political shift, a new paradigm emerging where they, as individuals, no longer mattered.

They sensed correctly that the world they knew was being buried under a mountain of globalist Marxism. In the Church, faithful Catholics likewise sensed a major shift happening. They couldn’t put a finger on it, but they knew something was up, something was off.

So they began realigning themselves, leaving the Church of Nice and hunting out the actual Faith. It’s like a Catholic version of the Walkaway movement that is rippling through the Democratic Party — a movement of Democrats who have woken up and realized the party no longer represents them. And so they are walking away from it.

There is a huge ideological shift, an enormous immigration, a mass migration where people are seeking out like-minded individuals and associating themselves with them. It’s all over social media. It’s all over politics. It’s all over the Church. It’s all over the place.

People are choosing sides, and in that choosing up sides, some people are waking up and realizing that the folks they thought they had a lot in common with, they really didn’t. So they cut ties and are establishing new ones.

Now, some people find this upsetting. They bemoan the division, they lament the lack of unity. Frankly, that’s a stupid response. There can be unity only if it’s a unity around truth. In fact, this entire realignment is about the truth.  Some waking up to it, others wanting to destroy it.

But truth is the cause. When truth is present, there are only two responses. It is either embraced or raged against. The Marxist Left, up until the arrival of Donald Trump, was able to keep the truth of its agenda under wraps, to conceal the truth.

But now, it’s all out there. Nothing is hidden. And people are making choices. And that’s a good thing. Even on the side of evil, it’s good to know who’s who. For Catholics and other Christian denominations — remember, this is how things will be at the end of the world. Truth will cause one great, final realignment — and it will be final.

EDITORS NOTE: This Church Militant video is republished with permission. ©All rights reserved.

AOC: ‘Freeing People’ From ‘Existential Havoc’ of Capitalism

In a conversation with the online Interview Magazine published Tuesday, Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (AOC) promoted fellow Democratic Socialist Jabari Brisport from New York as another candidate who hopes to fundamentally transform the country.

AOC asked the openly gay, black nominee for the New York State Senate what Democratic Socialist means to him, Brisport replied, “For me, it’s really about getting people out from underneath the thumb of capitalism, and freeing them from the very small group of people that manage—or I should say mismanage—our economy and our society for their own wealth and benefit. It’s about freeing up people to truly experience all the joys in life by making sure they don’t have to worry about whether or not they’ll be able to keep their home from month to month, or whether or not they’ll be able to pay for health care when they get sick.

“It’s about freeing people from all the existential havoc that capitalism wreaks on us, and allowing them to truly thrive,” Brisport added.

The duo didn’t offer any examples of where and when in history people have truly thrived under socialism.


Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez

27 Known Connections

Lauding the Protesters and Rioters in America’s Streets

In an August 2020 photo essay in which Vanity Fair magazine “celebrat[ed] the founders of Black Lives Matter [BLM] … and more on the forefront of change,” Ocasio-Cortez called it “profoundly exciting” that the Marxist/anarchist revolutionaries of BLM and Antifa were “discovering their own power” by participating in the massive wave of protests and violent riots that had swept the country since late May. Some excerpts:

  • “I believe that people are really discovering their own power in a broader sense that we have not seen in a very long time. So, yes, we’re starting to see some of this emerging power at the ballot box and at the polls, but we’re also starting to see it in the streets, and people standing up for themselves in the workplace, in organizing themselves and their labor, and it’s profoundly exciting. And it’s really incredible to see how people are really taking the reins for themselves in the direction of systemic change.”
  • “I think that all these people in the streets that are educating others, that are engaging in this elevated and amplified way, have really emboldened me, and it’s given me a lot of courage and encouragement to try to match the energy of everyone else right now who’s really fighting for progressive change.”

To learn more about Ocasio-Cortez, click on her profile click here.

EDITORS NOTE: This Discover the Networks column is republished with permission. ©All rights reserved.

When Democrats Say ‘the People,’ They Mean ‘the Government’

In his inaugural address, Donald Trump announced that,

“today we are not merely transferring power from one Administration to another, or from one party to another — but we are transferring power from Washington, D.C., and giving it back to you, the American People. For too long, a small group in our nation’s Capital has reaped the rewards of government while the people have borne the cost. Washington flourished — but the people did not share in its wealth. Politicians prospered — but the jobs left, and the factories closed. The establishment protected itself, but not the citizens of our country…. That all changes — starting right here, and right now, because this moment is your moment: it belongs to you.”

