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Dispelling the Myth of the Demise of Communism
OpinioNet ^ | June 15, 2002 | David T. Pyne

Posted on 06/17/2002 3:00:31 PM PDT by Tailgunner Joe

Despite the oft-expressed misconception that communism died with a wimper in the bloodless revolutions in Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union in 1989-1991, today communism is making somewhat of a comeback in much of the world to the point that approximately one and three-quarter billion people live under communism, renamed Communist Party or Marxist-Leninist control today. While the People’s Republic of China has taken up the USSR’s old role as the communist motherland, other notable still-formally-communist states include North Korea, Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia, and Cuba. Myanmar is ruled by a military junta, which espouses Marxist-Leninism and has closely aligned itself with Communist China. States governed by unrepentent communist apparachik dictators-for-life include Belarus, Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Kyrgizistan, Tajikistan, and Turkmenistan. Meanwhile, Azerbaijan and Georgia are ruled by the same former Communist Party bosses that governed them during Soviet times.

Even as Western Europe tilts to the political right, renamed Communist Party politicians are returning to power in Eastern Europe. The leaders of their respective national renamed communist parties have returned to power via the ballot box in Poland, Romania, Hungary, Moldova, Albania and have come to a power sharing arrangement in Bulgaria with the election of a communist president and head-of-state. Slovakia also seems set to return to renamed Communist Party control in this fall’s elections. Many of these former communist-bloc countries are either current NATO members or will be considered for full NATO membership at a special NATO summit to be held in November of this year. In Russia, the Communist Party controls the speakership of the Russian Duma along with several of its committee chairmanships, though with the recent break-up of the governing partnership between former KGB spymaster and current Russian President Putin and the Communist Party in the Duma, overt communist influence is currently on a decline. In Ukraine, the communists remain a force to be reckoned with in the Duma and President Kuchma seems to be increasingly aligning Ukraine with KGB-led Russia.

In fact, communism has advanced far beyond the Eurasian subcontinent. In Venezuela, recently re-installed President Hugo Chavez has declared himself a communist and has stated that his goal is to transform his country into a communist “paradise” similar to Castro’s Cuba. In South Africa, the communist-dominated and one-time terrorist organization, the African National Congress, rules what has increasingly become an essentially one-party state, which is only a decade or so behind its more radical Marxist Leninist one-party dictatorship cousin in Zimbabwe in terms of radicalization. The president of South Africa himself, Thabo Mbeki, unlike his predecessor, is an actual member of the South African Communist Party. In fact, virtually all of southern Africa with the exception of Botswana is ruled by Marxist-Leninist regimes against which the US under which the Reagan administration fought proxy wars to defeat back in the 1980s. In addition, Ethiopia and several other African states are ruled by revolutionary Marxist regimes.

In what is likely to be the greatest communist coup since Mao and his Red Army proclaimed the People’s Republic of China in Beijing in October 1949, Brazil seems set to elect its first Marxist president in October. Ignacio Lula da Silva, the perennial candidate of Brazil’s Communist Popular Front, leads his closest non-socialist opponent by 27 percentage points according to the latest poll, while socialist party candidates account for an additional 28 percent of the vote likely to go to Lula in the second round of voting. Lula has aligned himself with Fidel Castro of Cuba, Hugo Chavez of Venezuela and the FARC narco-terrorists in Columbia through his Forum of Sao Paulo organization, which he founded to increase the influence and joint coordination of Marxist and communist revolutionaries throughout the Western hemisphere. Lula has further expressed an intention to align Brazil with Russia and Communist China if elected and to provide China with naval bases along his country’s long Atlantic coastline.

It is imperative that US policymakers realize that the truth is that the fight between the West and what remains of the Communist bloc never really ended since the great majority of people who lived in Communist nations in 1991 still suffer under Communism's yoke today. America's fight against Communism isn't over and will not be until the 1.3 billion people now enslaved by their murderous Communist Chinese captors are liberated along with their compatriots still languishing in the laogai death camps. America must deter and contain Communist Chinese aggression and expansion and, yes, engage in a Reaganesque strategy of rollback very different from the policy being pursued by the current administration.

The main difference between the foreign policy of Ronald Reagan and that of President George W. Bush is that while Reagan had a clear-cut vision and strategy of how to defeat Soviet communism, which ultimately proved mostly successful, Mr. Bush appears to have no strategy to rollback Chinese communism at all, having chosen instead to pursue a failed strategy of detente with the Communist Chinese. Even worse, the Bush Administration has opted to continue the Clinton Administration’s policy of appeasement and accommodation towards the Butchers of Beijing. The US cannot hope to defeat, rollback, or even successfully confront and contain Chinese communism without a strategy for victory, let alone without any strategy at all. However, such a strategy will first require that the Bush Administration affirm that Communist China is not only an increasing threat, but is still a communist adversary not merely some fanciful "market economy" trade competitor as they have previously asserted.


TOPICS: Crime/Corruption; Culture/Society; Editorial; Foreign Affairs
KEYWORDS: anc; angola; axisofevil; brazil; castro; chavez; colombia; communism; cuba; europe; farc; hegemony; luladasilva; marxism; mbeki; narcoterrorism; nato; pntr; prc; savimbi; southafrica; ukraine; venezuela; waronterror; zimbabwe

1 posted on 06/17/2002 3:00:31 PM PDT by Tailgunner Joe
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To: Tailgunner Joe
The article fails to address the theory that creeping socialism, which is what we're undergoing, is another means to attain a communist state. I believe it can be traced back to an Italian communist philosepher who Hillary and her cohorts follow. The premise is that if a candidate jumped up and said "I'm a communist-vote for me" they would lose. However, under the guise of a socialist in other countries, or a democrat in ours, they slowly but surely ratchet their way toward communism.

