The Epoch Times is serializing an adaptation from the Chinese of a new book, How the Specter of Communism Is Ruling Our World, by the editorial team of the Nine Commentaries on the Communist Party.
Table of Contents (continued)
4. Politics Through Violence and Lies
a. How Communism Uses Violence and Lies
b. Instigating Violence in the West
c. Confusing the West With Lies
5. The Road to Totalitarianism
a. Eradicating Free Will and Suppressing Moral Agency
b. Totalitarianism via Welfare, Technology, and Excessive Regulation
6. Communism’s Threat to Basic Values
References
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4. Politics Through Violence and Lies
In communist doctrine, no means are considered too excessive. Communist parties publicly proclaim that violence and lies are their tools for conquering and ruling the world. From the first appearance of the communist regime in the Soviet Union to today, within only a century, communism has caused the deaths of at least one hundred million people. Communist Party members have abducted, tortured, murdered, destroyed, and lied. They have used every extreme method possible. The degree of their evil is shocking. Furthermore, participants profess to have no regrets.
The lies fabricated by communists vary in size, both in communist countries and in the West. They range from relatively small lies, such as a hoax, fake news, or the framing of a political opponent, to a series of systematic lies of considerable scale through complex operations. For instance, the CCP staged a self-immolation incident in Tiananmen Square and blamed members of the spiritual practice Falun Gong — all to incite public hatred against the practice.
Big lies, or great deceptions, are also used, and this is the hardest to manage, because the big lies are almost equivalent to the entirety of communist ideology. Their scale is so enormous, their operations so multifaceted, their duration so long, and the people they touch so numerous — including some who are sincerely dedicated to the cause — that the truth of the situation is lost. The communist specter fabricated the lie that a “great unity” was the goal of communism. Because this claim cannot be disproven in the short term, it was the deception on which the entire communist project was based. Communists claim that they are establishing a heaven on earth, but this is precisely their greatest lie, and the only fruit this lie has borne is a hell on earth.
The previous chapter analyzed how communism usurped the notion of progressivism through yet another Great Deception. In the past few decades, communism has hijacked a number of social movements and brought people to turmoil and revolution, which will be discussed in later chapters.
a. How Communism Uses Violence and Lies
Communist parties encourage class conflict — and this conflict is a struggle to the death. As The Communist Manifesto states: “The Communists disdain to conceal their views and aims. They openly declare that their ends can be attained only by the forcible overthrow of all existing social conditions.” [14] Lenin wrote in The State and Revolution: “We have already said above, and shall show more fully later, that the theory of Marx and Engels of the inevitability of a violent revolution refers to the bourgeois state. The latter cannot be superseded by the proletarian state (the dictatorship of the proletariat) through the process of ‘withering away,’ but as a general rule, only through a violent revolution.” [15]
During the process of seizing power — as seen during the Paris Commune, the Russian Revolution, or the CCP’s rise — communist parties use extremely violent and bloody methods. Regardless of whether their enemies are young or old, healthy or weak, communist parties burn, rob, and murder them; they exhibit a wickedness that shocks the soul. So numerous are the crimes that have been committed under violent communist regimes that they are impossible to count.
The communist cult employs lies and violence to maintain power. Lies are lubricants for the violence and also a way of enslaving the public. Communist parties are willing to promise anything, but never consider making good on their promises. To satisfy their needs, they change their stories as much as they like, with no moral baseline and no sense of shame.
Mao, Ben Bella, and Castro all claimed they would never establish totalitarian regimes. But once in power, they immediately initiated high-pressure totalitarianism, carrying out purges within the party as well as persecution campaigns against dissidents and the ordinary public.
Additionally, language manipulation is one of the main methods the communist cult uses to deceive people — that is, altering the meanings of words and even turning words into their opposites. As the altered language is repeatedly used, its distorted meanings become deeply rooted in people’s minds. For example, “God” is equated with “superstition”; “tradition” is equated with “backwardness,” “foolishness,” and “feudalism”; “Western society” is equated with “hostile” or “anti-China forces”; and the “proletariat” becomes “the masters of state-owned assets.” Though the people have no power under communism, the communists say that “all power belongs to the people.” Pointing out injustices is labeled as “inciting subversion of state power.” Therefore, when talking to those who have been deeply poisoned by the communist cult, people tend to find that the two sides often lack a shared basis for communication because they cannot even agree on the meanings of words.
