The Epoch Times here serializes an adaptation from the Chinese of a new book, How the Specter of Communism Is Ruling Our World, by the editorial team of Nine Commentaries on the Communist Party.
The communist specter’s scheme to destroy humanity has been in the works for centuries. Its arrangements manifest in the labyrinth of social affairs — from mass movements to governing elites, around the world and across history — working ceaselessly to ensnare and eliminate man.
Listen to the audiobook:
Table of Contents
1. The Corruption of Human Thought
2. The Subversion of Traditional Culture
3. Communism in the East and the West
4. The Breakdown of Society
5. The Divide-and-Conquer Strategy
6. Deception and Defense
Introduction
The specter of communism has been working for centuries to corrupt and destroy humanity. It began by crippling man spiritually, divorcing him from his divine origins. From here, the specter has led the peoples of the world to cast out their millennia-old cultural traditions that the divine had meticulously arranged as the proper standards for human existence.
Bereft of its ancient heritage, the whole of human society is breaking down at an unprecedented pace. Meanwhile, the specter’s earthly agents have exploited this societal havoc to push their nefarious agendas, masking them as “liberation” and “progress.”
Over the past two hundred years or more, the specter’s influence has overtaken the labyrinth of social affairs and historical development. Its demonic influence takes myriad and seemingly contradictory forms, from the overt brutality of communist rule found in the East, to the piecemeal subversion of Western politics, culture, and mainstream society.
1. The Corruption of Human Thought
In today’s world, the criteria for discerning good and evil have been inverted. Righteousness is cast as wickedness and vice as compassion. Sinister concepts are disguised as science, and gangster logic is masked as “social justice.” “Political correctness” is used to impose thought control, and the notion of “value neutrality” is used to render people insensitive to brutal atrocities.
Man was created by the divine, and the faithful receive divine protection. The specter’s first and primary aim, therefore, is to sever the connection between man and the divine.
The socialist anthem, “The Internationale,” claims that there has never been any Creator. In the 1850s, German materialist philosopher Ludwig Feuerbach said that God was merely a projection of man’s inner nature. But humanity’s traditional morality, culture, society, and reason all come from the divine. In the tumultuous currents of history, spiritual faith may be described as a strong anchor line keeping mankind from being lost to the waves.
Atheism lures the arrogant into playing God and attempting to control the fates of others and society; the leaders of communist movements are prone to self-deification. British philosopher Edmund Burke, reflecting on the bloodshed of the French Revolution, said, “When men play God, presently they behave like devils.”
A concept closely linked to atheism is materialism, which denies the existence of the soul. Materialism took root during the Industrial Revolution, when rapid progress in science, technology, and production fueled a cult of empiricism and atheism. People lost faith in divine miracles and rejected divine commandment. The concept of dialectical materialism is the core tenet of Marxism and other radical ideologies. In recent history, the theory was first articulated by German philosopher Georg Hegel as a general set of principles for logical thought. Marxism then absorbed select aspects of Hegel’s work, while exaggerating the nature of dialectical conflict.
In the hands of the specter, materialism and atheism serve as demonic weapons used to overthrow man’s spiritual faith, undermine human morality, and destroy traditional culture. Materialism and atheism have established the basis for a whole host of warped intellectual pretensions. The corruption of philosophy has gone hand in hand with the corruption of science. A cult of “scientific rationality” has replaced normal reason with a type of secular religion used to repress faith and deny morality, reinforcing the atheistic worldview.
The contemporary scientific community dismisses all phenomena it cannot explain or verify by its methods as superstition and pseudoscience, or ignores them entirely. Aiming to dominate academic thought and the education system, it inundates those fields with atheistic theories such as Darwinism. Darwin’s flawed theory of evolution has been widely adopted as an instrument for distancing man from the divine. It equates man with beasts, undermining both his self-respect and his reverence for divine creation.
In the twentieth century, the theory took over the spheres of research and education; today, those who believe in creationism are ridiculed. Apart from their impact on the natural sciences, atheism and materialism spawned many philosophical and ideological trends rooted in the concept of struggle. The theory of evolution now not only dominates the study of biology, but also holds sway in the social sciences. From Darwin’s original theory came the pernicious philosophy of social Darwinism, with its concepts of “natural selection” and “survival of the fittest” reducing the community of nations to a jungle of barbaric struggle.