These were stirring words, but they were the sort of thing presidents have said for ages. Back in his first inaugural address in 1913, Woodrow Wilson decried the fact that “the great Government we loved has too often been made use of for private and selfish purposes, and those who used it had forgotten the people.” In his first inaugural address in 1953, Dwight D. Eisenhower asserted that “we, the people, elect leaders not to rule but to serve.” And in his January 1996 state of the union address, Bill Clinton declared: “We know big government does not have all the answers. We know there’s not a program for every problem. We have worked to give the American people a smaller, less bureaucratic government in Washington. And we have to give the American people one that lives within its means. The era of big government is over… Our goal must be to enable all our people to make the most of their own lives — with stronger families, more educational opportunity, economic security, safer streets, a cleaner environment in a safer world.”

However, as Rating America’s Presidents: An America-First Look at Who Is Best, Who Is Overrated, and Who Was An Absolute Disaster explains, Trump’s declaration that he was transferring power back to the people actually heralded a move away from big government, not toward it. Trump’s words didn’t herald a push to expand government power under the guise of working for the people. On the contrary, he was determined to expand the freedom Americans enjoyed and roll back government power. A new era had begun in American politics: for the first time in over a century, the rule of “the people” did not mean the rule of the government.

This equation has been taken for granted since the election of 1896, when a key issue was currency. The Republican platform committed the party to the gold standard, which prevented the production of so much currency as to lead to inflation. A minority of Republicans and a significant majority of Democrats, however, supported the free coinage of silver, which would lead to inflation and thereby make it easier for farmers to pay off their debts. That rapidly rising prices were rendering the life savings of Americans essentially worthless did not trouble the silver advocates, who cloaked their case for what was essentially the government’s assumption of the debts of private citizens in the language of support for the plight of the common man. Forgotten in all the controversy was that when the government does something, it is the taxpayers who pay for it.

President Grover Cleveland supported the gold standard, but toward the end of his second term, he was deeply unpopular, and the silver forces among the Democrats were restive. At the Democratic National Convention, a handsome and vigorous thirty-six-year-old congressman from Nebraska named William Jennings Bryan electrified the delegates with a speech in favor of the free coinage of silver that is one of the most celebrated pieces of oratory in American history. “You come to us,” Bryan declared, “and tell us that the great cities are in favor of the gold standard; we reply that the great cities rest upon our broad and fertile prairies. Burn down your cities and leave our farms, and your cities will spring up again as if by magic; but destroy our farms and the grass will grow in the streets of every city in the country.”

Rating America’s Presidents explains that Bryan sounded notes of class warfare that would become ever more common in American politics: “We do not come as aggressors. Our war is not a war of conquest; we are fighting in the defense of our homes, our families, and posterity. We have petitioned, and our petitions have been scorned; we have entreated, and our entreaties have been disregarded; we have begged, and they have mocked when our calamity came. We beg no longer; we entreat no more; we petition no more. We defy them!” In conclusion, he thundered: “You shall not press down upon the brow of labor this crown of thorns, you shall not crucify mankind upon a cross of gold.”

In a frenzy of enthusiasm over this populist appeal, the Democrats nominated Bryan for president. This marked a sea change for the Democratic Party, as the party that had always favored a limited central government now began to advocate for a massive increase of federal control over the economy, under the cloak of a concern for the common man.

Bryan lost, and lost two more times, but his ideas took hold. By the time of the presidency of Franklin Delano Roosevelt, the Democratic Party, and a significant and growing portion of the American public, took it for granted that taking an industry or sector of the economy out of private hands and placing it under government control was tantamount to giving it to “the people.” It is such a compelling sleight of hand that Communist regimes also used it for decades.

But then came Trump, who actually meant “the people” when he said “the people.” And that’s one principal reason why the statists who hitherto championed themselves as guardians of the interests of “the people” hate him with such incandescent intensity.

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EDITORS NOTE: This Jihad Watch column is republished with permission. ©All rights reserved.

WATCH THIS 1969 VIDEO: ‘Color, Communism and Common Sense’

RELATED VIDEO: Manning Johnson’s Farewell Address.

A message from a former member of the U.S. Communist Party and author of “Color, Communism, and Common Sense.”

From the LP, back cover:

Has the NAACP helped the American Negro, or hindered him?

Whose assignment is it to downgrade a Negro community into a “ghetto,” and to see that it remains a “ghetto”?

What did the U.S. Supreme Court do to the lives of more than 130,000 qualified Negro teachers in the South?

What did the Communists do, in 1928, to insure today’s “civil rights” insurrection?

Who really started church segregation in the South?

These and many other provocative questions are superbly answered in this probing and abundantly documented speech by a God-serving and patriotic American Negro who was enticed into Communism with Utopian promises, who worked his way up to the high echelons of the conspiracy, then suddenly and dramatically saw through the blandishments. That was the day Manning Johnson faced the jolting realization that he was being used as an activist in the plot to destroy his native land. When the fever of managed news and manipulated mass communications has burned itself out, and truth once again shines on the avenues of information, Manning Johnson’s name will loom large and gloriously in the list of American Negroes of whom all Americans can be proud. In the minds of many, a veil of mystery obscures the true circumstances of Manning Johnson’s death. Was he cleverly liquidated by subversive elements, or did he die of natural causes? That question, too, is answered in the introduction to this final speech of Manning Johnson.