The cult of communism not only tells lies itself, but also creates an environment to make the entire population join it in lying — including through forced political study, mandatory statements of one’s political stance, and political vetting. This is meant to force people to say things they don’t believe and thus demoralize them and degrade their sense of right and wrong. After people become aware of communist fabrications, they respond with their own lies. The communist cult knows that people are lying to it, but this is acceptable because lying itself is part of the game. What’s dangerous for communists is when people start telling the truth.
The enforcement of a culture of falsehood is a means of moral degeneration engineered by the communists. This book has noted repeatedly that the CCP regime desires not only to kill the physical body, but also to engender extreme moral corruption. In this regard, the communist specter has partially achieved its goal.
b. Instigating Violence in the West
The communist specter is composed of the elemental force of hatred, and its theories are infused with hate. It promotes class struggle and attributes the root of every problem to traditional social structures. It talks about the rich exploiting the poor in order to incite grudges and hatred against the rich and incite revolution and violence. With the expansion of communist movements, its manipulation, violence, and lies have become commonplace in the West and have filled society with rancor.
A society with a greater tendency toward violence will become less stable and more divided. In American society, some politicians and political operatives attack their enemies by unscrupulous means, like deception, personal attacks, and the like. These days, the irreconcilable differences between the two major parties make them appear as incompatible as fire and water.
Left-leaning parties and politicians claim that they’ll protect the rights of the people and follow the regulations of a democratic society. But when they come to power, under the influence of the communist specter, they use all methods to suppress dissent and arbitrarily deprive others of their rights.
Not everyone wants conflict, but it only takes a few core communist activists to stir things up. After the 2016 presidential election, Antifa extremists locked onto their target — conservatives — and went after them at rallies and elsewhere. They stopped supporters of the president and conservative thinkers from speaking at events and, in some cases, even physically attacked them.
In June 2017, Steve Scalise, the House of Representatives majority whip, was shot and wounded by a supporter of another party while attending a baseball practice. One leftist official from Nebraska even said he was “glad” that Scalise was shot and wished that he had died. That official was soon removed from his post as a committee chairman at the state level of his party.
c. Confusing the West With Lies
Communism has a negative reputation in the West, so lying is its only means of expanding its influence. Some politicians promote policies that are basically communist but come packaged under another name, using slogans like “freedom,” “progress,” and “the public interest.” For instance, the establishment of a socialized health care system isn’t called socialist, but instead “Medicare for all” and “universal health care,” or it’s justified as being supported by public opinion. When leftist politicians want to force employers to pay a minimum wage, they call it a “living wage.” They make empty promises to get elected, similar to what communist parties do gain power. In fact, their goal is to advance socialism, and their tactics mirror the communist promises of creating “heaven on earth.”
Specifically, politicians use warped and redistributionist fiscal and tax policies — such as giving tax incentives to trade unions, government programs, and minority enterprises — while increasing taxes on other enterprises and the wealthy. The result is that the beneficiaries of those policies (including the poor, trade unions, and so on) become reliant on the politicians who favor them, and then support them in elections. Such politicians then have a stable, long-term hold on that area, and can build their political machine. At the same time, businesses are squeezed financially and thus shrink, go out of business, or move, resulting in a constant decrease in tax revenue and job opportunities in the city, eventually causing the city to go bankrupt.
In the past, people believed that the United States was a truly free society and the last bastion against communism. But today, people see clearly that high taxation, a highly developed welfare state, collectivism, big government, social democracy, “social equality,” and the like — all derived in one way or another from socialist and Marxist-Leninist ideological DNA — are enshrined in policies and put into practice. In particular, the younger generation simply isn’t aware of the history of brutality in communist countries. They yearn for and pursue an illusory ideal, and are deceived by the new guise that communism has taken on. The result is that they unknowingly walk on the road to ruin.
