Tag: Communism

Evidence of Fascism, Socialism, and Communism — Hurting Your Own People

Richard Barnes

I was recently asked about the usual definition of fascism placing it as a right-wing phenomenon, as if Hitler were a conservative or right wing politician or orthodox Christian(!).

Unfortunately, that is the “popular” understanding of the term; so if you are conservative or traditionalist in your beliefs you are liable to be identified as a fascist. 

Perhaps the best source to consult in this matter is the classic by F. A. Hayek, The Road to Serfdom. In that great work, he makes the obvious observation that the line between fascism and socialism or communism is practically … nil.

The three systems, and their multifarious variants, are undergirded by one constant: total control. 

All else is dressing. Communism seeks total control by having the state own all property, or “means of production”; fascism seeks total control by having the state direct or force or threaten all property, or “means of production” to act as directed. 

The end result in both cases is the same: totalitarian control of the people and their property. In other words, total control of everything. 

In all such cases, Orwell’s definition applies: a boot grinding on our faces forever.

That is the reality.

To attempt to describe fascism as “conservative” or “right wing” is worse than a distraction. It is false and misleading. 

Another aspect of totalitarianism — regardless of its provenance — is its complete disregard for the people under its governance.

Totalitarianism — whether fascistic or communistic or socialistic — acts and rules to retain power.

The conservative temper is totally of another world. It acts and rules as an exercise of love. It governs with an inchoate understanding that we are responsible not only for those living today, but for those who have gone before us — who have bequeathed us a wonderful heritage — and for those who are yet unborn — who will carry on on our behalf long after we are gone.

Conservative temperament sees our time on this earth as a trust. A responsibility to not only preserve what we have inherited, but to improve upon it and to pass it on to our descendants after us.

It is a disinterested temperament — it cares more for those to come in the future than it does for “me”. 

So when we learn of the former self-described socialist president of Bolivia, Evo Morales, commanding his loyalists to block Bolivia’s major roads, starving out the populace, in order to prevent his arrest on charges of pedophilia, we should not care whether he is a leftwing or a rightwing maniac. 

What we should understand is that he is determined to return to power. 

And when we read that the self-described socialist president of Venezuela, Nicolás Maduro, is providing the vehicles to ensure those road blockages, we should readily understand that Mr. Maduro is also a man consumed with retaining power. Whether he is a “socialist” or a “fascist” is irrelevant.

He and Morales are totalitarians. 

And the totalitarian temper is not limited by forms of governing. It is found in monarchies, dictatorships, democracies, republics, fill-in-the-blank.

In all such cases, the attitude is: the people be damned.

Both Bolivia and Venezuela are suffering greatly. But this does not concern the powerful in those countries.

Their concern is to retain power.

So the blockades have caused over $1.3 Billion in damages to the economy of Bolivia plus untold deaths and wounded by the violence of the Morales thugs. All the while Venezuela’s ruling elite focuses on assisting an ally more than on liberty for her own people. 

So, instead of asking whether a politician or a pundit is right wing or left wing or fascist or socialist or communist, a better question or analysis is: does that person promote or pursue more liberty for the people or does he or she promote more regulations and controls. 

That is the litmus test: liberty or tyranny.

Ah. One more thing: an irreligious people cannot govern itself. Therefore, such a people will confuse “more liberty” with “more libertinage”, which always results in more tyranny.

Pray for the people of Venezuela. And Bolivia.

At a wholesale market in the central Bolivian city of Cochabamba, farmer Damaris Masias watches through tears as 10 tonnes of tomatoes that she spent over a week trying to get through roadblocks are tossed into a bin (Barron’s)

Nothing New Under The Sun II

Richard Barnes

Contrary to the hopes of millions of peoples around the world, the fall of the Communist Soviet Union did not mark an end to the state’s ages long, relentless offensive to bring all humanity and her activities under the state’s total control.

Nor did Soviet Communism mark the beginning of that quest. The previous post noted that Marx and Engels assumed Communism to be the Jacobins’ program a century before; Lenin himself said the Jacobins’ fatal error was to stop the terror, a mistake he (Lenin) was determined to not repeat.

