Posted on 11/01/2017 6:07:03 AM PDT by Kaslin
This year marks the hundredth anniversary of one of the worst mistakes ever made: the Communist revolution in Russia.
Communist regimes went on to kill about 100 million people. Most died in famines after socialist tyrants forced people to practice inefficient collective farming. Millions of others were executed in political purges.
Yet when the Russian Revolution happened, people both inside and outside Russia were excited. Crowds cheered Lenin. No longer would nobles rule; no longer would capitalists exploit workers. Now the people would prosper together.
British journalist Theodore Rothstein wrote, "The undivided sway of the Imperialist nightmare is at an end ...(there will be) rule of the labouring classes."
But you can't have government plan every aspect of people's lives and expect things to go well. Instead, you get bureaucratic planning commissions and secret police.
That won't stop some Americans from celebrating Communism's anniversary.
A day of anti-Trump protests is scheduled for Nov. 4, and I'm sure some protestors will wave hammer-and-sickle flags. Some will wear Che Guevara shirts.
A few commentators will call the protesters "idealistic" but impractical. They shouldn't. We should call them supporters of mass murder.
Lenin ordered the hanging of 100 property owners at the very start of the Revolution, saying people needed to see the deaths of "landlords, rich men, bloodsuckers."
Mass murder and starvation rapidly increased the death toll after that.
It wasn't exactly what philosopher Karl Marx had in mind, but it shouldn't have surprised anyone. Marx's writing is filled with comparisons of capitalists to werewolves and other predators who must be destroyed.
Marx admitted that capitalism is productive but said that "capital obtains this ability only by constantly sucking in living labor as its soul, vampire-like."
Even as the Russian regime killed millions, some journalists and intellectuals covered up the crimes.
Stalin kept most media out, so few Americans knew that millions were starving, but New York Times writer Walter Duranty saw it first-hand.
Yet he "covered up Stalin's crimes," says Tom Palmer of the Atlas Network, a group that promotes free-market ideas around the world.
Because Duranty wanted to support "the cause," he wrote that "report of a famine in Russia is today an exaggeration or malignant propaganda."
Duranty "saw the truckloads of bodies," says Palmer, yet, "he wrote on the front page of The New York Times how wonderful everything was." He even got a Pulitzer Prize for it.
In some ways, times haven't changed that much. This year, the Times ran a series of essays commemorating the anniversary of Russian Communism, including one piece arguing that sex was better in the Soviet Union because the Revolution destroyed macho capitalist culture.
At least The New York Times eventually admitted that Duranty's work was "some of the worst reporting in this newspaper," but the Pulitzer committee never withdrew its prize.
Communism kills wherever it's practiced. But people still people believe. Making a video on Communism's hundredth anniversary, I interviewed Lily Tang Williams, who grew up under the regime in China.
"Mao was like a god to me," she recounts. "In the morning, we were encouraged to chant and to confess to dear Chairman Mao."
Under Mao, Williams nearly starved. "I was so hungry. My uncle taught me how to trap rats. But the problem is, everybody is trying to catch rats. Rats run out, too."
Still, she says she was so brainwashed by Communist propaganda that she "cried my eyes out when Mao died."
But then, "when I was college student, I met a U.S. exchange student ... He showed me a pocket Constitution and Declaration of Independence. A light bulb came on!"
For the first time, she realized, "I have rights ... natural rights that cannot be taken away. Life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness."
She escaped to the United States. Now she says her mission in life is to teach Americans the importance of liberty.
I think her message is wiser than that of Karl Marx, Lenin and Stalin.
"Big, powerful government, it's very scary," she warns. "It will keep growing like cancer, will never stop. If you empower government, not the individuals, we're going to lose this free country!"
In the U.S. today, I feel like we are living in Dr. Zivago, but without the love story.
So, we can also celebrate 100 years of "journalists" being complete fools who get everything wrong, 100% of the time...
Lenin ordered the hanging of 100 property owners at the very start of the Revolution, saying people needed to see the deaths of “landlords, rich men, bloodsuckers.” Mass murder and starvation rapidly increased the death toll after that. It wasn’t exactly what philosopher Karl Marx had in mind …It wasn’t? When one reads Marx’s writings, one sees that it is exactly what he had in mind.
Of course, in the beginning, this cannot be effected except by means of despotic inroads on the rights of property and on the conditions of bourgeois production; by means of measures, therefore, which appear economically insufficient and untenable, but which, in the course of the movement, outstrip themselves, necessitate further inroads upon the old social order, and are unavoidable as a means of entirely revolutionizing the mode of production. …Marx had zero understanding of human nature. Somehow the “proletariat” was more noble than any preceding version of humanity, and once they attained dictatorial power and centralized everything, they would suddenly discover no more need for their dictatorship, convert their deadly weapons into plowshares, and live in a world with no families, no private property, no national borders and no religion, and sodomy and transgenderism for all.
The Communist Manifesto was published in 1848. I think he means since the Russian Revolution.
Its sad that Americans need to be taught the importance of liberty—something they should already know.
Its sad that Americans need to be taught the importance of liberty—something they should already know.
This was Jacinto Marto, Francisco Marto, and Lucy Santos. The children had three predictions: suffering for their Catholic Church and the Holy Father (Pope), an even worse war if people did not repent (World War I was still raging and this was a prediction of World War II).
But the prediction the children were ridiculed about was that Russia would spread its errors around the world
At this time in 1917, Russia had been knocked out of World War I because it was such an INEPT world power?
How could such an INEPT power spread its errors around the world?
The answer is the Revolution of Red October, and how Communism would be the mechanism that would spread its errors around the world...
Nothing to celebrate here, just prayers for the (at least) 100 million souls who died in the name of that so-called ideal.
104 years ago the income tax and the IRS were created.
Right up there with Communism.
Happy Birthday all you Dead commies.
The actual death toll statistic should also cover SOCIALISM. Remember, the only disagreement of Mao and Stalin with Hitler was “international” socialism vs “national” socialism.
Concur that the 100MM death toll quoted in the article is way, way low.
WRONG! communism has been around a lot longer than that, in fact it was tried in the Plymouth Colony in the early 1600's and in 1623 was such an abject failure that the entire colony almost starved. They went to a capitalistic system and ushered in an era of prosperity. Same people same resources, but different philosophy of government. You can read a summary of William Bradford's journal here Or you can get a copy and plough through the whole thing - it's available on Amazon.
Communism ALWAYS fails to deliver on its promises. All it ever produces is poverty and misery.
Communism turns 100...
F*ckers killed my great grandfather, and kept most of the rest of that family in a giant open-air prison for the next 75 years (along with about 100 million other families).
The bastards may come to power here, but I swear on the grave of my great grandfather that I won’t go quietly or peacefully.
For any that believe that this 100 year old revolutionary political movement is on it’s death bed....please read this...
https://www.thoughtco.com/critical-theory-3026623
The Austrian Germans and Magyars will be set free and wreak a bloody revenge on the Slav barbarians. The general war which will then break out will smash this Slav Sonderbund and wipe out all these petty hidebound nations, down to their very names. The next world war will result in the disappearance from the face of the earth not only of reactionary classes and dynasties, but also of entire reactionary peoples. And that, too, is a step forward.And of course, “national” socialist genocide was birthed from this international socialist genocidal outlook, which envisioned a “world war” from the very outset.
— “The Magyar War”, Neue Rhenische Zeitung, 01/13/1849
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