Despite its appalling track record of misery, murder and oppression, socialism, not to say open communism, is still very much in vogue with millennials. The very group whom polling shows are least able to correctly describe socialism are the ones most besotted by the hateful lunacy of Marxism, and the modern poster girls of socialism. A generation of ignorant children idolises a murderous ideology they are almost completely ignorant of.
Of course, they?re mostly ignorant because they?ve never been taught the truth. The modern education system is dominated by the left, not to say literal Marxists, who endlessly drill children that ?Nazism is bad, mmkay? (which it was), without ever honestly explaining what Nazism was (an extreme nationalist brand of racist socialism). So everything they think is bad must be Nazism.
But, worse, educators obscure the truth about socialism and Marxism, and proudly declare themselves Marxists. Quote:
Chances are you have friends who still idealize socialism, communism, and the men who enforced these ideologies with an iron hand. But what they probably don?t realize is the awful truth about these utopian visions of a better world. Let?s quickly walk through some of the history they ought to consider.
…Marx and his followers, sadly, did not realize that capitalism-driven industrialization ultimately creates widespread prosperity, and they ended up hurting the very workers they aimed to help. Thanks in part to the factories that Marx detested, the United Kingdom?s average income was three times higher when he died than when he was born.
After communists seized power in Russia a century ago, in the name of equality, anyone who was too well-off had to be identified and punished. Those with specialized knowledge, such as engineers, or those who had ?non-labor income? were suspect. End of quote.
Marx and Engels never articulated an actual political program. Instead, they asserted that communism would just bring about a paradise on earth. When the declared goal of your ideology is a literal paradise, your followers are licensed to commit any number of atrocities. After all, it?s all for the greater good.
As one communist wrote: Quote:
?You see, they can?t make a revolution with white gloves. Annihilating the kulaks is a bloody and difficult process, but it has to be done.? End of quote.
Compare this with Himmler?s infamous address to the leaders of SS death squads: ?The difficult decision had to be taken to make this people disappear from the earth?It made everybody shudder; yet everyone was clear in his mind that he would do it again if ordered to do so, and if it was necessary?. Quote:
Millions of ?class enemies,? political dissenters, and other unfortunate victims were sent to work in the Gulag, the forced-labor-camp system created under Lenin and greatly expanded under Stalin. Anyone who tried to escape was summarily executed?
In sum, to bring about equality, the communist system imprisoned or killed those who had attained expertise and achieved success?By imprisoning or murdering many of the most productive people, while simultaneously eliminating market incentives for productivity by collectivizing industries and banning competition, communists brought about far deeper and more widespread poverty than under capitalism. (Capitalism, in fact, has helped bring world poverty to an all-time low.)
Research suggests that the number of unnatural deaths wrought by communism may be upward of eighty million? End of quote.
This is a fact of which too many people, especially the young, remain in almost complete ignorance. Even of the few who have some knowledge of the horrors of communism, most resort to denialism and whataboutism to try and defend their ideology. Quote:
Today, seven out of ten Americans underestimate the number of lives that communism extinguished. Perhaps that explains part of communism?s continued appeal. End of quote.
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Those who forget ? or are never taught ? the lessons of the past are condemned to repeat them. But educators don?t teach the lessons of the past, they propagandise. Popular culture joins in: Holocaust movies are a dime-a-dozen; can you think of one popular movie about the horrors of communism? (Peter Weir?s excellent The Way Back is a brave exception, which was doomed to obscurity.)
History, proper history, must be restored in school curricula. The anti-Western, anti-capitalist obsessions of the leftist education hierarchy must be replaced by a balanced assessment of the good as well as the bad. By all means teach an unflinching history of Nazism: but tell the truth about communism for once, too.