On this bicentennial birthday of Karl Marx, the figleafs are off but the full-frontal horror remains pixilated. What are we looking at? We don't know, we can't know. After generations of foreign, domestic, communist and pro-communist conditioning, including mass media agit prop and "higher education"; after generations of penetration, subversion, de-moralization, corruption and beguilement, the mainstreaming of Marxism continues on autopilot. That means freedom is "converging" with tyranny, which means freedom is disappearing in tyranny, which must make this the best birthday for Karl Marx ever.
It was FDR who quite enthusiastically set our national course on such "convergence" with the socialist revolution known as the New Deal; we put him on a pedestal. FDR's Soviet-penetrated White House and policy shops then helped turned Allied armies into weapons of Communist expansion in Europe and Asia; we honor him and his hapless successor Truman as great war presidents. Never mind that they ushered in more, and more insidious "cold" war, which included preventable war in Korea and Vietnam, and misery and death for tens of millions of people, and a continuing assault on our core national character.
Thoroughly deceived, self-deceived or deceiving, Americans eventually called "victory" in the Cold War at the "end" of the Soviet Union. Never mind that this deceptively transitional phase seems to have operated as a giant smoke-screen for some much-needed regrouping and re-branding for Kremlin Inc., even as America and the wider West took that 1990s-opportunity to transfer billions to our "former" enemies, with Bill Clinton swapping US military secrets for campaign contributions from Red China on the side. Eventually returning to the "formerly" red well, Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton initiated another more sophisticated tech-for-cash scheme known as Skolkovo, which netted "contributions" for the Clinton Foundation from many of the tech companies who were also getting Russian contracts. In other words, nearly a century later, something much much like Lenin's NEP was going strong in updated ventures into state-controlled foreign "investment." Communism was really "dead" this time, so it was all okay.
Lately, however, something does seem to different. As recently as 2008 and 2012, it was verboten to hint that Barack Obama was a socialist -- and that went for his signature socialist program, Obamacare (Hillarycare). In 2016, however, a socialist relic named Bernie Sanders was probably the rightful presidential nominee of the Democratic Party. Now, in 2018, the New York Times reports, numerous Democrats are running for office quite openly as socialists.
No wonder on turning 200 this month, Karl Marx appears all bright and shiny new. Across the media, from Left to Left, we are seeing red-hot hosannas to Marx, would-be destroyer of God and morality, of property and liberty.
Irish Times
With this collective breeze blowing, no wonder Bernie Sanders popped out a "new" scheme for federal jobs for all, while British Shadow Chancellor of the Exchequer John McDonnell gave a speech praising Marx's relevance and influence on the Labor Party. Much more ominously, in a little noticed interview, Democratic Party vice chairman Keith Ellison outlined a perfectly dictatorial Marxist vision for a "maximum wage." Maximum wage? Even the writer for The Progressive thought he was joking. "I wasn't joking about having a maximum wage," Ellison said. "Why shouldn't there be a maximum wage?"
In this gathering maelstrom, I guess we all better hope Vladimir Putin holds onto to that little gold cross of his. Speaking of the Kremlin's most famous "Christian," I wonder if Putin was wearing his cross last year during his address before the massive world communist youth festival in Sochi, Russia (which Jeff Nyquist flagged for us here). That was some shindig, by the way. The Communist Party USA, which sent a youth delegation "joining with 50,000 progressive youth from over 183 countries," described this big event, which Putin hosted, this way:
Centered on the struggle against imperialism, fascism and racism, the festival will honor the 100th anniversary of the great October Revolution; the 70th anniversary of the Festival Movement; and the memory of Ernesto “Che” Guevara and Mohamed Adelaziz.
Sounds just like old times.
Any Marx birthday round-up has to include Jean-Claude Juncker, the unelected "president" of the European Commission, the unelected governing body of the European Union which exerts onerous collective controls over the 508 million persons living in the "free" member states. Given his office, peculiar as it is, Juncker's homage to Marx was probably the most significant. It was the most sinister, too.
EU President Juncker not only praised Marx, he went to his birthplace in Trier, Germany to do so. There, in the middle of Europe, historically a central battlefield in hot wars and cold, Juncker marked the advent of Marx from a lectern in an ancient church (if there is a cross it is not visible in the picture) by delivering what one newspaper called "an impassioned speech praising the legacy of German philosopher Karl Marx." Not far away, a giant new statue of Marx now towers in the city center, a gift from Communist China -- home to tens of thousands of Trier-treking tourists, not incidentally. Surely, they will all now want to see the new Statue of Tyranny.
I just wonder where the next one will go up.