By Scott Hogenson | The Daily Signal
The political landscape in this off-year election cycle is littered with examples of authoritarianism, discord, violence, and murder. In New York City, the leading candidate for mayor in next month’s election promises socialism for the Big Apple. In Virginia, the Democrat running for attorney general envisions shooting a Republican lawmaker in the head. He also expressed a desire for the lawmaker’s young children to die in their mother’s arms.
In Chicago, mobs attack law enforcement officers for the sin of enforcing the law. A sniper in Dallas aimed for U.S. immigration officers but instead killed two migrants being processed for deportation. Last weekend, there were some 2,600 No Kings street protests, funded in part by George Soros, and other socialist and communist organizations.
Earlier this year, Charlie Kirk was assassinated in Utah. Independent journalists were beaten and arrested in Portland, Oregon. Self-identified socialists and communists emerged as political candidates in Maine, Minnesota, and Washington state. This is just a sampling of how these ideologies are metastasizing from coast to coast.
This is unprecedented in the living memory of America, but in many ways, this behavior parallels historical examples of what happens in an environment of political extremism. The world’s preeminent extremist event happened 108 years ago this weekend—the Bolshevik Revolution of Oct. 24-25, 1917, the Julian calendar date of the era.
The driving force behind implementing the most murderous political ideology in human history was Vladimir Lenin.
A theoretician, practitioner, and prolific writer, reading his often-tortured prose reveals remarkable similarities between current events and Lenin’s vision of Soviet Communism.
“Not a single problem of the class struggle has ever been solved in history except by violence,” said Lenin in his January 1918 speech to the Third All-Russian Congress of Soviets. “When violence is exercised by the working people, by the mass of exploited against the exploiters—then we are for it!”
One can’t help but think Lenin would approve of the violent mobs taking over the streets of Chicago, Portland and elsewhere.
Lenin advocated this form of agitation long before the October Revolution.
“We supported the use of violence by the masses against their oppressors, particularly in street demonstrations,” said Lenin in his November 1916 remarks at the Congress of the Social-Democratic Party of Switzerland. “We sought to bring to the whole country the lesson taught by every such demonstration.”
The socialist/communist sponsorship of the Oct. 18 No Kings protests is no coincidence; it reflects Lenin’s goal of bringing agitation to the whole country.
Street violence was essential to achieving Lenin’s vision, but so was cleansing the party of those less enamored of it.
In a 1911 essay titled “The Career of a Russian Terrorist,” Lenin wrote, “Only the organization of this class (proletariat) and the exclusion of petty-bourgeois ‘fellow-travelers’ from its party, and the elimination of the vacillation, weakness, and lack of principle characteristic of them, can again lead.” (Italics in original)
This philosophy might account for the nascent effort to oust moderate Pennsylvania Democrat Sen. John Fetterman. The same might be said of the pressure applied to New York Sen. Chuck Schumer by leftists like Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Sen. Bernie Sanders to endorse socialist Zohran Mamdani for mayor of New York City. It could also explain why Schumer is bending to the will of the increasingly leftist voter base he needs for reelection next year. The man has been put on notice that he’s not sufficiently radical.
By August 1918, Lenin was done pussyfooting around.
“You need to hang—hang without fail, and do it so that the public sees—at least 100 notorious kulaks, the rich, and the bloodsuckers,” read Lenin’s urgent telegram to his commissars in the town of Penza. “Publish their names. Take away all of their grain. Execute the hostages.”
Three weeks later, he unleashed the Red Terror, his systematic program of murder that left 200,000 dead.
Thus far in America, we’ve only seen a few political murders, but recall the words of Chinese philosopher Lao Tzu: “A journey of a thousand miles must begin with a single step.”
Russia’s nightmare didn’t happen overnight; it took one generation to evolve from the youthful musings of an exiled Marxist to mass murder.
But harbingers of this political radicalism surround us, and they should concern us all.
In his 1917 tome “The State and Revolution,” Lenin opined on how socialism is an intermediate phase preceding the ultimate goal of communism.
His dream is more than a century old, but there are very many Americans who want to retrieve Lenin’s ideas from the ash heap of history and implement them here, today.
In the parlance of the épéeist, en garde.
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Scott Hogenson is a public relations executive who lives in Texas.
First published in The Daily Signal
Vladimir Lenin and the Foundations of the Democratic Party (Townhall)
. . . Lenin made it very plain—and Democrats in America do, too, in their words and actions—that hate is the foundation of their philosophy.
Lenin wrote, “We must hate—hatred is the basis of communism. Children must be taught to hate their parents if they are not communists…hatred is truly the ‘beginning of all wisdom.’”
Lenin labeled his enemies “parasites,” “fatcats,” “spiders,” “bloodsuckers,” and a host of like epithets. The Democrats like to use “Nazi” and “fascist” (interesting how they never call Trump or his supporters “communists,” even though the latter killed hundreds of millions more than the Nazis and fascists did). Lenin got his hate from his master, Karl Marx.