However, going back to the Jacobins is not going back anywhere near far enough.

In the Middle Ages, there was a real tension within the church as to which was the more important or critical: the particulars or the absolute? How this question was answered would also lead to determining the standard by which the church should be governed: by men and their traditions or by the full authority of the Bible? Francis Schaeffer’s How Should We Then Live has an interesting narrative on this point, as does R. J. Rushdoony’s The One And The Many. 

This was a very real debate which “swung” one way to the other and back, with consequences for centuries thereafter.

Over time, those who pushed for men and their traditions won out over those who pushed for the authority of the Bible. The humanist victory was accompanied with absolutism, which is usually the case when the authority of the Bible, the Word and Law of God, is minimized or otherwise not recognized. According to St. Peter, judgment must begin in the house of God. As goes the church, so goes the rest. So the tension within the church devolved into a tension between the church and the state. After all, both claimed authority on the basis of men and traditions, not on the basis of eternal Law.

Interestingly, most folks believe that the church in the Middle Ages was running things. That’s a dangerous oversimplification. The church may have opened the door for the tyranny that followed; however, she ended up being blamed for crimes which she actually opposed. She clearly preferred to be the one running things, however the fact is that she was not.

In the battle to determine who was the supreme manifestation of man on earth, church or state, the state clearly won out. Yes, many in the church fought and argued for her supremacy, while many in the kings’ courts argued for the supremacy of Caesar.

Very few argued for the supremacy of God over both church and state. That was inherent in Augustine’s phrase, “The One and the Many” — God is One in Three Persons. Wherever the Trinitarian faith prevails, not only in creeds, but in sincere belief and practice, there is freedom. There is a recognition of individual liberty and desires (the Many) but also of community and communion, acknowledging the need for unity (the One). And there is the recognition that there are spheres in life, of which church and state are two. Others include family, school, work, etc. But all are under God and none is to usurp the sphere of another.

An example of the state’s tyranny for which the church is usually blamed is the case of John Hus. At the Council of Constance (1414-1418 in Bohemia) the church declared that John Hus was not a heretic. The members of the council disagreed with his focus on the Bible, but this was not heresy, according to them.

Emperor Sigismund had promised safe conduct to Hus. But that was a lie: as soon as Hus arrived he was arrested and was not permitted to defend himself; he was only permitted to renounce his faith, something he would not do. Regardless, Sigismund declared that even if Hus recanted his faith, he would be executed.

Hus declared, “I appeal to Jesus Christ, the Only Judge who is omnipotent and wholly Just. In His hands I place my cause, not on the foundation of false witnesses and councils, but on the foundation of truth and justice.”

He was cruelly burned at the stake, by Caesar’s orders and henchmen. Hus’s example can be multiplied by the thousands.

The state requires conformity, whether it be 21st Century health mandates, 20th Century Soviet Union, or 15th Century Bohemia. And for total conformity to become a reality, total control is necessary: everyone is to think the same and to do the same. For this to be so, the state must control even our thoughts and our beliefs. 

This is nothing new, not even in the 15th Century.

Incidentally, throughout the Inquisition, a program in which the Church did not execute anybody, the state did, sober estimates of executions range from a low of 2,000 to a high of 20,000. Compare that to the deaths chargeable to atheistic Communist regimes in the 20th Century alone, where the numbers go into the tens of millions and even up to 200,000 million, depending on your sources. I am most certainly not excusing the church’s role in this nefarious period of history; however, the tale needs to be told truthfully.

The important point for the purposes of this post is to realize that the battles of the Middle Ages revolved around the question: Christ or Caesar? The 16th Century Reformation decidedly proclaimed the Crown Rights of Christ the King — which became the cry of the English Puritans of the 17th Century, which conviction they brought to the Americas. This meant that Christ was over both the church and the state.