ABOUT KEY RECORDS

KEY RECORDS gratefully acknowledges the valued assistance of Mr. J.C. Wittman of Seattle, Washington, and Mr. James Horne of Kirkland, Washington, for their volunteer assistance in helping to assemble the elements of this project. Special thanks go to Helen Wood Birnie, close friend and associate of Manning Johnson, and to the Coroner’s Office of San Bernardino County, California, for cooperation in separating rumors from facts in the matter of Manning Johnson’s death. Camp Constitution is an all volunteer association of Americanists. We run a week-long family camp, man information tables at various venues, have a book publishing arm, and post videos from our camp and others that we think are of importance.

Royalties on this album are paid semi-annually to the Manning Johnson Scholarship Fund, which provides higher education opportunities to deserving young American Negro men and women. Recorded under non-professional conditions, in a church, this album is hardly a highlight in hi-fi history. You’ll hear some babies crying here and there in the background. An occasional vehicle may be heard passing outside. There’s even some public address system “feedback.” But there’s a wealth of organic truth to offset any mechanical shortcomings. And we give it to you exactly as it happened.

©All rights reserved.

Americanism vs. Communism

America is being ripped apart by two diametrically opposed worldviews – Americanism and communism. These contending forces are locked in a savage death match. They are so incontrovertibly incompatible that they cannot peacefully coexist. At the end of the day, only one flag will wave over the United States. It’s our duty and mission as freemen to determine which side will prevail.

The American Founding Fathers gave the world a Freedom philosophy unique in human history. No other nation enjoys the heritage of Freedom we enjoy. No other country has the same institutions for securing the blessings of Liberty that we have. No other People centered their society upon the idea of protecting God-given rights like our forefathers here in America. Our Republic, with its unparalleled power, wealth, influence, success, and Freedom, was born with this immortal declaration from the pen of Thomas Jefferson:

“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. – That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, – That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it.”

These simple words declare our People’s commitment to God, to Liberty, and to our mutual Union. Out of their burning desire to secure their God-given rights, our Founding Fathers declared Independence, waged a war against British tyranny, and created the Constitution. However imperfectly we may have implemented these profoundly powerful principles, they have been our guiding light.

After touring the United States nearly a century ago, the famed philosopher G.K. Chesterton made a keen observation:

“The American Constitution . . . is founded on a creed. America is the only nation in the world that is founded on a creed. That creed is set forth with dogmatic and even theological lucidity in the Declaration of Independence; perhaps the only piece of practical politics that is also theoretical politics and also great literature. It enunciates that all men are equal in their claim to justice, that governments exist to give them that justice, and that their authority is for that reason just. It certainly does condemn anarchism, and it does also by inference condemn atheism, since it clearly names the Creator as the ultimate authority from whom these equal rights are derived” (G.K. Chesterton, What I Saw in America, 7).

Our American Republic is founded on a creed. To be sure, this creed is political, social, and cultural, but it is also highly religious in nature. Thomas Jefferson’s original draft of the Declaration of Independence in fact did not use the term “unalienable Rights.” Rather, it called our rights “sacred and undeniable.” Life, Liberty, property, individual stewardship, and all the things that make life worth living, are indeed sacred.

Significantly, Americans have traditionally viewed their rights as endowments from Almighty God – not as mere privileges granted by government. Alexander Hamilton, for instance, stated:

“The sacred rights of mankind are not to be rummaged for, among old parchments, or musty records. They are written, as with a sun beam, in the whole volume of human nature, by the hand of the divinity itself; and can never be erased or obscured by mortal power” (Alexander Hamilton, The Farmer Refuted, February 23, 1775).

Thomas Jefferson confirmed Hamilton’s position when he wrote:

“The God who gave us life gave us liberty at the same time; the hand of force may destroy, but cannot disjoin them” (Thomas Jefferson, A Summary View of the Rights of British America, 1774).

And John Adams expressed the idea this way:

“I say RIGHTS, for such [the People] have, undoubtedly, antecedent to all earthly government, — Rights, that cannot be repealed or restrained by human laws — Rights, derived from the great Legislator of the universe.” (John Adams, A Dissertation on the Canon and the Feudal Law, 1765).

This fervent belief that rights did not come from government, but from God, formed the basis of the American political and cultural system. Biblical principles, including prominent parts of the civil law revealed to Moses, are tightly interwoven into our federal, state, and local structures of law and justice. In his book The Ten Commandments & their Influence on American Law, William J. Federer detailed the ubiquitous blending of politics and religion during colonial times and throughout most of U.S. history. He noted:

“The belief in a monotheistic God is so basic to America that it is almost unnecessary to discuss. We have to look no further than our National Coinage, National Currency, National Motto, National Anthem, Pledge of Allegiance, Inaugural Addresses, State Constitutions, the wall above the chair of the Speaker of the House, National Monuments, National Day of Thanksgiving Proclamations, etc., to see examples” (William J. Federer, The Ten Commandments & their Influence on American Law: A Study in History, 43).

