Thread by @johnjsuarez

Communists Lie and Communism Kills: Brief overview of a terrible idea cubanexilequarter.blogspot.com/2020/08/commun… 1/ #Communism #CommunismKills

Communism prior to Marx
The word and idea of communism predates Karl Marx and first arises out of Enlightenment ideas that would fully express themselves in the French Revolution. cubanexilequarter.blogspot.com/2020/08/commun… 2/ #Communism #CommunismKills

On February 21, 1848, The Communist Manifesto, written by Karl Marx with the assistance and patronage of Friedrich Engels is published. cubanexilequarter.blogspot.com/2020/08/commun… 3/

This political pamphlet was commissioned by the Communist League which had come into existence in 1847and is considered the first Marxist party. cubanexilequarter.blogspot.com/2020/08/commun… 4/

The Manifesto didn't offer anything new in communist theory, but a synthesis of these ideas packaged in a way that made it readily accessible, unlike some of other Marxist works such as "Das Kapital." cubanexilequarter.blogspot.com/2020/08/commun… 5/

They were also blessed by some good timing b/c the tract predicted that revolution was imminent, a natural outcome of materialist historical processes, & within days of publication, coincidentally, revolutions broke out first in France & then across Europe, but were put down. 6/

Three international communist networks that span over a century sought to establish a global political network to destroy existing political orders around the world. cubanexilequarter.blogspot.com/2020/08/commun… 7/

The first leader of the Soviet Union, Vladimir Lenin on October 2, 1920 in a speech to Russian communist youth stated: cubanexilequarter.blogspot.com/2020/08/commun… 8/

"The class struggle is continuing and it is our task to subordinate all interests to that struggle. Our communist morality is also subordinated to that task. cubanexilequarter.blogspot.com/2020/08/commun… 9/

We say: morality is what serves to destroy the old exploiting society and to unite all the working people around the proletariat, which is building up a new, communist society." cubanexilequarter.blogspot.com/2020/08/commun… 10/

This is at the heart of communist morality, the ends justify the means, a profound immorality and a pillar of international communism. cubanexilequarter.blogspot.com/2020/08/commun… 11/

"There are no morals in politics; there is only expedience. A scoundrel may be of use to us just because he is a scoundrel." - Vladimir Lenin cubanexilequarter.blogspot.com/2020/08/commun… /12

The power of propaganda
The Communists were excellent at diagnosing problems in society and using propaganda to exploit them, even if their solutions did not improve them. cubanexilequarter.blogspot.com/2017/11/rememb… 13/

The Communist Manifesto is a perfect example of this. However they also operated in international totalitarian networks to spread the propaganda and to engage in coordinated international campaigns to achieve political power. cubanexilequarter.blogspot.com/2020/08/commun… 14/

These innovations would give communists an organizational and message advantage over traditional political parties. cubanexilequarter.blogspot.com/2020/08/commun… 15/

The pioneer in totalitarian networks was Wilhelm "Willi" Münzenberg who impacted much of the 20th century. Münzenberg met the Russian communist revolutionary Lenin in Bern, Switzerland in 1915. cubanexilequarter.blogspot.com/2020/08/commun… 16/

The Münzenberg network was one of the key factors for the direction taken in political attitudes that operated in the 1930s. cubanexilequarter.blogspot.com/2020/08/commun… 17/

He manipulated & influenced public opinion using a network of writers & intellectuals such as: Ernest Hemingway, John Dos Passos, Lillian Hellman, George Grosz, Erwin Piscator, André Malraux, André Gide, Bertolt Brecht, Dorothy Parker, Kim Philby, Guy Burgess & Anthony Blunt. 18/

He organized protest marches, politicized writers conferences, politicized art festivals, ad hoc committees signed by famous celebrities for causes without end. cubanexilequarter.blogspot.com/2020/08/commun… 19/

These networks are still active today and have operated over the years in campaigns for Angela Davis (1970), Mumia Abdul Jamal (1982-2011), the Cuban Five (2000- 2014) just to name a few high profile cases. cubanexilequarter.blogspot.com/2020/08/commun… 20/

