The collapse of the communist regimes in the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe marked the end of a half-century-long Cold War between the capitalist and communist camps in the East and West. Many were thus optimistic, holding the belief that communism had become a relic of the past.
The sad truth, however, is that a transmogrified communist ideology has instead taken hold and entrenched itself around the world. There are the outright communist regimes like China, North Korea, Cuba, and Vietnam; there are the former Soviet Union and Eastern European countries, where communist ideology and customs still exert a significant influence; there are the African and South American countries, which attempt socialism under the banner of democracy and republicanism—and then there are the nations of Europe and North America, whose body politics have become host to communist influences, without people even realizing it.
Communism breeds war, famine, slaughter, and tyranny. These in themselves are terrifying enough, but the damage dealt by communism goes far beyond this. It has become increasingly clear to many that, unlike any other system in history, what communism declares war on is humanity itself—including human values and human dignity. Over the course of a century, communism established massive dictatorships in the Soviet Union and China; it caused more than 100 million unnatural deaths; it enslaved billions; and it brought the world to the brink of nuclear war and thus destruction. Yet more important is its deliberate and widespread destruction of the family, its fomenting of social disorder, and its attack on morality, all of which are ruinous to the foundations of civilization.
“The Communist Manifesto” begins: “A specter is haunting Europe—the specter of communism.” The use of the term “specter” was not a whim of Karl Marx. The preface of this book argues that communism should not be understood as being an ideological movement, a political doctrine, or a failed attempt at a new way of ordering human affairs. Instead, it should be understood as being a devil—an evil specter forged by hate, degeneracy, and other elemental forces in the universe.
The communist specter took the form of a serpent, then that of a red dragon, and it keeps company with Satan, who hates God, and exploits low-level beings and demons to wreak havoc on man. The goal of the specter is to ruin humanity, and while the divine offers salvation to humanity, communism tells man not to believe, attacks human morality so as to renounce tradition, and causes man not to heed God’s instruction and, ultimately, to be destroyed.
Following the Cold War, the poison of communism not only continued to harm formerly communist countries, but also spread throughout the world. The ideological infiltration of communism has led the specter to influence human society on a global scale, and many people even think that the dark wishes of communism are their own. With this, people lose their ability to judge right from wrong, to differentiate good from evil. This, a devil’s conspiracy, was almost carried out.
Thus, even as the specter congratulated itself, delighted with its sinister victory, most people thought that it had been destroyed. There’s nothing more dangerous than mankind being on the verge of destruction, yet ignorantly celebrating its triumph.
Man was created by God, and the compassion of gods has long protected man. This the devil knew, and so it set about severing this connection, to corrupt man so that gods would no longer take care of him. The devil’s approach has been to subvert the culture given to mankind by gods, corrupt human morality, and thus warp man and make him unworthy of salvation.
Both good and evil, God and the devil, reside in the heart of every person; a life can sink into moral decadence, or can elevate through moral cultivation. Those who believe in God know that by striving for moral conduct and thought, one’s righteous thoughts can be strengthened by gods, and gods will allow miracles to happen. Gods will also help one’s morality rise in level, to help one become a more noble person, in the end allowing one to return to Heaven. A person of low morality, however, is filled with selfishness: desire, greed, ignorance, hubris. While gods will never recognize such thoughts and actions, the devil will magnify them, intensifying selfishness and wickedness, and manipulating the person into wrongdoing, thus creating karma and causing further moral decay, until, in the end, only Hell awaits. If the moral standards of human society as a whole decline, the devil will hasten these trends with the goal of causing more wrongdoing, more karma, and humanity’s eventual destruction.
His followers argue that political power is the central question of Marxian political science; this is both true and not true. Being clear about the ultimate aims of communism means we can recognize that political power is both important and unimportant to the communist project. It is important in that access to political power allows a rapid means of the widespread corruption of humanity. With the levers of power, communists can promote their ideology with violence and eradicate a traditional culture in mere decades or years. Yet it is also unimportant in that even without the apparatus of the state, the devil has other means of exploiting the weaknesses and shortcomings of man; to deceive, co-opt, coerce, confuse, and so overturn traditional thought, subvert order, and create upheaval; and to divide and conquer, with the objective of gaining global control.