To the Reformers the solution of The One And The Many was the Trinitarian faith under which men were free to govern themselves according to the Bible, the only Rule for life. Under that faith, all legitimate institutions were under Jesus Christ. This meant that the state had no business regulating the church nor did the church have any business performing duties delegated by God to the civil authorities. So, for instance, the administration of justice was a civic duty. But the church could and should proclaim the justice of God including rebuke of a State which would deviate from God’s Law. This was a church duty and she had the liberty to freely exercise that duty.

With the passing of the decades and centuries, Americans increasingly inclined towards a more Erastian persuasion, meaning that as the state grew, citizens saw it as god, without actually saying so. For example, the federal income tax laws “exempt” charitable organizations, into which they lump the church. However, the 17th Century understanding was that the church was a separate sphere or kingdom under God’s Kingdom. The income tax authorities (if there had been any back then), would have absolutely no business determining if a church met their definition of charitable organization or not, much less demand a certification or registration to that effect.

The Erastian view is that the church must indeed “prove” to the state whatever the state demands. And that’s where we are today: a spot where the church is seen as “under” the state. The past three years where churches were shut down or ordered to cease communion or to wear masks or to practice social distance clearly demonstrated that the state, and many churchgoers, do not believe that Jesus is the Head of His Church, let alone King.

But, again, even that is not something new under the sun.

Way back in the Garden of Eden, man was tempted to be his own god; a god who determines what is right and what is wrong. He was tempted to not obey the Triune God Who had told him that He, God, tells him, man, what is right and what is wrong. R. J. Rushdoony has written much about this and any reader who is interested is encouraged to look into his writings.

Practically all of history is man’s quest to be god. The City and Tower of Babel (Genesis 11) is collective man attempting to be god. The attempt failed.

All such schemes will fail, whether they be Sigismund executing John Hus, whether they be Communist China seeking to control what her people think, whether they be federal and state officials telling churches how to worship and when, or whether it be the World Economic Forum predestinating us to a solitary, nasty, brutish, and short life.

All will fail.

There is nothing new under the sun.

Jan Hus (1370-1415) statue in Prague, Czech Republic

Emperor Sigismund (1368-1437)

Thomas Erastus (1524-1583)

Converting The Catastrophe Of The Revolution

Richard Barnes

[The left-wing Republicans] managed to convert the catastrophe of the [French] Revolution into a stirring and soft-focused myth, largely by downplaying, editing out, or explaining away its most sanguinary ‘episodes’, like the Terror, as deviations from the noble idea, a process in which the great historians of the Republic, some of whom achieved high office, were thoroughly collusive, and which has obvious echoes of subsequent events in Russia, although there, historians tended to be shot” — Michael Burleigh, Earthly Powers, p. 339 [emphasis mine].

Alexander Solzhenitsyn wrote, “To destroy a people, you must first destroy her roots.” This observation has multiple applications of which two are primary. 

One application is to a country, such as The United States, where for more than a century now, her media and academia have utterly distorted her colonial and early Republic history. The effect of this has been to rear generations who have been taught not only to not know, let alone understand, but to actually hate their country for her racist, repressive, and utterly corrupt colonial past and founding. In effect, there was nothing good in our past and to “progress” we must “burn it down”, cast it aside, and start over. These generations not only despise their fathers, they refuse to listen to anyone with the temerity to show them, even from primary sources, that they have been taught bunk.

Another application is to apply it to a country, such as Venezuela (and much of South America) where for more than two centuries, her media and academia have utterly distorted her colonial [Spanish] history and mythologized and glorified her recent history, inaugurated by the godlike Simón Bolívar, who “liberated” her and initiated the birth of true liberty and civilization. The effect of this has been to rear generations who have been taught to not only scorn, let alone understand, but to hate their colonial past and to believe that all civilization began in the modern era. These are generations who ignore what even Bolívar admitted as he neared death, that centuries of civilization had been wiped out by his revolutions.

Both applications are nefarious and will surely precipitate utter ruin unless arrested. In the first case, they lead to a refusal to defend one’s people and home; in the second, they inspire a false valuation of one’s recent history. In both cases, they result in a headlong rush into ruinous policies and actions.

And, in both cases, an insufferable arrogance is birthed and encouraged: Job would say to them, “No doubt but ye are the people, and wisdom shall die with you.”

