Mad Rant: The Red Menace

WHY?!?! This drives me up the wall! Why am I constantly being told that I am crazy, deranged or at least hopelessly “out of date” whenever I talk about the threat of communism today? “Get with the times”, they say or, “the Cold War is over” they say. As if the Berlin Wall coming down was the death of Marxism altogether everywhere in the world! Yes, it is true, the “Iron Curtain” came down in Europe but many of the same people were in the communist party in those days are running the continent, east and west, today in the ruling clique of the European Union. Even more pronounced is the fact that, while the “Iron Curtain” came down in Europe, the “Bamboo Curtain” across Asia is still going strong -and being reinforced by American and European currency as well. Why does everyone pretend as though every communist threat disappeared when Germany was reunified? I don’t understand the mentality! And why do so many tell me that I am “out of date” for pointing out actual communists causing trouble all over the world while these same people are always comparing every villainous national leader to Adolf Hitler and the Nazis? No one says to them, “World War II is over, get with the times!” No, in fact, there are still groups that comb the earth looking for any surviving Nazis to arrest them and imprison or execute them. No one calls them out of date, so why are communists treated differently. There are plenty of victims of communism in the world today because, unlike the Nazis, there are numerous communist parties still in power in countries all around the world. So why is worrying about communism “crazy” and “out of date”?

People can call names as much as they like but facts are facts and the fact is that communism is not dead and buried (I would think that would be obvious) but is alive and well and still working its insidious agenda even in North America and western Europe. The President of the European Commission is Jose Manuel Barroso who was a Maoist revolutionary working to bring down the corporatist state in Portugal. Since then he has said he is not a communist but his actions say something else and would it matter if someone had been a member of the Nazi Party in their youth? The President of the United States had a Marxist mentor as a child, his communications director, Anita Dunn, said she admired Mao Zedong, he even had a Mao Zedong ornament hanging on his Christmas tree at the White House. Some conservatives shouted about this stuff, but most just ignored it. Would everyone have reacted the same to a White House communications director saying she admired Adolf Hitler or if the President had a Christmas tree ornament with Hitler or a swastika on it? Everyone knows the answer to that, it’s obvious. Well, Mao Zedong killed more people (by a considerable margin) than Adolf Hitler did and unlike the Nazi Party which is dead, buried and outlawed, the Communist Party of Mao Zedong is still in power today ruling the largest country on earth with the largest military and an arsenal of nuclear weapons. Why is this not alarming? Or, at least, why is it “crazy” and “old fashioned” for people like me to be alarmed by it?

In Russia, the man in charge is President Vladimir Putin, a former officer of the Soviet KGB. Now, I am not saying that Putin is a communist, it would be hard to pin him down like that. On the one hand he said the fall of the Soviet Union was a terrible thing, on the other hand he has privatized industries rather than nationalizing them but regardless of what you think of his actions today, if you consider him a hero or a villain (because there are those in Russia who think Stalin was a great guy and at least they have been kept out of power) but just consider where he came from and, again, ask yourself if the world would tolerate or do business with a President of Germany who used to be an SS officer? At commemorations of World War II in Russia the old Soviet flag is still paraded. Do the Germans still parade with Nazi flags on historical occasions? No, of course not but, again, Stalin killed more people than Hitler did. Stalin invaded peaceful countries, neutral countries as well. So if everyone agrees that Hitler was evil, if everyone is constantly on the lookout for “the next Hitler”, why is it considered a throw-back to the 1950’s to be worried about communism? And worse than the various communist parties (which still hold power in countries from North Korea to Cuba) is the spread of the Marxist philosophy under other names.

The education system in First World countries around the world has become dominated by teachers unions that all have a Marxist mindset and a Marxist agenda. I’m sure people will say that sounds crazy but the facts are the facts. Schools all over the First World (and these are targeted because the Marxists target success because they think success can never be legitimately earned) teach their students to be ashamed of their countries, to despise their own people, to look down on their forebears and to scorn national pride and love of country. Americans will remember, not so long ago, the uproar over teachers unions in Wisconsin. Governor Scott Walker tried to limit collective bargaining rights for public employees and faced massive opposition from the teachers unions who tried (unsuccessfully) to remove him from office. They had plenty of insults to throw at the man and plenty of names to call him but one of the ones most used was “the Midwest Mussolini”. Now, why would they call Governor Walker “the Midwest Mussolini”? Why not “the Midwest Mao”? Probably because the people running the teachers unions do not consider Mao Zedong to be all that bad of a guy, just like the President they support. It is the same across both oceans from America. Despite the stories you may have heard from China or Korea about textbooks, in Japan the children are taught to be ashamed of their country. The teachers unions in Japan resisted so fiercely even flying the national flag or singing the national anthem that one school principal committed suicide because of his failure to reconcile the two sides of the issue. They opposed fiercely the law which officially designated these long-held symbols to be the national flag and anthem of Japan. Why? Because the flag was the same as that of the old Empire of Japan and the national anthem is a hymn of praise to the Emperor and as people with a Marxist mentality they totally despise these symbols and what they represent. The situation across the Atlantic from America is no better.