Out of our ancestors’ reverence for their God-given rights grew a movement to codify Liberty in written documents and to restrain the hand of tyranny by a strict and limited national Constitution. The American People knew that they held all political power and that government is their servant. The Declaration of Independence had made that abundantly clear. Moreover, they knew that they were accountable to God, not to the state, and therefore endeavored to remove government from their lives to the fullest extent possible while still maintaining a civil society with enough strength to secure their collective Freedom.

To fulfill these hopes, the finest American minds came together in Philadelphia in 1787. Carefully, they crafted an instrument capable of preventing usurpation by despots, delegating limited power for specific purposes to government, and retaining to the People and the states the lion’s share of social duties and daily governmental functions. The Constitution which they produced contained a short list of powers that would be delegated by the People to the federal government for particular purposes, such as to repel invasion, put down insurrection, maintain state militias, build postal roads, and to coin money. Beyond this, the government could not go.

The Bill of Rights was later added to safeguard specific fundamental rights, such as the rights of self-defense, peaceable assembly, speech, discrimination, privacy, habeas corpus, due process, and religion. The Bill of Rights serves as a list of “thou shalt nots” to government. The right to keep and bear arms for self-defense against criminals and tyrants, for instance, “shall not” be infringed. Our patriot forefathers loved their Liberty too much to leave anything to chance.

The purpose of the Constitution, as stated in the Preamble, is to “secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity.” It is the Constitution which activated our forefathers’ hopes and dreams. It is this wise document, so beautifully constructed with checks and balances, a brilliant division of powers, and an almost perfectly limited scope of operations when correctly followed, that truly launched the Republic to greatness. James Madison in fact referred to the Constitution as “the cement of the Union” (James Madison, First Inaugural Address, March 4, 1809).

Former British Prime Minister William Gladstone famously called the Constitution “the most wonderful work ever struck off at a given time by the brain and purpose of man” (Thomas W. Hanford, ed., William Ewart Gladstone: Life and Public Services, 323). It was such a brilliant feat because it was created by honorable men who understood that their rights came from their Creator, that government’s duty was to secure those rights, and that the People justly held all political power and were capable of governing themselves.

These were also men who knew that “Freedom hath been hunted around the globe” and that America was to be Liberty’s final “asylum” (Thomas Paine, Common Sense, February 14, 1776). Not only did early Americans see God as their national Benefactor, but they viewed themselves as chosen instruments in His hands to set the ball of Freedom rolling. For instance, President George Washington remarked:

“[T]he preservation of the sacred fire of liberty, and the destiny of the Republican model of Government, are justly considered as deeply, perhaps as finally staked, on the experiment entrusted to the hands of the American people” (George Washington, First Inaugural Address, April 30, 1789).

In harmony with their convictions, the patriots of 1776 fought zealously for their rights as if on a holy crusade. They revered George Washington and his fellow Founders nearly as highly as prophets. And the Declaration of Independence and Constitution held a place of sanctity akin to scripture in the American mind. Taken altogether, this Freedom philosophy and the sense of prophetic national destiny that emerged in early America has sometimes been termed the “American Gospel.”

When we speak of “Americanism,” therefore, it is this constitutionally-guaranteed Freedom philosophy, undergirded by formal belief in God and a sense of our People’s special destiny, to which we refer. The “American Gospel” is our true heritage. It is our mission as a People to carry forward the sacred fire of Liberty and protect it from the tumultuous torrents of tyranny.

Unfortunately, we have lost touch with our Founding Fathers’ vision for this great Republic. Their vision of an “Empire of liberty” (Thomas Jefferson to George Rogers Clark, December 25, 1780) has not been taught in schools, heralded by the media, celebrated in the movies, or uttered in the halls of government for generations. Parents have failed to convey a proper love of our Republic to their children. And churches, once the guardians of the sacred flame of Freedom, have become mere mouthpieces for the mantra “obey government.”

As a People, we have let the Constitution collect dust while allowing our public servants to glorify themselves at our expense. We’ve sat silently as our political power has been usurped and our precious rights have been trampled. We’ve allowed the memory of our national heroes – men such as George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Andrew Jackson, and Robert E. Lee – to be denigrated and twisted into something horrid and repulsive while anti-American agitators are held up as icons worthy of emulation. We’ve let a rabid minority of activists foist perversions upon us and our children in the form of the LGBT movement, feminism, and so forth.