It is no accident that modern conservatism is traced back to a profound and nuanced rejection of the French Revolution of 1789 found in the writings of Edmund Burke, and especially Reflections on the Revolution in France published in November of 1790. cubanexilequarter.blogspot.com/2020/08/commun… 21/

Burke knew the basis and structure of a traditional society and the threat of revolution to these important social structures that make civilization both possible and tolerable. cubanexilequarter.blogspot.com/2020/08/commun… 22/

This critique of the Revolution applies to Communism, and the followers of Edmund Burke, and Roger Scruton, one of his intellectual descendants in an essay titled "What can Europe learn from communism?"explained one of the great errors of communism. cubanexilequarter.blogspot.com/2020/08/commun… 23/

"The great error of the communists was to eliminate opposition, to conscript the people into a ‘unity’ that they had not chosen and were not allowed to question." cubanexilequarter.blogspot.com/2020/08/commun… 24/

"The great benefit of democracy is that it makes opposition possible and also legitimate. But this has the consequence that, in a democracy, more than half the people at any moment might be living under a govt that they did not choose, maybe a govt that they hate." 25/

"What makes that possible? Why do democracies not break down, under the pressure of popular dissent?" cubanexilequarter.blogspot.com/2020/08/commun… 26/

"The answer is simple: they don’t break down because the loyalty of the citizen is not towards the govt, but towards something higher, something that is shared between all the citizens, regardless of their political beliefs and inclinations." cubanexilequarter.blogspot.com/2020/08/commun… 27/

This higher thing is the nation, the entity to which we all belong, and which defines the first-person plural of democratic politics." cubanexilequarter.blogspot.com/2020/08/commun… 28/

Results time & time again when communists take power & dissent is outlawed & elections no longer contest power between political parties, but only to ratify fidelity to the ruling class, the end results are piles of dead bodies, destroyed societies, & generations of mistrust. 29/

Despite the claims made about education and healthcare in these regimes, children have been treated horribly. cubanexilequarter.blogspot.com/2020/08/commun… 30/

The paradox of communism is that it spawns societies that are profoundly antisocial. Police states with informants spying on neighbors does not build social bonds, but paranoia and distrust. cubanexilequarter.blogspot.com/2020/08/commun… 31/

Communists today embrace this statement when they dispute the death count of 100 million victims of communism, and manufacture their own numbers, including millions of victims of communism, in their lists claiming over a billion dead due to capitalism. cubanexilequarter.blogspot.com/2020/08/commun… 32/

Beware of the small print used by the communists. Out of the 1.6 billion deaths they blame on Capitalism a fair amount can be challenged, but some are just absurd. Consider the following taken from the embedded Tweet above in small print: cubanexilequarter.blogspot.com/2020/08/commun… 33/

World War 2 was started by an alliance between Nazi Germany and the Communist Russia. Both regimes were hostile to capitalism and liberal democracy. cubanexilequarter.blogspot.com/2020/08/commun… 34/

On August 23, 1939 they signed the Hitler Stalin Pact and over the next month launched invasions from each country dividing up Poland and starting WW2. cubanexilequarter.blogspot.com/2020/08/commun… 35

Therefore, the dead in that war can be laid at the feet of fascism and communism, not capitalism. cubanexilequarter.blogspot.com/2020/08/commun… 36/

However, if liberal capitalist regimes like the United States had not supplied billions in aid to the USSR, after the Nazis double crossed Stalin and invaded Russia in June 1941, the outcome of the war might have been very different. cubanexilequarter.blogspot.com/2020/08/commun… 37/

The claim that India between 1947 and 1990 had a "capitalist policy" is not true. cubanexilequarter.blogspot.com/2020/08/commun… 38/

The first elected leader of an independent India was Jawaharlal Nehru and he was a democratic socialist who believed that "Socialism is after all not only a way of life, but a certain scientific approach to social and economic problems." cubanexilequarter.blogspot.com/2020/08/commun… 39/

India under Nehru nationalized the means of production and the banks, but despite being a socialist regime, it remained a democracy. cubanexilequarter.blogspot.com/2020/08/commun… 40/

This meant that opposition parties were able to run for office in contested elections, and there was a free press to report on the economic failures of socialism. To call this a "capitalist policy" is a falsehood. cubanexilequarter.blogspot.com/2020/08/commun… 41/