The demonic philosophy of struggle also has invaded the field of language. The definitions and nuances of words have been twisted to conform with atheist and materialist thought. In British writer George Orwell’s dystopian novel Nineteen Eighty-Four, Newspeak is an artificial language created to reinforce the Party’s control over the people. In many ways, Orwell’s visions have become reality. “Freedom” has been twisted to mean a state unrestrained by morality, law, or tradition. Principles such as “all men are created equal” and “all men are equal before the law” have been distorted to mean absolute egalitarianism. “Tolerance” has been deviated to mean acceptance of all sorts of warped thought and conduct. Rational thinking has been made a tool of narrow-minded empirical science. In the pursuit of equality of outcome, justice has become “social justice.”
The goal of communism is not to resolve problems, but rather, as Chinese republican leader Chiang Kai-shek once said, “to expand global contradictions to the greatest extent possible and cause human struggle to continue forever.”
This has been observed time and again throughout modern history. Communism incites hatred among the people, creates and escalates conflicts, and ultimately seizes power through violent revolution or subterfuge. In every case, the “liberation” promised by the revolutionaries results in brainwashing, killing, and tyranny.
2. The Subversion of Traditional Culture
Mankind’s orthodox culture was imparted by the divine. In addition to maintaining the normal functioning of human society, the most important role of divinely inspired culture is to provide a means for humanity to understand the divine law taught in the final epoch and to be saved from elimination.
Divinely inspired culture provides for strong moral protection against evil. The specter of communism thus aims to destroy human culture by turning people against their own traditions.
The spread of atheism and materialism weakened the religious roots of civilization, giving rise to new ideological movements grounded in struggle. In secular society, the specter’s representatives undermined traditional education, created degenerate modern art, promoted sexual promiscuity and pornography, and popularized drug use. The sinful and revolting is now glorified as liberating and expressive.
For thousands of years, traditional education played a key role in developing and passing on mankind’s exquisite culture. Students learned to work diligently to master professional, artistic, or academic skills, and to be good people and citizens.
Western countries started establishing free public education in the nineteenth century. By the start of the twentieth century, atheistic and anti-traditional thought had begun gradually seeping into the curricula, facilitated by leftist pedagogical experts who had infiltrated academia and held sway over educational policy. The theory of evolution became required learning, while political correctness was made the norm in social studies. Textbooks were gradually filled with atheism, materialism, and class struggle. Traditional culture, exemplified by the great literary classics, was at odds with the demonic ideological current. Thus, the classics were incrementally marginalized or reinterpreted according to modern social theory, leaving bright and gifted students without any deep understanding of the wisdom contained in humanity’s most important literary works.
Students’ creativity and curiosity now are squandered in the pursuit of meaningless causes, while they remain unversed in the fundamentals of work and life. Math and literacy standards have fallen. Long school hours separate children from their parents and families, ensuring continuous exposure to the degenerated education system. Under the slogan of “independent thinking,” students are educated to be anti-tradition and anti-authority and are encouraged to despise society and their elders. They are fed leftist narratives on history and social studies and are immersed in vulgar entertainment.
In countries ruled by communist regimes, children are actively indoctrinated in Marxist political studies from the time they enter preschool or kindergarten. Traditional culture and faith are completely replaced by an atheistic communist culture of hatred and struggle. Growing up with a constant barrage of ideological brainwashing, children raised in communist countries learn to think using the same twisted logic as the communist party.
Eccentric and deviated trends fill today’s consumer culture, while age-old trades have died out. Traditional standards of workmanship and business ethics have been lost. Alienated from their traditional culture and ways of life, people drift further from the divine. Today’s society worships sexual freedom and perversion. Youth are addicted to video games, social media, and pornography.
