America is nearing the last exit on the highway to Hell
America is nearing the last exit on the highway to Hell
The metastatic cancer of “cancel culture” that has taken root in the American sociopolitical environment features a couple of mechanisms all too common in communist regimes -- purges and struggle sessions.
In the former Soviet Union, it was Stalin’s practice to purge anyone he saw as a threat to his position. It didn’t matter whether the person was a staunch communist or a true believer in the revolution. If he didn’t bend to Stalin’s will, he was removed. Many people just disappeared.
In the beginning, during the Bolshevik Revolution, Lenin, Stalin, and Leon Trotsky were close, with Trotsky eventually becoming second only to Lenin, but it didn’t take long for a split to form. Trotsky supported the Mensheviks; Lenin the Bolsheviks. Lenin would come to refer to Trotsky as a “Judas,” a “scoundrel,” and a “swine.” After Lenin died, Stalin came to believe Trotsky was a threat to his grip on the Soviet state, so he permanently exiled Trotsky.
Trotsky eventually fled to Mexico but still had a voice and following in Russia that threatened Stalin. So, Stalin had Trotsky convicted of treason in absentia and sent an NKVD goon squad to Mexico -- half a world away -- to assassinate him. The squad first botched a machine gun attack, and eventually murdered him with an ice ax.
Stalin’s practice of purging spread throughout Soviet society. Anyone could be accused of being a counterrevolutionary or enemy of the state. Some were named to fill quotas. The process was also used to remove anyone out of favor or in the way of some party apparatchik’s petty aspirations. Fraudulent and fictional offenses were common -- all that was needed was an accusation from the right person and ‘Off to Gulag!’
In America today, if you are not a Democrat or are an insufficiently progressive Democrat, you too can be a counterrevolutionary and an enemy of the state. If you do not see the similarity between the bloodlust Stalin had for Trotsky and the hate Democrats have for Donald Trump and anyone associated with him – with Trump supporters demonized as “domestic terrorists,” “white supremacists” and “insurrectionists” -- you either do not know history or choose not to look.
“Struggle sessions” were China’s version of the “glorious peoples revolution.” Mao used to subdue and control a billion people spread across China’s vast landscape, most of which was rural and agrarian. They were a form of public humiliation and torture that forced the subject to admit various crimes before a crowd of people who would verbally and physically abuse the victim before, during, and after the confession. Struggle sessions, though, were not designed primarily to punish the guilty. They were used to shape public opinion, as well as to humiliate, persecute, or execute political rivals and those deemed class enemies. Struggle sessions were cancel culture on steroids.
These tactics exist in contemporary American culture. The cancel mob will persecute anyone who says the wrong word, writes the wrong paper or editorial, retweets the wrong tweet, holds the wrong opinions, or is determined to be a danger to progressive ideology or Democrats -- and “wrong” is defined as anything progressive Democrats don’t like.
Mao’s struggle sessions were conducted up close and personal, while cancel culture is often conducted from a distance (via social or traditional media). Even that is changing, though, since the Democrats became emboldened after taking total control over the Presidency and Congress.
Mao’s practices are evident in the new Congress. Democrats are demanding that Republicans repeat the approved words about the election being free and fair, with Biden as the legitimate president. Anything less is branded as “disinformation” and a “conspiracy theory.” Anyone not willing to recite this new progressive catechism is branded an “insurrectionist” or an “enemy of democracy,” and must be shamed and/or removed. Some Democrats are calling for people to be arrested, jailed, and sent to re-education camps for nothing other than holding “harmful” perspectives.
Scary stuff.
The speed with which the “revolution” happened helps define the Democrat Party. If it quacks like a Soviet, walks like a Soviet, and swims like a Soviet, Friar William of Occam would say it is reasonable to conclude it is a Soviet.
Statistically speaking, sensible, liberty-loving Democrats exist. They need to see what their party has become. They should remember the fates of people like Trotsky, Solzhenitsyn, and Nikolay Ivanovich Yezhov (the man behind Stalin’s purges who was eventually purged himself). They need to know about Lavrentiy Pavlovich Beria, Stalin’s director of the secret police, the man who coined the phrase “Show me the man and I will show you the crime.”
Time to open your eyes, my patriotic friends in the Democrat Party. The blind, vitriolic hate of Donald J. Trump and the bloodthirsty lust for power of your party’s leadership has America on the highway to Hell. The last exit is approaching fast, let’s not miss it.
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