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The collapse of the communist regimes in the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe marked the end of a half-century-long Cold War between the capitalist and communist camps in the East and West. Many were thus optimistic, holding the belief that communism had become a relic of the past.
The sad truth, however, is that a transmogrified communist ideology has instead taken hold and entrenched itself around the world. There are the outright communist regimes like China, North Korea, Cuba, and Vietnam; there are the former Soviet Union and Eastern European countries, where communist ideology and customs still exert a significant influence; there are the African and South American countries, which attempt socialism under the banner of democracy and republicanism — and then there are the nations of Europe and North America, whose body politics have become host to communist influences, without people even realizing it.
Communism breeds war, famine, slaughter, and tyranny. These in themselves are terrifying enough, but the damage dealt by communism goes far beyond this. It has become increasingly clear to many that, unlike any other system in history, what communism declares war on is humanity itself — including human values and human dignity. Over the course of a century, communism established massive dictatorships in the Soviet Union and China; it caused more than 100 million unnatural deaths; it enslaved billions; and it brought the world to the brink of nuclear war and thus destruction. Yet more important is its deliberate and widespread destruction of the family, its fomenting of social disorder, and its attack on morality, all of which are ruinous to the foundations of civilization.
What, then, is the nature of communism? What is its objective? Why does it take mankind as its enemy? How can we escape it?
1. Communism Is a Devil Bent on the Destruction of Humanity
“The Communist Manifesto” begins: “A specter is haunting Europe — the specter of communism.” The use of the term “specter” was not a whim of Karl Marx. The preface of this book argues that communism should not be understood as being an ideological movement, a political doctrine, or a failed attempt at a new way of ordering human affairs. Instead, it should be understood as being a devil — an evil specter forged by hate, degeneracy, and other elemental forces in the universe.
The communist specter took the form of a serpent, then that of a red dragon, and it keeps company with Satan, who hates God, and exploits low-level beings and demons to wreak havoc on man. The goal of the specter is to ruin humanity, and while the divine offers salvation to humanity, communism tells man not to believe, attacks human morality so as to renounce tradition, and causes man not to heed God’s instruction and, ultimately, to be destroyed.
Following the Cold War, the poison of communism not only continued to harm formerly communist countries, but also spread throughout the world. The ideological infiltration of communism has led the specter to influence human society on a global scale, and many people even think that the dark wishes of communism are their own. With this, people lose their ability to judge right from wrong, to differentiate good from evil. This, a devil’s conspiracy, was almost carried out.
Thus, even as the specter congratulated itself, delighted with its sinister victory, most people thought that it had been destroyed. There’s nothing more dangerous than mankind being on the verge of destruction, yet ignorantly celebrating its triumph.
2. The Devil’s Ways and Means
Man was created by God, and the compassion of gods has long protected man. This the devil knew, and so it set about severing this connection, to corrupt man so that gods would no longer take care of him. The devil’s approach has been to subvert the culture given to mankind by gods, corrupt human morality, and thus warp man and make him unworthy of salvation.
Both good and evil, God and the devil, reside in the heart of every person; a life can sink into moral decadence, or can elevate through moral cultivation. Those who believe in God know that by striving for moral conduct and thought, one’s righteous thoughts can be strengthened by gods, and gods will allow miracles to happen. Gods will also help one’s morality rise in level, to help one become a more noble person, in the end allowing one to return to Heaven. A person of low morality, however, is filled with selfishness: desire, greed, ignorance, hubris. While gods will never recognize such thoughts and actions, the devil will magnify them, intensifying selfishness and wickedness, and manipulating the person into wrongdoing, thus creating karma and causing further moral decay, until, in the end, only Hell awaits. If the moral standards of human society as a whole decline, the devil will hasten these trends with the goal of causing more wrongdoing, more karma, and humanity’s eventual destruction.
The turbulence of Europe beginning in the 18th century, and the attendant moral decline, gave the devil an opportunity. It set about subverting, step by step, the criteria of discernment between good and evil. It promoted atheism, materialism, Darwinism, and the philosophy of struggle. The devil chose Marx as its envoy among men. Marx’s “Communist Manifesto” of 1848 advocated the violent destruction of private enterprise, social classes, nations, religions, and the family. The Paris Commune of 1871 was its first attempt at seizing power.