Art also has come under relentless attack. Upright, traditional arts came from the divine and first appeared in temples, churches, and other places of worship. True art presents truthfulness, kindness, beauty, and honor, thus helping humanity to maintain an orthodox moral culture. Garbage now occupies the halls of art. Dark, sinister paintings depict things of the netherworld. Impressionism, surrealism, and other grotesque styles have replaced the exquisite works of antiquity and the Renaissance. In literature, the ancient classics that embodied the wisdom of entire civilizations have been cast out in favor of shallow and convoluted modern writing.
Music, once composed and performed in awe of divine glory, is today dominated by obscenity and noise. Pop culture is full of demonic themes celebrating violence and drugs. Celebrities with hundreds of millions of fans promote degenerate and immoral lifestyles. The sublime, noble, and pure are ridiculed, while the vulgar and shameless are lauded.
3. Communism in the East and the West
Communism is characterized by the atheistic philosophy of struggle and derives its political organization and ideology from those of gangs and cults. In the East, communism is represented by totalitarian regimes and ruthless leaders, such as Vladimir Lenin, Joseph Stalin, Mao Zedong, Jiang Zemin, and their followers. The situation in the West is more complex, as powerful elites in fields such as government, business, academia, and religion scheme to undermine society.
Once-upright religions have been infused with the secular religion of socialism. Whether due to political control by communist regimes, or the misguided interpretations of unfaithful clergymen, traditional teachings and holy scripture have been altered. Liberation theology has infused an otherwise upright faith with Marxist ideology and class struggle, and moral perversion has spread among priests. Consequently, many believers have lost hope in the church and have given up faith in divine salvation.
Along with religion and nation, the family is among the divine cornerstones of human civilization. It is an important bastion of morality and tradition and serves as a conduit for culture to be passed from one generation to the next. Leftist movements around the world promote feminism, sexual liberation, and homosexuality, undermining the traditional family structure and harmonious gender roles. These ideological trends legitimize and encourage promiscuity, adultery, casual divorce, and abortion, breaking down healthy relationships and the basic standards for human existence. Destroying the family is a key factor in how the devil is destroying humankind.
Totalitarianism in the East
Russia was weakened by its defeats in World War I, forcing the czar to abdicate. Taking advantage of the political chaos, communist revolutionaries launched the 1917 October Revolution to overthrow the constitutional government. Following a devastating civil war, the communists founded the world’s first socialist regime — the Soviet Union — and used its vast resources to export revolution abroad via the Communist International.
The Chinese Communist Party (CCP) was created in 1921 with direct Soviet backing. Over the following decades, the communists waged a violent and treacherous rebellion against the Republic of China. The CCP benefited greatly from the Japanese invasion in World War II and continued fighting against the ruling Nationalist Party during and after the war. In 1949, the communists took over all of mainland China, establishing a totalitarian People’s Republic.
Both the Soviet and the Chinese communist parties ruthlessly slaughtered tens of millions of their own people in times of peace. To enforce its malicious Marxist ideology, the CCP launched the unprecedented Cultural Revolution, declaring war on China’s five thousand years of traditional culture and exquisite ancient civilization.
Beginning in the 1980s, the CCP introduced economic reforms to stave off its own collapse, while keeping the political sphere under its strict totalitarian control. To this day, the Party maintains its tight grip on power through campaigns of suppression, such as the crackdown on the democracy movement and the persecution of Falun Gong.
Infiltration in the West
China’s imperial court, the Western divine right of kings, and the American system of checks and balances are forms of government established by the divine for humans according to their unique cultures and environments. Though communist revolutions have failed to take power in Western countries, the specter of communism has nonetheless established covert control over the free world via subversion and infiltration. Without violent revolution, Western countries have abandoned upright methods of statecraft and broadly adopted various characteristics of the communist system, such as heavy taxation, bloated welfare states, excessive and self-serving bureaucracies, and political correctness.
The law, originally founded on religious morality and divine commandment, has been altered to accommodate deviant understandings of ethics and freedom. In the communist countries of the East, the law exists to do the regime’s bidding. In the West, the law is interpreted through leftist ideology and modified to uproot moral concepts of good and evil. Legislation is passed to show leniency toward serious crime, encourage adulterous sexual lifestyles, undermine the family, and curb the rights of upstanding citizens through heavy regulation.
