At Its Best It's Still the Worst: Deadliest Ideology in Human History

“Those who fail to learn from history are condemned to repeat it.”

— Winston Churchill

There are few things with as much sweeping consensus in America as the widespread disgust of Nazism. Nazi Germany’s horrific and systemic murdering of 6 million Jews and an additional 10-12 million others is rightly viewed as abominable by Americans today.

Many efforts through museums, movies and books have been incredibly effective at teaching the horrors rendered by Nazism.

Meanwhile, communism and its economic philosophy of socialism, are rising in popularity. Positive attitudes toward communism and socialism are at an all-time high in the United States. Forty percent of Americans now have a favorable view of both and almost half of young adults say they favor socialism.

Yet, Marxist socialism is the deadliest ideology in the history of the world. In 2007, President Bush dedicated a memorial to the more than 100 million victims of communism. His remarks speak to the many peoples who suffered throughout the world:

They include innocent Ukrainians starved to death in Stalin’s Great Famine or Russians killed in Stalin’s purges; Lithuanians and Latvians and Estonians loaded on cattle cars and deported to Arctic death camps of Soviet communism. They include Chinese killed in the Great Leap Forward and the Cultural Revolution; Cambodians slain in Pol Pot’s Killing Fields; East Germans shot attempting to scale the Berlin Wall in order to make it to freedom; Poles massacred in the Katyn Forest and Ethiopians slaughtered in the “Red Terror”; Miskito Indians murdered by Nicaragua’s Sandinista dictatorship; and Cuban balseros who drowned escaping tyranny.

The recent protests in Cuba have exposed the horrors suffered by Cubans at the hand of a wicked regime. As is the case in Marxist states, the people are equally impoverished while their leaders amass wealth. While tens of thousands of young women sold themselves to survive, Fidel Castro lived in luxury.

Cuba is not alone, as other contemporary examples of communism include China, Laos, North Korea, Venezuela and Vietnam.

Unfortunately, in every one of these places, innocent people suffer while a new version of Marxism is put to practice. In Communist China religious minorities are being placed into concentration camps.

In Laos there is a hunger crisis while its leaders drive the nation into debt. In North Korea, women and children are tortured.

Venezuela’s Communist Dictator ate empanadas while addressing his starving nation. In Vietnam basic civil and political rights are systemically violated.

Considering these atrocities, why the growing favorability toward the deadliest ideology in world history? A few noteworthy examples in contemporary mainstream culture might clue us to the root cause:

The dominance of left-of-center thought on college campuses. According to the National Association of Scholars, 40% of top-ranked liberal arts colleges have zero professors who are registered Republicans.

To make matters worse, in some subjects, such as Sociology, as many as one in four professors are self-described Marxists.

The nation’s largest teaching union, The National Education Association (NEA), approved a plan to promote race-based Marxism through critical race theory in all 50 states. In one example in Philadelphia, fifth-grade students were forced to celebrate “black communism” and simulate a Black Power rally in honor of political radical Angela Davis.

Groups such as the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) have moved from the fringe to becoming a mainstream movement with serious political power. DSA membership has increased from 5,000 in the 1980s to over 94,000 members in 2021.

Throughout the last six months of 2020, over $10.6 billion was poured into Black Lives Matter causes. BLM, founded by trained Marxists, recently posted a statement absolving the Cuban dictatorship of any role in the suffering of 11 million Cubans while heaving every ounce of blame on the United States.

It should not be a partisan exercise to oppose totalitarian and authoritarian regimes. Efforts should be bolstered to educate on the evils of Nazism and fascism as younger generations are losing knowledge of the facts while a new wave of anti-Semitism sweeps across the West.

At the same time, many Americans remain uneducated on the evils wrought by Marxist philosophies manifest throughout the world.

In the words of the Victims of Communism Memorial Foundation:

“We have a solemn obligation to expose the lies of Marxism for the naïve who say they are willing to give collectivism another chance. New generations need to confront the reality of Marxism in practice. Socialism is not a kind, humane philosophy. Marxist socialism is the deadliest ideology in history. In the 21st century, we have an opportunity to learn from the 20th century and rededicate our free society based on individual liberty, free enterprise, the rule of law, democratic self-government, and human rights.”