For example, nobody in America owns their home even if the mortgage is paid off. Don't believe me. Don't pay your real estate taxes and find out what happens. The state owns all private property in this country, a concept unthinkable generations ago.

2 posted on 06/17/2002 3:13:38 PM PDT by MattinNJ
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To: MattinNJ
That's a fine post.It's the 'creeping towards' that disturbs me.Regardless that we had to put up with Hillary Directing #42 for 8 years AND People actually are coming out publicly and making statements like this:


ALL TIME CHILLING QUOTE OF THE DAY :
"The American people will never knowingly adopt Socialism,
but under the name of Liberalism
they will adopt every fragment of the Socialist Program
until one day America will be a Socialist Nation
without ever knowing how it happened----"

WHO SAID THIS?

Norman Thomas, six-time Socialist Party presidential candidate and one of the founders of the ACLU.
Now you understand how come I don't sleep so well at night sometimes.They are brazen enough to TELL US what's coming. That fact alone should worry every U.S. Citizen!

3 posted on 06/17/2002 3:33:47 PM PDT by Pagey
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To: Tailgunner Joe
It's long been my contention that tearing down the Berlin Wall simply ruptured the pod of communism and scattered its nefarious seed to the four winds like down from a thistle. It took root in those fertile places where the soil is heavily enriched by fecal matter, such as the Democratic Party.

Communism is now a philosophy without borders, Trotsky's vision manifest. Anyone who thinks it is dead is sadly, dangerously deluded.

4 posted on 06/17/2002 4:44:14 PM PDT by IronJack
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To: Pagey
"The goal of socialism is communism." - V.I. Lenin

"The meaning of peace is the absence of the opposition to Socialism." -Karl Marx

5 posted on 06/17/2002 5:11:51 PM PDT by Orion78
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To: MattinNJ;Pagey
Your probably thinking of Antonio Gramsci.
6 posted on 06/17/2002 5:16:16 PM PDT by nickcarraway
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To: Stavka2
"...the reason it should sound familiar is that before you Western intelligentsia forced Communism on us..."
7 posted on 06/17/2002 5:20:19 PM PDT by Orion78
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To: Orion78
NEVER FORGET -THERE IS A THIRD WAY
8 posted on 06/17/2002 5:20:34 PM PDT by DTA
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To: Tailgunner Joe
Right, Communism isn't dead, it just transfered from the USSR to many members of the US Congress.
9 posted on 06/17/2002 5:30:14 PM PDT by Uncle George
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To: MattinNJ; Tailgunner Joe
The guy is Gramsci, a hero of the Communist movement and especially revered in Cuba, not to mention over to Hillary's house.

And I'm going to tell all Freepers ONE MORE TIME: THE book to read on this subject is Anatoly Golitsyn's "New Lies for Old"
.

What this courageous defector did was lay out (in 1985) that exact course which the Communists have in mind for the world for the next 5 decades.

If this book does not make one a wee bit paranoid, one would be nuts to begin with.

10 posted on 06/17/2002 9:37:16 PM PDT by Kenny Bunk
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To: MattinNJ
There is lots of material on Gramsci in the FreeRepublic archives:

Gramsci vs. Tocqueville or Marxism vs. the American Ideology
http://www.FreeRepublic.com/forum/a3a54bec871fa.htm

The Gramscian Roots of America's Culture War Thread 2 (Is Gramsci the Father of Neo-Conservatism ?)
http://www.freerepublic.com/forum/a3a3bc78569bf.htm

Who is Antonio Gramsci? You Better Learn!!!
http://www.FreeRepublic.com/forum/a3a4c610569be.htm

YATES: "Understanding the Culture War: Gramscians, Tocquevillians and Others"
http://www.FreeRepublic.com/forum/a3a56d02c2a1b.htm

Original Sin
http://www.FreeRepublic.com/forum/a3b80051c3e46.htm

11 posted on 06/17/2002 11:03:31 PM PDT by Ernest_at_the_Beach
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To: Kenny Bunk
Google turned this up:

Marxism By Any Other Name

12 posted on 06/17/2002 11:09:11 PM PDT by Ernest_at_the_Beach
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BUMP
13 posted on 06/18/2002 1:07:56 PM PDT by Pagey
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To: sonofliberty2; HalfIrish; NMC EXP; OKCSubmariner; Travis McGee; t-shirt; DoughtyOne; SLB; ...
Great article which blows away the misconception that Communism went the way of the doe doe birds back around 1991. However, the author missed a couple of former Communist led countries. Both Croatia and Armenia are currently governed by their respective former Communist party leaders.
14 posted on 07/05/2002 6:43:53 AM PDT by rightwing2
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To: Tailgunner Joe
Not to mention a strategy to take on America's leading communist, Hillary Clinton!
15 posted on 07/05/2002 7:31:06 AM PDT by Freedom'sWorthIt
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To: Ernest_at_the_Beach
Deconstructing the Western Mind: The Gramscian-Marxist Subversion of Faith and Education

(lots of good links in the Comment)

16 posted on 07/05/2002 7:57:30 AM PDT by Askel5
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To: rightwing2
Thanks for the flag, rightwing2.
17 posted on 07/05/2002 9:44:16 AM PDT by Askel5
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To: rightwing2
Thanks for the heads up!
18 posted on 07/05/2002 10:39:18 AM PDT by Alamo-Girl
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