Governments and citizens alike have been dragged into a culture of avaricious overconsumption. Financial elites have done away with the traditional wisdom that governed sustainable economics, replacing the gold standard with a fluctuating fiat currency. Banks and the state encourage the accumulation of endless debt, leading to perennial economic crises and eroding national sovereignty.
The communist specter has used globalization as a tool to gradually break down the sovereignty of individual nations through organizations such as the League of Nations and the United Nations. Billed as utopian solutions to international conflict and disputes, these global authorities have in reality come to serve nefarious agendas. The United Nations, despite receiving most of its funding from Western democracies, has increasingly come under the sway of communist regimes like the People’s Republic of China. International organizations are used to spread leftist ideology and undermine legitimate national interests. The ultimate aim is to bring the whole world under one totalitarian regime with tight controls on politics, ideology, and population.
Leftist and other pernicious agendas have been able to acquire so much mainstream influence in Western countries largely due to the help of mass media. In countries run by communist regimes, all outlets are subject to state censorship, if not directly controlled by the communist party. Elsewhere, the media has been brought under the sway of financial and partisan bias. Honest reporting and discourse are buried by an avalanche of sensationalism, political virtue-signaling, and outright fake news.
4. The Breakdown of Society
In order to topple traditional human society, the specter has driven social movements, mass immigration, and other upheavals on a global scale. This astounding process has been underway for several centuries.
Warfare and Revolution
Seizing political power is one of the key steps in communism’s plan to destroy humanity. Karl Marx, in summarizing the lessons learned from the Paris Commune, wrote that the working class must overthrow the original governmental apparatus and replace it with its own state. Power is always the core issue in Marxist political theory.
War is one of the specter’s most effective tools for breaking down the old international order, destroying bastions of tradition, and accelerating the development of communist ideology. Many wars were waged under demonic influence. World War I brought about the collapse of several European empires, chiefly czarist Russia. This paved the way for the Bolshevik Revolution.
World War II provided the conditions for the CCP to seize power and for the Soviet Union to invade Eastern Europe, thereby establishing the postwar socialist camp. The war also created the disorder of decolonization, which the Soviet and Chinese communist regimes exploited to support the worldwide communist movement. National liberation movements brought many countries across Asia, Africa, and Latin America under authoritarian socialism.
The instigation of revolution can be divided into the following steps:
- Foment hatred and discord among the people.
- Deceive the public with lies and establish a revolutionary united front.
- Defeat the forces of resistance one at a time.
- Use violence to create an atmosphere of terror and chaos.
- Launch a coup to seize power.
- Suppress the reactionaries.
- Build and maintain a new order using the terror of revolution.
The communist countries attempted to launch a world revolution via the Communist International, exporting revolutionary activism and creating unrest by supporting local leftists in non-communist states.
Communism exploits divisions between people and channels the rage of individuals into collective hatred. Communist revolutions succeed through acts of terror, and communist regimes implement policies of state terrorism. Most terrorist movements take inspiration from the Leninist organizational model, and the Soviet and Chinese communists supported terrorist groups as a kind of task force against the free world.
The irrationality with which terrorists take hostage of and slaughter innocent people creates an atmosphere of helplessness. Exposed to wanton violence, people become more antisocial, depressed, paranoid, and cynical. All this damages public order and fragments society, helping to create the conditions necessary for communism to seize power.
Economic and Social Crises
All around the world, socialist and communist movements have taken advantage of economic unrest to edge themselves into positions of influence, with the eventual goal of overthrowing the existing social order.
Economic crises can be created and utilized as a means of encouraging revolution or casting socialist movements as saviors. When politicians in democratic countries find themselves desperate for solutions, they make Faustian bargains, gradually steering their countries toward big government and high-tax socialism. As Saul Alinsky wrote in Rules for Radicals, “The real action is in the enemy’s reaction.”
The Great Depression of the 1930s was the key juncture at which Europe and the United States embarked on the path toward big government and widespread interventionism. The financial crisis of 2008 continued tipping the scales in favor of expanding leftist policies.
