Everyone seems to agree with the idea of learning from history, but few seem to actually do so.
Today, the Victims of Communism Memorial Foundation marks Victims of Communism Memorial Day. The foundation, established by an act of Congress under President Bill Clinton, is dedicated to reminding Americans about the horrors of communism.
“We have a solemn obligation to expose the lies of Marxism for the naïve who say they are willing to give collectivism another chance,” the foundation explains. “New generations need to confront the reality of Marxism in practice. Socialism is not a kind, humane philosophy. Marxist socialism is the deadliest ideology in history.”
Let’s reflect on this.
The authors of “The Black Book of Communism: Crimes, Terror, Repression,” published in 1997, estimate upward of 100 million people died under communist regimes, largely of course in Communist China and the Soviet Union.
Mass famine of course killed people by the millions, with tens of millions of people dying under Mao’s “Great Leap Forward” scheme to rapidly industrialize China. Around 1 to 2 million others were murdered or driven to suicide during the Cultural Revolution.
There was also the “Great Purge” in the Soviet Union, for example, in which Joseph Stalin had around 700,000 to over a million people executed. And there was also the Cambodian genocide carried out by the Khmer Rouge, which resulted in the deaths of upwards of 2 million people, a quarter of Cambodia’s population.
Beyond the outright annihilation of people and the considerable trauma that brought onto people, leftist regimes inflicted considerable misery in myriad other ways.
From direct control of how and where people lived, to criminalizing free expression, to subjecting people to a life of intentional scarcity, socialist and communist regimes brought misery wherever they went.
From personal experience as someone who has been fortunate to visit a number of post-communist nations in Eastern Europe, even today you can see the lingering legacy of socialist and communist failure decades later. Abandoned towns, collapsed buildings and giant soulless communist concrete architecture everywhere.
A couple of years ago I visited Cuba. Within blocks of the Cuban Capitol building were totally collapsed structures and people begging on the streets. People spoke of the economic misery of life in Cuba. Asked about their “free” healthcare system, they pointed to shortages at hospitals and the need to bring your own medical supplies. And don’t get me started on the abysmal ration books given to Cubans, with entitlements to receive meager amounts of food every month.
And throughout my travels through Latin America in recent years, I’ve met many Venezuelans who had to flee the Maduro regime and were either trying to make life work in countries like Colombia or Panama or were planning to make their way to the United States. Naturally, they spoke of having no economic opportunities, and of their impression political participation was risky or a waste of time.
Of course, you don’t have to go see it yourself. Here in Southern California, many of our neighbors are people who had to flee socialist tyranny. From the Vietnamese community to much of the Armenian community, many of the older folks have stories to tell. Ask them.
On theoretical grounds, on moral grounds, on real world grounds, socialism, communism and Marxism are total busts. But many Americans either are unaware of this or don’t care.
A Gallup poll in September found that 39% of Americans have a favorable view of socialism. This includes two-thirds of Democrats and 38% of independents. Somehow there are Republicans (14%) who also view socialism favorably. Gallup’s findings are consistent with polls conducted on behalf of the Victims of Communism Memorial Foundation. In 2020, they reported that 49% of Gen Zers viewed socialism favorably. In 2019, they found that 35% of Millennials thought communism was good and 15% “think the world would be better off if the Soviet Union still existed.”
I’m not surprised America’s K-12 government education systems are bad, but they are completely failing if they’re producing adults with favorable views of socialism and the Soviet Union. The only people who can be excused for having favorable feelings toward the Soviet Union are babushkas confusing the nostalgia they have for their youth for positive thoughts about the Soviet government.
All of this is to say: to hell with communism and never forget the victims of communism.
Sal Rodriguez can be reached at salrodriguez@scng.com