5. The Road to Totalitarianism
The totalitarian control exercised by communist regimes over the lives of their subjects is well-documented. But communism’s ideological offshoots in democratic countries are stealthily working toward the same goal through advocating laws that aggressively expand government power and increase regulation over society and the economy. More frightening is the fact that today’s authoritarians have science and technology at their disposal, giving them powers of surveillance and social control on a scale the tyrannies of the past could scarcely have imagined.
a. Eradicating Free Will and Suppressing Moral Agency
When human beings follow the traditional values established by the divine, the development of their culture will follow an orthodox path, allowing them an important channel to connect with the divine. The different social and political systems seen across humanity are likewise derived from their respective cultures.
People are endowed by the Creator with free will and the ability to manage their own affairs. They must manage themselves through self-discipline, moral conduct, and responsibility for themselves and their families. After studying American politics in the nineteenth century, the French political philosopher Alexis de Tocqueville came to greatly appreciate American society. He was impressed with Americans’ ability for introspection, their understanding of evil, their willingness to solve problems with patience, and the general lack of violence in solving social problems. He thought that the greatness of the United States lay in its ability to correct its own mistakes.
What the communist specter wants, on the other hand, is to instigate people to oppose tradition and morality, and to block the path for people to incline toward goodness and toward the divine. People in communist countries are transformed from being God’s people to becoming subjects of the devil, all without noticing it. In communist countries, the government monopolizes social resources so that everything must be carried out by following the instructions of communist party leaders, who themselves must exhibit sufficient “party nature” if they are to survive the vicious factional struggles that characterize communist regimes. Ordinary citizens or the rank-and-file cadres who try to follow their conscience and act morally almost invariably end up violating the party’s ideological line, and are either demoted or labeled enemies of the state. They then become the underclass, forced to struggle at the bottom of society.
In free societies, governments are also moving toward authoritarianism, with “big government” coming to control almost everything. One of the key features of authoritarian politics is a strong central government that plans and directs the economy. At present, Western governments have tremendous power to intervene in and control the economy to achieve government plans; they use the instruments of state revenue and expenditures, taxation, and debt financing.
Expansion of the central administrative power, local governmental control over the lives of citizens, and numerous laws and court rulings have resulted in an all-round expansion of governmental power and unprecedented societal control. “Political correctness” is an excuse to deprive people of their freedom of speech. Those who openly denounce sinister policies are dismissed as engaging in “hate speech.” Those who dare to oppose political correctness are marginalized, isolated, in some cases fired, and in extreme instances threatened or attacked.
Deviated political standards have replaced upright moral standards. These standards are then enforced with the power of the law, regulation, and public attacks, thus creating an atmosphere of social terror and pressure. This social terror can then suppress people’s free will and their freedom to pursue kindness. This is the essence of totalitarian politics.
b. Totalitarianism via Welfare, Technology, and Excessive Regulation
Contemporary Western society is now rife with laws and regulations governing the minutia of nearly every aspect of society, from workplace practices to the raising of children. State welfare is increasingly seen as a default necessity, rather than as a form of emergency aid for the truly disadvantaged. Advances in technology have enabled governments to enforce their red tape on a scale never before possible. Encouraging and accelerating this process are leftist groups and politicians, who market it as progress.
In fact, the expansion of government oversight and state welfare poses a grave threat to liberty and morality. In the nineteenth century, Tocqueville observed that “if despotism were to be established amongst the democratic nations of our days, it might assume a different character; it would be more extensive and mild; it would degrade men without tormenting them.” [16]
From the federal level down to the state, county, and municipal levels, thousands of new laws are passed every year. Just about everything has a law or rule limiting it. The US tax code is tens of thousands of pages long, while the recent health insurance law amounts to over twenty thousand pages. Even judges and lawyers cannot comprehend all the laws, not to mention an average citizen. A person can break a law without even realizing it.
Furthermore, no matter how perfect the law may be, it is only an external form of restraint and cannot govern the human heart. As Lao Tzu said, “The more laws are promulgated, the more thieves and bandits there will be.”