Worse yet the Famine of 1932-33 (Kulak policy and weather) was a famine manufactured by Josef Stalin. It is a crime of communism, and to blame it on capitalism is a lie. cubanexilequarter.blogspot.com/2020/08/commun… 42/

Khmer Rouge took over Cambodia in a communist revolution with backing from Beijing in 1975 & were forced out of power by the Soviet backed Vietnamese in 1979 & in the space of less than 4 years killed over 2 million people, or a 1/3 of the entire population. 43/

They were and are true believing communists who carried out a radical and profound revolution. cubanexilequarter.blogspot.com/2020/08/commun… 44/

Lastly, the communists blame capitalism for over 306 million deaths due to cigarettes between 1960 and 2011. Capitalism did not force individuals to buy and consume cigarettes. cubanexilequarter.blogspot.com/2020/08/commun… 45/

Liberal democracies carried out public campaigns against cigarette smoking and restricted its use, and taxed it heavily. cubanexilequarter.blogspot.com/2020/08/commun… 46/

What is equally interesting and not mentioned is that cigarette smoking is also widespread in communist regimes that do not have capitalism, and in China it was tobacco production that drove their economy in the early 1990s. cubanexilequarter.blogspot.com/2020/08/commun… 47/

People freely choosing to smoke, and other bad habits cannot be blamed on capitalism. cubanexilequarter.blogspot.com/2020/08/commun… 48/

People not statistics

Some psychologists argue that as the number of victims increase into the hundreds, and thousands that compassion collapses out of the human fear of being overwhelmed. cubanexilequarter.blogspot.com/2020/08/commun… 49/

Soviet dictator Josef Stalin put it more succinctly: "When one man dies it's a tragedy. When thousands die it's statistics."

Therefore will highlight specific victims of communism from around the world over different decades. cubanexilequarter.blogspot.com/2020/08/commun… 50/

Milada Horakova of Czechoslovakia (1950)

Milada Horakova was hanged with three others in Prague’s Pankrac Prison as a spy and traitor to the Communist Czechoslovakian government on June 27, 1950. cubanexilequarter.blogspot.com/2020/08/commun… 51/

She was a lawyer, social democrat, and a prominent feminist in the interwar and postwar periods. She had been a member of the Czech resistance to the Nazi occupation of her homeland and survived a Nazi prison. cubanexilequarter.blogspot.com/2020/08/commun… 52/

After Czechoslovakia was liberated from the Nazis in 1945 by the Soviets she became a member of parliament in 1946 but resigned her seat after the Communist coup of 1948. However she refused to abandon her country. cubanexilequarter.blogspot.com/2020/08/commun… 53/

Unlike others who did break under the relentless psychological & physical torture she never did. The communists tried to edit her testimony for propaganda purposes but as Radio Prague reported on their 2005 discovery of the unedited tapes of her trial: cubanexilequarter.blogspot.com/2020/08/commun… 54/

She faced her show trial with calm and defiance, refusing to be broken. Audio recordings - intended to be used by the Communists for propaganda purposes - were mostly never aired, for the large part because for the Party's purposes, they were unusable. cubanexilequarter.blogspot.com/2020/08/commun… 55/

Because she refused to cooperate her punishment was particularly severe, even for the death penalty. In 2007 her prosecutor Ludmila Brozova-Polednova who in 1950 had helped to condemn Horakova to death, now 86, was tried as an accomplice to murder. cubanexilequarter.blogspot.com/2020/08/commun… 56/

During the trial Radio Prague reported that a note written by an anonymous eye-witness to Milada Horakova's execution quoted the young prosecutor recommending: "Don't break her neck on the noose, Suffocate the bitch - and the others too." cubanexilequarter.blogspot.com/2020/08/commun… 57/

Milada Horáková was executed in Pankrác Prison on 27 June 1950 by a particularly torturous method: "intentionally slow strangulation, which according to historians took 15 minutes. cubanexilequarter.blogspot.com/2020/08/commun… 58/

She was 48 years old." The urn with her ashes was never given to her family nor is it known what became of them. cubanexilequarter.blogspot.com/2020/08/commun… 59/