Our society has been so thoroughly indoctrinated that it recoils at the terms “American exceptionalism” and “Manifest Destiny.” We become offended by those things which make us characteristically American and which made America great. Our language has been hijacked and the free speech of those who defend traditional values is viciously attacked. Our noble history has been transformed into something “oppressive” and “shameful.” Our culture has become corrupted inside and out. Political correctness taints everything.

Who is responsible for this campaign of mass brainwashing and societal transformation – transformation that causes us to turn inward and condemn our history, belittle our ancestors, hate our institutions, and, ultimately, devour ourselves in tribalistic hostility? The origin of the term “brainwashing” points us in the right direction. In his book Brain-Washing in Red China, Edward Hunter explained:

“The plain people of China have coined several revealing colloquialisms for the whole indoctrination process. With their natural facility for succinct, graphic expressions, they have referred to it as “brain washing” and “brain-changing.”

“Brain-washing became the principal activity on the Chinese mainland when the Communists took over. Unrevealed tens of thousands of men, women, and children had their brains washed. They ranged from students to instructors and professors, from army officers and municipal officials to reporters and printers, and from criminals to church deacons. There were no exceptions as to profession or creed. Before anyone could be considered trustworthy, he was subjected to brain washing in order to qualify for a job in the “new democracy.” Only then did the authorities consider that he could be depended upon, as the official expression is worded, to “lean to one side” (Soviet Russia’s) in all matters, and that he would react with instinctive obedience to every call made upon him by the Communist Party through whatever twists, turns, or leaps policy might take, no matter what the sacrifice. He must fight by all possible means and be ready, too, with the right answer for every contradiction and evasion in Party statements. . . .

“. . . Man has learned not only some of the theoretical processes that go on in a man’s head but also how to direct his thoughts, and to do this in a “democratic group discussion,” in a “self-criticism meeting,” on the operating table, or in the hypnotist’s chamber. The whole field of psychology has broadened to embrace everything that influences thought and attitude, from the first crude publicity put out for a movie actress to Ivy Lee and psychological warfare, and the whole wide range of activities that lies within – in effect, our entire field of modem communications media, from public opinion surveys to aptitude testing. . . .

“The politicians of the world have been quick to seize upon these discoveries in the realm of the brain in order to advance their own objectives. Initially, they worked primitively in the field of propaganda. Then the vast possibilities of psychological warfare, what we call a cold war, dawned upon them. Cold war as a term is unfortunate in one respect. It sets up a line between cold and hot war that exists only on the writing table, not on the field of battle. What actually is meant by cold war is warfare with unorthodox weapons, with silent weapons such as a leaflet, a hypnotist’s lulling instructions, or a self-criticism meeting in Red China” (Edward Hunter, Brain-Washing in Red China, 4, 11-12).

Modern brainwashing is communist in origin. While variations of their tactics have been used throughout time, it was the communists who perfected the art, combined it with modern technology, science, and medicine, and employed it on a global scale. In particular, the unholy alliance between Marxism, psychiatry, and the drug industry threatens to upend our civilization and reduce us to bedlam.

This insidious program of mental and moral transformation – our version of Mao’s Cultural Revolution – is not native to our fertile American soil. Rather, it was imported to the United States by Soviet agents, covertly engrafted upon us, and cunningly cultivated. They first brought political correctness, of which the Encyclopaedia Britannica has noted:

“The term [political correctness] first appeared in Marxist-Leninist vocabulary following the Russian Revolution of 1917. At that time it was used to describe adherence to the policies and principles of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (that is, the party line).”

Brainwashing techniques arrived on our shores soon after political correctness. The purpose of these twin tactics of subversion was and is to convince people to toe the communist line and embrace socialism. Of course, they didn’t refer to it as “the Communist Party line” – they used other terms to disguise their true motives. They preached about “democracy” and “equality,” heaped praise on “diversity,” force fed us the vice of “tolerance” (i.e. toleration of criminality, corruption, and communism), deceptively referred to themselves as “Progressives,” “liberals,” and “social democrats,” and did everything they could to project the failures and abuses that they were guilty of onto America, her People, and her constitutional system, thus inverting reality and confusing our citizenry.

In order to push political correctness and wash Americans’ brains, the social engineers went about convincing us that our history was “shameful,” that our heroes were “villains,” that our principles were “hateful,” that our institutions were “oppressive,” and that our Republic was founded by “bigots.” The current rash of monument-destroying and the ghastly effusion of self-hated and “white guilt” is the long-cultivated fruit of the communist effort to demoralize and indoctrinate our People.

Let’s make something very clear: Communism is not American. It is a hostile, alien ideology that seeks to destroy and then supplant our Amercanist Freedom philosophy. The great statesman J. Reuben Clark, Jr. observed:

“This influence is in leadership largely alien, – in birth, or in tradition, or in training and experience, or possessing alien concepts and alien philosophies. With them are some American-born rebel conspirators. These all form a vast army . . . all ready, able, and willing to take over if their opportunity shall come, or be made” (J. Reuben Clark, Jr., October, 7, 1943).