His followers argue that political power is the central question of Marxian political science; this is both true and not true. Being clear about the ultimate aims of communism means we can recognize that political power is both important and unimportant to the communist project. It is important in that access to political power allows a rapid means of the widespread corruption of humanity. With the levers of power, communists can promote their ideology with violence and eradicate a traditional culture in mere decades or years. Yet it is also unimportant in that even without the apparatus of the state, the devil has other means of exploiting the weaknesses and shortcomings of man; to deceive, co-opt, coerce, confuse, and so overturn traditional thought, subvert order, and create upheaval; and to divide and conquer, with the objective of gaining global control.
3. Communism Is the Ideology of the Devil
God established a rich culture for human society based on universal values, paving the way for humans to return to Heaven. The communism of the devil and the traditional culture of God are irreconcilable.
At the core of the evil specter is atheism and materialism: a confluence of elements from German philosophy, French social revolution, and British political economy assembled as a secular religion meant to replace the position previously occupied by God and orthodox beliefs. Communism turns the world into its church, bringing all aspects of social life under its purview. The devil occupies people’s thoughts, causing them to revolt against God and discard tradition. This is how the devil leads man to his own destruction.
The devil chose Marx and others as its agents to oppose and destroy the principles laid down by God for human society. It promotes class struggle and the abolition of established social structures. In the East, it launched a violent revolution and established a totalitarian state that united politics and secular religion. In the West, it undertakes progressive, nonviolent communism through high levels of taxation and wealth redistribution. On a worldwide scale, it seeks to spread communist ideology to political systems everywhere, with the goal of undermining nation-states and establishing a global ruling body. This is the “paradise on earth” promised in communism, a supposed collective society without class, nations, or government, based on the principles of “from each according to his ability and to each according to his need.”
Communism uses its program of creating a paradise on earth to promote an atheistic conception of “social progress”; it uses materialism to undermine the spiritual pursuits of mankind, including belief in the divine and religion, in order to allow communist ideology to spread to every sphere, including politics, economy, education, philosophy, history, literature, art, social science, natural science, and even religion. Like cancer, communism eliminates other beliefs as it metastasizes, including the belief in God. In turn, it destroys national sovereignty and identity, and humanity’s moral and cultural traditions, thus leading man to destruction.
In “The Communist Manifesto,” Marx proclaimed, “The communist revolution is the most radical rupture with traditional property relations; no wonder that its development involves the most radical rupture with traditional ideas.” Thus, Marx himself accurately summarized the practice of communism over nearly the past two centuries.
God is the source of moral order, and God’s morality is eternal and unchanging. Moral standards should never be determined by man, nor can they be changed by man’s power. Communism tries to sentence morality to death, and to have the communist New Man establish a new morality. Yet while it denies real morality, communism uses negative methods to expel from human tradition all its positive factors, with the goal of having negative factors occupy the world.
Traditional laws come from morality and are intended to uphold morality. Communism tries to separate morality from the law, then destroys morality by concocting bad laws and maliciously interpreting traditional ones.
God calls on man to be kind; communism agitates class struggle and advocates violence and killing.
God established the family as the basic social unit; communism believes that the family is a manifestation of the private, capitalist system and threatens to eliminate it.
God gives man the freedom to obtain wealth and the right to life; communism seeks to eliminate private property, expropriate assets, raise taxes, monopolize credit and capital, and completely control economic life.
God established the form that morality, government, law, society, and culture should take; communism seeks the “violent overthrow of the whole existing social structure.”
God transmitted to man the unique form of traditional art as a means of passing on his image; traditional art recalls to mankind the beauty of heaven, reinforces faith in God, elevates morality, and nurtures virtue. Communism, on the other hand, would have man worship warped modern creations, artistic productions that stifle our divine nature, give full rein to the demonic impulse toward chaos and disorder, and manipulate the art world by spreading base, ugly, malformed, evil, and decadent ideas.
God wants man to be humble and full of reverence and wonder at divine creation. Communism connives at the demonic and arrogance in man, encouraging him to revolt against God. By amplifying the evil inherent and inescapable in human nature, it exploits the idea of “freedom” to encourage conduct unrestrained by morality and unfettered by a sense of duty or burden. The slogan of “equality” is used to stir up envy and vanity, as man is tempted by fame and material interests.
After World War II, the communists expanded their military and economic empire, and the communist bloc and the free world contended for decades. Communist doctrine became a secular religion in those countries, an unchallengeable truth written into textbooks. But elsewhere, communism under other guises also took root and has had tremendous influence.