With the rise of industrialization and globalization came mass migration, first from the countryside to cities, then across borders and continents. People have moved from one place to another since antiquity. However, the rapid domestic and international population movements seen in modern times are a result of the specter’s manipulation.
Mass migration dissolves national identity, borders, sovereignty, cultural traditions, and social cohesion. As masses of people are removed from their traditional identities, they are more easily absorbed into the drift of modernity. It is difficult for immigrants living in an unfamiliar environment to secure their livelihood, let alone participate deeply in their host countries’ political processes or cultural traditions. Newly arrived immigrants are thus easily recruited as free votes for leftist parties and social causes. Meanwhile, immigration creates ripe conditions for stirring up racial and religious animosities.
Communism makes use of social trends to inflame and agitate people, escalate conflicts, mobilize movements to destabilize society, bludgeon the political opposition, dominate discourse, and appear to seize the moral high ground. Examples include the anti-war movement and environmentalism, which communists hijacked for their own purposes.
5. The Divide-and-Conquer Strategy
The communist specter handles people according to their different characteristics and motivations. It takes the lives of some while taking advantage of others’ greed. It can put human idealism and emotion to work, indoctrinating individuals to serve as the pawns of revolution and rebellion.
Eliminating Dissent
Some people are wiser and more perceptive than others. Some are closer to the divine and not susceptible to the devil’s trickery. In countries with long and rich historical experiences, it is difficult to get people to go along with the deception. The communist specter does not hesitate to physically liquidate the discerning members of society who see through its conspiracy and are brave enough to stand out by resisting. To this end, it arranges political campaigns, religious persecutions, show trials, and assassinations.
In China, which boasts five thousand years of divinely inspired civilization, the CCP could only break down the cultural order by launching a series of political campaigns that killed tens of millions of people. It paid special attention to murdering the scholars, gentry, and spiritual practitioners who served as the custodians of traditional Chinese culture.
Elites across all nations and industries have taken up a demonic way as the specter plays to their interests and endows them with power according to how closely they follow its agenda. For those who seek fame and influence, the specter gives them a reputation and authority. For the greedy, it arranges profit. It inflates the egos of the arrogant and maintains the bliss of the ignorant. The gifted are seduced with science, materialism, and unrestricted freedom of expression. Individuals with lofty ambitions and good intentions have their ideals turned into self-glorification, making them feel the warm glow of accomplishment in becoming presidents, prime ministers, think-tank scholars, policymakers, administrators, big-shot bankers, professors, experts, Nobel laureates, and the like, with outstanding social status, political influence, and vast fortunes. Once established, these great personalities are co-opted, each according to his or her circumstances. Many of them become the specter’s ignorant agents and, in the words of Lenin, “useful idiots.”
Dumbing Down the Masses
Communist ideology manipulates public knowledge by employing fake narratives, deluding people with its warped educational system, and controlling the mass media. It uses people’s sense of security and shallow interests to make people care only about their immediate interests, vulgar entertainment, competitive sports, social gossip, and indulgence in erotic and carnal desires. At the same time, politicians cater to the lowest common denominators to undermine voters’ vigilance and judgment, and thus capture the electorate.
In totalitarian communist countries, the people are never allowed to have anything to do with politics. In democratic countries, those concerned with the public good have their attention diverted to trivial issues (such as transsexual rights), echoing the famous stratagem from ancient Chinese military history: “advancing via a hidden route while repairing the plankways in the open.” Viral news, social sensations, and even terrorist attacks and wars are arranged as cover for communism’s ultimate goal.
The public is inculcated with a modern consciousness and mobilized to overpower the minority of people who stubbornly hold to tradition. Intellectuals levy heavy criticism of folk cultures around the world, fostering narrow-minded prejudice among their undiscerning audiences. The concepts of critical and creative thinking are abused to pit those of the younger generation against authority, preventing them from absorbing the knowledge and wisdom of traditional culture.
In communist countries, after the bearers of traditional culture were slaughtered, the bulk of the population was indoctrinated to participate in revolution. After the CCP seized power, it took two and a half decades to nurture a generation of “wolf cubs,” a Chinese term for those who grew up under communism and were indoctrinated to hate and kill class enemies. They were encouraged to fight, smash, rob, and burn indiscriminately.