Richard Wurmbrand, a Romanian pastor who spent 14 years tortured in a communist prison camp, wrote, “There is no support for the view that Marx entertained lofty social ideals about helping mankind. Marx hated any notion of God or gods. He determined to be the man who would kick out God.”
Marx said, “My object is to dethrone God and destroy capitalism.” . . .
By Mark Holmberg, a retired journalist, on his Facebook page
I ask you “No Kings” protesters, supporters and encouragers in our media with all seriousness and in great curiosity:
Why is it the practice – indeed the compulsion! – of the left to protest when you don’t get what you want?
Verily, this is just the latest round in a seemingly endless series of protests that exploded with Trump’s first surprising election and reignited with great vigor when he won back his second term despite two impeachments, countless lawsuits, prosecutions, attempts to keep him off ballots and a practically seamless media campaign to malign him and anyone who supported him.
The right doesn’t do all this protesting. Not on this scale or as often.
Save for the occasional anti-abortion rally and the outlying January 6 riot that became a titanic investigation, a Hollywood-assisted miniseries and resulted in third-world-like round-ups and incarcerations.
We saw none of this vigorous “justice-seeking” for those involved in the George Floyd rioting, burning, looting and murder.
Indeed, those “mostly-peaceful racial-justice protests” that gutted mostly minority-owned sections of many cities across the nation were deemed “essential activities” during the great Covid shutdowns. (When church attendance, child education and visiting sick or elderly relatives were ruled too risky by the authoritarians.)
We saw basically no accountability for the ripping down of historic public property during the monument-removal frenzy.
Or the illegal takeover of private university property and blocking of public property during pro-Palestinian rallies.
Blocking roadways – also illegal and kingly behavior (you cannot restrict the ability of other citizens to freely move) – has become de rigueur among the more-agitated left.
The right doesn’t do that.
Allow me to remind you that we saw totalitarian, authoritarian, kingly and unconstitutional control of our nation during the Biden administration’s response to Covid – WITHOUT vast protests or riots.
Indeed, dissent was squashed with jackbooted vigor. Social media platforms admit they silenced – at the request of team Biden – voices that resisted the lockstep measures, even when those voices came from experts in virology. (Experts who are now being vindicated as the “trust-the-science” edicts wilt under less hysterical examination.)
It was all for “the greater good”! We were saving lives! (Everyone got exposed anyway.)
The cost: some $15 trillion just to taxpayers. Thousands of business closed. Personal fortunes lost. Children went without education, particularly the poor who didn’t have access to computer-assisted learning.
Citizens, including those in the military, were forced out of their jobs for not complying.
But no protests like this by the right.
When Biden horribly and cluelessly botched the Afghanistan withdrawal, the costs were immense.
Our soldiers lost their lives. Billions in equipment left behind. The Taliban immediately took over that nation.
Russia and Hamas immediately began planning their invasions of Ukraine and Israel.
Millions of lives lost since. Trillions of dollars spent.
But no protests here by the right. No riots. No anti-Biden rallies.
When team Biden and allied politicians wiretapped or prosecuted political enemies, there were no protests or justice rallies by the right.
(But as Trump reciprocates, he is acting like a King who must be stopped.)
When all of us saw Biden had collapsed mentally and largely went into hiding we were stunned as his team and most of our media gaslighted us, saying he was fine and attacked those pointing out his visible decline.
But no protests by the right.
Zero “No Vegetables” rallies staged across the country and encouraged by the media.
And when Kamala Harris was coronated as the Democrat candidate without a single vote – and with lavish (slavish, really) coverage by most of our media – there were no protests or riots over her royal treatment.
(BTW, you can blame her late coronation and terrible campaign for Trump’s win.)
As these “No Kings” protests get underway, we hear much of Trump’s offensive kingly behavior stands on his enforcing federal immigration law and using federal forces to protect those officers doing the immigration roundups; officers who are frequently physically attacked and doxxed for doing their jobs.
Where were the “No Kings” protests when Obama rounded up and deported three million illegals?
“Oh, he did it differently!” we’re told.
While Obama was less vociferous and mean about it, his federal officers indeed conducted similar raids. (Look it up.) And they were assisted by local police and the courts, while those in some cities are now forbidden to help.
Why weren’t there protests, attacks and blocked streets during Obama’s mass deportations?
Oh, there was some upset about it. A few even staged hunger strikes.
But none of this craziness.
But we all know this is really about Trump hatred.
He could end wars, fix gross trade imbalances, dramatically reduce fuel costs, end our energy dependence on foreign sources, keep inflation and unemployment low, improve the economic and educational picture for blacks, legally clean up and make Washington DC safe, try to win the AI race, lower prescription costs, etc., and he would still be The Worst President Ever.
Because he reversed the nation’s steady march to the left. Not just here but in other countries around the world.
Worse, he’s having fun doing it, mocking those in opposition, refusing to yield to any shred of political correctness.
That’s what makes him a “king.”
There’s no mystery about that.
That’s not what I’m asking.
Please consider and answer:
Why is it that the left – and not the right – feels compelled to protest when they don’t like what’s going on in this great land?
What makes us so different?
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