This alien conspiracy is wholly anti-American. It is a parasitical force sapping the lifeblood of our nation. Its values are the opposite of those codified in the Declaration of Independence and U.S. Constitution. Its principles were forcefully rejected by our ancestors. Its aim is to convert the United States of America into the United States of Soviet America. All their study, planning, and work is aimed at transforming us from Freedom to high-tech feudalism.

In a 1951 article, David O. McKay warned of the attempt to use sophisticated, long-range methods to subvert our country. He wrote:

“More destructive to the spreading of Christian principles in the minds, particularly of the youth, than battleships, submarines, or even bombs, is the sowing of false ideals by the enemy. . . .

“Misrepresentation, false propaganda, innuendos soon sprout into poisonous weeds, and before long the people find themselves victims of a pollution that has robbed them of their individual liberty and enslaved them to a group of political gangsters” (David O. McKay, Salt Lake Telegram, April 26, 1951).

For a very long time, our People have been asleep. We were lulled into a hypnotic trance. We’ve been so beguiled that we didn’t listen when Charles Lindbergh, Henry Ford, Huey Long, Senator Joseph McCarthy, J. Edgar Hoover, W. Cleon Skousen, Fred Schwarz, Antony C. Sutton, Robert W. Welch, Jr., Bella Dodd, Whittaker Chambers, Louis Budenz, Yuri Bezmenov, and hosts of others in and out of government, attempted to alert us to the creeping dangers of socialism here in America. We failed to pay attention when the FBI, the U.S. House Un-American Activities Committee, and the Reece and Cox Committees, churned out material exposing the communist conspiracy and its backers on Wall Street, in banking, in academia, in Hollywood, in the news media, and in Washington, D.C.

Perhaps some did listen to the warnings, but never acted on them either out of fear or out of being labeled a “conspiracy theorist” or “intolerant” or one of the other smears the communists love to use. The esteemed Ezra Taft Benson made this relevant observation. He said:

“The communists bring to the nations they infiltrate a message and a philosophy that affects human life in its entirety . . . Communists are willing to be revolutionary; to take a stand for this and against that. They challenge what they do not believe in – customs – practices – ideas – traditions. They believe heatedly in their philosophy.

“But our civilization and our people here in America are seemingly afraid to be revolutionary. We are too “broadminded” to challenge what we do not believe in. We are afraid of being thought intolerant – uncouth – ungentlemanly. We have become lukewarm in our beliefs. . . .

“This is a sad commentary on a civilization which has given to mankind the greatest achievements and progress ever known. But it is even a sadder commentary on those of us who call ourselves Christians, who thus betray the ideals given to us by the Son of God Himself. I ask, are we going to permit atheistic communist masters, fellow travelers and dupes to deceive us any longer?” (Ezra Taft Benson, The Red Carpet: Socialism – the Royal Road to Communism, 53-54)

Though written decades ago, Benson’s question is one we must ask today. We must decide how much longer will we allow ourselves to be deceived, lied to, and abused before we stand up, speak out, and take back our country. Can we afford not to be “revolutionary” in the cause of our Freedom? Is it wrong to be radical for Liberty when the alternative is socialist slavery? Was it wrong when the Sons of Liberty became extremists against British tyranny in 1776?

Americans have generally believed that the threats we face are those hiding in the shimmering sands of Arabia or the sweltering jungles of the Pacific. We don’t like to think that the enemy is here, in our neighborhoods, in our schools, in court houses, in our Congress. Yet, that’s precisely where he is! Over a long period of time, as we’ve sat apathetic and distracted by TV, hedonism, political correctness, party politics, and pride, a ruthless cadre of criminals has helped one another rise to fill key positions in our government, media, justice system, military, medicine, universities, and so forth.

This group of gangsters may be called many names, from the “deep state” to the “swamp” to the “globalists.” I simply call them communists, however, because the thing they share in common, regardless of where you find them, whatever outward differences they may have, and whatever sinister organizations they belong to, is their communist ideology. They are committed to internationalism, one-world government, legalized plunder, centralization and collectivization, economic monopolies, humanism, loose morals, political correctness, and so on. In short, the adherents of this global cabal all support the core planks of The Communist Manifesto.

Some try to draw distinctions between the various isms. In particular, they endeavor to separate socialism and communism. Ezra Taft Benson explained the fallacy in their attempts:

“It is high time that we recognize creeping socialism for what it really is – a Red Carpet providing a royal road to communism. . . .

“This is a most important lesson for all of us to learn, namely, that the communists use the socialists to pave the way for them wherever possible. This is why communists and socialists are often found supporting each other, collaborating together and fighting for the same goals.

“The paramount issue today is freedom against creeping socialism. . . .