In a letter to her 16 year old teenage daughter Milada explained why she had refused to compromise with evil. Her daughter received the letter 40 years later after the end of communist rule: cubanexilequarter.blogspot.com/2020/08/commun… 60/

The reason was not that I loved you little; I love you just as purely and fervently as other mothers love their children. But I understood that my task here in the world was to do you good ... cubanexilequarter.blogspot.com/2020/08/commun… 61/

… by seeing to it that life becomes better, and that all children can live well. … Don’t be frightened and sad because I am not coming back any more. Learn, my child, to look at life early as a serious matter. cubanexilequarter.blogspot.com/2020/08/commun… 62/

Life is hard, it does not pamper anybody, and for every time it strokes you it gives you ten blows. Become accustomed to that soon, but don’t let it defeat you. Decide to fight. cubanexilequarter.blogspot.com/2020/08/commun… 63/

June 27th, the day of Milada Horakova's execution is now recognized in the Czech Republic as “Commemoration day for the victims of the Communist regime.” cubanexilequarter.blogspot.com/2020/08/commun… 64/

Haile Selassie of Ethiopia (1975)

Emperor of Ethiopia Haile Selassie I was believed to be the reincarnation of Jesus Christ. Selassie had served first as regent of Ethiopia from 1916 to 1930 and was emperor from 1930 to 1974. cubanexilequarter.blogspot.com/2020/08/commun… 60/

He was the heir to a dynasty that traced its origins to the 13th century, and from there by tradition back to King Solomon and the Queen of Sheba. cubanexilequarter.blogspot.com/2020/08/commun… 61/

At the League of Nations in 1936, Emperor Selassie condemned the use of chemical weapons by Fascist Italy against the people of Ethiopia. cubanexilequarter.blogspot.com/2020/08/commun… 62/

Ethiopia was the one independent African state during a time when the rest of the continent was under colonial rule. cubanexilequarter.blogspot.com/2020/08/commun… 63/

H.I.M. Haile Selassie , the lion of Judah, resisted the Fascist invasion of his homeland Ethiopia and warned the world of its threat when he addressed the League of Nations. cubanexilequarter.blogspot.com/2020/08/commun… 64/

He would go into exile in Great Britain but returned home after the defeat of the fascists. cubanexilequarter.blogspot.com/2020/08/commun… 65/

Emperor Haile Selassie's internationalist views led to Ethiopia becoming a charter member of the United Nations, & his political thought and experience in promoting multilateralism & collective security are still viewed as part of his enduring legacy. cubanexilequarter.blogspot.com/2020/08/commun… 66/

Despite inspiring the founding of a religion that today has up to 800,000 followers he remained an Ethiopian Orthodox Christian until his death. cubanexilequarter.blogspot.com/2020/08/commun… 67/

Emperor Haile Selassie was deposed in a communist military coup and it is believed that the officers smothered him and that Mengistu Haile Mariam: cubanexilequarter.blogspot.com/2020/08/commun… 68/

"ordered the emperor's body to be buried head down in the palace and had a lavatory erected over the grave so that he could express daily his contempt for the monarch." cubanexilequarter.blogspot.com/2020/08/commun… 69/

Winston Churchill had described Emperor of Ethiopia Haile Selassie I as "the only enlightened Abyssinian prince." cubanexilequarter.blogspot.com/2020/08/commun… 70/

In December 1994 The New York Times reported that an Ethiopian court described "how Emperor Haile Selassie was 'strangled in his bed most cruelly' in 1975 by order of the leaders of a Marxist military coup." cubanexilequarter.blogspot.com/2020/08/commun… 71/

Less than a decade after Mengistu fled into exile on November 5, 2000, Haile Selassie was given an Imperial funeral by the Ethiopian Orthodox church. Bob Marley's widow, Rita Marley, participated in the funeral. cubanexilequarter.blogspot.com/2020/08/commun… 72/

Laura Inés Pollán of Cuba (2011)

Laura Inés Pollán Toledo was a courageous woman who spoke truth to power and protested in the streets of Cuba demanding an amnesty for Cuban political prisoners. cubanexilequarter.blogspot.com/2020/08/commun… 73/

