100 Years of Communism—and 100 Million Dead

wsj.com ^ | Nov. 7, 2017 | David Satter

[PROCON]

The Bolshevik plague that began in Russia was the greatest catastrophe in human history.

Armed Bolsheviks seized the Winter Palace in Petrograd—now St. Petersburg—100 years ago this week and arrested ministers of Russia’s provisional government. They set in motion a chain of events that would kill millions and inflict a near-fatal wound on Western civilization.

The revolutionaries’ capture of train stations, post offices and telegraphs took place as the city slept and resembled a changing of the guard. But when residents of the Russian capital awoke, they found they were living in a different universe.

Although the Bolsheviks called for the abolition of private property, their real goal was spiritual: to translate Marxist- Lenin ist ideology into reality. For the first time, a state was created that was based explicitly on atheism and claimed infallibility. This was totally incompatible with Western civilization, which presumes the existence of a higher power over and above society and the state.

The Bolshevik coup had two consequences. In countries where communism came to hold sway, it hollowed out society’s moral core, degrading the individual and turning him into a cog in the machinery of the state. Communists committed murder on such a scale as to all but eliminate the value of life and to destroy the individual conscience in survivors.

But the Bolsheviks’ influence was not limited to these countries. In the West, communism inverted society’s understanding of the source of its values, creating political confusion that persists to this day.

[PROCON]

On it's Centennial, A historic reminder of the incomprehensible brutality of a godless, Communist "Utopia".

[Skooz]

bfl

[Army Air Corps]

Ping.

[spirited irish]

ping

[Snickering Hound]

It did give the world goofy Socialist Realism paintings...

[beaversmom]

Comrade Kaprugina Delivers a Scolding (Doctor Zhivago)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mq__Z-Z_Ofs

[ctdonath2]

Interesting:
The Mensheviks were a subset of Bolsheviks who realized that in order to redistribute wealth, there would have to be wealth to redistribute - so society would have to wait for capitalists to create it _before_ initiating the Revolution. The Bolsheviks, annoyed at the notion, refused to wait and revolted anyway - discovering actual redistributable wealth was limited.

[Jim Robinson]

Bump!

[nutmeg]

bookmark

[beaversmom]

From the article:

“When the Bolsheviks seized power in Russia, Western intellectuals, influenced by the same lack of an ethical point of reference that led to Bolshevism in the first place, closed their eyes to the atrocities. When the killing became too obvious to deny, sympathizers excused what was happening because of the Soviets’ supposed noble intentions.”

From Yuri Bezmenov:
“Exposure to true information does not matter any more. A person who is demoralized is unable to assess true information. The facts tell nothing to him. Even if I shower him with information with authentic proof, with documents, with pictures. Even if I take him by force to the Soviet Union and show him concentration camps, he will refuse to believe it until he is going to receive a kick in his fat bottom.”—Yuri Bezmenov 1984, regarding communist propaganda in the United States and how to brainwash a nation

[RayChuang88]

100 million dead? I think when the final toll gets counted, the death toll from Communism in the 20th Century could reach 200 million.

[theBuckwheat]

A hallmark of every utopia is a militant desire to put an end to history, to freeze mankind in a static state, to put an end to diversity and man’s free will, and to order everyone’s life in accordance with the utopian’s totalitarian plan. Many early communists and socialists set forth their fixed utopias in great and absurd detail, determining the size of everyone’s living quarters, the food they would eat, etc. Marx was not silly enough to do that, but his entire system, as Professor Thomas Molnar points out, is “the search of the utopian mind for the definitive stabilization of mankind or, in gnostic terms, its reabsorption into the “timeless.” For Marx, his quest for utopia was, as we have seen, an explicit attack on God’s creation and a ferocious desire to destroy it. The idea of crushing the many, the diverse facets of creation, and of returning to an allegedly lost Unity with God began, as we have seen, with Plotinus.

— from Karl Marx: Communist as Religious Eschatologist by Murray N. Rothbard
Review of Austrian Economics, 1990, 4, pp. 123-179 (Page 54-55 in the PDF)
https://mises.org/system/tdf/rae4_1_5_2.pdf?file=1&type=document

NB: Rothbard called Gnosticism “reabsorption” theology.

[Ruy Dias de Bivar]

What is the difference between Nazi socialism and Communist socialism?

No one says true Nazism has never been tried.

[skinndogNN]

Collateral damage.

It was all for the greater good.

[Puppage]

00 Years of Communism—and 100 Million Dead

Quick, someone ping the majority of millennials that would rather have socialism than capitalism. Idiots.

[Dalberg-Acton]

Marx and Engels were paid to write a book about Communism in 1848.

[DoughtyOne]

And we can watch the miracles of Communism that keep on coming, from North Korea and Venezuela.

[beaversmom]

Related:

Last of the Czars [Three Parts]

Nicky and Alix
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mYo8SEvnsrM

The Shadow of Rasputin
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hx2zMUCsdM0

Death of a Dynasty:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f1em_lDQzmA

[WKTimpco]

We conservatives often don’t believe this but it’s true: there are many of our so-called countrymen whose hearts are warmed at the fire of such a communist totalitarian state in the USA’s future. They feel their rightful place at the top of society has been wrongfully stolen by Trump and other supporters of Liberty. They are enraged. They think Trump’s election was the last straw, and they will never relent until we are in cattle cars.

[HLPhat]

"Two Hundred Years Together is a monumental work of historical scholarship by Soviet dissident and 1970 Nobel literature laureate, Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn dealing with the relationship between Russians and...."

https://wikispooks.com/wiki/200_Years_Together

Jude 5-11

5 Though you already know all this, I want to remind you that the Lordc delivered his people out of Egypt, but later destroyed those who did not believe. 6 And the angels who did not keep their positions of authority but abandoned their own home — these he has kept in darkness, bound with everlasting chains for judgment on the great Day. 7 In a similar way, Sodom and Gomorrah and the surrounding towns gave themselves up to sexual immorality and perversion. They serve as an example of those who suffer the punishment of eternal fire.

8 In the very same way, these dreamers pollute their own bodies, reject authority and slander celestial beings. 9 But even the archangel Michael, when he was disputing with the devil about the body of Moses, did not dare to bring a slanderous accusation against him, but said, "The Lord rebuke you!" 10 Yet these men speak abusively against whatever they do not understand; and what things they do understand by instinct, like unreasoning animals — these are the very things that destroy them.

11 Woe to them! They have taken the way of Cain; they have rushed for profit into Balaam's error; they have been destroyed in Korah's rebellion.

NIV