Dishonest historians and media are nothing new. Solzhenitsyn told about American correspondents who visited Moscow and reported back to America how the Russian people were filled with unspeakable joy and gratitude for Soviet Communism, this in the face of millions dying from hunger and torture in the Gulag network of concentration camps and prisons. Not to mention the dishonest and debunked “reporting” by such as Walter Duranty who lied with a straight face about the forced famines in Soviet Ukraine. He “won” the Pulitzer prize for his grim fairy tales and to this day, that honor has yet to be denounced, let alone recalled, by The New York Times.

Examples can be easily multiplied.

Jesus said, “By their fruits ye shall know them.”

We do not need the media or historians to show us the very real, life-killing, tyrannical fruits of Communism and Socialism, by whatever names they may be called in any given era. Just a few observations here and there will suffice, assuming we are willing to see and listen. For example, we now have, in the United States, hundreds of thousands, if not millions of emigres who escaped the chains and gulags of Asian and Eastern European tyrannies. Many of them have been raising their voices and sounding the alarm, most acutely over the last three years. Sure, they are dismissed, ignored, or mocked by the bien-pensants who write from their ivory towers in commerce and academia and who despise the men and women who do the work and pay the taxes and actually love their country and her history.

But we ought not dismiss them, for in warning us, they reach back to the horrible truths of their past, and point to what our future will be if we do not change course, beginning with the very real, religious Foundation of liberty.

As for the “noble idea”, their pasts and our future are not “deviations” from it, but rather are intrinsic to it. 

For it is by no means a “noble idea”, but rather an ancient, demonic one, as is attested by millions of voices crying from their blood-soaked graves.

Although this study covers religion and politics from the French Revolution to the Great War, it demonstrates, once again, that there is nothing new under the sun

Alexander Solzhenitsyn (1918-2008) warned the west, as he observed her unwillingness to defend her heritage, her love of materialism, ease, and pleasure, and her blindness to the same systems of philosophy and government that created the Soviet Gulag Archipelago, Mao’s Cultural Revolution, Pol Pot’s Killing Fields, and more.

Postscript

Richard Barnes

After publishing The Unquiet Death of Cetin Mert, I came across several reports about American teachers’ in-your-face determination to indoctrinate their students in Communist ideology.

From Fox News: “Rebeca F. Rothstein [works at North Bethesda Middle School in Maryland] also posted about providing ‘Marxist literature’ to kids and said, ‘F— capitalism.’ She shared in one instance that she was ‘tired after a long day of indoctrinating students.'”

“‘I had to un-brainwash myself from capitalism in order to fall in love with socialism and communism,’ she said. ‘If everyone had the same amount of money, then money wouldn’t be worth anything.'” [Do parents truly want their children to learn economics from low-wattage bulbs like this specimen?]

“‘Capitalism must go,’ she said. In that same video she said, ‘revolutions involve violence.'”

“The school district ignored multiple requests for comment about her quote on violent revolutions and whether they support the rhetoric.”

An article in Townhall reported on an event organized by the Colorado AFL-CIO, the parent organization of the American Federation of Teachers (AFT), the nation’s second largest teacher’s union, where a Colorado teacher took the stage to call for a “forceful cultural revolution”, borrowing from that great humanitarian, Mao Zedong (formerly known as Mao Tse Tung). 

“Tim Hernandez is a teacher at Aurora West Preparatory Academy in the Aurora Public Schools District, according to its website. He announced in his speech at the Colorado AFL-CIO event that he advocates for Marxist-Leninism to be taught in schools, admitting that he teaches radical Communist doctrines in his classroom.”

As noted in my prior post, we must oppose this evil by affirming our love for Truth and for humanity. And those of us with school age children need to decide as to where, how, and by whom they are to be schooled.

And, no, I do not equate schooling with education.

Jesus said, “By their fruits ye shall know them.” The fruit of Communist ideology, by whatever name it might use to cloak itself, is death. Tens of millions of horrible deaths precipitated by the godless state. No amount of foolish, deceitful, and dangerous rhetoric can hide that fact.