A woman who had been a school teacher, before her husband was jailed for his independent journalism in 2003. cubanexilequarter.blogspot.com/2020/08/commun… 74/

Laura Pollán became a dissident when her husband Hector Maseda was imprisoned during the Black Cuban Spring of 2003 along with more than 75 other activists and civil society members. cubanexilequarter.blogspot.com/2020/08/commun… 75/

She was one of the founders of the Ladies in White and challenged the Castro regime on the streets of Cuba. cubanexilequarter.blogspot.com/2020/08/commun… 76/

Following brutal repression in an effort to prevent them from marching through the streets of Havana Laura Pollan directly and nonviolently challenged the regime: cubanexilequarter.blogspot.com/2020/08/commun… 77/

"We will never give up our protest. The authorities have three options — free our husbands, imprison us or kill us. cubanexilequarter.blogspot.com/2020/08/commun… 78/

Despite all the efforts of the Cuban communist dictatorship that has a monopoly over force and the mass media in Cuba, Laura was able with a small group of courageous women to take to the streets and demonstrate. cubanexilequarter.blogspot.com/2020/08/commun… 79/

Not once or twice but on a weekly basis since her husband was unjustly imprisoned in March of 2003. The dictatorship did everything they could to stop them, including brute violence. cubanexilequarter.blogspot.com/2020/08/commun… 80/

Bruises and broken bones did not deter these ladies and they continued marching with casts and slings. cubanexilequarter.blogspot.com/2020/08/commun… 81/

Over a 100,000 people dressed in white took to the streets in Miami in the spring of 2010 to protest the violence against these women led by Gloria Estefan, who had organized the demonstration in solidarity with this movement. cubanexilequarter.blogspot.com/2020/08/commun… 82/

In the summer of 2010 the dictatorship finally began the process of releasing the bulk of the remaining prisoners of conscience from the group of the 75 and the last of them were released in the spring of 2011. cubanexilequarter.blogspot.com/2020/08/commun… 83/

Unfortunately, there were new prisoners of conscience whose release the Ladies in White would continue to demand. cubanexilequarter.blogspot.com/2020/08/commun… 84/

Laura recognized that "[a]s long as this government is around there will be prisoners because while they've let some go, they've put others in jail. It is a never-ending story." cubanexilequarter.blogspot.com/2020/08/commun… 85/

Five days before she became suddenly deathly ill, as the violence and threats escalated, she let the dictatorship know that: cubanexilequarter.blogspot.com/2020/08/commun… 86/

"We are not going to stop. If they have imprisoned our sisters thinking that we would give up, they are mistaken. We are very united (...) all the women's movements are very close." cubanexilequarter.blogspot.com/2020/08/commun… 87/

On October 14, 2011, Laura Pollan, one of the founders of the human rights movement the Ladies in White died after years of suffering physical and psychological assaults against her person. cubanexilequarter.blogspot.com/2020/08/commun… 88/

Finally, she would become a victim of the Cuban healthcare system following the Castroite dictum of inside the revolution everything outside of it nothing - would suffer & die in a matter of days while under supervision of doctors who were revolutionaries first & doctors 2nd. 89/

A Cuban doctor, who reviewed her case file, described it as a death by purposeful medical neglect. cubanexilequarter.blogspot.com/2020/08/commun… 90/

Liu Xiaobo of China (2017)

Nonviolent dissident, scholar and Nobel Peace Prize Laureate Liu Xiaobo was sentenced to 11 years in prison for the crime of speaking. cubanexilequarter.blogspot.com/2020/08/commun… 91/

He had already been jailed for more than a year for being one of the authors of Charter 08 that sought to gather signatures in a petition calling on the Chinese regime to gradually shift toward democracy. cubanexilequarter.blogspot.com/2020/08/commun… 92/

Liu Xiaobo had played a prominent role in the June 1989 protests in Tiananmen Square engaging in a hunger strike that he mentioned in a statement he made on December 23, 2009 during the political show trial he was being subjected to: cubanexilequarter.blogspot.com/2020/08/commun… 93/

But I still want to say to this regime, which is depriving me of my freedom, that I stand by the convictions I expressed in my "June Second Hunger Strike Declaration" twenty years ago ‑ I have no enemies and no hatred. cubanexilequarter.blogspot.com/2020/08/commun… 94/