People ignore the fact that social problems are caused by unleashing the evil side of man. As they create more and more laws, ignoring the crux of the matter, a vicious cycle is formed, and society begins its step-by-step march toward totalitarianism.
Throughout history, competent governments maintained the ability to allocate resources to the poor, such as during times of famine, drought, or flooding. Meanwhile, charities existed organically in local communities and religious organizations. The British jurist A.V. Dicey observed that in the twentieth century, however, governments began to see the welfare of individuals as something to be regulated and provided for by taxation:
Now before 1908 the question whether a man, rich or poor, should insure his health, was a matter left entirely to the free discretion or indiscretion of each individual. His conduct no more concerned the State than the question whether he should wear a black coat or a brown coat. But the National Insurance Act will, in the long run, bring upon the State, that is, upon the taxpayers, a far heavier responsibility than is anticipated by English electors. … [Unemployment insurance] is in fact the admission by the State of its duty to insure a man against the evil ensuing from his having no work. … The National Insurance Act is in accordance with the doctrines of socialism. … [17]
However, large government-established welfare states are riddled with inherent weaknesses. There is no such thing as a free lunch. High levels of welfare are based on high taxation, which causes all manner of social ills. The Nordic model of socialist welfare was once considered a positive example of socialist prosperity to be imitated by the West, yet in Northern Europe, the tax rate-to-GDP ratio is among the highest in the world, with many of the countries’ tax rates hovering at around 50 percent.
Analysts have pointed out several fatal problems with socialist medical welfare. It is unsustainable, as people want to benefit from free services more than they pay into them. There are no rewards or penalties for performance, and medical industry practitioners don’t need to assume any legal responsibility for what they do. It causes huge losses to the government: People steal through loopholes, abuse the system, and engage in underground trade. The government decides the life and death of the people through the medical system, and it’s plagued by bureaucracy. [18]
In 2010, a 32-year-old man named Jonas in northern Sweden had to suture his own bleeding wound after waiting hours for medical care. After accidentally cutting himself while renovating his home, he first went to an outpatient clinic, which was closed, then went to the emergency room. There, he waited for an hour for assistance as his wound continued to bleed. Finally, noticing a needle and thread that the nurses had left out, he attempted to treat himself. The hospital staff later reported him for violating the law by using hospital equipment without authorization. [19] This is just one example of how a socialized welfare scheme can lead to ridiculous outcomes. Because everyone wants free medical care, resources are abused. The clash between limitations on resources and the demand that things be free causes imbalances in the supply and demand equation. The lack of supply means long wait times and inadequate care. Those who really need care are thus harmed by socialized medicine.
In addition, while cradle-to-grave welfare appears desirable to many, the population’s dependence on the government lays down the foundation for an autocratic regime. This principle is reflected clearly in the Marxist understanding that socialism is merely the primary stage of communism.
Greater involvement by the authorities in the regulation of society or in the lives of individual citizens requires larger systems of state control: the hiring of personnel and drafting of regulations require money, which is generated from taxation. With the expansion of the state also comes the creation of powerful political cliques that have a vested interest in keeping and enlarging the scope of their authority.
Technology makes it even more convenient for governments to control their populations. The Chinese Communist Party is the most obvious representative of this issue, but the same dangers are present in Western countries, particularly in Europe, where socialist programs are already ubiquitous.
Today’s China has the largest surveillance system in the world. In public places and on the roads, surveillance cameras are everywhere. In just minutes, faces on a blacklist can be pulled from a sea of 1.4 billion people. The surveillance software embedded in WeChat on cellphones enables open surveillance, and privacy is completely absent for anyone with a cellphone. There is simply nowhere to hide.
As technology becomes more and more advanced and governments become bigger and bigger, a continuation on the path of socialism in the West would result in a similarly horrifying fate — of being constantly monitored, pressured, and managed. This ultimate scenario is by no means an exaggeration.
In addition to physical surveillance and censorship, the government can also utilize big data and financial information to have targeted citizens fired from their jobs. Banks can be made to cancel their mortgages. A government with these technological means can revoke the licenses of disobedient citizens and cut off their access to the welfare that, because of other economic policies, is their only means to maintain their livelihood.