“. . . the worst thing that can happen to a socialist is to have himself openly identified with the work of the communists who are generally feared and despised. . . .

“We must ever keep in mind that collectivized socialism is part of the communist strategy. Communism is fundamentally socialism. We will never win our fight against communism by making concessions to socialism. Communism and socialism, closely related, must be defeated on principle” (Ezra Taft Benson, The Red Carpet: Socialism – the Royal Road to Communism, 65, 69, 75).

The blunt reality is that socialism is communism with a smiley face. Karl Marx was instrumental in launching the First International, forerunner of today’s world-wide Socialist International (SI). George Bernard Shaw and the others who created Fabian Socialism, which has utterly devastated our nation, were ardent followers of Marx. Red China openly promotes socialism. Russia, after the fake “fall” of the USSR, proclaimed it was instituting more socialism and getting back to its Leninist roots. And so it goes, with communists invariably supporting socialism, and socialism invariably leading to communism.

When you compare the principles and inevitable outcomes of socialism, communism, social democracy, democratic socialism, Maoism, Marxism-Leninism, or the more vague “statism,” “globalism,” and “collectivism,” you realize that there’s not a dime’s worth of difference between them. They all lead to the destruction of Faith, Families, and Freedom and to the establishment of state domination over human beings. Socialism and communism must be seen as two wings of the same ravenous bird of prey and defeated by any means necessary.

America is long overdue for another great awakening. Thankfully, the blatant attacks on our rights using the Coronavirus sham as a pretext, as well as the violent rioting in our cities with its bestial destruction of our national monuments, has awakened many to the awful situation we find ourselves in. Many more need to awaken, however, if we are to tip the scales back in favor of Freedom.

In order to accomplish this great awakening, one thing we can do is to point the finger of blame in the right direction. No longer should we point to Jihadists in Afghanistan or to vaguely-defined “terrorists” as our primary enemy. Rather, the finger of blame must be pointed inward. And not merely to the Democrats, but to people of any party or persuasion who fail to uphold the Constitution, who excuse and justify the violence on our streets, who promote cultural corrosion, who advocate greater government centralization, who denounce the godly principles America was founded upon, or who promote any form of socialism.

Dr. John Coleman encouraged us to cut out the cancer within our society above and beyond all else. He wrote:

“The greatest danger arises from the mass of traitors in our midst. Our Constitution warns us to be watchful of the enemy within our gates . . . The UNITED STATES is where we MUST begin our fight to turn back the tide threatening to engulf us, and where we must meet, and defeat these internal conspirators” (John Coleman, Conspirators’ Hierarchy: The Story of the Committee of 300, 30).

From Black Lives Matter agitators to Antifa thugs to turncoats on the Supreme Court to LGBT activists to oath-breakers at all levels of government, it’s time to fight the enemy within. We can’t long endure a situation where 97 members of congress belong to the openly Marxist Congressional Progressive Caucus – the largest single faction in the government. We can’t long endure a situation where governors allow communist revolutionaries to take over city buildings, police precincts, and residential areas, declaring them autonomous zones where U.S. law doesn’t apply. We can’t survive if we allow thugs to vandalize and destroy memorials to our fallen soldiers and monuments to our past heroes with impunity. We can’t last when we empty our prisons of hardened criminals while arresting mothers playing in the park with their children or people who rightly refuse to wear a face mask. We can’t endure in an atmosphere where anything you say that doesn’t agree with the communist agenda is labeled “racist” and “hateful” by the media. None of this is sustainable if our goal is to be free.

Until we wake up and realize the stakes of this war we’re engaged in, we don’t have a prayer of winning. Until we point the finger of blame in the right direction and square off against the traitors among us, we will forever lose ground. We would do well to recall words written during the height of the Cold War:

“Let’s get one thing straight at the very beginning. International communism is the self-avowed enemy of every loyal American. It has declared war against us and fully intends to win. The war in which we are engaged is total. Although its main battlefields are psychological, political and economic, it also encompasses revolution, violence, terror and limited military skirmishes. If we should lose this war, the conquering enemy’s wrath against our people and our institutions will result in one of the greatest blood-baths in all history. Call it a “cold war” if it makes you feel better, but our freedom and our very lives are the stakes of this contest” (Ezra Taft Benson, An Enemy Hath Done This, 165).

As precarious as our situation is, we haven’t lost yet. We have a choice. We can choose Americanism with its Freedom philosophy and reliance on God or we can side with communism and its unparalleled system of Satanic oppression. We can uphold the Constitution or we can sustain The Communist Manifesto. We can throw our lot in with George Washington and Thomas Jefferson or we can fly to the standard of Marx and Lenin. There’s no middle ground; neutrality is not an option.