I always knew from American textbooks that in the American War for Independence the colonial rebels are naturally portrayed as the “good guys” and the British and loyalist Americans as the “bad guys”. Whatever your opinion is, that makes sense for American schools to teach that. But, knowing that, I always assumed that in British schools the textbooks would teach the opposite point of view. I was genuinely shocked the first time an English friend of mine informed me that, no, when he went to school they were taught that the American rebels were right and the British government was wrong. Later, this same friend, who has English roots going back to the conquest and is as staunch and proud, “Queen and country” patriot as you would ever hope to meet, shocked me again when he admitted that he didn’t know the words to “God Save the Queen”, the British national anthem. I explained to him how, in American schools, everyone is taught the national anthem and we say the pledge of allegiance to the flag every morning. This doesn’t happen in the United Kingdom. The national anthem is not taught there, no pledge of allegiance to the Crown even exists for school children and, I was told, aside from certain public holidays, almost no one ever flies the national flag, the “Queen’s Colours” as they were once called. I was as shocked by this at the time as I am still shocked when people act as though they think radical nationalism is running rampant in Japan. No, the same problem exists in the British Isles; Marxist-dominated teachers organizations are teaching children to be ashamed of British history, to have no respect for their forebears, no loyalty to the Crown and no love of country.

But, if you point these things out, everyone says, “you’re living in the 1950’s” and it is ridiculous. Why does no one say the same thing about the Southern Poverty Law Center that is still monitoring the Ku Klux Klan in America, even though the KKK has not been a major national movement since the 1920’s? For all intents and purposes, the KKK doesn’t even exist anymore. A Klan gathering these days is nothing more than one or two families getting together to wear sheets and set things on fire, but concern about them is legitimate while concern about communism is “crazy”?! Just to be clear, for any half-wits in the audience, I am not saying any of these targeted groups are good, I am only saying that there should be just as much concern about dangerous groups that actually exist today as is shown to dangerous groups that existed in the past but are almost totally gone at present. I could go on forever. Everyone in the world, the Americas, Europe, Africa, Asia, all trades with Red China which is still ruled by the Chinese Communist Party and which still has the huge portrait of their hero-dictator Mao Zedong hanging over the Tiananmen Gate of the Imperial City. Would all these countries have the same economic ties to a Germany that was still ruled by the Nazi Party and had a huge portrait of Hitler hanging on the Brandenburg Gate? Would these countries trade with Italy if the Fascist Party were in power and a huge portrait of Mussolini was hanging on the Coliseum? I think we all know the answer to that. Yet, everyone trades with China, Europe and Canada trade with Cuba, South Korea even does business with North Korea and those who oppose these things are called “out of touch”. But, of course, Hitler didn’t have any of those adorable panda bears, they’re so cute!

Communist ideology is rampant throughout the world, on every continent and in almost every country to one degree or another. Yet, if you point this out, you’re accused of living in the past, of peddling “McCarthyism” (who actually found actual communists if the truth matters to anyone) and just being hopelessly out of touch. So what if Franklin Roosevelt was the first president to recognize the Soviet Union, so what if he orchestrated the government takeover of whole sections of the American economy, so what if he only got into World War II after Hitler invaded Soviet Russia, so what if his administration was crawling with communist agents and so what if he and his hapless allies handed over half of Europe to Joseph Stalin and so what if an unfortunate side-effect of World War II was making the world safe for communism -that is all pure coincidence with no substance to it at all. Why do I bring it up? Because World War II was the great moment of glory for communism as is obvious by how they cling to it. They got to be the “good guys” and that is why every world leader that is not a communist who gets put on the ‘naughty list’ is referred to as or compared to Adolf Hitler, that is why Communist China always points the finger at Japan and invokes World War II whenever anyone looks too closely at their own gross misdeeds. They want everyone to just remember the war and keep chasing those Nazi, Fascist and imperialist bogeymen while they continue to tighten their grip on the future of humanity.

Communists may not always be honest about who they are but their ideology is still around and still spreading. Communist dictatorships still exist and they are still dangerous and growing more so with every passing year as the rest of the world embraces them. I do not mind saying so, I am a monarchist and being called “out of date” is rather mundane for me but the fact that so many will point to other horrors of the much more distant past while willfully ignoring the real and current threat that communism poses in security, in international relations and in education, makes me a very, very … Mad Monarchist.