6. Communism’s Threat to Basic Values
Communist ideologies have wreaked havoc in the political sphere for centuries. In the East, communist regimes mobilized the forces of the state to crush political opponents, destroy traditional culture, and kill tens of millions of people. In the West, left-wing movements have steadily taken over the democratic process. While eschewing overt violence and dictatorship, the policies they advocate follow the same philosophy of struggle.
Lust for power, wealth, and fame have existed as long as humanity itself, as everyone harbors the capacity for evil as well as good. Taking advantage of the moral weaknesses inherent to human nature, the specter of communism has cultivated networks of “agents” around the world.
Due to communist infiltration, today’s Western societies are divided to an unprecedented degree, with the Left using all its power to obstruct and thwart those who hold traditional views in politics. It is no exaggeration to say that the West is now in a war over its own values.
Leftist political influence has proven extremely resistant to the attempts taken to weaken or reverse it. Politicians and activists under communism’s sway collude with the media to discredit the opposition and spread misleading information to confuse the public. Left-wing officials ignore or obstruct government decrees, divert public resources to support their ideological agendas, and enact policies that exacerbate social division and conflict.
In 2018, according to a poll conducted by The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research, more than 80 percent of respondents said they believed that Americans were heavily divided on important values and that the country was more deeply divided on politics than in the past. [20]
The state is unmatched in its ability to marshal human and economic resources. Wielded properly, political power can bring great benefit to the entire nation, and improve the international community. But as seen throughout history, and in the history of the communist movement, abuse of that power leads to monstrous crimes.
Former US President Reagan said in his first inaugural address: “From time to time, we have been tempted to believe that society has become too complex to be managed by self-rule, that government by an elite group is superior to government for, by, and of the people. But if no one among us is capable of governing himself, then who among us has the capacity to govern someone else?” [21] President Donald Trump said that in the United States, “we don’t worship government — we worship God.” [22]
The unity of a country requires a common set of values and a shared culture. Although doctrines differ among religions, the standards for good and evil are similar. In the United States, this makes it possible for people of different ethnic and cultural backgrounds to live side by side in harmony. However, when the people are divided over questions of basic morality, the very survival of the country is at stake.
Read Next: Chapter Nine I
Updated April 22, 2020
Read the series here: How the Specter of Communism Is Ruling Our World
References
14. Marx and Engels, “Manifesto.”
15. Vladimir Lenin, The State and Revolution (1918), 381–492, Marxists Internet Archive, accessed April 17, 2020, https://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1917/staterev/ch01.htm.
16. Alexis de Tocqueville, Democracy in America, vol. 2, Henry Reeve, trans., (London: Longmans, Green, and Co., 1889), 289.
17. Albert Venn Dicey, Lectures on the Relation Between Law & Public Opinion in England, During the Nineteenth Century (London: Macmillan and Co., 1919), xxxviii, Online Library of Liberty, accessed April 17, 2020,
http://oll.libertyfund.org/pages/dicey-on-the-rise-of-legal-collectivism-in-the-20thc.
18. Paul B. Skousen, The Naked Socialist (Salt Lake City, UT: Izzard Ink, 2014), Kindle edition.
19. Peter Vinthagen Simpson, “Jonas, 32, Sewed Up His Own Leg after ER Wait,” The Local, August 3, 2010, https://www.thelocal.se/20100803/28150.
20. Juana Summers, “AP-NORC Poll: Most Americans See a Sharply Divided Nation,” The Associated Press, http://www.apnorc.org/news-media/Pages/AP-NORC-Poll-Most-Americans-see-a-sharply-divided-nation.aspx.
21. Ronald Reagan, “First Inaugural Address of Ronald Reagan” (speech, US Capitol, Washington, DC, January 20, 1981), The Avalon Project, accessed April 17, 2020, https://avalon.law.yale.edu/20th_century/reagan1.asp.
22. Donald Trump, “Remarks by President Trump at the 2017 Values Voter Summit” (speech, Omni Shoreham Hotel, Washington, DC, October 13, 2017), White House, accessed April 17, 2020, https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefings-statements/remarks-president-trump-2017-values-voter-summit.