By Robin Schumacher, Exclusive Columnist
I’ve been patiently waiting for sensibility to prevail in the current wave of elections that has bubbled to the top avowed communists who openly reveal their anti-America agenda. “Surely this will be the last one,” I think. But the wave continues, most recently with the crowning of Abdul El-Sayed, who won the Democratic nomination for the U.S. Senate in Michigan by racking up impressive margins in progressive pockets and university settings (shocking!)
Heck, even Francesca Hong, the openly democratic socialist candidate for governor in Wisconsin, who campaigned on public grocery stores and a 17% state income tax, just narrowly lost, by about 4,000 ballots, to Milwaukee County Executive David Crowley. Thankfully, Thanksgiving came early this year to Wisconsin (ha, get it, Francesca?) But that’s too close for comfort.
Columnist and author Peggy Noonan evidently feels the same way I do. Writing in the Wall Street Journal, she takes an MRI of the current culture and socialist surge and dashes mine and her hopes that it’s some fast-fading blip on the radar, saying: Socialism’s opponents imagine there is safety in its poor track record, which is obvious to everyone. No, it isn’t. Many of its proponents wouldn’t know the history and many wouldn’t care: Our version will be better.”
Why, of course it will be! Yeesh.
Welcome to another example of post-truth philosophy in blazing action, along with “the god of this world blinding the minds of the unbelieving” (2 Cor. 4:4). Regarding the post-truth mindset, Noonan says: “Socialism is a belief, and it summons feeling. Capitalism is a thing of reason, a disadvantage in an age of sensation.” Spot on, Peggy.
She also sees the spiritual component that I see in the socialist onslaught: “As religion recedes, politics takes its place. As confidence fades, political movements grow radical.” What she doesn’t point out is that socialism/communism is a faith — a religion in itself that takes no prisoners when it comes to rival belief systems.
In his essay, The Religion of Communism, Reinhold Niebuhr spells that out with precision, showcasing that communism exhibits many religious characteristics like fervent faith, dogma, rituals, punishment of heresy, and a sense of mission. The government, though, sits on the throne vs. God — something portrayed, Niebuhr says, in a Russian film where peasants, after experiencing failed prayers to God for rain and provisions, go to Soviet authorities, receive everything they need and, in turn, treat them with religious awe.
Niebuhr also notes the deadly ethical simplicity of communism: loyalty to the working class is made an absolute good, justifying any means, including violence and dishonesty, for the sake of proletarian victory. All hallmarks of our extreme leftist movements today, including democratic socialism supporters.
Not surprisingly, there is strong hostility from these adherents directed towards religion, and Christianity in particular, some of which is veiled (for the time being) and some that is very in-your-face. “Today’s socialists strike me as colder, less human, fiercer and occasionally sociopathic,” says Noonan.
Their actions dovetail well with the principles laid down by their prophets such as Nikolai Bukharin, a Russian revolutionary, Soviet politician, and Marxist theorist (described by Lenin as a “most valuable and major theorist” of the Communist Party) who wrote:
“Many weak-kneed communists reason as follows: ‘Religion does not prevent my being a communist. I believe both in God and in communism. My faith in God does not hinder me from fighting for the cause of the proletarian revolution.’ This train of thought is radically false. Religion and communism are incompatible, both theoretically and practically.”
No one agreed with this more than the man who started it all for Bukharin and everyone else, Karl Marx. And there’s at least one professor and author who says his hatred of God was directly influenced by the one the Bible calls “the prince of the power of the air, of the spirit that is now working in the sons of disobedience” (Eph. 2:2).
The devil and Karl Marx
In his book The Devil and Karl Marx: Communism’s Long March of Death, Deception, and Infiltration, Paul Kengor persuasively argues that Marxism should be understood not merely as a failed economic theory but as a revolutionary, anti-Christian worldview whose destructive consequences and underlying ideas have survived by changing form.
To support his assertions, Kengor points to Marx himself, and his upbringing, intellectual influences, personal writings, poetry, hostility toward Christianity, and fascination with demonic and hellish imagery.
As just one piece of evidence, Kengor references a section in one of Marx’s poems indicating he knew he was on a devilish path: “Thus Heaven I’ve forfeited, I know it full well. My soul, once true to God, Is chosen for Hell.”
If you’re wondering what such a man thought of Christians, here’s an excerpt from an article he penned titled “The Communism of the Rhine Observer”: “The social principles of Christianity preach cowardice, self-contempt, abasement, submission, humility, in a word all the qualities of the canaille.”
If the word “canaille” isn’t in your vocabulary, allow me to translate: it’s a French noun that translates to “the rabble” or “scum” when referring to the lowest order of society. Such feelings spell out that Marxism is anything but religiously neutral. Atheism is foundational to Marx’s revolutionary worldview, with Christianity representing an opposing conception of man, morality, and ultimate reality.
The way of attack on Christianity and the culture in general is noted by Kengor and reads like a page out of today’s DSA playbook: “Rather than organize the workers and the factories … they would organize the intellectuals and the academy, the artists and the media and the film industry … These would be the conveyor belts to deliver the fundamental transformation.”
Reading that made me think of something the former Jesuit Malachi Martin wrote about how the enemy works in a way that is sometimes difficult to see and detect: “Evil moves cunningly along the lines of contemporary fads and interests, and within the usual bounds of experiences of ordinary men and women.”
And when we apply Jesus’ principle of knowing a tree by the fruit it bears (Luke 6:44), three guesses at what communism’s contribution to the world has been, and the first two don’t count. The Black Book of Communism took a shot at tabulating the Marxist death toll in the 20th century, and came up with about 100 million dead (e.g., USSR: 20 million deaths, China: 65 million deaths, Vietnam: 1 million deaths, North Korea: 2 million deaths, Cambodia: 2 million deaths, Eastern Europe: 1 million deaths).
That’s communism following its master, whom the Bible says comes to steal, kill, and destroy (John 10:10). The funny (and sad) thing is that the anti-God crowd still parrots the lie of religion being the primary cause of war and death. If that’s you, here’s some reading to help put that lie to bed.
History, as well as Kengor’s research, shows that Stalin, Lenin, Mao, etc. didn’t corrupt an otherwise benign Marxist ideal. The evidence spells out that revolutionary class warfare, abolition of private property, hostility toward religion, and the overthrow of existing institutions contained seeds that made coercion and mass repression likely once Marxism gained political power.
It’s like one antagonist said in the TV series Children of Dune: “When I am weaker than you, I ask you for freedom because that is according to your principles; when I am stronger than you, I take away your freedom because that is according to my principles.”
So, why would we believe it will turn out differently this time with the new DSA crowd? Because they assure us, “our version will be better”?
That, in the end, is the promise behind every reimagining of Marxism. The names change. The rhetoric becomes softer. The revolution is repackaged for a new generation. Instead of Soviet commissars, we get democratic socialists. Instead of proletarian revolution, we hear about equity, liberation, and systemic transformation. But changing the packaging does not change the underlying worldview.
The coercion, the suppression of religion, the destruction of institutions, the class warfare, and the enormous loss of human life repeatedly flowed from ideas embedded in the system itself.
Remember that the devil rarely needs to invent an entirely new lie to do damage. Most of the time, he only needs to make an old one look new.
Like the DSA.
Robin Schumacher is an accomplished software executive and Christian apologist who has written many articles, authored and contributed to several Christian books, appeared on nationally syndicated radio programs, and presented at apologetic events. He holds a BS in Business, Master’s in Christian apologetics and a Ph.D. in New Testament. His latest book is, A Confident Faith: Winning people to Christ with the apologetics of the Apostle Paul.