During the Cultural Revolution, teenage girls readily beat their teachers to death. Today, internet trolls known as the “50 Cent Army” actively work on different social media in China, constantly writing about beating and killing, with typical posts reading, “Recover the Diaoyu Islands even if China is laid to waste,” and, “We would rather China be peppered with graves than fail to exterminate the last Japanese.” Their murderous sentiment is actively cultivated by the CCP.
In the West, communist parties proudly harken to the experience of the French Revolution and the Paris Commune. Every revolution and insurrection has been introduced by mobs that had no scruples, no shame, and no compassion.
Fragmenting Society
Today, the older generation is being marginalized and removed from society at an accelerated pace. As young people are endowed with ever more rights, political power, and privileges, the elderly lose their positions of authority and prestige, speeding up mankind’s break with tradition. Contemporary literature, arts, and popular culture are all geared toward the tastes and values of the young, who are under pressure to pursue endlessly changing trends in fashion, lest they be ostracized by their peers.
Rapid scientific and technological progress renders the elderly unable to keep up and adapt to the massive social changes that occur as a result. The transformation of urban and rural spheres combined with mass migration work together to alienate the elderly and estrange them from the present. The torment and helplessness of their solitude are exacerbated by the reality of modern life, where the young are in a constant state of competition and have little time to spare for their parents and elders.
In traditional human society, people help each other. When there are conflicts, they have religion, morality, laws, and folk customs to facilitate resolution and cooperation. Such an organic society cannot be made to collapse in a short period of time. It must first be broken up into atomized units, dissolving the traditional reliance between individuals and alienating them from each other.
Virtually every conceivable standard has been used to divide society into opposing groups and instigate hatred and struggle among them. Class, sex, race, ethnicity, and religious denomination can all serve as bases for division. Communism and other ideologies influenced by the specter magnify the animosity between the bourgeoisie and the proletariat, the rulers and the ruled, progressives and “regressives,” liberals and conservatives — all while the government expands its powers to build an unstoppable totalitarian state.
6. Deception and Defense
The communist specter has concealed itself well. It is difficult to fathom the scale of its deception, which it created through a vast array of stratagems running the spectrum from hidden to overt.
The specter’s most diabolical schemes are carried out in broad daylight, where they are presented as sensible, reasonable, and legal. They are so pervasive that it is difficult to expose these schemes for what they are. At times, certain aspects of the specter’s agenda are revealed, only to deflect attention and scrutiny away from a greater conspiracy. For example, during the Cold War, the world was divided between two military and political camps. Yet, while their social systems appeared to be diametrically opposed, the same demonic process was taking place on both sides in different forms. Many revisionist Western-style communists, socialists, Fabianists, liberals, and progressives publicly rejected the Soviet and Chinese models, but their efforts led society on a path toward a social structure no different from those of the Soviet Union and China. In plain terms, the communist specter used the totalitarian East as a diversion for the active infiltration of the West.
Those who dare to expose the specter’s scheme are labeled “conspiracy theorists,” “extremists,” “far-right,” “alt-right,” “sexists,” “racists,” “warmongers,” “bigots,” “Nazis,” “fascists,” and other terms of abuse meant to isolate and marginalize them from academia and the broader society. Reduced to objects of ridicule and fear, their ideas gain no audience and exert no influence. People are simultaneously conditioned to oppose and hate certain ethnicities, groups, and individuals, thus drawing attention away from the fundamental evil that is the communist specter.
It is impossible for all of humanity to be taken in by the specter’s deception. But communism in its myriad forms has gained influence over the majority of people and their leaders around the globe. It is no exaggeration to say that the specter of communism is ruling our world. In light of the general strategies outlined above, the following chapters of this book examine in detail how the communist specter’s rule came to be, and what mankind must do to avoid ultimate destruction at the specter’s hands.
Read Next: Chapter Two
Updated April 21, 2020
Read the series here: How the Specter of Communism Is Ruling Our World