None of the police who monitored, arrested, and interrogated me, none of the prosecutors who indicted me, and none of the judges who judged me are my enemies. cubanexilequarter.blogspot.com/2020/08/commun… 95/

Although there is no way I can accept your monitoring, arrests, indictments, & verdicts, I respect your professions and your integrity, including those of the two prosecutors, Zhang Rongge and Pan Xueqing, who are now bringing charges against me on behalf of the prosecution. 96/

During interrogation on December 3, I could sense your respect and your good faith. cubanexilequarter.blogspot.com/2020/08/commun… 97/

Hatred can rot away at a person's intelligence and conscience. Enemy mentality will poison the spirit of a nation, incite cruel mortal struggles, destroy a society's tolerance and humanity, and hinder a nation's progress toward freedom and democracy. cubanexilequarter.blogspot.com/2020/08/commun… 98/

That is why I hope to be able to transcend my personal experiences as I look upon our nation's development and social change, to counter the regime's hostility with utmost goodwill, and to dispel hatred with love. cubanexilequarter.blogspot.com/2020/08/commun… 99/

Chinese Dissident Liu Xiaobo was arrested on June 23, 2009 & charged with “inciting subversion of state power” for co-authoring Charter 08, a declaration calling for political reform, greater human rights, ... cubanexilequarter.blogspot.com/2020/08/commun… 100/

& an end to 1-party rule in China that has been signed by hundreds of individuals from all walks of life throughout the country. On December 25, 2009 Liu Xiaobo was sentenced to 11 years in prison and two years' deprivation of political rights. cubanexilequarter.blogspot.com/2020/08/commun… 101/

The Beijing High Court rejected his appeal on February 11, 2010." cubanexilequarter.blogspot.com/2020/08/commun… 102/

Unjustly imprisoned for over 8 years China's Nobel Laureate Liu Xiabo was seriously ill in mid 2017 & although granted medical parole continued to be arbitrarily detained, in a hospital diagnosed with terminal liver cancer his access and movement continued to be restricted. 103/

His wife, Liu Xia said that her husband, according to The Guardian, "cannot be given surgery, radiotherapy or chemotherapy," allegedly "because the cancer is so advanced." cubanexilequarter.blogspot.com/2020/08/commun… 104/

Chinese Human Rights Defenders reports that individuals in custody, like Liu Xiaobo, had been denied medical treatment in what is a life threatening form of torture. cubanexilequarter.blogspot.com/2020/08/commun… 105/

Liu Xiaobo died on July 13, 2017. cubanexilequarter.blogspot.com/2020/08/commun… 106/

Milada Horakova, a feminist, was a member of the Czech resistance to Nazism. cubanexilequarter.blogspot.com/2020/08/commun… 107/

H.I.M. Haile Selassie, the lion of Judah, resisted the Fascist invasion of his homeland Ethiopia and warned the world of its threat. Laura Inés Pollán Toledo was a school teacher, turned human rights activist, to free her husband, a journalist jailed for his writings. 108/

Liu Xiaobo was a literary critic, poet & human rights activist who advocated for nonviolent change in his homeland. cubanexilequarter.blogspot.com/2020/08/commun… 109/

He was also a Nobel Peace Prize laureate. They were all murdered by communist regimes through explicit executions or other nefarious means. cubanexilequarter.blogspot.com/2020/08/commun… 110

These are four cases out of the over 100 million lives murdered by communist regimes. cubanexilequarter.blogspot.com/2020/08/commun… 111

It can happen here

Do you know what U.S. citizens have in common with Cubans, Venezuelans, and Nicaraguans? They all at one point said that "it couldn't happen here." cubanexilequarter.blogspot.com/2020/08/commun…
112/

There are signs in the streets of the United States that some of those same forces are using the symbols and tactics of international communism and using force and intimidation on Americans to comply. cubanexilequarter.blogspot.com/2020/08/commun… 113/

However, it is early enough in the process that a non-violent and moral stand of resistance to these forces can stop them before they take and consolidate power, but one cannot live in denial. cubanexilequarter.blogspot.com/2020/08/commun… 114/