Live not by lies.

George Meany, call your office.

George Meany (1894-1980) on Time’s cover in 1955

He was an old-time labor leader who genuinely understood and opposed Communist ideology. His introduction of Alexander Solzhenitsyn in June, 1975, was powerful and reverberates to this day.

The Unquiet Death of Cetin Mert

Richard Barnes

Earlier this year I wrote about Peter Fechter in The Unquiet Death of Peter Fechter. 

Mr. Fechter was 18 years old when he was shot and left to die, pleading for help which the Communist east refused to provide while forbidding the west to render assistance. His pleas went silent after 50 minutes.

Looking over that post in light of a recent re-reading of Alexander Solzhenitsyn’s speeches to the AFL-CIO in 1975, I see that I was missing an insight: it is not sufficiently clear to be against Communism. Our need to speak truth requires more precision.

For example, consider one of the youngest to die along the wall, although in his case it was not technically along the wall, but in the Spree River. 

A little boy, on his fifth birthday, played with his new ball as his parents prepared to take him to the countryside for a picnic to celebrate with his friends.

The ball rolled down the embankment and fell into the river. The boy ran after it and lay down on his stomach stretching over the water seeking to retrieve the ball with a stick. He fell in the water and witnesses frantically sought help. However, none dared jump in the water, knowing they’d be shot, like Peter Fletcher. 

By some idiosyncrasy, the West Berlin side of the border went only to the river’s edge in that part of the city; the river itself was considered all East German territory.

West German guards and firemen came and sought permission to rescue. Permission was denied. Over an hour later, East German scuba divers arrived and fished the dead boy out of the water as hundreds of folks on the west side cried, “Murderers! Murderers!” 

That was not the end of it. Instead of immediately returning the boy’s body to his parents in the west, Communist East Germany kept the body for four full days. 

As a postscript, many years later, more information was learned from the Stasi files: East German guards had seen the boy falling into the water. They had watched with binoculars and took photos. But did nothing.

As one ponders such evil, the realization dawns that to say one is “anti-Communist” does not quite cut it. 

And here is where Solzhenitsyn’s insight is helpful: “Communism has managed to persuade all of us that these concepts [good and evil] are old-fashioned and laughable. But if we are to be deprived of the concepts of good and evil, what will be left? Nothing but the manipulation of one another. We will sink to the status of animals.”

I forget who said it, but after the fall of the Berlin Wall, “Communism” was said to have disappeared, except in the faculty lounges of American [and Western] universities. That was good for a chuckle. But no one chuckles now, as we see the product of those faculty lounges in generations of students and careerists who laugh at the concepts of right and wrong, good and evil. They do not acknowledge that there is a God Who will not be mocked and Whose law is the standard by which we and they will be judged one day.

Meanwhile, our own country sees our city streets and highways consumed with rage and hatred, manifesting themselves in murder and mayhem.

Solzhenitsyn would tell us to not make Communism “appear as though [it] were something original, fundamental”. To say one is “anti-Communist” is to make Communism one’s point of departure.

He went on to say that the primary, the eternal concept is humanity. I believe he would not quibble with me as I modify his assertion a bit: the eternal concept is Truth. And Truth recognizes the reality of humanity as made in the image of God. I know he would not quibble because elsewhere he urged us to “not live by lies”, but rather to live by and for Truth.

So, we can say, that to be “against Communism is to be for humanity”. To reject this inhuman Communist ideology is simply to be a human being. “It is a protest of our souls against those who would have us forget the concepts of good and evil.”

So as you see the detritus of Communism throughout the 20th Century and into our own; as you see it manifested on our own streets, by different names but the same godlessness and hatred and desire to destroy our own social order; as you confront folks who downplay the evil or who seek to finesse their arguments to in effect obfuscate the very real nefariousness of the lies being hurled at us; just remember: you are for humanity and therefore you are against them.

Cetin Mert (May 11, 1970 – May 11, 1975)

East German guards retrieving the boy’s body from the Spree River

East German guards remove the body of Peter Fechter who spent his last 50 minutes on earth pleading for help.