With all her flaws and internal spasms, America is still the greatest nation on earth. We are still the hope of the world. We are the only thing holding back the full tsunami of communistic tyranny from sweeping over the globe. We have the potential to yet realize our forefathers’ vision of America as a shining city on a hill – an asylum for Liberty. I hope and pray that we will do the right thing, utterly purge communism from our society, and reclaim our heritage as Americans.

© 2020 Zack Strong – All Rights Reserved

VIDEO: Kennedy and Reagan — Communism Sucks . . . Must be Destroyed!

Please watch this short video where Tom Trento reaches back into American history to have President John Kennedy and President Ronald Reagan teach the Democrat party that they have abandoned our Constitutional Republic and whole-hardheartedly embraced a Marxist, anti-capitalist, anti-God, political philosophy.

ALL Patriotic Americans, E PLURIBUS UNUM – must come together and DESTROY Marxism! The future of America – LIGHTS OFF or LIGHTS ON – will be determined on November 3, 2020.

RELATED VIDEO: ‘Autonomous’ Zone In Seattle ‘Liberated’

©All rights reserved.

Pence: ‘Socialism Has Failed … Freedom Works’ [Video]

Vice President Mike Pence warned a gathering of conservative activists Thursday about the perils of socialism and its historical record of failure.

“Socialism has failed everywhere it has been tried, in every era in every continent. Freedom works,” Pence told a cheering crowd at the Conservative Political Action Conference, known as CPAC. “It was freedom and not socialism that ended slavery, ended two world wars, [and] has made America a beacon of hope.”

The vice president, tasked with leading the government’s response to the coronavirus, also said Americans “expect us to work together” to keep the public safe.

Pence repeated President Donald Trump’s vow that “America will never be a socialist country” as he noted that the ideology has gained in popularity among lawmakers on the left in Congress as well as on college campuses.


In these trying times, we must turn to the greatest document in the history of the world to promise freedom and opportunity to its citizens for guidance. Find out more now >>


Socialism is being sold as a promise of better health care and a cleaner environment, Pence said.

“The reality of socialism is different,” the vice president said. “The truth is, citizens in the most free countries in the world earn seven times more than citizens in the least free countries.”

Pence noted Venezuela’s grave problems and shortages as the country is in the midst of a struggle for freedom against what the Trump administration considers dictator Nicolas Maduro’s illegitimate government.

“Venezuela was once the second-wealthiest country in our hemisphere,” Pence said. “Then we wake up after a decade of a socialist dictatorship. Almost 5 million people in that country have fled to neighboring lands.”

Pence spoke about a woman from Venezuela who said her grandchildren had to rise at 4 a.m. to get a ticket to stand in line to buy a piece of bread in the afternoon.

“This president and this administration will continue to stand with the people of Venezuela,” Pence said.

The vice president also said the Democratic Party has embraced socialism.

“Whether it’s called ‘Medicare for All’ or a ‘Green New Deal,’ Democrats have embraced socialism,” he said. “History tells us it has literally impoverished millions of people and robbed the liberty of generations.”

Pence began by speaking about the coronavirus one day after Trump put the vice president in charge of the federal government’s response. The vice president said:

We’re all in this together. This is not the time for partisanship. The American people expect us to work together. … I promise you this administration will work with leaders in both parties, on the state and local level. This president will always put the health and safety of America first.

Pence said the White House’s coronavirus task force has met daily and that as of Thursday, 15 known cases of the disease have been detected in the United States.

“The risk to the American public remains low,” Pence said. “We are ready for anything.”

CPAC, the largest annual national gathering of conservative activists, runs Thursday through Saturday at the Gaylord National Resort and Convention Center in National Harbor, Maryland, just outside Washington.

COLUMN BY

Fred Lucas

Fred Lucas is the White House correspondent for The Daily Signal and co-host of “The Right Side of History” podcast. Lucas is also the author of “Tainted by Suspicion: The Secret Deals and Electoral Chaos of Disputed Presidential Elections.” Send an email to Fred. Twitter: @FredLucasWH.

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The Left Will Keep Trying to Oust Trump, House Conservatives Predict

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Coronavirus Spreads to Europe and Middle East. What That Means for This Global Health Crisis.

‘America Needs Our Help to Keep Her Special,’ Heritage President Tells Conservatives


A Note for our Readers:

This is a critical year in the history of our country. With the country polarized and divided on a number of issues and with roughly half of the country clamoring for increased government control—over health care, socialism, increased regulations, and open borders—we must turn to America’s founding for the answers on how best to proceed into the future.

The Heritage Foundation has compiled input from more than 100 constitutional scholars and legal experts into the country’s most thorough and compelling review of the freedoms promised to us within the United States Constitution into a free digital guide called Heritage’s Guide to the Constitution.

They’re making this guide available to all readers of The Daily Signal for free today!

GET ACCESS NOW! >>


EDITORS NOTE: This Daily Signal column is republished with permission. All rights reserved.

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